#just about court and the verdict | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

moyazaika · 4 months ago

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tbh jaded lawyer darling trying to save yan crime kingpin from getting his ass thrown into prison for life — yet again.

he’s lingering at the court’s steps, entertaining the news reporters with a dazzling smile, the entire world waiting with bated breath to see whether this is the day his billion dollar criminal empire comes crumbling down—

“the whole world knows you did it!”

“are you ashamed of yourself?”

“do you really think you’ll walk away a free man after today?”

that gets his attention.

“darling, don’t ‘ya worry about me,” he turns to the journalist, and tilts his head to the side, pulling out his lollipop from between those lips, curled in a sly grin. “i ain’t gotta worry ‘bout no fuckin’ laws when i got the world’s best damn lawyer on my side.”

a young man, then. thick glasses and braces on his teeth. far too thin and lanky, for all his balls of steel as he speaks up. “are you implying that your lawyer is an accessory to your crimes? a corrupt lawyer for a guilty man on his way to the gallows?”

he hears you approach before he can think to respond. the familiar, expensive echo of the dress shoes he’d bought you the first time you’d won a case, before you’re there where he thinks you belong; right by his side.

“alleged crimes,” you correct, and your kingpin turns to greet you with a million dollar smile. “now, my client will not be taking any more questions. kindly, fuck off.”

cameras flash instantly and countless more mics are shoved into his pretty face, still mesmerised by you, even when you grab him by the back of his collar (unironed, you notice with absolute dismay) and pull him inside, away from prying eyes.

“you’re being tried for sixteen drug and weapons counts,” you hiss, digging your newly manicured nails into his skin, as you pull the lollipop he’s sucking on right out of his mouth with a wet ‘pop’ and toss it to the side, seething. “when will you fucking get serious!”

he only dumbly stares back at you with a slack jaw, and stars in his eyes. his voice dips an octave lower, deep in his throat when he speaks. “oh, i could get very serious if you wanted to give me a kiss. or, y’know, maybe you could act as a replacement to that sweet lollipop of mine ‘ya just—oh, fuck!”

when you stride into the courtroom later, in your neat, pressed suit and slicked back hair, nobody dares ask why the infamous ‘alleged’ crime lord is following after you with a bruise blossoming on cheeks that flush a deep, deep scarlet.

the judge announces the jury's verdict, and you don’t even look up from the documents you’re perusing when he’s found ‘not guilty’ in a court of law, yet again—

“jesus fuckin’ christ, i knew you were gonna save me!” your kingpin jumps up from where he’s sitting besides you, pressing his face into your shoulder as he breathes you in with an elated, shuddering breath. “can’t even imagine which ditch i’d be rottin’ in without ‘ya, sweet pea.”

“excuse me, sir.” you pry his hands off you with a detached air of reservation you reserve for when the two of you are in public, but the way your knuckles are white when you gather the countless files and papers of yours scattered on your desk tell him everything he needs to know about how pissed you are. “hands off.”

he knows he’s in for it when the two of you get home, and yet, he looks forward to the sight.

it’s always more… exciting than it should be; when you’ve got him shoved right up against a well, going off about how ‘irresponsible’ and ‘immature’ he is, nails leaving his skin bleeding from how deep you sink them into his body, too caught up in your own irritation to notice or, honestly, care.

and maybe, he thinks, as he follows you out, tonight he’ll go pay a visit to someone after you’re done with him.

a man’s got needs, y’know?

he’s high off the rush of his latest win when he walks up the porch steps hours later. it's really only the latest achievement in a long line he attributes solely to you and your efforts.

he’ll make sure to repay you one day, with all you’ve done for him. he’ll take such good care of you; let you do whatever you wanted to him, as a token of his appreciation for how hard you've worked to keep him on the streets he rules and out of the prisons he knows he belongs in.

in fact, his efforts start right here and right now; on the steps of a nice, suburban house, that belongs to the journalist with thick glasses and braces and a wiry frame. the white picket fence and 'keep off the grass' sign do little to deter the man outside. then again, the poor bastard could have had gates of iron, and he still would have found a way to creep inside.

he never knew being a journalist paid so well. shit, maybe he should’ve gone down this path instead of, y’know, running a criminal empire. this bastard's got balls of steel, for what he had the nerve to say about you. but it’s okay! hey! he’s here to take care of it for you!

you don’t ever need to find out what he’s done in your name. ♡

he’s very adamant about this, choosing to see the job to completion all alone, slinking away from your critical, watchful gaze—only once he’s made sure you’re knocked out by watching you sleep, crouched by your bedside, for a few hours—to make sure the problem’s all taken care of.

the kingpin rings the doorbell, and patiently waits for the door to open with his scarred hands held behind his back. there’s a glock in his left back pocket, and a silencer in the right. a swiss army knife curled in his fingers, because he’s always been creative.

yeah, can you believe that? his teachers used to tell him he would make a great artist one day. and he is, he likes to think. only that his canvases are a little less traditional, and not in the banksy way. you know how it is! life imitates art... or some hippie shit like that.

there's no rules in art for what you can paint with, right? or what surfaces you can carve up into pretty shapes...

and so, when the lock clicks open, and the handle turns, it’s exactly like he said; a man’s got needs!

so sue him! really, so what if his needs mean his heavy hands are clamping over the journalist’s mouth, twisted into a silent scream—

so what if he knocks the smaller man back, a fist flying to his face, those wide eyes and all, slack jaw stupidly hanging open in disbelief—

so what if he shoves him inside and kicks the door behind them shut?

your kingpin knows what comes with the life he chose, and sullying his name is one thing—but nobody gets to drag your name through the dirt and live.

he makes sure of that, personally.

“where did you go last night?” you ask, not taking your eyes off the weekly newspaper in your hands. there, on the front page, a greyscale photo of you and your headache of a client, descending the court’s steps after the verdict. “and why didn’t you ask for my permission before you left?”

the headline, in big, bold letters, splashed above the picture; INTERNATIONAL OUTRAGE AS INFAMOUS DRUG LORD EVADES LAW YET AGAIN. SHADY LAWYER TO BLAME?

“just takin’ out the trash, lovely. don’t you worry ‘yer pretty little mind about it.” as he says that, he abandons his own breakfast, suddenly snatching the paper out of your hands and ripping it up, but not before noting the name of the article’s author, tucking it away for later.

shreds of the weekly paper you hadn't even gotten to read yet fall to the floor, fluttering this way and that. you close your eyes and smile. “haha. funny. well, my ‘pretty little mind’ is telling me to throw the coffee in my hands all over you.”

“tryna mark me up?” he purrs, “if you really wanna wake me up, can i suggest somethin’ else ‘ya could throw at me? or on me, really. but—”

“i’m going to kill you in your sleep, one of these days.” you deadpan, turning back to your food. he’s like a little kid, and you’re not about to indulge him by giving him the attention he so desperately wants from you.

“'yer serious??" he grins, hands flying to his face in elation, a curious blush colouring his skin a deep pink. “you mean you actually wanna step into my bedroom— at night— of 'yer own damn will?“

you take another sip of your coffee, fingers trembling around the cup. don’t throw it at him it’s what he wants don’t throw it at him it’s what he wants don’t throw it at him it’s what—

“damn... guess i should start sleeping naked, then.”

extra; what if darling was a prosecutor instead?

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mostlysignssomeportents · 6 months ago

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The Google antitrust remedy should extinguish surveillance, not democratize it

I'm coming to DEFCON! On FRIDAY (Aug 9), I'm emceeing the EFF POKER TOURNAMENT (noon at the Horseshoe Poker Room), and appearing on the BRICKED AND ABANDONED panel (5PM, LVCC - L1 - HW1–11–01). On SATURDAY (Aug 10), I'm giving a keynote called "DISENSHITTIFY OR DIE! How hackers can seize the means of computation and build a new, good internet that is hardened against our asshole bosses' insatiable horniness for enshittification" (noon, LVCC - L1 - HW1–11–01).

If you are even slightly plugged into the doings and goings on in this tired old world of ours, then you have heard that Google has lost its antitrust case against the DOJ Antitrust Division, and is now an official, no-foolin', convicted monopolist.

This is huge. Epochal. The DOJ, under the leadership of the fire-breathing trustbuster Jonathan Kanter, has done something that was inconceivable four years ago when he was appointed. On Kanter's first day on the job as head of the Antitrust Division, he addressed his gathered prosecutors and asked them to raise their hands if they'd never lost a case.

It was a canny trap. As the proud, victorious DOJ lawyers thrust their arms into the air, Kanter quoted James Comey, who did the same thing on his first day on the job as DA for the Southern District of New York: "You people are the chickenshit club." A federal prosecutor who never loses a case is a prosecutor who only goes after easy targets, and leave the worst offenders (who can mount a serious defense) unscathed.

Under Kanter, the Antitrust Division has been anything but a Chickenshit Club. They've gone after the biggest game, the hardest targets, and with Google, they bagged the hardest target of all.

Again: this is huge:

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/boom-judge-rules-google-is-a-monopolist

But also: this is just the start.

Now that Google is convicted, the court needs to decide what to do about it. Courts have lots of leeway when it comes to addressing a finding of lawbreaking. They can impose "conduct remedies" ("don't do that anymore"). These are generally considered weaksauce, because they're hard to administer. When you tell a company like Google to stop doing something, you need to expend a lot of energy to make sure they're following orders. Conduct remedies are as much a punishment for the government (which has to spend millions closely observing the company to ensure compliance) as they are for the firms involved.

But the court could also order Google to stop doing certain things. For example, since the ruling finds that Google illegally maintained its monopoly by paying other entities – Apple, Mozilla, Samsung, AT&T, etc – to be the default search, the court could order them to stop doing that. At the very least, that's a lot easier to monitor.

The big guns, though are the structural remedies. The court could order Google to sell off parts of its business, like its ad-tech stack, through which it represents both buyers and sellers in a marketplace it owns, and with whom it competes as a buyer and a seller. There's already proposed, bipartisan legislation to do this (how bipartisan? Its two main co-sponsors are Ted Cruz and Elizabeth Warren!):

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/25/structural-separation/#america-act

All of these things, and more, are on the table:

https://www.wired.com/story/google-search-monopoly-judge-amit-mehta-options/

We'll get a better sense of what the judge is likely to order in the fall, but the case could drag out for quite some time, as Google appeals the verdict, then tries for the Supreme Court, then appeals the remedy, and so on and so on. Dragging things out in the hopes of running out the clock is a time-honored tradition in tech antitrust. IBM dragged out its antitrust appeals for 12 years, from 1970 to 1982 (they called it "Antitrust's Vietnam"). This is an expensive gambit: IBM outspent the entire DOJ Antitrust Division for 12 consecutive years, hiring more lawyers to fight the DOJ than the DOJ employed to run all of its antitrust enforcement, nationwide. But it worked. IBM hung in there until Reagan got elected and ordered his AG to drop the case.

This is the same trick Microsoft pulled in the nineties. The case went to trial in 1998, and Microsoft lost in 1999. They appealed, and dragged out the proceedings until GW Bush stole the presidency in 2000 and dropped the case in 2001.

I am 100% certain that there are lawyers at Google thinking about this: "OK, say we put a few hundred million behind Trump-affiliated PACs, wait until he's president, have a little meeting with Attorney General Andrew Tate, and convince him to drop the case. Worked for IBM, worked for Microsoft, it'll work for us. And it'll be a bargain."

That's one way things could go wrong, but it's hardly the only way. In his ruling, Judge Mehta rejected the DOJ's argument that in illegally creating and maintaining its monopoly, Google harmed its users' privacy by foreclosing on the possibility of a rival that didn't rely on commercial surveillance.

The judge repeats some of the most cherished and absurd canards of the marketing industry, like the idea that people actually like advertisements, provided that they're relevant, so spying on people is actually doing them a favor by making it easier to target the right ads to them.

First of all, this is just obvious self-serving rubbish that the advertising industry has been repeating since the days when it was waging a massive campaign against the TV remote on the grounds that people would "steal" TV by changing the channel when the ads came on. If "relevant" advertising was so great, then no one would reach for the remote – or better still, they'd change the channel when the show came back on, looking for more ads. People don't like advertising. And they hate "relevant" advertising that targets their private behaviors and views. They find it creepy.

Remember when Apple offered users a one-click opt-out from Facebook spying, the most sophisticated commercial surveillance system in human history, whose entire purpose was to deliver "relevant" advertising? More than 96% of Apple's customers opted out of surveillance. Even the most Hayek-pilled economist has to admit that this is a a hell of a "revealed preference." People don't want "relevant" advertising. Period.

The judge's credulous repetition of this obvious nonsense is doubly disturbing in light of the nature of the monopoly charge against Google – that the company had monopolized the advertising market.

Don't get me wrong: Google has monopolized the advertising market. They operate a "full stack" ad-tech shop. By controlling the tools that sellers and buyers use, and the marketplace where they use them, Google steals billions from advertisers and publishers. And that's before you factor in Jedi Blue, the illegal collusive arrangement the company has with Facebook, by which they carved up the market to increase their profits, gouge advertisers, starve publishers, and keep out smaller rivals:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jedi_Blue

One effect of Google's monopoly power is a global privacy crisis. In regions with strong privacy laws (like the EU), Google uses flags of convenience (looking at you, Ireland) to break the law with impunity:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/15/finnegans-snooze/#dirty-old-town

In the rest of the world, Google works with other members of the surveillance cartel to prevent the passage of privacy laws. That's why the USA hasn't had a new federal privacy law since 1988, when Congress acted to ban video-store clerks from telling newspaper reporters about the VHS cassettes you took home:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Privacy_Protection_Act

The lack of privacy law and privacy enforcement means that Google can inflict untold privacy harms on billions of people around the world. Everything we do, everywhere we go online and offline, every relationship we have, everything we buy and say and do – it's all collected and stored and mined and used against us. The immediate harm here is the haunting sense that you are always under observation, a violation of your fundamental human rights that prevents you from ever being your authentic self:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/blog/2013/jun/14/nsa-prism

The harms of surveillance aren't merely spiritual and psychological – they're material and immediate. The commercial surveillance industry provides the raw feedstock for a parade of horribles, from stalkers and bounty hunters turning up on their targets' front doors to cops rounding up demonstrators with location data from their phones to identity thieves tricking their marks by using leaked or purchased private information as convincers:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/06/privacy-first/#but-not-just-privacy

The problem with Google's monopolization of the surveillance business model is that they're spying on us. But for a certain kind of competition wonk, the problem is that Google is monopolizing the violation of our human rights, and we need to use competition law to "democratize" commercial surveillance.

This is deeply perverse, but it represents a central split in competition theory. Some trustbusters fetishize competition for its own sake, on the theory that it makes companies better and more efficient. But there are some things we don't want companies to be better at, like violating our human rights. We want to ban human rights violations, not improve them.

For other trustbusters – like me – the point of competition enforcement isn't merely to make companies offer better products, it's to make companies small enough to hold account through the enforcement of democratic laws. I want to break – and break up – Google because I want to end its ability to bigfoot privacy law so that we can finally root out the cancer of commercial surveillance. I don't want to make Google smaller so that other surveillance companies can get in on the game.

There is a real danger that this could emerge from this decision, and that's a danger we need to guard against. Last month, Google shocked the technical world by announcing that it would not follow through on its years-long promise to kill third-party cookies, one of the most pernicious and dangerous tools of commercial surveillance. The reason for this volte-face appears to be concern that the EU would view killing third-party cookies as anticompetitive, since Google intended to maintain commercial surveillance using its Orwellian "Privacy Sandbox" technology in Chrome, with the effect that everyone except Google would find it harder to spy on us as we used the internet:

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/googles-trail-of-crumbs

It's true! This is anticompetitive. But the answer isn't to preserve the universal power of tech companies large and small to violate our human rights – it's to ban everyone, especially Google, from spying on us!

This current in competition law is still on the fringe, but the Google case – which finds the company illegally dominating surveillance advertising, but rejects the idea that surveillance is itself a harm – offers an opportunity for this bad idea to go from the fringe to the center.

If that happens, look out.

Take "attribution," an obscure bit of ad-tech jargon disguising a jaw-droppingly terrible practice. "Attribution" is when an ad-tech company shows you an ad, and then follows you everywhere you go, monitoring everything you do, to determine whether the ad convinced you to buy something. I mean that literally: they're combining location data generated by your phone and captured by Bluetooth and wifi receivers with data from your credit card to follow you everywhere and log everything, so that they can prove to a merchant that you bought something.

This is unspeakably grotesque. It should be illegal. In many parts of the world, it is illegal, but it is so lucrative that monopolists like Google can buy off the enforcers and get away with it. What's more, only the very largest corporations have the resources to surveil you so closely and invasively that they can perform this "service."

But again, some competition wonks look at this situation and say, "Well, that's not right, we need to make sure that everyone can do attribution." This was a (completely mad) premise in the (otherwise very good) 2020 Competition and Markets Authority market-study on "Online platforms and digital advertising":

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5fa557668fa8f5788db46efc/Final_report_Digital_ALT_TEXT.pdf

This (again, otherwise sensible) document veers completely off the rails whenever the subject of attribution comes up. At one point, the authors propose that the law should allow corporations to spy on people who opt out of commercial surveillance, provided that this spying is undertaken for the sole purpose of attribution.

But it gets even worse: by the end of the document, the authors propose a "user ID intervention" to give every Briton a permanent, government-issued advertising identifier to make it easier for smaller companies to do attribution.

Look, I understand why advertisers like attribution and are willing to preferentially take their business to companies that can perform it. But the fact that merchants want to be able to peer into every corner of our lives to figure out how well their ads are performing is no basis for permitting them to do so – much less intervening in the market to make it even easier so more commercial snoops can get their noses in our business!

This is an idea that keeps popping up, like in this editorial by a UK lawyer, where he proposes fixing "Google's dominance of online advertising" by making it possible for everyone to track us using the commercial surveillance identifiers created and monopolized by the ad-tech duopoly and the mobile tech duopoly:

https://www.thesling.org/what-to-do-about-googles-dominance-of-online-advertising/

Those companies are doing something rotten. In dominating ads, they have stolen billions from publishers and advertisers. Then they used those billions to capture our democratic process and ensure that our human rights weren't being defended as they plundered our private data and put us in harm's way.

Advertising will adapt. The marketing bros know this is coming. They're already discussing how to live in a world where you can't measure clicks and you can't attribute actions (e.g. the world from the first advertisements up until the early 2000s):

https://sparktoro.com/blog/attribution-is-dying-clicks-are-dying-marketing-is-going-back-to-the-20th-century/

An equitable solution to Google's monopoly will not run though our right to privacy. We don't solve the Google monopoly by creating competition in surveillance. The reason to get rid of Google's monopoly is to make it easier to end surveillance.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/07/revealed-preferences/#extinguish-v-improve

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

#pluralistic #google #antitrust #monopolies #remedies #ad-tech #competition #power #doj v google #attribution

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timeisacephalopod · 2 years ago

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There hasn't been enough presidential assassinations in the US in my lifetime for my liking you guys need to get on it I'm not from that country so another JFK would be popcorn material instead of terrifying, and to be clear I'm not advocating anyone shoot a president, I'm just saying I'd be curious about the ensuing conspiracy theories if it happened 🧐🧐🧐

Don't snipe Biden though, not because I think he's good at his job or anything, it's just that sniping a guy labeled "sleepy Joe" by his opposition isn't the cool conspiracy theory fueler I'm looking to observe with a glass of wine and a bong filled with the best weed I can find here in Canada

#winters ramblings #i thought for SURE if it was gunna happen someone would shoot trump but unfortunately hes still kicking #like mans won't even die a NATURAL death and now hes got like 600 open court cases and while thats all well and good #some Top Notch political entertainment the court case is HAPPENING so i dont even get to be entertained proper #until ALL of it comes out when the verdict drops and we can all see the evidence amd whatnot ourselves #because obviously no one is releasing that stuff in full to the public due to the ongoing case so ok cool the us is giving me a NUGGET #of entertainment but guys i would like MORE and if someone just HAPPENED to JFK a guy im not advocating anyone do that #but i want to find out what the modern grassy knoll is OKAY #also im lying about the wine i HATE wine i eill probably be drinking water 😂😂😂

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abyssruler · 1 year ago

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furina’s guide on the art of matchmaking

neuvillette x gn!reader

it’s no secret that furina is constantly bored of the mundanity that comes with court, but with the recent discovery of neuvillette’s crush on you, things have just gotten a lot more interesting. if only you and neuvillette would just get together, but alas, it comes down to the great hydro archon to bring justice to neuvillette’s sad, pathetic love life.

furina pov, comedy, furina being dramatic as hell

Furina knows the best way to get under Neuvillette’s skin is through you. The Iudex may seem impassive from the outside, but she knows where to look for his tells, particularly when he’s annoyed (she has, after all, been the recipient to silently judging stares, usually those of a disappointed or even irritated nature).

And she’s seen the way Neuvillette looks at you—his face softening, an almost imperceptible smile on his lips, and most damningly of all, the slightest hint of a blush whenever you stare into his eyes a little too long to be considered proper.

It’s all so entertaining to watch, if a bit miffing to endure seeing how utterly slow the two of you are. If Furina had been in Neuvillette’s shoes, she would have long since enacted a performance grander than anything Fontaine has ever seen and asked you out on a date. Not just any date though, no, she would have to pull an all-nighter to come up with the best date there is. One does not simply go on a date with the God of Justice and have it be mediocre.

But all that aside, with how boring Neuvillette is with his stricter than strict rules and views on how one must go about their day, it falls upon her to make sure he doesn’t die as a decrepit old bachelor who’s never felt the touch of another person intimately. (Not that Furina had any say on the topic of intimacy, seeing as she’s never had any experience in the romantic aspects of life, but experience means nothing compared to the wisdom of the God of Justice!)

So, after many nights spent huddled beneath her blankets, scribbling on her notebook and brainstorming the best way to get a rise out of Neuvillette, she happened upon a breakthrough. An idea so great it would not only be something worthy of the Steambird’s headlines, but also be something the people of Fonatine would speak of for years to come.

Yes, it all comes down to this very moment, standing over the highest place in the opera with hundreds of eyes watching her as she points an accusing finger at your figure standing on the very stage she’s set up.

Neuvillette watches it all with his eyes narrowed at her, hands clasped tightly around his cane, and Furina would have loved to relish in that reaction, but alas, she must continue with her script.

With a haughty smile, she meets your eyes as she yells out loud to her captivated audience.

“I charge you, (Y/N), with the crime of theft!”

The people below gasp in shock at the sudden accusation. Only natural, of course. You, an esteemed person of reputable background who most people view as a kind person, being charged with theft? How scandalous!

But that’s not all!

“You stand accused of thievery,” Furina pauses for a dramatic effect, feeling the spectators hold their breaths as they await her final verdict.

She then looks up at Neuvillette, and it takes all she has in her not to burst in hysterics at the comically pinched face he’s sporting. She moves her finger from you to Neuvillette, practically preening in place as the assembled crowd below let out varying expressions of shock.

And with a smug smile, she deals the final blow.

“For stealing the Chief Justice of Fontaine’s heart!”

One, two, three—

Screams erupt from below. Women squealing in delight while the men cheer at the sudden twist from accusation to romance.

Furina basks in the attention as the people sing praises of her.

“Of course, how could not I have seen it before?”

“Lady Furina is so sharp to have caught on!”

“Monsieur Neuvillette and (Y/N) do make a good pair, don’t they?”

“How ingenious! As expected of our Lady Furina!”

But then, Neuvillette stands, a stern look on his face as he taps his cane on the ground hard enough to rattle her eardrums.

“Order!”

His face could have been made from stone with how hard he’s looking at her. If looks could kill, she’d be dead on the spot. Yikes! Perhaps it’s time to make a swift escape…

“Lady Furina, might I remind you that charges and accusations are not to be made lightly within the court. To abuse your position in order to make a ridiculous statement. I…”

With every word that leaves his mouth, Furina slowly begins to feel that perhaps she’d been too hasty in thinking that all would turn out well. And oh, maybe she should have thought up of scenarios and what-to-dos after she finished performing her grand plan, but in her defense, she’d been too excited at the prospect of finally pushing you two together that it completely slipped her mind!

Is it too late to claim it was all an elaborate performance not meant to be taken seriously?

Neuvillette stares thunderously up at her.

She’ll take that as a no, then.

Just when all hope seemed to have been lost, a savior comes in the form of you raising your hand.

Neuvillette immediately stops speaking in favor of addressing you.

“Would the accused like to defend their innocence?”

You take a deep breath, gaze briefly flitting to Furina’s before meeting Neuvillette’s. And even without much prompt, from that single glance alone, she knew she was about to witness something extremely entertaining.

“I… I would like to press charges as well,” you say evenly, and for a second, Furina’s heart drops as she thinks you’re about to charge her for false accusations and perhaps even slander, (the first time in history that anyone has charged the God of Justice for a crime!) but then, you continue—

“I would like to press charges against you, Monsieur Neuvillette, for stealing my heart too.”

Your statement is followed by a stunned silence that only lasts for a brief moment, before it’s overcome by exclamations and whoops at the sudden turn of events.

Furina falls back on her seat and howls with laughter as she watches Neuvillette be struck speechless, red creeping up his cheeks as your statement echoes across the cavernous hall. She reminds herself to gift you something extravagant for saving her at the very last moment.

Ah, what a delightful way to end the show.

She watches you direct a besotted smile towards Neuvillette. Another day, another poor sod saved from the horrors of a nonexistent love life.

Furina mentally pats herself on the back for a job well done.

#furina: another day another slay #genshin x reader #genshin impact x reader #neuvillette x reader #genshin neuvillette x reader #gn reader #furina #focalors

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velvees-archive · 4 months ago

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At 20 years old, Miles Edgeworth’s only mentor tells him never to step foot into his opponent’s territory lest he fail to crush them in court. 4 years later, Edgeworth enters Defendant Lobby No. 1 to warn opposing counsel Phoenix Wright about Redd White’s decisive testimony.

Some post-AAI1 reflections + how Phoenix unravels Miles from the very moment they meet again.

After playing through the original trilogy, up to 4-2 on Apollo Justice, and all of Ace Attorney Investigations 1, I couldn’t help but jot down my (admittedly incomplete) thoughts about Phoenix and Edgeworth’s relationship, especially as it pertains to Miles’ “unraveling,” or his departure from von Karma’s teachings.

We already know von Karma had no love for Edgeworth. Crushing the late Gregory Edgeworth’s legacy under the guise of mentoring his son (and eventually ruining his career at its peak) was von Karma’s last act of hatred towards the departed.

From Miles’ perspective, however, von Karma was an accomplished teacher to whom he owed his gratitude and career’s success. This is important because Edgeworth’s actions are fundamentally motivated by his desire to express his “gratitude,” repay debts, and honor legacies.

His debt to von Karma compels him to strive for the perfection his mentor obsesses over. Achieving perfection takes the form of absorbing von Karma’s teachings, among them the AAI1 screenshot from earlier: only face your opponent in court, and make sure you crush them when you do it.

We know for a fact that the “demon prosecutor” internalizes von Karma’s teachings. He follows them to a T.

So, following 15 years of indoctrination, 4 years of putting the von Karma creed into practice, and an entire childhood AND early adulthood’s worth of gratitude, you’d THINK Edgeworth wouldn’t dare dishonor him…

Until he does, by coming to the defendant lobby to speak to his “enemy.”

Prior to playing AAI1, I thought the impetus for Edgeworth’s character development was 1-3, wherein he reevaluated the facts of the case and helped Phoenix get Dee Vasquez a guilty verdict. I still think 1-3 was the first time he consciously acknowledged the possibility (keyword: possibility) that his prosecutorial upbringing wasn’t..sound…(lmao!)

But with this AAI1 von Karma and Bratworth interaction, I now believe it was 1-2—with Edgeworth subconsciously disregarding his mentor’s teachings and Phoenix acting as the catalyst—that shows us when he first strayed from the path of a Von Karma.

An aside: Do I think AAI1 Bratworth was perfectly characterized? Not at all; he’s much too noble for that era of his life, though I don’t think it affects my case.

Edgeworth is a man full of contradictions. He comes to the defendant lobby to tell Phoenix his case is hopeless, though he has no obligation to disclose—nor has he ever set a precedent of disclosing—decisive witnesses’ information to his opponents.

He tells Phoenix he’ll do anything to get a guilty verdict, yet he warns the defense that his witness’s testimony will be considered infallible, prompting the player (Phoenix) to dissect the following testimonies with more care.

He tells Phoenix not to expect any special treatment from him, yet his very presence in the defendant’s lobby is in direct opposition to his respected mentor’s wishes.

It takes just one appearance from Phoenix for the filaments of von Karma’s indoctrination to unravel. 4 years into his career, Edgeworth has met many attorneys—most notably, Mia Fey—who embody Phoenix’s faith in his clients, yet none could shake his foundations like Phoenix Wright.

Edgeworth may have not been ready to turn a new leaf upon his first encounter with Phoenix, but the fact that a loose thread from his childhood (that’s emblematic of his innocence, his dreams, and dare I say his father’s drive) ultimately leads to his unraveling is poetry if I’ve ever seen it.

TL;DR Phoenix deconstructs Edgeworth like he was born to do so. The moment Phoenix decided to chase after him, Edgeworth had already lost.

#ace attorney #vel talks ace attorney #narumitsu #but not really narumitsu in the ship sense #ace attorney investigations 1 #reflections #and they were soulmates #phoenix wright #miles edgeworth #cross posted on twitter

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starboundsingularities · 11 months ago

Text

the jurist system seems really cool i hope they keep using it :-)

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🌈 lawsbian Follow

hey girl. am i a suspect. because you can "court" me any time

🧊 just--ice Follow

try.

🌈 lawsbian Follow

hey girl. am i a suspect. because you can "try" me any time

🌈 lawsbian Follow

hey girl. are you a lawyer. because you can "try" to "court" me any time

🌈 lawsbian Follow

hey girl. am i on trial.

🌈 lawsbian Follow

i'm determined to make this work btw

🌈 lawsbian Follow

hey girl. law

🔪 violencekilling Follow

hey girl. are you a murderer. because ow ough ouch agh stop stabbing me

732,390 notes

🌟 rockliker270 Follow

guys watch out hes gonna shelly de kill you

293,485 notes

🎀 copiicat Follow

they called me to the witness stand and the defense attorney just shouted "BOOOOOO WE HATE YOUR PUSSY"

43,618 notes

🧇 edible-evidence Follow

look if i was on trial and the guy prosecuting me started advertising his music i'd just plead guilty. avoid the embarrassment of getting put in prison by a guy who basically used the trial to say "this blew up btw here's my soundcloud"

97,384 notes

⚖️ courtofpublicopinions Follow

💞 lawveyourself Follow

didnt miles edgeworth defend someone in a case once

⛲ fountainoftruth Follow

do you know the difference between a prosecutor and a defense attorney

270,934 notes

💟 longingforyou Follow

being rivals isn't enough i need to kiss you

💟 longingforyou Follow

who the fuck is evil magistrate

💟 longingforyou Follow

STOP TAGGING THIS WITH LAWYERS?????

584,769 notes

🐈 nyattorney Follow

they hired a guy to stand in court and shout "GET A ROOM YOU TWO" whenever the lawyers start getting a little too homoerotic

976 notes

💥 courtroomchaos Follow

your honor i know all the evidence points to my client being guilty. but come on you have to admit he kinda ate right

💼 courtofwaw Follow

mia fey when they had phoenix wright on trial

20,475 notes

🔍 thuthseeker Follow

ok hot take but i feel like these lawyers should maybe not be allowed to drag literal children to court with them?? how many people have gotten genuinely actually fucking SHOT in court and they're just ok bringing fucking 8 year olds in?

12,475 notes

💼 courtofwaw Follow

happy almost christmas to all who celebrate

💫 dizzydreamers124 Follow

it's march

🎄 holidazed Follow

happy almost christmas :)

😈 knownjaywalker Follow

WHO is putting this on my dash

👁️ cymorgue Follow

STOP POSTING THIS. IT IS JUNE.

🐼 pandastar91 Follow

ITS ALMOST CHRISTMAS!!!!!!!

1,589,589 notes

💽 platinumcourtrecord Follow

evil gavinners be like. innocent hate. this is a nothing post

19,384 notes

🥚 eggvidenced Follow

STOP asking me about the dl-6 post idc idc look even phoenix wright forged evidence once shut up

📕 lexculpatory Follow

he didn't forge the evidence, though. it was kristoph gavin who ordered the forgery. this was covered in the trial of vera misham. if you're going to try to compare yourself to well known figures, you could at least check the veracity of your claims.

🥚 eggvidenced Follow

yeah well. he might have. on a different case or something.

73 notes

🃏 thecourtjester Follow

i tried to take the bar exam but they didnt let me because i wasnt cunty and traumatized enough

57,384 notes

😇 innosense Follow

683,876 notes

🦀 mad_libz_87 Follow

when will global studios realize that i do not WANT another shitty steel samurai spinoff i just want the original show back

7,094 notes

⚖️ courtofpublicopinions Follow

she present on my evidence til i reach a verdict

⚖️ courtofpublicopinions Follow

WRONG BLOLG. DON'T REBLOG THIS. DELETE POST DELETE POST DELETE POST I SWEAR WE'RE PROFESSIONALS HERE

17,283 notes

👑 courtroyals Follow

"we need more great prosecutors" you guys couldn't even handle manfred von karma

🧊 just--ice Follow

didn't he kill someone?

👑 courtroyals Follow

irrelevant. you guys couldn't handle him.

587 notes

📋 lawandwhoreder Follow

law: i'm so law

lawyer, who needs to one up everyone no matter what: i'm more law than you

🏛️ lawyest Follow

📋 lawandwhoreder Follow

you've got to be fucking kidding me

183,834 notes

🧊 just--ice Follow

why is it always murders with lawblr. why don't we ever talk about divorce or something

#ace attorney #ace attorney spoilers #dashboard simulator #dash simulator #dashboard sim #dash sim #unreality #fake dashboard #fake dash #post simulator #long post #this is just going to be a series now /lh #well. if i make any more. who knows #timeframe is sometime after the end of aa4 but before the start of aa5 #the timeframe for these posts is of course always the exact point i'm at in my own playthrough /lh #some of these are based on real posts. but i'm hoping it is more inspiration rather than outright copying #if it is though i'm always willing to remove them #though i will not be removing the one that's based on my own post because that's mine /lh #i worry this may be an unnecessary sequel but who cares. who cares.

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pynkhues · 26 days ago

Note

I've noticed that if I type 'iwtv' or 'lestat/louis'.. in the search bar and don't put hashtags infront of the word your posts show up. I don't know if that is how more ppl found your blog but just letting you know! Though maybe I'm doing smth wrong bc I haven't used tumblr for a long time

Oh gosh, that's - - well! Okay! Hahah, I honestly checked to make sure things weren't easily searchable when I started posting, and thought I was flying pretty under the radar, so this is news to me.

#i feel like the homer simpson gif of just slowly walking back into the bushes now lmao #i mean it's fine #i'm less pedantic about it since we got through court #i just didn't have the spoons for fandom outside my little bubble when i was getting three hours sleep a night #getting my sister ready for her divorce and custody trial after splitting with her abusive ex #especially after i became a witness #(which is NOT an experience i recommend by the way)#but yeah we're through the weeds of that now just waiting for a verdict #so i'm a lot more relaxed about it all rn really #even if i do generally speaking still try to avoid main tags for replies #(i do put them on sometimes #like i did for the byronic hero post and that sort of thing #but these days i'm also conscious of spamming tags given i reply to quite a lot of asks)

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dark-night-hero · 1 year ago

Text

Imagine 300 years prior to the current happenings in Fontaine. The rain has been pouring non stop for days. Even in the deepest and coldest cell in the land of Fontaine, you can hear the wain pouring hard alongside a few thunderstorms here and there making almost all flinch and yet you remained calm and continue to humm an unfamiliar tune.

Imagine as you look outside the cell, the guard almost flinching, unable to look at your face. Nevertheless you smile, smile to yourself as you could hear a familiar footsteps coming from the distance. And there soon enough, a familiar face came from the distance causing you to stand up from your bed, a bed quite luxurious for a prisoner like you.

"The time has come? I suppose?" You asked, holding up your hand that was chained up, shackles connected to a mass of concrete to weight you down. Rather than answering you, you only heard the cell gate opening. So it did seems like the time has come. "It's quite pouring outside, hmm?" You spoke, never once did a smile left your face.

Imagine, as you step out of the cell. Your (eye color) iris finally met a pair of blue ones. And then he looked away. "I'll be taking this prison from here." "Yes Monsieur Neuvillette." The prison guard salute. And so the silent walk into the court has began. Just the two of you walking side by side, hands resting on front as you drag the heavyweight concrete connected to your shackle.

Imagine only the sound of the pouring rain could be heard as the silence seems to have somehow comforted the two of you. "Is it heavy?" He asked referring to shackles placed upon you. But perhaps he was talking about something else "No, not at all." And that goes for you too. "Can we... Can we-" "We have arrived." You spoke as you arrived at the door that leads to the end of the trial that has been going on for months now.

"As the chief justice, I shall now render (First name)(Last name)'s crime of murder of hundreds of Fontaine citizens that have been gone missing for the past few years, abuse of authority as the head of the Dutchy causing corruption and disorganisation on it. As a human to cause such disruption and harm within not only in the community but also within the country. You are... Guilty."

Imagine as his cane makes a loud banging noice on the floor, everyone flinched. Yet the calm smile never left you face as if you have seen it all coming, rather, your eyes were focused of the rather havier rain than you could imagine pouring outside the court, drowning the cheer of people inside. As the final verdict was passed on into the machine, Oratrice Mecanique, you just continue to stare outside, the rain seem no sign of stopping by as time passes.

"According to the judgment of Oratrice Mecanique D'analyse Cardinate, (First name)(Lastname) is... guilty, to be punished... via death sentence." Looking away from the scenery outside, you look up only to see him looking at you this time, never once looking away. Eyes seems to be saying something. How do you do this to me is what it seems to you. How could you made me to this to you?

As you stand in place where the punishment shall take place, it front of the crowd and in front of him as well as the Hydro Archon looking at you with an emotionless expression as you gave her a slight nod. Soon your part in the play would be over. "Any last words?" He asked. That made your smile twitch and your eyes once again look at the pouring rain ourside.

"I... I wish it would stop raining... It's quite a gloomy day for my execution, I wish it could be more of a bit sunny today but... It's okay... It's okay, the rain will stop somehow, right?" As soon as you said that, the sound of the rain stopped and everything went black as the look of pain and suffering was reflected in the eyes of your lover. Hydro Dragon, don't cry.

Imagine it was the one of the first unfair trials in the court with after almost a decaded later it was known that it was in fact not the work of the former leader of the Duchy that causes people to went missing as well as the corruption but other people. But the damage was already too late as the blood has been shed and the wrong person have died already.

Imagine little to they know, little does he know, it was part of the plan. And even if it means being one of the sacrifices to return the power that he once have. For his sake, for his sake then you shall do it. Even if it causes your life, it's worth it. Only for him and only him.

Imagine, even if years have gone by. He's still standing on that cliff, hoping and waiting one day. He'll see you again, this time. This time, he will never let you do such a thing. He will keep you safe and sound even if that means defying every since law in this land. So there he is, still standing on that clif, wishing one day, you'll be here again.

#dark night hero #genshin impact #genshin imagines #genshin #genshin impact x reader #bro idk what happened #neuvillette imagines #neuvillete x reader #neuvillette x reader #neuvillette #neuvilette genshin #neuvilette x y/n #neuvillette angst #genshin angst #genshin impact angst #genshin x y/n #genshin x you #angst

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chastiefoul · 9 months ago

Text

mischievous streak | neuvilette

just another day of you pining over neuvilette and poor wriothesley has to hear all about it. (dw neuvilette makes an appearance!!) fluff. crack. this one is so unserious. 0.7k words

“and when he said ‘oratrice mecanique d'analyse’ did you hear it, wrio?” you swooned, another day of fanning over the iudex of fountaine to your best friend, wriothesley.

“did you?” the duke replied increduosly, as if not really getting the reason why that was the part you’re fawning over. “oh and when he declared ‘guilty’ verdict with such conviction and charisma to that person, i wished that was me.” you went on, the conversation was most definitely one-sided.

“...you wished that you’re in a court and getting a ‘guilty’ verdict?” he blinked, not knowing how to react when the things you’re saying gets more insane as each day passed. “well not really, but i am certainly guilty. guilty for wanting to climb him like a-“

wriothesley cut you off with an exaggerated cough.

“you finish that sentence and i’m sending you to the authorities.” you crossed your arm, “you’re the authorities.” he sighed, “yes and i’m not above putting cuffs on you and throw you to one of the cell.”

you gasped, “you wouldn’t. you’d put me in jail because of love?”

“insanity is what you are, (y/n). seriously, just talk to him.” he picked up his cup of tea wanting to take another sip. “and what do i say, that i’ve been in love with him since forever and that i’d give him a limb in exchange for a date?”

“sure. or, you could say you want to get to know him a little better, and ask him out for some lunch?” he said, his pen not stopping on checking the piling documents on his table. “but that’s like super obvious!” you retorted.

“and saying you’d give him one of your limb isn’t...?” he gave you a side-eye before getting back to his paper. “hmm, fair point.” you tapped your chin with your finger. “but he doesn’t seem like the type who’d just go out with anyone, no? i don’t think i’ve ever seen him with someone,” you claimed, thinking back to all the times you passed him accidentally by remembering his schedules.

“you’re right, but i don’t think that’s by his choice though. i think some people just got really intimidated by the idea of casually hanging out with the iudex of fountaine.” he shrugged. “what?! that’s not fair, even though he’s really kind hearted?”

the man in front of you gave you a mocking smile. “yeah, and you’d know hm? since you hang out with him so much,” he teased. “i don’t like you, you’re attacking me for no reason.” you grumbled. wriothesley just chuckled good naturedly before you continued.

“gosh but seriously, he should have someone by his side, don’t you think? someone’s who’s supportive, who will stand by him no matter what. you know, someone like me? i would treat him so good. i would make him food all day, draw him a bubble bath-“

a cough cut you off, you’d think it’s wriothesley and his unwillingness to hear your sincerity about your feelings towards neuvilette, but when you see that his expression was just as startled, you shut your lips.

both of you turned your heads to the end of the stairs and there he is.

neuvilette.

yes, the very one you’ve been crushing on since forever, oh and did i mention you just said you’d draw him a bubble bath?

the tip of his ears was visibly rosy, as he looked like he tried so hard not to look embarrassed or even phased. “i was let in by the guard, i didn’t realize there is another guest.”

you closed your eyes, counting slowly to three because perhaps it would be able to turn back time, even just a little. wriothesley was just covering his mouth, and you’d bet the other limb you have that he’s currently trying his harderst to hold back a laugh.

this is a situation. a situation you need to diffuse fast with your quick thinking.

you turned to wriothesley. “that’s why i said duke, not only you don’t need to reduce my sentence, please don’t let me out from this jail forever. i would endanger the civilians. thank you for your time duke wriothesley, i am now going to go back to my cell.”

hearing that was just the last straw for your best friend, he laughed out loud. doubling over and all that as he clutched his stomach. after a solid two minutes of him just laughing and you facepalmed yourself, wriothesley gained his composure.

“neuvilette, meet (y/n), the all-over supervisor of the fortress of meropide.”

you glared at him before giving the long-haired man your sweetest smile.

“hello, it’s nice to finally see you down here in the flesh, monsieur neuvilette.” you nodded at him in which he replied with a slight smile. “likewise and please, just call me neuvilette.”

neuvilette gave wriothesley a document as he immediately skimmed through it. “i see, well there’s nothing here that i can give an input on better than (y/n), this is more of their expertise.” your head turned so quick as if you heard a blaring alarm. “then, i would appreciate your insight on this matter if you have the time,” neuvilette said as looked at you and there’s no way you could say no.

“of course! perhaps over lunch? it’s the right time, no?” you bounced back, now feeling excited than nervous. he chuckled at the enthusiasm as he agreed. “yes, you’re right. but perhaps you should know i’m not ready yet for someone to draw me a bubble bath after just one lunch.” he put his fist over his mouth, covering his smile. so turned out the iudex of fountaine has a mischievous streak in his personality after all.

that’s nice. not for your already beyond embarrassed state, though.

“wriothesley, just arrest me right now please.”

#genshin x reader #genshin scenarios #genshin impact x you #genshin impact x reader #genshin x you #genshin fanfic #genshin fluff #neuvilette x reader #neuvilette x you #neuvilette fluff #wriothesley fluff

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someone-will-remember-us · 14 days ago

Text

Four years ago, Caroline Darian thought she had a normal life. She was in her early 40s, she had a home in the Paris area, a job as a communications manager, a husband who worked for a TV breakfast show and a six-year-old son. She got on well with her parents, who had retired to the picturesque village of Mazan in Provence in the south of France, to a house with pastel-blue shutters where they would all often spend long summers together in the garden under the mulberry tree and splashing in the pool – with barbecues and music, dinner and board games on the patio and country bike rides with her dad.

Darian remembers the exact moment that this all shattered. It was 8.25pm according to the clock on her kitchen cooker, on a Monday night in November 2020. She had been working from home all day on Zoom calls. She had just put down a bag of Japanese takeaway on the kitchen counter when her mother, Gisèle Pelicot, called and told her to sit down in a quiet spot; she had something difficult to say.

Darian thought of her father’s health – he was heavy, had breathing problems, and France had been in and out of Covid lockdowns. But instead she learned that police had arrested her father, Dominique Pelicot, for secretly filming up women’s skirts in a supermarket with a hidden camera in a bag. Officers investigating his phones, computer and hard drive had found thousands of images and videos stretching over almost 10 years showing that he had drugged his wife then filmed her, unconscious, being raped in her own bed by him and dozens of strangers. There had been at least 70 men, aged from 22 to 71, and police were still trying to identify them all.

Darian didn’t understand what was being said. She felt herself lose control: shaking, shouting, screaming insults about her father, hardly able to breathe. “It was like being hit by a wave,” she says, still struggling to comprehend it four years later. “It was a cataclysm. All my foundations collapsed.”

Darian is sitting in a book-lined room, up a creaky wooden staircase in a publisher’s office on the Left Bank in Paris. The first time we speak, it is days before the verdict in what has become the biggest rape trial in French history, after her mother decided to waive her anonymity and hold the four months of hearing in public, saying “shame must change sides”. Gisèle was embraced by the world as a feminist hero for her bravery and refusal to be shamed, as the trial made global headlines and the family was thrown into the spotlight. Darian is poised and calm, although nervous about the verdict. Channelling her anger into a public campaign to raise awareness of drug-facilitated sexual violence has been a “question of survival”, she says. But on the inside, she describes herself as a “field of ruins”. The previous few nights, she began dreaming about Dominique Pelicot again.

The trial was an “ordeal”, Darian says, “really hard from a human perspective”. Dozens of accused men, now aged between 26 and 74, including a soldier, journalist and lorry drivers, had sat on benches in court, at close proximity to her and her mother. The men seemed so relaxed and “comfortable in their seats”, Darian observed. Video evidence was shown of many of them raping Gisèle in her bedroom when she was in a comatose state, lying limp and lifeless and snoring loudly, with family photos on the dresser and spotty pillowcases on the bed.

Dominique Pelicot hid prescription drugs in a tennis sock inside a hiking shoe in his garage. He crushed sleeping tablets and anti-anxiety medication into Gisèle’s mashed potato, coffee, or the raspberry ice-cream he served her in front of the TV. This would give him seven hours, he told the court, in which his wife was in a state akin to being under general anaesthetic. He would take off her pyjamas, dress her up in underwear he had bought. Then he and the other men would rape her while a camera filmed. Afterwards, Dominique Pelicot said he would wash her and dress her in her pyjamas before she would wake up, groggy but unaware, thinking the blackouts and memory lapses meant something was wrong with her brain. He contacted men online with messages such as “I’m looking for a pervert accomplice to abuse my wife who’s been put to sleep” or “You’re like me, you like rape mode.”

Days after we meet, Dominique Pelicot is sentenced to 20 years in prison and all 50 other men are found guilty of rape, attempted rape or sexual assault. At least 20 more could not be identified and are presumed to be still at large today. Most had denied the allegations, saying they had never “intended” to rape and thought it was a game by a couple of swingers in which “the wife” was pretending to be asleep. Some said that if the husband gave consent it was OK.

Darian has total admiration for her mother – “the true victim of this whole story” – for agreeing to hold the trial in public. Darian went public herself, in 2022, while the investigation was ongoing, publishing a book called I’ll Never Call Him Dad Again, which has now been translated into English for a new edition. It was a kind of diary of the first year after the revelations, illustrating how “trauma expands outwards like a shock wave” through a family.

She had grown up happily with her parents and three brothers. Her father, an electrician who had also worked as an estate agent, and mother, a logistics manager, met when they were 19 and 20 and married soon after. The family lived in a house provided by her mother’s company with five bedrooms and a walled garden in a coveted neighbourhood on the banks of the river Marne just outside Paris. Dominique Pelicot encouraged Darian’s dance lessons and would drive her to school to avoid her getting the bus. She remembered him singing Barry White songs in his Renault 25 as he drove the kids on holiday. All that was sunk for ever by the revelations. She now doesn’t even keep old photographs. “I can’t keep hold of those memories,” she says. “Sometimes they pop up, but that was a previous life; this is now.”

Campaigning “is a way for me to recover some kind of dignity”, she says, having founded a movement called Don’t Put Me Under (#MendorsPas) to raise awareness and support victims of drug-facilitated rape, pushing a new expression into the mainstream in France: “chemical submission”. Drugging most often happens in the home, enacted by family members or people you know, she says, and victims can be adults or children. Before her father’s arrest, “I didn’t have a clue about drugging or drug-assisted rape. I knew about GHB, the date rape drug, in nightclubs and bars, but I didn’t know it was so much more widespread and mostly happened using the contents of the family medicine cabinet.” She wants better training for health professionals and police, and better access to toxicological testing for victims.

She would also like more respect for rape victims in court. She watched in horror when even her mother, a grandmother, who had been drugged into a coma with no recollection of the assaults, was questioned by defence lawyers about whether she might have led the men on.

“I’m really proud of my mum,” Darian says with determination. “She has opened the door. She has led the way for other victims of sexual violence. She’s told them they’re not alone any more. That is strength. So to me she’s a hero … And she did it brilliantly. She walked into this court every single day with hundreds of journalists, being scrutinised by everyone, being humiliated by all these [defence] lawyers. Frankly, you have be strong to do that … She’s an independent and strong woman. And she did it with dignity.”

She describes her mother as having the calm of a “medieval queen” presiding over ruins – a resilience she says Gisèle has had since losing her own mother to cancer aged nine.

Darian, 45, attended the trial with her brothers, David, 50, a sales manager, and Florian, 38, an actor. (She uses the pseudonym Darian because it is a composite of her brothers’ names, in honour of their support, but has taken her husband’s surname). She was a striking figure in the courtroom, head held high, arms folded, sitting metres away from the accused men – many of whom were around her own age – and visibly staring them all in the eye. What did she feel? “I felt anger. They’re cowards.” She said the men stared right back at her: “I was looked at like a sex object during this trial by many of them.” While reporting the trial, I saw Darian’s appearances shift the mood in the courtroom. She was unflinching about the unbearable emotional toll – “How are you supposed to rebuild yourself from the ruins when you know your father is the worst sexual predator of the past 20 years?” she asked the head judge. She was not afraid to regularly shout across the courtroom, “You’re lying!” to the man she no longer called her father, or get up and walk out. At one point, when her father was speaking about her, she retorted: “I want to throw up.”

Within the first days of the trial, it became clear that Dominique Pelicot was reserving perhaps his most twisted evasions for his daughter, refusing to explain what he had done to her and appearing to change his story several times.

What had emerged in the four-year investigation of Dominique Pelicot’s crimes was that no woman in his family was safe. He had hidden cameras in bathrooms and bedrooms at his home and in relatives’ homes, secretly photographing his sons’ wives naked and sharing the pictures and photomontages online, boasting that he was “surrounded by sluts”. He hid cameras in the guest bedroom in Mazan to secretly film his daughter naked and make photomontages of both her and Gisèle naked, comparing their bodies under the title “The slut’s daughter”, which he shared online alongside obscene commentary.

On his computer equipment, police had found a deleted folder called “my daughter naked” and recovered two pictures of Darian, then aged roughly in her 30s, taken at different times, asleep on her side in the foetal position, wearing beige underwear with the duvet pulled back. When police first showed her those pictures, she initially didn’t recognise herself. The lights were on, and she was a light sleeper who would have woken up. She never slept in that position, or went to bed dressed like that, and the underwear she was wearing definitely wasn’t her own. She said in court she was certain she had been drugged, and also probably raped and abused by Dominique Pelicot. “It’s not a hypothesis; it’s reality, I know it,” she told the judges. She said the difference between her and Gisèle Pelicot was that her mother – most unusually in a rape case – had the confirmation of thousands of files of video evidence. Darian, without video evidence, felt, she said, more like the remaining 99% of women who allege drugging, unable to ever know the truth, locked into “doubt and silence”.

In her final appearance in court, Darian said: “I’m a forgotten victim in this case.” Turning to her father, she added: “I know you abused me. You don’t have the courage to tell me.” She, her brothers, her lawyer and even Dominique Pelicot’s own lawyer beseeched him in court to speak honestly about what he had done. Despite the photos, he said he had never touched his daughter and didn’t know who had taken them. One court psychiatrist suggested that for a victim like Darian to go through life not knowing was “mental torture”.

When she walked into that courtroom at the start of the trial, was she convinced he would tell her what happened? “There was a small part of me that was hoping,” she says. “I was really determined to make him recognise the facts. And I failed.”

She pauses and the word hangs in the air. Did she think it was her responsibility to make him speak? “You know I’m always reflecting on that, because I was tough and I asked him in a violent way. Maybe if I had been in a more emotional dimension, he would have told the truth. Anyway, it’s a fail for me.”

She says: “The only victim who knows – and not even the entire truth – is my mum. But even for my mum, he didn’t tell the whole truth or the full story. Even today, we don’t know how many men came to abuse my mother, and when it started. We still don’t know.”

Darian’s brothers, in court beside her, described the whole family’s “devastation”. Her husband, Pierre, a TV journalist, who she says has been a crucial support, also took the stand. He said the discovery on Pelicot’s computer of pictures of Darian apparently asleep in underwear that wasn’t her own “added horror to the horror”. He told the judges it wasn’t a question of “whether she was drugged, but why she was drugged”.

For Darian, the case has robbed her of one of the most basic necessities of life: sleep. How do you doze off at night when you fear you might have been abused in your sleep, when you are terrified you might lose control and become someone’s prey? When she first found out about the allegations, she didn’t sleep for five nights straight. She ended up needing medical help and was admitted to an emergency psychiatric ward where – terrifyingly for her – staff tried to sedate her. Yet the whole issue of sedation “was, you know the reason we were in this nightmare”. This hospital approach was “absolutely not what I needed”, she says. Her body and brain resisted drugs, “so they had to use this massive dose … it was really experimental”. This is now part of her campaign for better support of victims. She has tried to be honest in public about her vulnerability as a survivor, and not look like what she calls a “pseudo wonder woman”. She announced halfway through the trial that she would go into a clinic for a few days to try to recover after “weeks of repeated insomnia”.

Her view of herself has been shaken by the case. Her past has dissolved and weakened her foundations, she says. “I lost a part of me, I lost a part of my identity.” She carries what she calls the “crushing double burden” of being the child of the victim and the perpetrator. “You can’t imagine the sadness and the loneliness,” she says. “I’ve got a part of his DNA. And it’s difficult to be the daughter of the biggest sexual criminal for the past 10, 20, even 30 years, and at the same time be the daughter of an icon like my mum … I don’t know if it’s better to be the daughter of Gisèle or worse to be the daughter of Dominique Pelicot. I’ll have to live with that.”

Back in November 2020, the day after Gisèle broke the news to her children, Darian and her brothers took the train south to the house in Mazan, with its sunny back garden, synonymous with holidays. It was now quite terrifying and they feared all these men would come back at night. Dominique Pelicot had been taken into police custody and would await trial in prison. The children wanted to clear the house and get their mother out in a matter of days – they started selling furniture, emptying drawers, which they found full of debt notices incurred by their father. Darian smashed one of his amateur paintings (a nude). Gisèle left with two suitcases and her dog. Nearly 50 years of marriage had vanished, and she soon filed for divorce.

At that time, Darian was running over in her head odd things that had happened, signs she felt she had missed. She and her brothers, as well as Gisèle herself, had worried she had Alzheimer’s; they had booked neurologists and scans, but the tests always came back normal. Fearful, Gisèle had stopped driving; pinched herself when she took the train to Paris, worried she’d miss her stop; and was convinced she would be diagnosed with a brain tumour. “She was having a lot of blackouts,” Darian says. “She would sometimes seem incoherent on the phone.” Once, Darian’s son called his grandmother to tell her about his rugby tournament, and she started repeating herself nonsensically. Darian took the phone from him and asked: “Mum, what day is it?” Gisèle couldn’t reply.

Another time, Florian and his family had sat down to eat dinner in Mazan after Dominique Pelicot had served his wife a glass of rosé. Her elbow slid off the table and she nearly fell off her chair, seeming to collapse like a rag doll, glazing over, appearing hypnotised. Dominique Pelicot said her family were tiring her out.

Looking back, Darian says, these blackouts always happened in Mazan when Gisèle was with her husband, never when she was in the Paris area with her grandchildren. There were gynaecological problems, too – Gisèle was bleeding despite being post-menopause. A doctor diagnosed an inflammation of the uterus.

Does Darian still feel, as she wrote in her book, that “ignorance is culpable”; that she should somehow have noticed what was going on, despite the extent of her father’s manipulation? “No. Today, I think it wasn’t possible for me to have known. Because everything was premeditated, organised. We are all victims in this family – all collateral victims: my brothers and I, but also our children.”

Video evidence showed that Dominique Pelicot not only invited men to rape his wife in the couple’s marital bed in Mazan. He had also invited men to Darian’s home outside Paris. Just after Christmas in 2019, when Darian was away on a mini-break in Morocco and her parents were house-sitting, Dominique Pelicot invited a 34-year-old warehouse worker to rape his wife in Darian’s guest bedroom. In May of the same year, while alone with Gisèle at Darian’s holiday cottage on the Île de Ré off the Atlantic coast, Dominique Pelicot invited a man to rape her in Darian’s own bed. Video evidence showed the rapes went on for more than five hours that night. Asked in court why he had chosen to do this in his daughter’s holiday home, he said: “There was no symbolism. It could have happened anywhere.”

But Darian thinks the choice of location is meaningful. She also thinks it is significant, given her questions about her father’s potential abuse of her, that the retired nightclub worker who raped Gisèle at the holiday cottage had previously been sentenced to five years in prison for raping his own 17-year-old daughter. “That detail is so difficult to cope with,” she says. “Home is supposed to be a safe place, not that kind of crime scene.” That Dominique Pelicot had raped her mother in Darian’s homes “was like being abused a second time. I was betrayed by my father in different ways.”

With Dominique Pelicot deliberately leaving what she calls a “great fog” over the question of what he may have done to her, she is left with no foothold. She had a vaginal tear that would not heal and needed several surgeries (once, while she was recovering from surgery, her father called her, asking to borrow money). Of the injury she says: “I’ll never know if it’s linked or not. It’s part of an open question – unanswered.”

She believes her father used her as a guinea pig to test out his drug cocktails – his exchanges with men show him commenting on the different effects on a woman who did or didn’t smoke. She was an occasional smoker and her mother was not. It was clear from the police investigation that Dominique Pelicot only confessed to crimes when presented with irrefutable evidence, and often partly at the start. In 2022, while awaiting trial for the rapes of his wife, Dominique Pelicot was questioned about an attempted rape of a 19-year-old estate agent in 1999. She was the same age as Darian at the time, and he had attempted to anaesthetise her with ether. Dominique Pelicot denied it until confronted with DNA evidence on the woman’s shoe. But he offered up a comparison with his daughter, saying that when he undressed the woman and realised she was the same age as her he had felt “blocked”. Instead, the woman broke free and fought him off.

Darian is unsparing in her praise for her mother, with whom she appeared hand in hand in court. But she wrote in her book and says today that, as wife and daughter, they are “in a different place within the family” and have dealt with the bombshell of Dominique Pelicot’s abuse in different ways. She says not knowing if she was drugged or abused weighs heavily on the whole family. Darian feels that without clear evidence, her mother has sought to reassure her that it may not have happened.

In court, near the end of the trial, Gisèle did not want to answer questions from defence lawyers about what Dominique Pelicot may have done to her daughter, saying it was for him to answer that. One defence lawyer suggested there was a family rift. Gisèle replied: “This isn’t a trial of the family.”

Now, Darian speculates that maybe the prospect of a daughter’s abuse is just too much horror for her mother to contemplate all at once. “She is not able, from an emotional standpoint, I think, to face the truth. I think it’s too difficult for her. And it’s hard for me – it’s really hard for me.” But the family remains close and she thinks time will change things.

The trial never fully uncovered why Dominique Pelicot did what he did – if there even was a reason. He told the court: “You aren’t born a pervert, you become one,” citing his own abuse as a child. He said he had been raped aged nine by a nurse in hospital when he was being treated for a head injury. Aged 14, as an apprentice on a building site, he said he witnessed – and was forced to take part in – a group-rape of a woman whom he described as disabled. “It was too heavy to bear,” he told the court.

“To me, it was pure manipulation,” Darian says. “He was choosing his words to make us empathise with him. And he knows exactly how it works … where to press the button.” In the high-ceilinged courtroom, where Dominique Pelicot sat on one side in a glass-fronted dock, and Gisèle on the other, Darian felt there had been an invisible “arc between my mum and dad all through this trial”, in which he was trying to communicate with his ex-wife to let himself off the hook of responsibility. “In life, you decide who you want to be,” Darian says, brushing aside any excuses about childhood. This echoes her mother’s view, expressed in court, that, regardless of their past, a person “chooses” who they become.

Darian says she won’t let Dominique Pelicot’s perversity become “this family’s curse”, that she must stop what she calls the “deviance” infecting generation after generation. (The court heard an investigation is ongoing into whether Dominique Pelicot may have abused any of his grandchildren. He denies any abuse). Darian says her father’s family line was mired in abuse – part of a “dysfunctional family system”. Denis, Dominique Pelicot’s father, whom she remembers in jeans and a biker jacket, with a single earring, had been a violent tyrant. He was a caretaker at a rehabilitation centre for convicts. The court heard that Denis was suspected of grooming and abusing a young girl with learning difficulties who was fostered by the family; Darian calls her Lucille in her book. After his wife’s death, Denis made Lucille his partner. In court, questions were raised over whether Denis also ever brought in men to abuse Lucille. Darian now questions why her parents would later send her and her brother to stay with her grandfather and his partner over the summer, until she said she no longer wanted to go.

Her own son, whom she calls Tom in the book, at first didn’t believe his grandfather could have done harm to his grandmother. “We’ve done a lot of things to protect him,” she says. “When it happened he was six. Now he’s 10. He’s had two and a half years of support from a psychologist. And today he’s in good shape. We really wanted to preserve him. But he’s known the truth right from the start. We told him with simple words that his grandfather was in jail.”

Darian, who works as a senior communications manager at a large company in Paris, says the trial has inspired her to campaign even harder in support of victims of sexual violence. Returning to normal life is key. “My son and my husband are my two pillars in life,” she says. “I’m a mum, I’m married, I’ve got a social life, friends.”

A few days later, at the verdict in the packed Avignon courthouse, she watches with quiet anger as most of the men, some silently weeping, are led away to the cells. Dominique Pelicot will likely spend the rest of his life in prison, and all the other men are convicted. As Darian leaves the court with her mother, hundreds of supporters who have travelled from across France and Europe chant, “Thank you Gisèle” and then begin shouting, “Thank you Caroline!”

We speak again the next morning. She is still feeling shaken. The prison sentences, which ranged from three to 15 years, some of which were suspended, were lower than the state prosecutor had recommended. It is a disappointment. “It’s the wrong message,” she says. “It’s not the message we wanted to send to all the other victims in France.”

This means that for her “the fight is only just beginning”. She has decided to write another book, the behind-the-scenes story of the trial. “Because it’s not what you see from watching TV. And while this trial was happening, there were so many other trials going on where the victims were all alone.”

Gisèle Pelicot, her lawyers say, now hopes to resume “as normal a life as possible”. Darian herself will rest and spend time with her son, husband and brothers, before resuming campaigning.

In the final moments in the courtroom, Darian looked only briefly at Dominique Pelicot before he was led away. “It was the very last time I’ll see him,” she says. “It’s an end point. It’s the very last chapter in what was my life before.”

It will take a while to work through.

“There’s a kind of grief,” she says. “It’s a long process, mourning someone who is still alive.”

(archive)

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

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moyazaika · 4 months ago

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omg doe brought up this AMAZINGGG idea abt the crime lord yan and his lawyer darling hello hey hi!!!!!!

this kinda got away from me because it is 3am but i nEEEEEDED to get this out bjsjsjjs i blame @carnivorousyandeere

i know i wrote the initial dynamic for his darling to be his lawyer, in that they’re on his side in court to keep him from getting sent to prison BUT BUT BUT hear me out T_T

lawyer darling who put yan kingpin away.

as in ,, you are the reason he was found guilty. you are the one, when the judge announced the final verdict, that his gaze turned to and that he smiled for, then. sentenced to death, before it was appealed to multiple life sentences; the beginning of the end of his empire.

you, you, you — the cause of his downfall.

after the infamous internationally documented case, your career soars to unprecedented heights. you’re the lawyer on every newspaper in every country, all the tv channels and glossy magazines. every law school wants you to speak at their graduation ceremonies. every firm’s reaching out to you. the whole world knows your name; you have everything!

—so why do you keep going back to the man who now has nothing?

the kingpin looks the same as he did that fateful day in court. only now, there’s bags under his eyes, and a five o clock shadow on his jaw; lips still curled in an easygoing smile. he laughs when he sees you, as if the two of you were merely old friends who hadn’t caught up in a while.

as if you’re not visiting him years later in the city’s most high security prison.

he grins. “come to gloat, have ‘ya?”

“you’ve committed countless crimes.” you state. “stolen lives and livelihoods. broken up families. killed good men. and still, all these years later, no remorse?”

“don’t get ‘yer panties in a twist,” he huffs, lazily leans back in the rickety prison chair so that he’s swinging it back and forth on its back legs, like a child. how absurd that even the garish orange uniform of a prison should suit him, “comes with the job description, don’t it?”

“i think about you,” you admit, eyeing the chains that bind his handcuffed hands to the desk in front of him. you look up, meet his gaze through the thick, dirty pane that separates you from him. keeps you safe. out of his reach, if only just.

a low whistle. “you sure know how to make a man feel special, y’know. been followin’ your cases. never put another one like me away, did ‘ya?” he grins. “i like that i’m special. makes me feel all warm ‘nd fuzzy inside.”

“wow,” you let out. “you really have gone insane.”

“always been a ‘lil crazy! like i said, part of the job description. though i’ve been thinkin’ recently,” he starts.

your fascination prompts you to lean closer. a sort of morbid curiosity that yearns to solve the puzzle of his twisted mind, slot the pieces you’ve already got in a way that makes them fit. you’ve got this weird feeling that you’re missing something. a big piece, maybe. one of the central ones.

“thinking about what?” your voice is barely above a whisper, almost conspiratorial. he leans in, too, all wide eyes—

—and then he jerks forward with the chains around the cuffs on his wrists pulled taut as he suddenly yanks them all the way, like a feral dog pulling on its leash. he looks like one, too, with that glint in his eyes.

“fuck!”

you barely even register that you’re on the floor until he laughs, low in his throat. he makes a vague gesture to your chair, toppled over on its side.

“oops.” he says, coyly. “didn’t mean to scare ‘ya.”

“liar,” you hiss, standing up to dust yourself off. this was stupid. why would you even entertain the idea of a civil conversation with a madman?

he gasps dramatically. “this is slander, your honour!”

“i’m leaving,” you scoff. “i don’t even know why i even came down here. you’re clearly fucking crazy.”

“and you’re no fun!” he pouts. “how ‘bout you stay just a little longer and i’ll make it worth ‘yer time, pretty please?”

“no can do,” you turn on your heels and reach for the door, fingers curled around the handle as you spare him one final glance over your shoulder— “have fun rotting in here for the rest of your life, psycho.”

—except the door won’t open. you try again, and again once more. the handle won’t budge. an awful sense of urgency overcomes you as you desperately shake the handle in a futile attempt to get it to just—

“funny ‘yer calling me crazy, ‘cus einstein once said real insanity is doin’ the same thing,” he beams. “over and over and over and over again, and expecting different results. door’s locked, lovely. ‘yer not getting out from there, ‘m afraid.”

you turn back then, still holding onto that door like a lifeline. he’s standing up, rubbing sore wrists that are, you realise with a sinking feeling, no longer bound by the handcuffs that kept him chained; on a short leash, like a good dog.

“what are you doing…?” your voice shakes, and it’s a far cry to the headstrong, unwavering lawyer who put the world’s most notorious criminal behind bars. “what the fuck—”

“i told you i’d make it worth your while t’stay,” he rolls up his sleeves, before pushing all of his hair (longer and greasier than the last you saw him) out of his face, features set in a determination you’ve never glimpsed before. familiar eyes twinkle with mischief. “and i meant it, y’know. the world’s very best lawyer came so far to see me! least i can do is greet ‘em properly.”

“‘cus see, the other prisoners wouldn’t be so nice. but i’ve been thinkin’ about you too.” he pulls his arm back and his fist comes flying at the pane. “don’t wanna have a conversation or nothin’ like that, nah, we talked enough.”

“you’ve been thinking about me, i’ve been waiting around for you…” bloody knuckles against cracks in the one barrier that is keeping you safe from him. you watch, helpless, as it threatens to break beneath the brute force of his trained fists.

“now let me just come over there,” he pulls his arm back again, ready to strike; knuckles raw and red, like the maniacal grin carved onto his pretty, flushed face. a deep blush and a shaky smile as those fists bring it all crashing down. “and show you how much i missed my faaavourite lawyer in the whole wide world.”

“—that be a good enough reason to stick around?” he asks slyly, before catching himself. “oh, silly me.” he shakes his head, apologetically, as he steps over broken shards on the floor, tainted with his blood. “doesn’t matter what ‘ya say.” a low hum when scarred hands reach out for you. “i waited so long for you…”

“… so, let’s make up reaaalllll good for all that lost time, okay?”

#mutuals my beloved #yandere #yandere oc #yandere oc x reader #yandere criminal

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