Mary Bell was released at the age of twenty three and was granted anonymity under the Mary Bell Order. This allowed her to change her name and start a new life.
As a young adult, Mary bore a daughter and led a quiet life. Until people took interest in her story, wondering Where is Mary Bell now? Tabloids & reporters began to follow Mary and her family trying their best to get an updated scoop.
The Guardian states, “The child killer Mary Bell was… in hiding after being hounded out of the seaside home where she had lived anonymously with her 14-year-old daughter.”
Much of the media frenzy stemmed from a 1998 biography called Cries Unheard: The Story of Mary Bell written by journalist, Gitta Sereny. Sereny received public criticism and backlash due to the fact that Mary Bell now received residuals from the book.
Sereny said, “I felt that I wanted to give her some of the money… because I could not use her, as everybody else has done.”
Bell’s profit created an uproar and opened old wounds for those related to the victims. People agreed Mary should not be allowed to receive money based on the murders she committed as a child.
A mother of the victim spoke out against Sereny & Bell in an interview with the Observer, “Mary Bell died when she left prison and took on a new identity. I thought of her as dead. I tried to have a decent life. I started to learn not to hate her because she had died and become someone else. Now Gitta Sereny has resurrected her. Why?”
Mary and her daughter moved from town to town, sometimes walking out with sheets over their head to escape publicity. The Mary Bell Order continued to protect the anonymity of her daughter and was eventually extended to her granddaughter. Their names will be protected for the duration of their lives.
Mary's mother and her life partner were not shy to give information to the press.
The Guardian says, "Bell's partner - a 40-year-old Geordie with a ponytail, tattoos and a lived-in look - certainly gave reporters value for money. Mary was the most gentle person he had ever met he loved her so much it hurt to be parted she had always wanted to work with children."
i love graffiti. "comics and jazz are the only american art forms" you forgot graffiti. did you remember graffiti? That art form birthed in Philly and NYC in the early 70s by poor Black kids. that art form that spread all over the world and influenced so many. that's used without irony in commercials when they're trying to appeal to a "young urban" customer.
did you forget graffiti? that racism broken windows theory victim? that reach the establishment takes claiming that it's exclusively violent gang members throwing up those full-color pieces and wildstyle tags in the middle of the night outsmarting fifty security cameras because the billboard was ugly anyway. as if, even if it was, it wouldn't be impressive as all hell. risking brutality and fall damage so your art can occupy the space a gentrified condo named something like "Coluumna" took away from you. proving that despite only assholes affording to live here anymore there's still a soul beneath it. an animal with dripping stripes and teeth that go clack-clack tsssss
at some point it's just like. do they even fucking like the thing they're asking AI to make? "oh we'll just use AI for all the scripts" "we'll just use AI for art" "no worries AI can write this book" "oh, AI could easily design this"
like... it's so clear they've never stood in the middle of an art museum and felt like crying, looking at a piece that somehow cuts into your marrow even though the artist and you are separated by space and time. they've never looked at a poem - once, twice, three times - just because the words feel like a fired gun, something too-close, clanging behind your eyes. they've never gotten to the end of the movie and had to arrive, blinking, back into their body, laughing a little because they were holding their breath without realizing.
"oh AI can mimic style" "AI can mimic emotion" "AI can mimic you and your job is almost gone, kid."
... how do i explain to you - you can make AI that does a perfect job of imitating me. you could disseminate it through the entire world and make so much money, using my works and my ideas and my everything.
and i'd still keep writing.
i don't know there's a word for it. in high school, we become aware that the way we feel about our artform is a cliche - it's like breathing. over and over, artists all feel the same thing. "i write because i need to" and "my music is how i speak" and "i make art because it's either that or i stop existing." it is such a common experience, the violence and immediacy we mean behind it is like breathing to me - comes out like a useless understatement. it's a cliche because we all feel it, not because the experience isn't actually persistent. so many of us have this ... fluttering urgency behind our ribs.
i'm not doing it for the money. for a star on the ground in some city i've never visited. i am doing it because when i was seven i started taking notebooks with me on walks. i am doing it because in second grade i wrote a poem and stood up in front of my whole class to read it out while i shook with nerves. i am doing it because i spent high school scribbling all my feelings down. i am doing it for the 16 year old me and the 18 year old me and the today-me, how we can never put the pen down. you can take me down to a subatomic layer, eviscerate me - and never find the source of it; it is of me. when i was 19 i named this blog inkskinned because i was dramatic and lonely and it felt like the only thing that was actually permanently-true about me was that this is what is inside of me, that the words come up over everything, coat everything, bloom their little twilight arias into every nook and corner and alley
"we're gonna replace you". that is okay. you think that i am writing to fill a space. that someone said JOB OPENING: Writer Needed, and i wrote to answer. you think one raindrop replaces another, and i think they're both just falling. you think art has a place, that is simply arrives on walls when it is needed, that is only ever on demand, perfect, easily requested. you see "audience spending" and "marketability" and "multi-line merch opportunity"
and i see a kid drowning. i am writing to make her a boat. i am writing because what used to be a river raft has long become a fully-rigged ship. i am writing because you can fucking rip this out of my cold dead clammy hands and i will still come back as a ghost and i will still be penning poems about it.
it isn't even love. the word we use the most i think is "passion". devotion, obsession, necessity. my favorite little fact about the magic of artists - "abracadabra" means i create as i speak. we make because it sluices out of us. because we look down and our hands are somehow already busy. because it was the first thing we knew and it is our backbone and heartbreak and everything. because we have given up well-paying jobs and a "real life" and the approval of our parents. we create because - the cliche again. it's like breathing. we create because we must.
We love MK, child of un-divorced. The next update will be more gay. And fluffier.
Shadowpeach Bio Parent AU (PREV / FIRST / NEXT )
before saying anything, read the stuff under the cut
About wukong and macaque
Both these bitches did wrong, but remember that MK saw the vision starting from the fight itself, not what happened before. He then read the chapters of the book and read that Macaque also attacked. I personally think he's mostly hurted by what Wukong did, not because it's worse of what Macaque did, but because he idolized Wukong for so long, and while he know he did so many wrongs in the past, his vision of a "hero" dissapeared in this moment. He s mostly dissapointed let's say. Of course it's not the best of things to put tour heroes on a pedal because you will always be dissapointed. I guess MK learned the lesson...
About what MK said in panel 8
Our monkey boy is remembering his own very stupid thing he sacrificied himself without trying to talk it out with the others AND using the circuit on Wukong.
About the posters
Yes they were Monkey King posters. MK ripped them immediately after the vision because he still was not sure was reality and vision and was scared.
About the eye
Because I would prefer no one dies of angst, his eye is fine, it s more like symbolism.
The way that I’m brainrotting over a DCxDP crossover with a Danny who’s a vengeful villain rn
Like, let’s just say that the GiW finally get into contact with the JL. They need help neutralizing a threat, you see, and they’re on their last limb trying to keep civilians safe.
They have video evidence! They have studies to back their claims! The JL have to help them!
Unfortunately, the JL believe them. They join a fight against Danny, and defeat him due to being far more experienced than he is. Danny is locked away and experimented on by the GiW.
That would CHANGE a person. Your heroes turning against you and seeing you as a monster, being experimented on for who knows how long, not knowing if your friends and family are safe.
Danny gets out due to a simple mistake on the GiW’s part; having Blüdhaven as part of their transport route.
Of course the trucks were attacked, they’re government property!
So now, whoever decided to raid the government transport trucks (the Penguin or something) has a ton of experimental weapons with no idea how they work, and a heavily traumatized teenager.
Danny knows how they work. Danny can be useful! They won’t throw him out if he’s useful! And so, now Danny is working for the Penguin, altering the ectoplasm weapons to make them work on humans.
It’s a good deal for both parties. Danny gets to neurotically imprint on the Penguin like a small baby animal, and the Penguin gets a brilliant mind who will stop at nothing to achieve his goals.
But eventually, Danny finds out what happened to his family in his absence.
Jazz is in Arkham. Not as a psychologist, but as a “patient.” Apparently, she snapped and completely destroyed the house, leveled a few blocks of Amity Park, and conducted organized attacks on government bases (mostly GiW) for months.
Sam and Tucker helped her, eventually splitting once Jazz was captured. Sam travels to areas of extreme pollution, completely overgrowing them with her plant powers. Currently she’s in the Amazon rainforest, engaging in an ongoing feud with logging companies. Sam is winning.
Tucker faked his death, and Danny has no idea where he is. He only knows that the death wasn’t real because of a code that the three of them made together, just in case.
Ellie’s trapped in the Infinite Realms. Danny had a failsafe in place so that if she was ever cornered by the GiW, she would be sent to her haunt in the GZ. However, with the portal destroyed, she can’t come back. Danny just hopes she’s okay.
His parents are now top GiW scientists. They’re traveling the country giving speeches. They’re working on a battery powered by ectoplasm, but apparently started “having difficulties” around the same time that Danny escaped.
None of it is fair. None of it is right.
The Justice League destroyed his life, the lives of his friends, and they’re doing as good as ever. The GiW is respected, and his parents are happily working away for them.
Danny takes up some of his more experimental weapons and breaks Jazz out of Arkham. She’s a little different now, colder and more quiet, but she still loves him all the same. It’s an unimaginable comfort to him to see his sister again.
He can’t use his powers anymore. He’s so used to associating them with pain that even transforming into his ghost form is enough to take him down for hours.
However, he understands ectoplasm more than anyone else in the world. He knows how to use it in virtually everything; how it can become a weapon, how it can be used as a supplemental ingredient in poisons and nerve agents, how it can twist and distort the mind if applied correctly.
He doesn’t care what happens to him. He’s going to take down the GiW, and destroy the lives of the JL members who helped lock him away, just as they did to him.
Big Facts!!! Nobody gives a FQ until we put the pressure on the media and the cops as if we’re putting both feet on their necks
For example, r Kelly was raping and abusing young women and children for nearly three decades but it took until 2019 for him to be exposed to the world as the monster he was and two years more for him to be found guilty. If he had mostly white victims he would be under the jail rn without any outrage or pressure. Why should we as black folks have to share our trauma to get justice and accountability ?
I truly hope and pray that #CarlethiaRussell is found ALIVE. I've been shaking ever since hearing her story. People using babies as bait? Unthinkable. Truly horrific.
One of the funniest things about “Hatchet Town” is that over the course of three musicals and Nightmare Time, most, if not a significant number Hatchetfield residents HAVE committed murder or been accomplices/accessories to murder in at least one timeline. To the point where if you randomly accused pretty much anyone in town of being a murderer, there’s a good chance you’d be right.
Mary Flora Bell was born 26 May 1957 in Corbridge, Northumberland, England.
Bell was only 10 years old when she strangled her first victim, four-year-old Martin Brown just a day before her 11th birthday on 25 May 1968. Mary and her 13-year-old neighbour, Norma Bell (no relation) knocked on Martin Brown’s aunt, Rita Finlay’s door and informed her, “one of your sister’s bairns has just had an accident. We think it’s Martin, but we can’t tell because there’s blood all over him.”
Dr. Bernard Knight conducted a post-mortem the following day upon the body of Martin. Knight was unable to find any signs of violence on the four-year-olds body, thus was unable to determine a cause of death. Knight’s theory was poisoning through ingesting tablets.
Two months later, Mary mutilated a three-year-old boy, Brian Howe.
Brian was last seen playing outside his house with one of his siblings, the family dog and Mary Bell and Norma Bell. Relatives became concerned when the boy did not return home later that afternoon. Concerned and worried neighbours and relatives scoured the streets to look for Brian.
At 11:10 pm, a search party discovered Brian Howe’s body between two large concrete blocks upon the “Tin Lizzie”.
A policeman who was first on the scene, observed that a “deliberate but feeble” attempt had been made to conceal the body due to being covered by clumps of grass and weeds. Brian was found with bruises and scratches on his neck and a pair of broken scissors lay close to his feet.
A coroner concluded that Brian had died of strangulation, and that he had been deceased for up to seven and a half hours. Brian’s genitals were found to be mutilated and he had an ‘M’ carved into his stomach.
Prior to Brian’s murder, on Mary’s 11th birthday, she and Norma broke into a nursery and vandalised it. The two ripped tiles off the slate roof, tore books, upturned desks and smeared ink and poster paints around the property before escaping.
Staff discovered the break-in the following day, along with four separate notes claiming responsibility for Martin Browns murder. One of these notes stated: “I murder SO That I may come back”; another read: “WE did murder martain brown fuckof you bastard”; a third note simply read: “Fuch off we murder. Watch out Fanny and Faggot.”
The final note was the most complex, reading: “You are mice Y Becurse we murdered Martain Go Brown you Bete Look out THERE are Murders about By Fanny and auld Faggot you Screws.” This was dismissed by police as a childish prank.
Two days before the funeral of Martin Brown, Mary Bell and Norma Bell called upon the house of his mother, June, asking to see her son. When June Brown replied that they couldn’t see her son because he was deceased, Mary replied, “Oh, I know he’s dead, I want to see him in his coffin.”
The trial of Mary Bell and Norma Bell started on 5 December 1968, in Newcastle Assizes. Both girls pleaded not guilty to the charges.
The trial lasted nine days. Mary Bell was cleared of murder, but convicted of the manslaughter of both boys on the grounds of diminished responsibility; Norma Bell was acquitted of all charges. Upon hearing the verdict, Norma clapped her hands in excitement, whereas Mary burst into tears as her mother and grandmother also wept.
Bell was first detained in a Durham remand home before being transferred to a second remand home in South Norwood. She was then transferred to Red Bank secure unit, a young offenders institution in Newton-le-Willows, Merseyside.
According to the Guardian, Mary Bell was, “the only girl among 20 or so boys.” She was allegedly subject to sexual abuse by a member of staff and also by fellow inmates, to which the rest of the staff turned a blind eye.
I want to make something super clear: all of Brennan Lee Mulligan’s battles are to the death. It is kill, or be killed and that extends to the Rat Grinders.
I like them just as much as the next person but I knew they’d die. They’re amazing antagonists and it’s great that we like them but this is their fate. They were doomed the minute they chose Porter, and yes they chose him and to come back.
Lucy didn’t. It was painful but she didn’t.
The others did. They were doomed by the narrative the moment they got the mark on themselves.