#losing a trial

[remembertheplunge]

7 minute verdict

8/29/1989. Friday. Should be, anyway. I’ve lived a week in these last two days.

It’s a really windy Tuesday. Thought I saw the wind blowing the stars around like sparks flying up from a fire.

The day of the 7 minute verdict.

7 minutes to give a guy 7 years.

One year per minute.

How do I feel?

Humiliated and happy.

Glad I ain’t got a death grip on it.

I poured my soul into the trial but managed to hang loose, too.

And, that’s good.

And, to have all of that work and lust 

Crash down in 7 minutes.

Amazing.

In a way, a blessing. No lingering torture (waiting for a verdict).

I think “Am I losing my touch?”

God, 7 minutes.

A blind dog could have probably kept them out 8.

Obviously my whole participation in that trial was moot.

The foreman was an old coot.

He’s been on 2 jurys before.

Next time “he’s” out. (A potential juror like him)

The 2 girls who didn’t like tattoos (client must have had visible tattoos)

Next time “out”.

They were honest.

I should have listened

It does hurt in such a way that I must keep silent myself.

Nice hiding tucked away at Mom and Dad’s tonight.

End of entry

Note:

I was a deputy public defender in Stanislaus County when I lost that jury trial. I had completely forgotten that trial. If I hadn't recorded the trial experience, it would have been lost forever.

I'm in a jury trial in Stockton now. I just completed another November 3rd, 2023. That one resulted in a not guilty verdict as to car jacking and robbery with a gun. Completely different post trial experience than i had in the 1989 case above.. I will blog that trial experience as soon as the client's cases are finished. She had one other active case other than the one that resulted in the jury trial.

[paper-lilypie]

pov gregory

[im-an-apollogist]

I think I'm going to start drawing Apollo's children because I love them and they don't have enough appreciation.

So here is some Idmon and Aristaeus for the soul!

And some happy family bonus (they don't know that one of them is going to die)

[coatl-cuddles]

This is my Skysona Rose, she's a little dumb but she got the spirit

[roman-o-cheese]

Third year of doing this solangelo pride redraw :D they are so beloved

[whump-in-the-closet]

i love love love when whumpees curse out their whumper. blood trickling out with their words, teeth bared and every sound vicious. and when the whumper replies by leaning in with the smallest of smiles and strokes their face. “careful.”

and whumpee whimpers. shrinking back, the bite in their eyes fading into terror. crying, shaking, pleading.

[lovesickeros]

☆ de fontaine

{☆} characters furina {☆} notes cult au, imposter au, drabble, gender neutral reader {☆} warnings angst, suicidal thoughts, hurt / no comfort {☆} word count 1.4k

This wasn't fair. This wasn't fair. This wasn't fair!

She thought, for one moment, she could put the mask down and breathe – for one moment of daydreaming, she thought she could just be Furina. She thought she would finally get to live the live she should've had in the first place, the life she threw away to play God to an audience who saw her as nothing but a circus animal, dancing to their whims. Furina just wanted to be selfish for one brief and fleeting moment..and it was gone before she could even grasp it in her hand. A comet soaring past far out of her reach.

She can barely keep her hands from violently shaking as she looks down at them – broken and bloody and more a corpse then a person – and she feels so numb she can't even feel the rain pelting against her back. None of this is fair, she wants to scream, why is it always me? But her voice is silent beneath the torrent of rain. She wonders if the ocean would take her if she sank into it's depths – just for a moment, she wonders how it would feel to finally be able to sleep at ease.

Furina is tired.

But Furina is nothing if not useful, isn't she?

So she forces her feet to move, dragging against the stone beneath her heels, and drags their bloodied body into the nearest empty building, letting the rain do the work of washing away the smeared blood following her path. The smell makes her feel sick, the feeling of it sticking to her hands and gloves makes her lightheaded, but she persists. Because Furina is useful, because Furina won't let them die out in the rain, because Furina won't stand by and just let them rot on the streets like some..pest.

Furina wants to go home. She wants to sleep and she isn't she if she wants to wake up, this time. But she keeps going anyway.

Because it's all she's ever done, and the habit sticks.

An Archon she may not be, not anymore, but the expectations of five hundred years still linger like eyes on the inside of her skull. They watch her, pry and prod at her thoughts, mocking laughter and judging eyes following her as she forces herself to dance to the song they weave with glee. Furina never stepped off that stage – she's still there, she thinks, watching the crowd stare at her in disdain as the curtain call looms above her like a guillotine. She still hears Neuvillette deliver her damnation and salvation with a trembling voice, still feels her hair stand on end when electro crackled like the crack of the whip, Clorinde's blade aimed at her like a loaded gun.

She's trapped on that stage and she never left, not really.

She hates it. She thinks she hates them, but it's not their fault. They didn't ask for this, didn't ask for everyone to turn against them, didn't ask for her to save them. Neither did she..yet here they are, she thinks.

She tries to tell herself she's in control this time, though. She can stop performing her part in this horrible, bloody play any time she wants. It makes her feel better, just for a little while, if she convinces herself she's still Furina, painfully human.

And Furina has always been good at lying.

It's the believing that's the hard part.

There isn't time for her to wallow in her own self pity, though. They're still bleeding out onto the dusty, creaky floorboards of some random, broken down house and she's just standing there as the blood stains the wood. She can fix it – she's good at fixing things. She's done nothing but fix things – try to, anyway – for five hundred years. She can fix a little wound, how hard could it be? Her hands are clenched so tight they ache as she kneels down, wincing at the creak of the floorboards beneath her heels– she hesitates just long enough to wonder if she's making a mistake before she peels away just enough of the outer layer of their clothes to see the deep, bloody gash across their chest. She tries not to think about it – it's deep, too deep, and she feels dizzy just looking at it, but she's handled worse, right?

Furina can fix it. That's what she's good at.

She doesn't feel so confident when she tries to wrack her brain for..something. Five hundred years, and a little wound stumps her? No, she had to have learned something, right? She's decidedly not trying to buy time because she's panicking, parsing through hundreds of years of memories like flipping through a book. Furina isn't made for this, not really – she's running on nothing but adrenaline and she's really not sure what she's doing, but she's trying. And just like before, it won't be enough, will it?

She'll fall short again – she'll be too late to fix it before she's alone again.

Furina was an Archon..used to be. What use would she have for that sort of knowledge? Which makes her predicament all the more harrowing and bleak. What was she supposed to do?

Furina had heard it first hand, that vitriol in Neuvillette's voice. She isn't sure she's ever heard him that..angry before. She's not sure he would listen to her if she tried, either. And that scares her more then anything. All of Fontaine was up in arms about this..imposter, yet here she was, staring down at them bleeding out in front of her, and she was trying to save them.

Why? Why is she throwing away her only chance at normalcy for a fraud? Why didn't she just turn them in?

They were dying – that should've been a good thing, shouldn't it? So why didn't it feel like it?

"Why you?" Her voice breaks as she speaks in harsh tones, grabbing the front of their shirt in trembling, bloodied hands. "Why now?" She wants to scream, to demand answers they can't give, to claw back the reprieve she was promised after five hundred years of agony..and all she can do is sob into their chest, pleading for an answer that will not come. "Why me?"

Silence is their answer, and it hangs heavy on her trembling shoulders as she cries.

Of course they don't, she thinks bitterly, no one has ever answered her pleas spoken in hushed sobs. Not her other self and certainly not them.

Furina has always been alone. Furina will always be alone.

Because Furina never left that stage, never left that moment when she looked at herself in the mirror and took up a mantle too heavy for her to bear. She always finds her way back eventually. There's no one on the other side anymore – she stands alone on a stage, waiting for an inevitable end she isn't sure will come.

"Please," She pleads through tears and choked sobs, clinging to them like they are all that keeps her from sinking. "Please don't leave me, too." The words burn on her tongue – how pathetic is she that she craves companionship from the bloodied body of the imposter? Perhaps she's truly lost her mind after all these years..perhaps she's finally gone mad. She must have.

But their presence is like the first feeling of gentle warmth upon her skin as the sun crests the horizon, like the gentle lap of tides along her heels, the sway of branches and leaves as the wind blows through them like an instrument all it's own. They are the soothing sound of rain against the window as she watches the dreary skies in fond longing, the first bloom of spring as color blooms upon the landscape like paint had been spilled across the hills and valleys.

They are like the faint spark she carefully nurtures and stokes, so fragile even the smallest wind could blow it out like a candle. She cradles it within her palms, pleads with whoever will listen – prays that someone finally listens, because if not for her, then for them.

She's failed to protect too much already, let too many people with so much trust in her fall between the cracks of her fingers like grains of sand. She won't let them go – she can't.

If nothing else, if she couldn't be saved when she begged for salvation from that five hundred year long agony, even if she never got that chance..

Furina will make sure they do.

[canisalbus]

To me, Machete kind of has the energy of a secondary villain/coldhearted side character in someone else's story that a lot of fans latch onto, moreso than the protagonist. Question is, would he be the villain in anyone's story?

Why, thank you! I'm actually glad to hear he gives off that vibe. I don't think he set out to become a villain but a lot of people certainly view him as one.

[moonshynecybin]

sorry i was talking about this with dante last night but it’s literally so funny that marc was like i don’t even care about winning i’d trade it all for this podium with my brother :) and then you go down the laundry list of things he did to try and win this weekend and it’s like his bones are broken his ribs are bruised he was in excruciating pain he couldn’t breathe the bike was fucked six ways to sunday BEFORE franky morbidelli decided to clip him and take half his wind screen clean off/make his airbags compress his movements to death and in fact THAT event in itself is what made him go crazy and put it p2. like literally the shock adrenaline and pain of it. and then he passed ALEX for second place handily on like the second to last lap. so all this to say i think he is lying through his teeth,

[inafieldofdaisies]

[demigod-shenanigans]

Cannot overstate the fact that I haven’t specifically written this snippet for a fic, but I was thinking about the kind of mindset Jason must have been in pre Burning Maze and this snippet just kind of happened:

Jason knew that Thalia was the first person he’d ever loved, but he could only miss his sister like a kind-faced stranger. He missed her like a butterfly he’d chased through the woods when he’d been little—almost close enough to touch, but always just out of reach.

Jason missed Reyna, but the feeling was foreign, like phantom pain in a lost limb—an incomprehensible ache originating from a part of him that was no longer there that flared up at random intervals and that he didn’t know how to soothe.

Jason missed Leo like the fire of a hearth. Like the warmth and safety of a home he’d never known, and had realized from the beginning he wouldn’t be able to keep. Because if there was one thing Jason could rely on in his life, it was that the good things never lasted.

Jason missed Piper like a final string. He‘d thought that at least he’d always have her—until, suddenly, he didn’t.

And then he was free falling.

[will80sbyers]

basically they were on a date here

[xuxudio]

the voices won

[moodyseal]

OOH OOH CONCERNED-POLLO?? MANS IS MOTHER™

Y E S

Poor guy's stressed out over everyone's safety 24/7 consciously AND subconsciously

[thelilylav]

We only see each other at funerals

(On Jason, Thalia, Nico, Bianca, and their parallels/connections)

The Titan's Curse (Rick Riordan), @/anxiousmaya_, Right Now (Gracie Abrams), The Battle of the Labyrinth (Rick Riordan), Joan of Arc (Mary Gordon), The Lost Hero (Rick Riordan), Episodes Toward and Elegy for Halley's Comet (Lindsey Drager), Jason Grace (Riordan Wiki), The Gods Show Up (Michael Kinnucan), The House of Hades (Rick Riordan), What the Living Do (Marie Howe), The House of Hades (Rick Riordan), Planet of Love (Richard Siken), The Blood of Olympus (Rick Riordan), Tangerine (Nolune), The Blood of Olympus (Rick Riordan), The Blood of Olympus (Rick Riordan), I Bet On Losing Dogs (Mitski), The Burning Maze (Rick Riordan), @/abhorarchive (Twitter), The Burning Maze (Rick Riordan), Seventeen (MARINA), The Burning Maze (Rick Riordan), @/rollercoasterwords, The Tyrant's Tomb (Rick Riordan), @/the-overanalyst, Where Things Come Back (John Corey Whaley), Grit (Silas Denver Martin), Softcore (The Neighbourhood), The Tower of Nero (Rick Riordan), Frost (Mitski), @/moonbends, I'm Your Man (Mitski), Sun Bleached Flies (Ethel Cain), The Tower of Nero (Rick Riordan), Three (Sleeping At Last), My Art

[daedelweiss]

i like how the peepaw leos are at each others’ throats while the teenage leos are just vibing 🤣

the peepaws:

Trial & Error by @apatheticrobots

Mutant Ninja Midlife Crisis by @mutantninjamidlifecrisis

Odd Man Out by @threestripeslider

We’ll Meet Again, Soon @chiangyorange

Replica by @kathaynesart​

the gremlins:

Celestial AU by @ashwii

Bloodbath by @trubblegumm

Nothing Left to Lose by @leo-kinnie​

Mystic Mayhem by @yourloveaton​

Life Mission: Save My Brothers by me 😛