#strangulation can literally be lethal

[kuusihevonen]

https://www.kemh.health.wa.gov.au/~/media/HSPs/NMHS/Hospitals/WNHS/Documents/Patients-resources/SARC---Non-fatal-strangulation.pdf

I hope you know strangulation can kill someone even weeks/months later, because of internal damage

Ooohhh to choke girls till their faces turn blue and they piss themselves. 🥰😵‍💫🤤

[castle-dominion]

castle 7x9 last action hero

the action movie episode liveblog

hard kill garbage earbuds sus person running person dead person!! Love the music btw talking out loud to himself

Aw I love 90s beckett's style Oooh allclads are a good brand! But bex is right, some pans just Work Better, you can't just live life with a full set of one, you need a couple mismatched ones thrown in there too. & it has pictures in it.

Cousin sofia! Nice Bex offended mr kuniak XD ofc he never said anything, that'd be impolite

Hohhhh her puppydog sleeves <3

raises crime scene tape uwu He's that guy! Esposito's face of "Really castle? HIM above any of the OTHER action heroes?" RC: Ex-Navy Seal Zen master Rico Cruz? With the catch phrase “Time to hit Cruz control”? JE: Yeah, I was never a fan. KR: Me either. What’s he done lately, anyway? JE: Yeah, right? RC: (seriously) Beat leukemia. KR+JE:

Lanie <3

LP: Cause of death is clearly strangulation by ligature. KB: A narrow ligature, from the looks of it. KR: Made by a thin wire tied to two wooden dowels? KB: KR: CSU found this in a dumpster. KB: A garrote? Who would use one of those? JE: Special forces will sometimes, when they want to kill quietly. RC: The bigger question is how they got the drop on Lance Delorca. KR: Uh, Lance played an action hero, Castle. Doesn’t mean he was one. RC: Au contraire, mon frère. Thank you transcript for actually saying that, screw you captions. I speak French, I want to see the words. If hearing bilingual people can understand the french, Ddeaf/hoh ppl should be able to have that same opportunity. RC: Lance was born in Spain where, before he became an actor, he was a member of the CNI, the Spanish Intelligence Agency. He was black ops. This man was a lethal weapon. Me then: Wow, that's so fake, he wouldn't become an american actor. Jon Huertas: *was in the military, poor guy, before becoming an actor & is literally Esposito in this very show* But then again, I have a friend from Israel/Sri Lanka (I think he grew up in israel but was originally from sri lanka, idk) & he was in the air force for thirteen years but I met him as a cheap cafe sandwich maker in the banquet cold kitchen. I mean he left that job a couple weeks ago for private security but other than that. My point is, being n the military does not denote your future, you can escape your past.

Love the music btw

*Knows it word for word* RC laughs. He notices KR+JE’S looks. RC: I was raised by a single mother. Hard Kill was how I got my brotime. KR: That explains so much. JE: Mmhmm.

JE: Yeah, the guy from The Indestructibles movies, where all the badass action heroes band together for one last mission. KR: Before they die of old age? JE: Hey. That’s a great film. And so was the sequel. Sequels are never good bro KR: (sarcastically) Yeah.

KR: The redhead, she’s an archaeologist? That strains credibility. (XD casually sexist) JE: Yeah, in a good way. KB: Hard at work investigating, I see. They all turn around quickly. (Love her)

Castle being sort of helpful while just watching movies *pushes esposito out of the way a bit* why garroute, not garawt? KB: I know what her name is. While you were having your B-movie festival, I tracked her down. She’s in New York. She’s shooting a film and she’s on her way in now. *Esposito's face lights up & Castle accidentally hits ryan*

love the music XD but bex, let Castle find girls pretty in the past tense, he had her poster on his wall when he was younger & def before he met you that is ok.

oh no Another indestructibles? before they all die of old age? Yay friends Wow guns Cheesy is not bad KB: The real miracle is how a girl like that’s hanging out with a bunch of guys old enough to be her grandfather. She's not wrong

RC: Hi, Mr. Harmon. Huge fan. Huge fan. (he holds out his hand for a shake) I – I’m – it’s an honor – honor to meet you. Brock Harmon: The honor is mine. I’ve passed many an hour in the john reading your books. (in the washroom but still, he reads em! Love it when two celebrities are fans of each other lol)

Sometimes they say first names, sometimes they say last names.

When castle said that I just thought "Jon huertas was drawing on his past as an airman to play a detective (who used to be a green beret)" but also I miss the days when Castle said smart stuff

Just so happens that everyone they need is in new york i love it

I know why they are "stonewalling" her heheh oh yeah she has "guys" in washington now!

Why Hard Kill of any of the ppl he's played?

KR: (reading the tagline) “Time to hit Cruz control.” Maybe that’s what I need, a catchphrase. (he lowers his voice) Time to meet hard justice. Time for prison time. (nOOO I HATE IT MY FACE IS CAUGHT BETWEEN A CRINGE & A SMILE JHDSKJHSDFJ) XD on second thought: don't. clipping.

Oh yeah I remember this stuff. Man's a regular little robotics high school student!

Oh yeah sobriety. Loev the set behind them too lol

Ooh I noticed the commotion in the background this time! Man holding his face!

Classic action movie other wife XD

{But Castle couldn't tell that this man was NOT ex-cni? He got beckett's entire life story so why is this like this?} btw I want a fanfic where castle pulls the same trick he did on beckett to learn abt esposito & ryan's lives

espt layers upon layers isexy

Enrique Gomez: He needed a bodyguard. Somebody he could trust. And I know such people. But none of them were available on such short notice, so I couldn’t help him. I mean yeah no yeah that's how things go

At least he ASKED his friend I mean Tavi was a sheep herder too! But then he became an operative! & wanted to be a lawyer! & then became captain of the army! & then became the king of the entire nation!

Aww castle so depressed deeply personal XD Tori *pops out* *pops back in*

Earology XD but also acupuncturists might know a lot, I feel like that could be a plot point in a future episode & the shows the little animation XD like girl why not just say "I have an ID" & give the ID & if they ask say "I compared her ear shape to pictures of women connected to Lance DeLorca" & show the green pic of the scan but since you already compared it, you don't need to compare it to any more (which is where we got that pretty ear shape animation from)

not quoting, rather clipping, but the captions are incorrect so beware

I like how dark the obs room is in comparison to the inter room but the box is still so dim

set smth right! Words we've said before!

RC: My opinion is not affected by her skimpy outfit. I’m speaking as an objective investigator. Someone who has set their personal feelings aside. KB: Along with your poster? RC stops abruptly. RC: Who told you? It’s Ryan, wasn’t it? Apparently everyone knows ryan as the blabbermouth. "She's going away with her boyfriend!" "It only proves that Ryan has a big mouth" like girl this is a minor character trait for him at this point

Yay I'm hopefully getting my meds filled! I went to the hospital for self harm & suicidal motives on wednesday & I still haven't gotten my meds yet *goofy face emoji* but now I am yayay

why does ryan say "except for her story is still holding up" instead of "except that her story is still holding up" but ig it's better "except FOR the fact THAT her story.."

slaps ryan's mouth XD

her fridge is EMPTY

THANK YOU! Thank you Lanie for giving us all this information, all the reminders of the past, the explosion, the best apartment ever! Also I totally thought that they were going to kiss & then I forgot this isn't fanfiction. Btw we need more femslash in fandom. Straight women, we need you! Lol wine in ceramic mugs

Ooh Ryan's outfit! It was good yesterday but now it is also good today!

Hollywood style one at a time fight, castle's face, espt's face, castle's face, espt's nodthe MUSIC, man he did a great job choosing the right instruments for this!

Reminds me, I was in martial arts as a kid (& I wish I could go back but college is awful & nobody should have to work more than five hours a day /gen /revolution /ubi) & some friends of mine got into a fight at mcdonald's & they TOTALLY should have asked for the security footage!

btw, kicks are low not for their face

You get sides of pork, not sides of beef. Cattle are cut into quarters. Sorry lol I took a meat fabrication course in college

Standing in a very fenton oconnell type way there huh

JE: AD says his name is Ernest Howe. He’s playing ISIS militant number twelve. KR: Not for long. You know what time it is? It’s Ryan time. KR walks, JE follows him. JE: Please. Just stop. KR: Name’s Ryan and I hate lyin’. (he flashes his badge) JE: Oh my god KR: Ernest Howe! NYPD. not clipping too embarrassing KR: Oh, you’ve got trouble. Ryan trouble. JE hangs & shakes his head EH, softly & deeply: I don’t know what that means.

add to 1x7 when esposito & ryan were about to fck "moot" btw love espt's outfit. "put the hurt on all of you" sounds like irish, "there is hurt on me" or "there is hunger on me" is how irish sentences work

wait then why were you there beating on him in the alley? Or maybe they couldn't connect him to any of the assaulters, he just looked kind of like them

Ryan mr narco didn't notice? well ig it has been like 9 years since then...

love a good old middle aged dude

RC: I’ve learned that every good fiction contains a kernel of truth. Mr writer

BH: Say, the gang and I are going out for drinks later tonight. How’s you like to come with us? RC: RC: BH: Castle?

RC to KB: You are my boyhood dream.

XD that little run! He's a teen girl I love him!

There is NOT enough space for three broad shouldered adlult men to sit in a caar together

BH: Somebody takes out one of our own, we take him out. Valid ig? but castle is right: Oh, guys. Hey. Listen. If your plan is to go to the club and steal that slot car, no, that would – that would taint the evidence. Rolf Magnus: Actually we can compel the DA to consider it, since the car technically belonged to the victim, Lance. Wow actually smart lol

Where is Castle? Oh wait that's him. When did Castle change? Cool guys don't look at explosions

Love the heist comp XD. & they call him el jeffe XD I love the triframe but castle is conspicuous Lol always check, esp if you don't want to create a distraction Now get gone he's only on his way you can still get gone! Pull the fire alarm! Oh good for her lol

KB: You’re telling me that this was handed to you by a concerned citizen? RC: Uh … yes.

KB: And reward you for your []illegal behavior? (she shakes her head) I think not.

& then she livetells him anyway?

They be f*ckin' /j "omg this is not what I expected to be listening to"

yk what trey, that's valid. But also dude maybe ask for help yk what the DA might feel bad for you but also girl go to the authorities at that point maybe except that yk how cops are but at least theyd arrest boothe for conspiracy to commit murder

What did the blood bone marrow donor have to do with all of this?

he's your real dad & blood bone tests showed that?

ryan weird with the vest half open tbh

Ohhhh his son that's how this was involved!

WOAH THE JEWELRY WIRE IS THE SAME!?!? I don't think Lance was trying to ruin things, just trying to build a connection with a kid he's met a few times, his friend's kid, who just so hapens to be HIS kid.

Gates said good job to castle XD!

RC: I was just going to suggest the exact same thing. We’re starting to think alike now! As if they haven't been doing this since s1 XD KB: (laughing) That is horrifying. Okay, go cue up the movie, open up a bottle of wine. I’ll be home in a bit. I’ve just got a stop to make first. (& make popcorn!) RC: Well, if I’m thinking what you’re thinking and it’s to pick up a sexy archaeologist costume, don’t worry. (he drops his voice to a whisper) I’ve already got the whip. KB: *surprised pikachu*

but girl that's nice wood! & that is too good of a carving tbh

cinematic <3

Mkay so it's 17 & I started watching at 13.30 so that's 4.5 hours & 3 hours is already double my allotted time this was triple my alotted time which means it took me sextuple times the episode... then again a lot of it WAS spent trying to upload stuff to tumblr, at least 30m.

[aswallowssong]

Second Child, Restless Child

Chapter 9 - The Devil Whispered Lies

@valkyrie-5583

Read on AO3

If I told y'all I got engaged and that's why this chapter is literally a billion years late, would that make it better??

Jokes aside (not really a joke, I did get engaged, I just hid it in the notes a few weeks ago) spring break is one week away for this teacher, and my goal is to write a whole bunch so I can not have to post chapters like... 2 months apart.

Let me know what you think of this one!! Have a lovely day!!

Continuation of chapter 8 - Heaven Knows How Hard I Tried. The Keystone Killer has given Kit a lot to think about; including some things she wasn't quite counting on.

Kit wasn’t quite listening when they walked back into the precinct. Her conversation with JJ earlier in the day had helped. If JJ had met pushback, but now she was allowed to be a full part of the BAU team, she should stand up for herself. The director himself saw all of her reports, she could tell Ramos she disagreed with him. Especially if, for the time being, her work was good enough for the literal director of the whole FBI.

But her talk with Hotch outside of Harbin’s house hadn’t done her a lot of good. Her mind was still reeling from the events of the last hour, she still hadn’t slept since Friday night, and it was actively Sunday. 

What brought her back to reality was Morgan’s voice, deep and steady at the front of their group. It caught her up to the present so quickly she almost stopped short, which would have sent Hotch right into her.

“Well, that's got to be a first. A killer actually leading us to another killer.”

“Come on,” Gideon said from further back, “we all know they make the best profilers. They admire each other's work.”

“Ya, but usually from afar,” Elle said as they spilled into the conference room.

Kit didn’t even let herself imagine sitting down. There was no way she would be able to stay awake when she had nothing of value to add. At this point, she was waiting to get back on the jet and back to her apartment. The image of Claudia was twisting in her mind, and she couldn’t help the desperate need she had to see Monty face to face.

Hotch didn’t let her stay in her head for very long. “At least we got Harbin off the street. All right, let's review. What do we know about the Keystone Killer?”

He’s killing women at an alarming rate.

“Well, we know that he's not dead or in jail,” Elle offered.

Gideon continued. “Enjoys taunting the game.”

“Ya,” Morgan agreed easily. “He's in complete control.”

Reid was quick to add on, statistics rattling from him easier than Kit was even keeping her eyes open. “He strangled seven women in the 1980's, stopped for eighteen years, and then began again suffocating them. Ten percent of all violent crimes are caused by strangulation, it only takes eleven pounds of pressure to fully incapacitate your victim and if you hang on for at least fifty seconds, they will never recover.”

“Yeah,” Kit said, stopping short once she’d realized the words had come from her mouth, not someone else’s. Everyone’s eyes were on her, and she took a moment before she voiced the fact her brain had produced for her, however reluctantly. “It’s one of the most lethal forms of violence. Victims can be unconscious in a matter of ten seconds.”

Hotch shook his head, confusion pushing from his before he said, “When you suffocate someone you actually have less control over their death. It's actually more passive because the killer doesn't feel the life leaving the body.”

“He's changed almost everything that he does,” Elle said. She was lost, mild annoyance and confusions coming off her in waves. Elle had joined the team just as JJ did, and Kit wondered if she ever felt as completely baffled as she herself felt.

In that moment, it felt like the answer could be yes, and that was comforting.

Gideon took over then, speaking to them as a whole in a series of questions. “Why why why why? What? I mean, what's he getting out of this new M. O.? Where's his payoff? You got Carla Bromwell, she sustains a significant head injury. Blitz attacks suggest disorganization, no self-confidence. This is a guy who walks into seven victims' homes prior to this. There was no forced entry at any of the scenes. Where's the loss of confidence?”

There was a beat of silence, and she really hoped anyone had any idea. It was moments like these that made Kit feel the most out of her element. She had no idea why the Keystone Killer would want to kill anyone anyway, how could she know why he would change his methods?

“He would never change the way he kills by choice,” Ryan said, breaking the silence.

“What?” 

Ryan spoke again, confident in a way the rest of the team lacked. “We've been operating under the assumption that he purposely changed his M. O.”

It was like something physically snapped into place. Kit looked around as everyone was suddenly much more engaged. 

“You're saying he changed because he had to change?” Gideon asked.

“He knocked her unconscious. And it wasn't to scare.”

Elle seemed to be catching on, and Kit wished selfishly she wasn’t. “Because he couldn't control her physically while she was awake.”

Ryan nodded. “He could be incapacitated.”

Gideon latched back on. “At least partially.”

“Maybe an injury.” 

“Or a stroke,” Hotch added, and Gideon started nodding. “Either way you're gonna have to have medical records. Agreed?”

It took her more than a few seconds to notice that no one had said anything else, and she looked over at Gideon, who was looking directly at her.

Why is he looking at me? He never looks at me? We have a spoken rule to not look at one another during cases so why is he looking right at me?

“Colghain?” he said, and she shook her head. He most certainly was looking at her for an answer, and everyone else had gone quiet so she could answer.

“Yeah.” She said, and she saw Ryan raise an eyebrow in annoyance before she stumbled over herself to continue her answer. “Yeah, yes, sorry. Yes. There would be injury reports, charts, notes, scripts. It’s a lot of records, depending on who your doctor is and what hospital you’re at.”

There was another pause before they were all nodding, taking in what she’d said and running with it.

Morgan was first to speak. “Okay, so what are we talking about? This had to have happened after the middle of 1988 in Philadelphia?”

Gideon nodded, first at Kit, and then to Morgan. “Somebody who fits the rest of the profile.”

“It's a lot of hospital records,” Reid said, also looking towards Kit, who nodded her affirmation. “There’s hoards of people going into ERs every day for exactly those sorts of things. It’ll be a huge pool.”

He smiled at her, and she found herself taken a bit aback, but returned his grin with a shy one of her own.

“Call our girl Friday,” Gideon said, directed to Morgan, and as the flurry of movement and new hope danced through the room, she found herself feeling much less tired than she did before.

She’d been helpful. Gideon had known she was an expert about something and asked for her agreement and input before simply inserting a thought. 

Her feelings were incredibly jumbled as she stood there, waiting for directions. Gideon’s affirmation made her feel better than she thought it would, considering they didn’t usually talk if not to argue. JJ’s conversation still lingered in the back of her mind, and she wanted to talk to Ramos. If JJ could stand up to the coms department and get what she wanted, why couldn’t she stand up to Ramos?

But Claudia filled the leftover space in her consciousness, and she didn’t know if she could fight for more time with the BAU, or to try to be more fully integrated, or whatever it was that she actually wanted if the cases were going to stay with her.

To scare her. To make her feel like she needed to know that her sisters were alright, even though there was no way to do that while knees deep in a case. 

What do you even want, Kody? What do you want?

She didn’t have an answer for herself.

-----

Kit stood in front of the mirror in the bathroom of the precinct and splashed another cupful of water onto her face, holding her cheeks in her hands a moment before looking up at her reflection. 

You look exhausted.

Monty’s voice, as always, chided her. Sometimes she wished the voice of her overinvolved consciousness was her brother Al instead. Alaska couldn’t be bothered over things like that. His biggest qualm in life was the fact that his name was Alaska, and it had been quickly remedied by Ari telling him he could just go by Alex at school. 

You’ve got bigger problems than that. You’re having a moment in a police precinct in Philly while the rest of your team waits on a comprehensive file to be faxed. 

A feeling of dread shot through her chest at the realization that Monty didn’t even know she was gone. She’d been so tired and so incredibly thrown by Garcia’s text, and then Hotch’s insistence that she was on the jet that she hadn’t thought to walk down and tell Ari she was leaving. He’d been on the clinic floor; out of sight, out of mind. Then she was on the jet, and then at the crime scene. 

She hadn’t even sent a text. 

Hell, she hadn’t even really slept since then. Her time in the jet and her few minutes in the car were nowhere near what she needed, and with all the feelings and thoughts she had flying around her head, she was surprised she hadn’t crashed. She was definitely feeling “Big Feelings,” and she didn’t have time for it.

Ari and Monty always helped the big feelings. They had to be wondering where she was. Why hadn’t they called her? Or texted? They had to be worried. Girls didn’t just go missing in the middle of the day.

But they do. And worse, they’re murdered too. Right out of nowhere for no reason at all. People are sick, Kody. They kill for pleasure. They kidnap for pleasure. They’ll take anyone at any time. 

She had her phone out and dialed in record time.

“Penelope’s hotline for all things truth. Speak and know.”

“Garcia.” She swiped at her eyes. When had she started crying? “I need a favor.”

“Oh, Kit, hey.” Her voice was as sunny as always. “I’ve got that file almost through, the medical was-”

“It’s not about the case.”

There was silence on the other line for a moment. “Oh?”

“If I gave you the first and last name, could you trace a cell phone?”

“A cell phone? As long as it’s registered to the same name, yeah, I can. Why?”

“Virginia.” She said. “Virginia Colghain.”

She didn’t know why she picked Ginny. Something inside her said that Seese, George, and Lina would be at home with their mam. Ginny lived in the city, and Kit couldn’t call her. 

Ginny didn’t know she was in the field. Ginny didn’t even know she’d been paired with the BAU.

“Where should it be? Just so I know what I’m looking for.”

“Probably the US Attorney's office.”

“Which branch?”

“The one in the district. On fourth street.”

Garcia hummed as she typed, the clicking of her keystrokes halting as she said, “Wait. Wait, Colghain?”

Kit bit her lip. She was sort of hoping Garcia wouldn’t notice. 

Which is stupid, because of course she’d notice.

“Yes.”

“Virginia Colghain?”

“Yes, Garcia, can you track it or not?” Kit glanced at herself in the mirror, letting her reflection ground her. She tugged at one braid, and then the other with her free hand before wiping at her eyes again.

The clicking started again before Garcia said, “Virginia Colghain’s phone is, in fact, inside the US Attorney’s office on fourth street.”

Kit breathed a sigh of relief. While it wasn’t proof that Ginny was okay, it certainly helped Kit’s nerves. “Thanks, Penelope. Sorry about that.”

“Sure, my sweet clover. But, why don’t you just call her and ask where she is? I’m going to assume that’s one of your many many siblings.”

Because I haven’t quite told her I’m working with the BAU now, or going in the field again, and I’m not ready to have that conversation with her just yet, considering no one knows but Ari and Monty.

“I don’t want to interrupt her at work, I just needed to know she was okay.”

Garcia was quiet again before saying, “You know, we’ll get him. My system has faxed almost all the papers now, and then you can go bring him in.”

Kit took a breath, glancing again at the reflection in the mirror. She almost didn’t recognize the face staring back at her. Had she always looked so sad?

“Thanks, Pen,” she said quietly. “I, um. I’ve gotta go.”

“Go fight crime, clover. But, hey,” Penelope’s voice took on a different quality. A serious one. “You and I should talk when you get back.”

She sighed, but nodded. “Okay… bye, Penelope.”

Kit hung up the phone.

Ginny was fine. She knew that it was a given, and she probably just looked like a crazy, paranoid moron, but she also knew deep down that Penelope didn’t care. Maybe she understood.

Before she could convince herself otherwise she hit the first position speed dial, pacing a bit in front of the sinks as it rang.

“Dia dhuit?” Came Monty’s groggy, listless voice over the line, and Kit nearly burst into tears at the combination of her sister’s voice, her real voice, and their mother tongue.

“Monty.”

“Yeah, it’s me. Where are you? Thought you were in the living room, but I only hear you on the phone.”

Kit wiped at a stray tear trailing down her cheek. There was no way she was keeping it together when she finally got home.

Monty’s accented Irish was thicker than it normally was. Her voice was lower too, telling of the fact that she quite possibly woke her twin up. She bit back a bit of guilt, her own voice launching into a language just for them.

“I’m sorry, I woke you, didn't I?”

“It’s alright, I’ll go back when we’re done. Where are you?”

“Are you feeling any better?” She was stalling. “When was the last time you took-”

“Dakota.” Kit stopped in her tracks. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Everything is fine.”

“But why are you crying?”

Damn it.

She tried to keep any tremor out of her voice, but she knew Monty would always be able to tell. “I’m not.”

“Why are you calling me, crying-”

Kit sighed, her pacing stopping dead in its tracks as she tried to keep herself together. “Everything is okay. I’m not hurt. I’m fine. Everyone is fine. I needed to hear your voice.”

The coughing across the line was grating, and then, “Kody, where are you? What are you talking about? What’s going on?”

“I…” Kit started, steadying herself with a hand on the counter. “We’re in Pennsylvania.” 

“You’re what?” 

“It’s fine, I had to leave overnight. We’re on a case.”

“You didn’t call,” Monty said, obviously upset. “You didn’t even send a text. Ari was at the bureau last night, too, why-” She cut herself off to cough, the line being muffled as Monty pulled away from the speaker.

Kit ran her hand down her face. This wasn’t the conversation she needed to be having. She should have called Ari. He tended to be a little more level headed when he was upset. 

“Why wouldn’t you say anything?” Monty finally asked, voice much rougher than before. “What if something happened?”

“Nothing is going to happen,” Kit said, her voice more steady than she felt it should be. “I’m sorry, Mont. I’m so sorry. I know I should have told you.”

“Why…” Monty trailed for a moment before she said quietly, “Why did you call now?”

Claudia’s face flashed to the front of her mind, and then Monty’s; the reflection of her own staring back at her in the mirror. 

“I needed to hear your voice. I had to know you were alright.”

Another moment of silence passed before Monty asked, “Something happened, didn’t it?”

Kit sighed, sniffling quietly before letting out another, deeper sigh. “I don’t know if I can do this, Mont.”

The door to the bathroom swung open, JJ standing on the other side.

“Hey, the whole file finally came through, we’re meeting in the- are you crying?” 

Kit’s head whipped around to look at JJ square, and she hastily wiped under her eyes. “No, I, um. I’ll be right there.”

JJ tilted her head, but nodded and shut the door again. The air between the twins crackled quietly before Kit cleared her throat.

“I have to go. I… hopefully I’ll be home tonight. I’m sorry, Montana. I am.”

“Kody, wait-”

“I love you, Mont, I’m so sorry.”

“You can’t just say those things and then go put yourself in danger! You can’t do that to me! I-”

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, I-” The door to the bathroom was pounded on. “Lep! Let’s go!”

Derek.

“Dakota!”

“I’m sorry. I love you.”

Before Monty could say anything else, Kit snapped her phone shut. 

------

Her leg bounced as she sat in the SUV in between Reid and Elle. She was twisting at the hem of her shirt, and some of the threads had ripped and stretched. It was keeping her from pulling on her hair though, so she didn’t care about that. Ginny could sew it for her when they got back to DC.

If Ginny’s still there. Anyone could grab her at any time. Anyone could-

“Are you okay?” Reid asked quietly, his eyes locked on her fingers as they tugged at the material.

She stilled her hands immediately, feeling the concern dripping from his tone.

“Yeah,” she said. “Just… tired.”

“You could probably sit out if you need to,” he said, not noticing the way her face had started to heat up. Everyone in the SUV was actively pretending they couldn’t hear their conversation, but Kit knew better.

“I don’t need to,” she said quickly. “I just want to get home, so the faster we cuff this creep, the better."

"Because of your sister?"

"What?"

How could he have possibly known what you were thinking about Ginny? Did you say something? Did-

"Your sister's sick, right?"

She stared at him for a moment before it clicked. He wasn't talking about Ginny. Of course he wasn't, the only one that knew about her minor meltdown was Garcia. Monty being sick was common knowledge. 

"Oh," she said. "Yeah. And because he's, you know." She gestured vaguely. "Murdering women."

Elle laughed quietly next to her, nodding as she said, “Right, there’s that. We’ll get him. Right, Gideon?”

“Oh, we’ll get him,” Gideon said, sending more anticipatory energy into the world than usual. Kit didn’t have to think about the implications of that, though, as the SUV came to a halt outside a two story home.

They got out of the van quickly, all thoughts of Monty and going home gone as they strapped into Kevlar vests and double checked their weapons.

“I believe Walter Kern is in Sylvia Gooden's home now,” Gideon said, addressing the five of them and the SWAT captain. “Hotch confirmed he left the community center hours ago, and Kern's car's parked on the next block.”

“I want Walter Kern alive,” Ryan said quickly, and the SWAT captain nodded at his request. ��I'll stand by for the word.”

“Reid, Greenaway, I'll call you when we've secured Kern. Morgan, Colghain, you’re with me and Ryan. Okay, let's move out.”

“Yeah,” Elle said, watching them as they walked away, Kit trailing just behind. 

It didn’t feel right to her that she was going and Elle was staying back, but that was one of the reasons she was even on the team.

Or, working with them, at least. There’d been too many conversations surrounding that topic for her to understand her feelings about it.

They crept towards the house, pausing as the SWAT team pried the door open. Gideon led and Kit held the rear, covering and watching to make sure that nothing happened to them. Team or not, they were her responsibility.

They weren’t in the house for very long before they could hear Gooden crying for help on the second floor. Every movement they made was succinct, and within seconds they were in the room.

“Don't move! Don't move!” Gideon yelled, all weapons drawn at Kern as he tried to hold a plastic bag over Gooden’s face.

They scuffled for a moment, Morgan able to knock Kern’s gun out of the way before holding his arms behind his back. “Down on your knees! Down! Don't move!”

Kit held her gun steady, shifting into a position that allowed her to still have a sightline on Kern; at least until he was cuffed. Not that she believed he could get out of Morgan’s hold.

Gideon spoke quickly into the com, letting Reid and Elle know that Gooden was alive, and Kern was secure.

Morgan struggled a bit to keep Kern’s hands together, and Kit didn’t change her aim. “Cuff him, Morgan.”

“Gideon, I need your cuffs, man,” he said over his shoulder.

Gideon didn’t move right away, but Kit didn’t take her eyes off Kern. She couldn’t until she knew he didn’t have any chance of getting away.

“Why don't you do this? I'll take care of her.” Gideon had spoken to Ryan, who had clearly been soothing Gooden until that moment. 

"That's enough. Now get up,” Morgan said, passing him off so Ryan could cuff him. “You got him?”

“Ya, I got him,” Ryan said, and Kit lowered her weapon as she heard the click of the cuffs secure around Kern’s wrists.

“Colghain,” Gideon said, “Some help, please.”

Kit turned quickly, realizing that Sylvia Gooden, who had just been nearly suffocated, was still crying and panicking with flex cuffs around her wrists. 

She wasn’t done yet.

The two steps to the bed were swift, and Gideon stepped aside as she spoke to the traumatized woman. “Hi, my name is Kit. I’m a nurse, and I’m going to check and make sure you’re okay. Is it alright if I touch you?”

Gooden looked up at her for a moment before she nodded stiffly, taking a deep breath before dissolving into hysterics. 

Kit grabbed her hands and squeezed gently, giving the older woman a small smile despite all the crazy going on around them.

“You’re going to be okay,” she said. “I promise. It’s all going to be okay.”

-----

Kit sat next to Reid on the jet, which was odd, because she normally tried to keep herself as far away from everyone as possible. She’d gotten a very strange read off of Hotch, though, who had secluded himself in the corner she usually would have taken, so she figured the conversation would keep her awake if anything else.

It didn’t stop her from propping a blue notebook open in her lap and tapping at it quietly with her pen. They were laughing at a story Ryan was telling about Gideon that made him seem almost human, and the laughter she shared was genuine. Gideon had stepped aside for her to take the lead with Gooden, which meant he was going to be true to his word when they were in the field. Stay out of each other’s way, and things will be fine. 

She just hoped it would last.

“What goes in that notebook?”

She looked up at Reid’s voice, noticing that while she’d allowed herself to be in her own head for fifteen seconds, everyone had splintered into their own conversations. Elle had even walked away from them, and was now engaged in a quiet conversation with Hotch.

“Hm?”

He nodded down at the blue notebook in her lap. “What goes in there? I’ve only ever seen the red one, and that’s where you write all of our medical information, and things that happen to us medically during cases. Like when I was sick in New Jersey. But that didn’t happen this time, nothing did, and that notebook is blue, and it’s much more worn, and -” He stopped short, frowning. “I’m rambling.”

She shook her head quickly. “No, it’s alright. I don’t mind. I was waiting for you to be done before I answered your question.”

Reid’s eyes widened a bit, his jaw dropping for just a moment before he seemed to right himself. “Most people don’t wait until I’m done.”

“It’s a skill I picked up in college. It’s hard to help someone if you won’t listen to their entire story.”

“Huh,” he said. He seemed to think on that for a moment before he said, “So, what’s it for?”

She blinked up at him. “Oh.”

She hadn’t thought she’d actually have to answer. She was sort of hoping that he would talk himself in circles until he was on another topic completely. He’d done it a few times over the short time she’d known him.

“Oh?”

“Well, it’s sort of personal,” she settled on.

“Like a journal? A diary?”

If he noticed she was blushing, he didn’t let on. “A little bit, it’s like-” She stopped short as she saw JJ move from her seat towards the coffee machine, and her brain flipped a completely different switch. “Sorry, I need to talk to JJ,” she said, and before he could protest, she’d dropped the notebook on her seat and was across the short length of the plane.

“Hey, JJ,” she said, causing the blonde to turn around and smile. 

“Hey, coffee?”

“No, actually I-” She hadn’t quite thought the rest out. “I um.”

She found her hands grabbing for the ends of her hair, but she stopped herself before she could start tugging. She was far too late on her meds, which were officially out of whack, considering the fact that she hadn’t slept in two days. She wasn’t even sure what day it was.

“Is today Sunday?” She said, which was not at all how she’d intended to start the conversation she wanted to have. 

JJ laughed. “I have no idea. Maybe? When we left it was the middle of the night, so I would need to check my phone.”

“Right,” Kit said, easing a bit and giving a quiet laugh of her own. “I um. Well, I wanted to tell you that I thought about what you said.”

JJ tilted her head, eyebrows pulling together. “What I said?”

“What you said about pushing back.”

“Ah,” JJ said, eyes flashing with recognition. “And?”

“I… Claudia really threw me.”

Her head tilted before she said, “The woman they found under the bed?”

Kit shivered. “Yeah.” She didn’t regard the moment with fondness. 

JJ didn’t seem to notice. She thought for a moment before shrugging. “I heard Morgan telling Gideon that you were incredible with her. That you didn’t leave when EMS got there because she didn’t want you to.”

Kit shook her head quickly, deflecting the praise. “I didn’t really do anything. She just… I don’t think she wanted all those men around her without another woman around.”

“And you were that woman for her.”

Kit stopped for a moment, watching JJ’s eyes soften. She was going to deflect again - insist that she’d done exactly what anyone else would have done, but something stopped her. 

“I want to be here,” she heard herself saying. She hadn’t had time to process it herself, but it seemed she was going to do it outloud, in real time. “I want to be a part of this, but I’m scared. Because there will be more Claudias. And more Sylvias… And more Kerns.” She moved a hand to play with the seam at the hip of her slacks. “And we won’t always get there in time. I won’t always get there in time.”

The two women stood in silence for a moment before JJ reached out and took Kit’s right hand off her braid, squeezing it gently between her own fingers.

“But we’ll always try. And sometimes?” She shrugged. “We win.”

Kit took a deep breath, allowing that thought to fill her senses. Sylvia Gooden was alive. Claudia was alive. Kern lost. 

“I think you should talk to Hotch when we get back. Not now. You look exhausted.”

They both laughed, Kit’s a little lackluster. “It’s that obvious?”

“You’ve got two black eyes.”

“Damn.” Kit shook her head, averting her eyes from JJ’s before saying, “Thank you. For listening and telling me what you knew and for making me feel like I deserve to be here.”

JJ nodded, saying simply, “You do.” She gestured to the coffee machine again. “You sure you don’t want some?”

Kit laughed, shaking her head again. “No, really, I shouldn’t. My body doesn’t know what time it is already, I think that would put me in dangerous territory.”

She stood on the Red Line platform, struggling to keep her eyes open. She pinched the skin between her thumb and forefinger, trying anything subtle to get her from point A to point B as quickly as possible. It was already dark, and she didn’t need to fall asleep on the train, or worse, while standing and waiting for the train. 

That would really cap this weekend. Falling asleep on the train, missing your stop, getting abducted…

“Do you have a headache?”

“Ah!” She jumped, turning over her shoulder and swearing loudly. “Reid, what the hell?”

“Sorry!” He said, ducking just a bit, as if he was worried she was going to strike him. “That pressure point is effective in relieving headaches, grounding panic attacks, and quelling nausea. Are you sick?”

She groaned and rolled her eyes. “No, that’s not- I know exactly what this pressure point is used for Spencer, what the hell are you doing here? At my train stop? Again? I told you that I don’t-”

“I wanted to make sure you got home safely,” he said quickly, cutting her off before she could really get going. The anxious sincerity flooding off of him stopped her long enough for him to continue. “The odds of being accosted on the Red Line are significantly lower than the Blue, but you’re exhausted, and this case made you nervous, so I just wanted to be sure you…” He slowed, a dark flush rising in his cheeks. “Got home safe. Which I’m sure you can on your own, because your field scores dwarf mine. I, um…”

He had stuttered to a halt.

He’s embarrassed. And he wanted to help you.

She didn’t have time or energy to process the fact that he’d most definitely profiled her. The sentiment was sort of touching.

Sort of, as far as Spencer Reid was concerned. 

“This… isn’t a Gideon thing?”

Reid chuckled quietly, shoving his hands into his pockets. “No. It’s, ah, a me thing. Gideon offered me a ride home, but I said no.”

She tilted her head at him, frowning as the train squealed into the station. “No shit?”

He laughed again, shaking his head and offering a small smile, his cheeks still flushed, but relief in his eyes. “No shit.”

“...Fine. But only because I’m really tired… You know, you could have said all this, or offered, in the bullpen, right? You didn’t have to follow me to the train like a stalker.”

The blush flooded his cheeks again, and he shrugged, unable to meet her eyes. “I didn’t want you to yell at me or something in front of everyone else.”

Her heart sank. 

Look what you’ve done, Kody. You made him anxious to be alone with you because he thinks you’re some crazy person that’s going to fly off the handle.

Well, aren’t you?

“I wouldn’t do that, Spencer,” She said, starting towards the train door. “I appreciate the concern… thanks.”

He looked up, eyes flashing a combination of relief and hesitance. “Oh. Yeah. Ah, yeah, sure.”

They sat down inside the train, Kit immediately leaning her head against the window. She sighed, closing her eyes.

Maybe Reid isn’t so bad. Maybe he’ll stay quiet, or read the whole way and you can actually get a short-

“You know, there’s a staggering amount of germs on the window on a DC train. Approximately 45% of people…”

-----

Spencer stalked away from her door, his long legs making him look somewhat like a baby giraffe as he turned to descend the stairs. He gave a last, incredibly awkward wave.

“See you tomorrow, Dakota,” he said.

She fought back the instinct to groan. “Bye Reid, thanks.”

He grinned as his head slipped below her sight line and she let out a sigh, her entire body seeming to settle into exhaustion. It was late, and dark, and hopefully she would be able to slip into the apartment and deal with her siblings in the morning before she left for work. She’d talk to Monty then, and Ari at the clinic, and everything would be fine.

She’d need to call Ginny, but she could do that in the morning as well. She needed to sleep first. Sleep, and then deal with whatever came.

Her hand fumbled a bit with the key as she tried to fit it correctly into the door, eyes dry and tired and brain scrambled. The residual jittery, anxious feeling of both the case and messing the the time on her medication wasn’t helping her fine motor skills, and she’d nearly resigned to search through her backpack for the flashlight she kept when the doorknob was ripped away from her hand, the door flying open. 

Something hard slammed into her body, arms wrapping around her in a vice grip and knocking the wind out of her.

Instead of words, there were hitching sobs from her attacker. Congested sounding, sad, and overly frustrated, matched with hot tears that were falling onto her shoulder. She took a breath, wrapping her arms around Monty and holding her as close as she could.

“Shh, it’s okay, dair, I’m okay,” she mumbled quietly, feeling her twin’s arms tighten around her. 

“Don't… ever do that,” Monty managed, voice gravely and tearful. “Never, ever.”

“Oi, Mont, what-” Ari turned the corner, making eye contact with Kit over their sister’s shoulder. She watched physical tension release in his shoulders. “Ah. Okay. Mont, deirfiúr, come in and close the door. She’s okay. We’re fine.”

The mixing of languages wrapped around Kit, filling her like a breath she hadn’t taken in days. Monty let go, rubbing furiously at her streaming eyes as she walked back through the door, settling down on their couch and curling herself into a ball.

Ari pulled Kit through the door, looking at Monty and shaking his head. There was no need for the mix now, they could speak as they did among themselves. “Ah, no, get up. Come on. She’s tired, you’re sick. Bed. Now.”

Kit didn’t know how it happened, but they all ended up in Ari’s bed. Granted, it was the biggest. He didn’t share a room, and he was significantly taller than both she and Monty had ever hoped to be. They’d slept all together as children often, and when they were first living in the district on the floor at Ginny’s, they ended up in some sort of pile of limbs the nights they all worked the same shifts. 

Now they rarely did. Six months before when they were back at home after Al needed to get his appendix out. A year before that when their Grandad had died. Before that? She wasn’t sure she remembered. 

Monty’s head rested on her chest, quiet congested snoring coming from her in even breaths. Her face was flushed; from fever or crying, Kit wasn’t sure.

She’d been nearly pulled into Ari’s lap, and now her head rested on his stomach, rising and falling just slightly as he slept. 

Regardless of how incredibly exhausted she was, she forced herself to stay awake and listen. To feel them breathing. To be sure they were there, and alive.

JJ’s words played in her head. 

You do.

She deserved to be with the BAU. She deserved to be there.

Her senses focused back in on her cúpla, and the stress she’d caused them. The fear. The anxiety.

But do you really want to be?

-----

It's me again!

The plan right now is to make each season (year?) a different story, with a different song as the title and lyrics for the chapters. I'm a music person, this is the only way I operate.

If you've heard a song that made you feel feelings, hit me with it!

[randomikemendegen]

hmm if yan asks then 🤔 which ocs would be capable of killing their loved one if it came down to it? like “if I can’t have them no one can” sort of!

Oh that's an easy answer lol

"If I can't have you then no one will": Leviotan, Lala, Raneus, Orchis, Fuyume, and Seisear.

--------------------------------------------

Trigger Warning(?): Character death(s)

Leviotan would rather kill his Darling than let literally anyone, besides Vivi, have them if it came to that-- like if he had no other option left (honestly it would not surprise me if Levi and Vivi share a Darling). He doesn't necessarily want it to come to that point, but if it is already too far gone then he'd kill his Darling to ensure no one else would have them.

Lala would rather kill others besides her Darling but if it came to losing her Darling to someone else then she would. She'd prefer to kill them with her bare hands, by strangulation, than using anything else as much as it pains her since she's making this very personal.

Raneus would take a slightly unique spin on killing his Darling-- he'd personally bite them with his fangs and inject a lethal venom through their veins/arteries. To him it makes things personal and it shows on how much he truly and genuinely loved/cherished them. (As a result, he doesn't ever fully recover from this and has one of the lowest chances of ever taking another Darling)

Orchis already has a very skewered moral compass and morality due to being an Undead, so them being a Yandere would practically spell out their Darling's doom. Death by being eaten (alive) is practically an unavoidable (bad) end when it comes to yandere!Orchis; to them, it's the highest form of "love" because then it means that their Darling will become a part of them even if death reclaims them.

Fuyume, along with Leviotan, would be the only ones who are thinking of killing their Darlings as a "practical and logical" sense. If her Darling doesn't love her or if someone else is trying to take her Darling away and there is no other option left, then she WILL kill them. By being frozen to death. And due to her nature as a Snow Fae, while she might feel SOME form of loss and sadness at losing her Darling, in the end she thinks it's the only logical conclusion.

Seisear is probably among the ones who, should their Darling die, would kill himself afterwards to join his Darling in death. He doesn't want to be alone again nor does he want to end up "killing" the person he loves the most ever again, but due to his already very fragile mind he WILL end up snapping and killing his Darling. Sei just didn't want to lose them to anyone, but it still doesn't change the fact that he killed them.

BONUS:

Yandere Yuuya WILL kill their Darling. Guaranteed. The idea of anything separating them breaks Yuuya's heart and thus they decide that, before that even ever happens, they'll kill their Darling first and join them in death.

After all, even if death do us apart, right~?

[cryptidcrone]

The Spearhead

I realize that I make a lot of reference to Urbosa’s soldiers, so I thought I’d put my thoughts all in one place for later reference.

For most of “The Center Cannot Hold” Urbosa is accompanied by six other warriors, comprising her Spearhead. A Spearhead is the smallest unit in the armed forces of Gerudo Town, usually comprised to three pairs of sworn sisters and a leader. Urbosa’s Spearhead is a ceremonial guard that is also lethally functional. Every woman there has proven herself worthy to ride the war-road with their Chief, though some of Urbosa’s choices are considered unorthodox by the Town Elders.

Makeela Urbosa va Rana: SHE. Needs no introduction. The Point of the Spearhead.

Taarvi va Vikla, aka Old Taarvi, aka Battle Crone: The oldest member of the team at 156; she was once a member of Urbosa’s mother’s Spearhad back in her prime, and swore an oath to Chief Rana that she would look after Urbosa as long as she was physically able. Has known Urbosa since she was a baby. Loyal unto death, but Extremely Done with everyone and everything. Still refuses to retire and take up the mantle of Elder. Can and will kick the ass of anyone who looks sideways at Urbosa. Had Some Kinda Thing with Urbosa’s mom but refuses to elaborate. Wants Urbosa to settle down with a nice Gerudo girl and maybe stop dropping everything to help the Hylian Princess...but also recognizes that a mother’s duty is to her daughter.

Corvuu va Fatira: The Spearhead’s combat medic. Highly skilled, has saved the life of everyone in the Spearhead thrice over. Extremely calm under fire, intense interest in the natural world. She’s writing a book on the commonality of all living organisms, and employs an army of children to collect specimens for her wherever they go. Decent at fighting, but prefers the scalpel to the sword. Is very done with the dumbass younger members of their group injuring themselves in foolish stunts. Married happily to Sabri. Will occasionally eat thing she shouldn’t to test the effects.

Sabri va Savee: Corvuu’s reckless and cheerful wife; full of roguish charm, has connections all over Hyrule because she used to work for a mercenary group. Gave up the roving life the moment she met Corvuu and worked her ass off to prove herself worthy of joining Urbosa’s outfit. Will flirt with Corvuu at the least appropriate times possible. Excellent storyteller, and has an unending barrage of dirty jokes in her arsenal. Irritates the living shit out of Taarvi for sport. Absolutely is the reason that one of Zelda’s first words in Gerudo was ‘fuck’.

Brona va Deerdra: Grim and unyielding in battle, Brona is nevertheless is warm and gentle in her everyday life. Tries to find peaceful resolutions to conflicts, much to her sworn-sister Taarvi’s irritation. Everyone is mystified by her relationship with Taarvi, who is at least a century her elder. The popular theory is that Brona’s unrelenting good humor eventually broke Taarvi’s spirit. Enjoys music of all kinds, and has some skill with a few instruments, including the Zora harp. Her true talent is with the Gerudo pipes, and serves as the piper when their unit marches to battle. Once had a wife and daughter, but lost them when their village was attacked by Yiga infiltrators. Refuses to speak of them at all; mentioning them is the one thing that can flip the switch on her affable personality.

Makeela Ubala va Ubari: One of the newer members of the Spearhead, eldest daughter of Urbosa’s sister. Joined the army the hot second she turned 17 to get away from the chaos of six sisters and parents who are nauseatingly in love. Loves the life of a soldier and is proud to serve under her aunt. Like all the women of her family, she is extremely stubborn and has a deep sense of honor and justice.Hates to see people in power mistreating people below them. A horse-hearted young woman who wants to build up the cavalry. Frequently engages in dumbass behavior because impulse control is not her forte. Considers Zelda her baby cousin (even though they have only recently started spending time together and is only a year or so older than her), tries to bring her out of her shell.

Ritva va Retava: Sworn sister to Ubala, the youngest member of the Spearhead at 17. A bit shy, and deeply anxious to prove herself. Daughter of the greatest armorer and blacksmith in the tribe, she has an innate understanding of how to repair or rebuild things. Finds ancient technology fascinating, and hopes to study it in greater depth when she’s done with her stint in the army. Falls hard and fast for Princess Zelda as they bond over the Sheikah slate, which has not escaped Urbosa’s notice. Co-conspirator in dumbassery; is the first to suggest they try to ride things that have been charged with a Stasis rune.

BONUS: Arakna va Amala: Urbosa’s sworn sister; they’ve been bound since they were fifteen, when they went through something traumatic together. Loyal to the point of fanaticism. Spy master and occasional murderer for the sake of Gerudo interests, side-hustle/cover as a cloth merchant. Would kill for Urbosa. Has killed for Urbosa. Has eyes and ears all over Hyrule Castle and beyond. Largely cheerful and irreverent, she nonetheless has a lethal temper. Can and will gleefully roast Urbosa at the slightest provocation. Has a deep aversion to touch; you don’t touch Arakana, she touches you. Multilingual, excellent dancer and seamstress. Favors poisons and strangulation as methods of disposal. Will very literally murder anyone who hurts Urbosa in any capacity; the only reason Rhoam’s still alive is because Urbosa ordered Arakna to lay off. Aranka keeps offering to kill him at least once a year.

[leakinghate]

Legendarily Defensive: Editing the Gay Away in VLD

Disclaimer: This meta is a collaboration of the entirety of #TeamPurpleLion.  We understand while we do touch on narrative romance, we are intentionally trying to be as ship-neutral as possible, and provide that which we only have evidence for.  We encourage the experts in their respective ship-fandoms to meta as they do best on these topics, and we hope this can be a factual basis to springboard from.

In the most recent AfterBuzz interview March 4, 2019, Executive Producers Lauren Montgomery and Joaquim dos Santos revealed in no uncertain terms who, precisely, is responsible for the editing fiasco that resulted in the version of Season 8 presented to the fandom, including explaining to their viewers when the changes were called for, and a heretofore unknown why: the removal of a mlm relationship between two of the male Paladins.

Let’s break it down.

The interview itself is a little very difficult to stomach, especially the latter half.  But, the first portion is an unusually open and honest discussion of what went down behind the scenes, and what it meant to the producers.  It’s also the place where we’ll be lifting direct quotes from.  The hosts of AfterBuzz allow the Executive Producers to have the floor and speak with quite a bit of leeway, and some very curious facts come to light.  For anyone interested in the source, the interview can be found on Youtube.(3)

Voltron is a unique case.  While much of the fan base may not have been around for prior incarnations of this franchise, it has existed for quite a while.

It originally came from a Japanese show Beast King GoLion.  From this show, the robot we recognize from Voltron: Defender of the Universe, was created in 1984. There exists an interview with the Executive Producer of Defender of the Universe, Peter Keefe, as well as other cast and crew on the production of how BeastKing became Voltron.(4)

After Voltron: Defender of the Universe, several other iterations bloomed forth - some in the form of comics, some as sequels, some as reboots. The first series to follow Defender of the Universe was Voltron: The Third Dimension, a CGI-based sequel released in 1998.

While not nearly was popular as its predecessor, it managed to stir up some legal conflict:

“Worse, the Japanese creators of Beast King GoLion ��� Toei Animation — began saber-rattling. Toei believed World Events had overstepped the boundaries of their 1984 agreement and made the CGI series without buying those explicit rights.

To quash this dispute once and for all, Koplar and crew purchased GoLion outright in 2000. Now they had the freedom to adapt at will. But nothing was in the works.”(7)

As of 2000, Koplar and World Events Productions (WEP) owned all the rights to Voltron. Talk of a live action movie has been in the works since 2005, but with little traction. In 2010, WEP licensed rights for the Voltron franchise to Classic Media (now DreamWorks Classics) (7).   By 2011, the animated series Voltron Force was released.

In 2014 Lauren Montgomery and Joaquim Dos Santos approached DreamWorks Animation with the idea of producing a new Voltron show, with the license DreamWorks had recently come to own through their acquisition of Classics Media. In 2016, Voltron: Legendary Defender launched.

It’s worth noting World Events Productions licensed rights to produce Voltron content to DreamWorks Studios.  They did not hand over the entire franchise to do with as they saw fit.  DreamWorks only purchased the ability to play with the characters and the story in whatever capacity WEP believed would remain on-brand.

Amidst the protests and visceral reaction to the final season of Legendary Defender, many have felt confusion about where to direct their frustrations.

In another post, @crystal-rebellion theorized the symbolism in Season 7’s Episode 4 ‘The Feud’ was actually a very blatant representation of what was going on behind the scenes, and why. (2)

Since the most recent interview, statements from the Executive Producers as well as the host have confirmed this to be an accurate assessment of the situation.

Joaquim Dos Santos says it himself:

"This is not a vilifying of DreamWorks. Any exec we ever interacted with was like, 'Hey, we understand why you want to tell the story, we understand where you're coming from. It's a little bit bigger than that. There's other sort of controlling parties with Voltron, which makes it unique.’ It's not just a DreamWorks owned property, and I think it got logistically really really weird." (3)

Seven times, he specifically mentions the pushback didn’t come from DreamWorks, but from ‘other controlling parties.’  He alludes to some logistical weirdness, the implication being a difference in creative direction, or some dissention from higher up. In fact, the hosts and EPs discuss a controlling IP owner eight times in the course of one interview.

He also says, in regard to the issue of LGBTQ+ representation and Adam specifically:

“Here's where we arrived on this. And we were pointing to things like Overwatch. We were pointing to Steven Universe. They're different scenarios, we were in a slightly different position. We didn't have that position of being the creators of this IP. And we also weren't a video game that was marketed to teens and above. We for all intents and purposes were started as a show for boys like 6 to 11 to sell as many toys as possible. And that's just like a fact and that's business, and it is what it is.” (3)

DreamWorks is not a platform that markets ‘toys for boys’ (a talking point brought up no fewer than five times) - but World Events is. President Robert Koplar himself states his target demographic is boys and their dads in Episode 12 from the Let’s Voltron podcast not once, but twice. (5)

The EPs confirm as much with their recent statement in the March 4th ABTV Voltron interview(3) that the possibility of a male paladin’s replacement was greenlit until the IP holder learned the male paladin was to be replaced with Acxa, a woman. This kind of sexist hypocrisy goes as far back as 1984 with Allura being spanked in front of her own team in one episode(11) and tied to a chair by them to prevent her escape in another(11). The 2003 Devil’s Due comic shows Lotor, who looks to be no more than five, witness his mother’s murder via strangulation by his father (complete with an expression of horror on her dead face)(12). Lotor then suffers the same type of non-lethal strangulation in a scene where his father interrupts what the comic refers to as “recreation” with a scantily clad blonde resembling both Lotor’s mother and Allura in a different series(13). All of this takes place in a franchise whose target demographic has consistently been six to eleven year old boys and their fathers. Koplar’s company has made their hypocritical moral stance abundantly clear in Legendary Defender, even going so far as to order the destruction of the entire final season. According to Dos Santos:

“Specifically with Season 7 and 8 we basically held onto Season 7 so Season 8 was like done by the time S7 was dropping. We had like a month left when reaction for Season 7 started coming in, and that was day of the drop. We were in a weird position. To DreamWorks's credit, the tide started changing internally. They came back to us and said, okay we're open to explore this relationship between Adam and Shiro so we were in this weird position where we had all the animation done, we had $0.00 left in the budget in terms of like what we could do and it was like, all right, we know Adam's fate is what it is, do we do this and sort of like take this step knowing that we're going to take some flack? And we decided to do it so we revised the dialogue. You can probably see it in the animation. If you really pay attention it's like, it's literally our editor cutting out mouths and like puppeting different dialogue. The dialogue is pretty vague, it's sort of the best we could do, and that was a process of discussing what we could actually have them say.”(3)

Hold the phone. Taken in context, Dos Santos is explaining the process of DreamWorks giving the showrunners the green light to change the epilogue of Season 8 to give Shiro the unambiguously gay orientation they had written out of Season 7. The problem is, there is no dialogue in the epilogue. Even if we consider the epilogue to consist of everything from “one year later” onward, there is no dialogue for Shiro and another male character that would have to be reworked.

Here is what we think happened: Season 8 was finished in June. The IP owner hated it and ordered it changed at the beginning of July. Those changes included cutting a male/male romance. August came and the fandom melted down over Adam dying. Hoping to avoid a repeat of the Adam debacle, in mid-August DreamWorks came around and offered to let the showrunners put something into Season 8 for more gay representation. By this point the edits to Season 8 were almost complete, the budget was gone, and time was short, so they opted to give Shiro a wedding during the ending, in the epilogue. In an effort to brush off the clear edits to Season 8, Dos Santos mentions the lip movements during the interview but is confusing the making of the epilogue with the rest of the edits.

Indeed, it seems those edits resulted not only in the deaths of the series’ heroine and a childhood abuse victim, but also in the demolition of not just one but possibly two completed romantic arcs. When discussing Allura and Lance’s romance, Dos Santos and Emma Fyffe have this to say:

JDS: I could see the argument where it’s like, it's basic. It's what we've kindof come to expect from okay the guy sort of turned around and-- but I think Lance's arc aside from being with Allura was bigger than the Allura love story.

EF: And Lance's overall story arc I really enjoyed. But again, I think it's this whole idea that we were dealing with this IP that was like "okay, monster of the week, it was like dudes being in love with one hot girl and just macho men with fighting robots and whatever was happening with Pidge".

JDS: Right, yes, yes. (3)

The showrunner himself not only agrees Lance’s milquetoast romantic arc was due to pushback from the IP holder, in discussing the controversy surrounding the main characters’ sexual orientation, Dos Santos inadvertently reveals a major romance between two male paladins was cut.

EF: ...it is important to know that, again, you have this character who is very much your sort of quintessential, like, alpha male.

JDS: That-that was the trope that we were trying to, like, sort of step on was that, you know. I grew up with characters like Duke. To a much lesser degree, he’s a big, giant robot Optimus Prime. The idea of Optimus Prime being with another Optimus Prime was off the table. Like it was a no-go. (3)

If Allura and Lance’s IP-owner-influenced romantic arc is any indication, clearly two main paladins being together was fine. Dos Santos is referring to the inability to pair two male mains.

We don't know for sure, and won't until the original S8 is released. But, we have reasonable cause to believe Keith was intended to be gay and part of the romance that got tanked. When speaking about Keith’s sexuality Dos Santos says:

JDS: Because, I think we didn’t, we didn’t pair him with anybody, you know what I mean. I think we didn’t designate sort of where he stood. We don’t know. It’s-- It’s--

KC: We don’t know

JDS: Yeah, it-- It doesn’t really matter to be honest with you. I mean it would be great to confirm just to make people happy, but, like at the end of the day he is who he is, and leaving it open to interpretation. (3)

Do you hear that? “It would be great to confirm”. Not that it would be great if they could have done it, but if they could have confirmed it. It seems that JDS conceptualizes Keith as having an attraction to men, but he was forbidden from making that fact plain. Again, we have no concrete evidence of who Keith was slated to be with, just that the writers couldn't have two gay male paladins.

The wording of his statements is just clear enough to avoid dishonesty and just vague enough so as not to break contract. Even beyond NDAs, it’s not as if the Executive Producers can speak more directly to these points. We already have evidence of the IP owner’s character in the form of the Voltron Store’s Twitter presence outright lying about WEP and the store being separate entities:

(8) When only a few weeks earlier they had liked a tweet explicitly identifying them as one and the same, while confirming they have the final say over what can be done with the characters:

(1)

Before the fandom realized that WEP was behind the edits to S8 of VLD, the information that they owned the license was accepted fact. This excerpt from the Lets Voltron Podcast, Episode 134, is just one example:

(talking about a Voltron reference in Ready Player One)

Host 1: For those of you not in the know, if you think DreamWorks is the all in all for Voltron. Well, World Events Productions is the company that owns --

Host 2: The Voltron intellectual property.

Host 1: Many of you have heard of DreamWorks obviously. They make the show. Well, World Events Productions owns the property and has helped make this new show and all previous shows possible.

LV Podcast EP 134, 5:00-5:30 (6)

Now? Many official avenues are hastily attempting to downplay WEP’s involvement. When reached for comment in February 2019 the LV Podcast claimed that DreamWorks owned the licence.

The official phone number listed on WEP’s website no longer offers an option to connect a person to WEP, instead it offers three options: to directly input an extension, the accounting department, and The Voltron Store. (9)

In an effort to prevent fans from contacting them with complaints, WEP have inadvertently made their association with The Voltron Store explicit. Regardless of what the twitter account may claim, they are one and the same company. If these incidents weren’t damning enough, the store has further attempted to engage in a subtle smear campaign by liking tweets from users apologizing for harassment and death threats the store had received over Season 8, when all groups bringing the problems with its forced edits to WEP’s attention have specifically advocated for civil and nonviolent communication. (8)

As the story unfolds, one point is clear: Each new interview brings more information forth, repeatedly shining the spotlight on one little office in St. Louis.

WEP LLC is a private company. It has no shareholders, investors, or boards to answer to. It is the sole IP holder of the Voltron brand, and its President is the only person in the entire world who has final say over what can and cannot be done with the characters. When someone says “the IP holder” they are really talking about one man: Bob Koplar.

#TeamPurpleLion is a collective of analysts ( @crystal-rebellion, @dragonofyang​, @felixazrael, @leakinghate​, and @voltronisruiningmylife​ )intent on tracking down the who, what, where, how, and why of the destruction of VLDS8. We present sourced & cited commentary, relying on evidence so the VLD community can see what happened behind the scenes.

[fearsewn]

When it comes to Year One, how do you feel about how his childhood was handled? What did you like? What would you change? Any childhood!Jonathan headcanons? :)

//BOY I TELL YOU WHAT.  This comic has it all, and is phenomenally nuanced and perceptive in terms of developmental psychology.  What I’m gonna say is just the tip of the iceberg, I’d love to chat with you about this more extensively. 

First of all the artwork is stark, graphically rigorous (contrasty, more focused on line than color) and stunning.  The style marries itself well to the subject of fear.  I also REALLY love Jon’s costume.  It’s not edgy and overdone, it’s practical--quick on and off, for situations of flight from a crime scene--and the mask is terrifying. It has a disturbing, childlike whimsy to it, very Burtonesque.  

I love the subtle nuances about how social evils and systemic, societal forms of hatred (homophobia, misogyny and domestic abuse, religious intolerance, to name a few) contribute to the creation of monsters: but also, that it requires innate proclivity, because Batman underwent a HIGHLY parallel origin story, and came out far less cruel.  AT THE SAME TIME, the comic makes sure not to render this argument a reductive case of nature versus nurture.  Because sure, Jonathan is a monster, and Bruce isn’t. But guess what.  Jonathan was raised by a hideously cruel person, and never knew maternal or paternal love; Bruce had parents who loved him and were taken away from him against their will, and was raised by the loving hand of Alfred Penniworth.  Jonathan literally has no concept of kind touch (every time anyone touched him for his entire life, it was to punish or harass him: it’s no wonder he’s so touch-averse as an adult).  Jonathan lived in abject poverty, with a family heritage of hostile mental illness and suicide; there is no known mental illness in Bruce’s family. I could go on and on.  The comic makes it abundantly clear that “evil” develops as the result of a complex cocktail of risk factors. 

It’s interesting that Jonathan’s revenge on his family is echoed in his non-familial targets:  Professor Pigeon is clearly a surrogate father figure who didn’t abandon him until failing to stand up for him at his dismissal hearing, for instance.  

What strikes me most is that as an adult, Jonathan is fully cognizant of his own pathology. He knows he’s abnormal.  He knows what he does is unhealthy and self-destructive: he simply doesn’t care, and even derives perverse pride from it.  He has a razor-edge clarity about his traumatic memories, and somehow summoned the strength to recognize that great-granny Keeney was completely remiss in her treatment of him.  This isn’t usually a realistic survivor’s point of view (there’s ordinarily a lot of internalized misplaced shame), but it’s very true to the characterization of Jonathan Crane, and his lethally detached, precise psyche.  It’s in the awareness that what he is doing wrong, is in fact wrong, and he still has no interest in abstaining from victimizing others as he was victimized, that his mental illness and his evil are clearly separated, and I think that’s a very important distinction to make, and that the authors did so laudably.  

Although, it’s not just a thing of “he knows he’s bad and doesn’t care” or “the bullied becomes the bully.”  It’s noteworthy, too, that Jonathan’s insanity derives from his beliefs, more than his actions.  His actions are composed and coherent, but the beliefs from which they stem–all the world is evil and dangerous, people will betray one another inevitably, eat or be eaten–are deeply paranoid and distorted, by trauma.  The fact that Jonathan often narrates his own insanity is fascinating.  It’s as if he can stand outside himself and psychoanalyze, the way he does others.  He can parody himself, as he can parody religious motifs, both dwelling within that strangulating framework, and outside of it (his long speech to Pigeon about how calling upon God will bring no aid comes to mind).  

I also really like the fact that nothing about his behavior patterns and beliefs is left up to “idk man, he’s just crazy lol!”  It’s all mapped out with cerebral clarity, not unlike Jonathan’s own personality:  the crows were an agent of serial abuse and punishment, which he turned around and weaponized, made into armor, as a part of his self-protecting alter ego.  He realized that the source of his fear was meaningless, an irrational phobia, without the author of malice to control the crows.  He realized he could harness and use the things great-granny did to him, as tools of his own, as a perpetual student, which is an excellent tie-in to his career as a professor.  

But then that brings us to the end of the comic, which was horribly apropos, and sad: he IS still afraid of the memory of his great-grandmother, but even more than her specifically, what she represents. Climbing up from hell, a skeleton, calling his name, intent upon punishment: this is not just the literal horror of a zombie coming to “get you.” Undead great-granny is also the metonymous symbol of ALL THE TIMES JONATHAN WAS HELPLESS.  And that wonderfully ties in to everything he has subsequently done, to arm himself. The Scarecrow alter ego is one great cry of “never again” and “get them before they get me.” In a way that none of the other canons posit, this canon posits the radical claim that Jonathan Crane doesn’t really care about fear. He cares about control with fear as a mere conduit toward control.   And for unsettlingly human reasons. 

[warmbeebosoftbeebo]

Why don't you get your nose out of what other people are into kink wise?? Because even anal is uncomfortable and unpleasant for people and they would consider that violating and triggering. If you don't like the things someone says or posts then fuck off and unfollow instead of shame them for what they enjoy. Kink shaming is not cool dude. I'm sure there's plenty of people that hate anal and you wouldn't like being made to feel like a freak for liking it. Grow up.

oh, boy, buckle up.

i brought it up in a new post, not naming her or alluding to her post, because it is something seen so fucking often both in this fandom and on the internet generally. she also specifically said for him to squeeze his arm around her neck till she passes out. if she had said something like “i’d like him to stroke my neck while i hold my breath as long as i comfortably can and one or both of us plays with my pussy till i come” i would barely have cared, and it wouldn’t have gotten me back on my soap box again. she responded to my post in a reblog and i responded back. she initiated the conversation between us with that reblog. and i responded back, trying to explain my views clearly albeit longly, once. 

men choking women is a common sexual act, a meme, and a threat online, and within this fandom. “if you don’t like it fuck off”? honestly, that’s telling women to leave the public square and go back to the kitchen and bedroom and laying back and thinking of england if they can’t handle “robust speech” or sexuality in media in public. i couldn’t be online or in this fandom if i couldn’t handle seeing it, or refused to see it. 

here’s another link on the dangers of strangulation https://tonic.vice.com/en_us/article/jpnj5x/how-risky-is-it-to-be-choked-during-sex

this whole “anti kink shaming” thing is just.. if kink shaming is terribly wrong, then we literally cannot criticize anything ever, bc everything is “kinky” (a sexual turn on, a fetish) to someone somewhere. and this is an old joke, but what if your kink is kink shaming? thought we couldn’t criticize any kinks?

the reality is, almost everyone, at least those with any ethical discernment kink shames *something.* if they couldn’t find *anything* that was shrouded in “omg hot sexy stuff” objectionable, i’d honestly be scared of them, and would hope at least that victimized people would have to deal with them.

what about all sorts of dangerous things that are eroticized? i’m thinking specifically about purposely seeking out hiv (mostly men), unprotected pia, knowingly exposing another to a significant risk of contracting hiv (also men; women simply don’t pose the same risk both re “sexual” fluids other than blood and how it is contracted sexually, receptive pia being the highest risk, followed by receptive piv). re: you can talk about choking, being choked, say vaguely that you should do it safely, but not talk about WHY it’s dangerous, what stats are on injury and death, what can happen, etc is like saying you can talk about pia and condoms, but not hiv or other risks of injury from it. i didn’t focus on the danger/risk of pia in my initial post, but it is high, way higher than people think or want to believe. should we not be concerned with those who want to infect other people with hiv, and people who want to be infected or is that prudish, immature kink shaming? 

i’m sure there’s things you kink shame. for example, let’s examine pseudo child pornography eg a 18-19 girl pretending to be and usually looking like a naive 14 years old or younger child, with a man in his 40s while they roleplay that he’s her father/stepfather/friend’s father/uncle/coach while he “introduces” her to sex, usually violently, with a focus on men “ruining” and “spoiling” “innocence.” is that fine and dandy? is a father with teenage or preteen daughters watching this and whacking off to it fine and dandy? considering the rates at which girls are abused by their mom’s boyfriends and husbands, what if a man living with a woman and her kids whacks off to this? what if he finds himself fantasizing about her 12 year old daughter?

how about necrophilia? what if a man can only get hard, turned on, come if the woman he’s with *pretends to be dead*? what if he strangles a woman “consensually” until she passes out, then either continues or starts to enter her with his penis? what if he tells women he can only be turned on if he inflicts enough violence on her that he could have killed her?

a few years ago, there was an rcmp cop in canada, jim brown, who was found to have a “kink” for the kidnapping, torture (including bondage and use of knives)  and murder of women. he had porn of it, he looked for women to roleplay it, he posted porn he had made online, etc. one news story describes it thusly: “progresses from an apparent street scene of a woman walking past Brown sitting on a wall; he overpowers her; he hog-ties her, and he imprisons her in a cage.In one image, Mulgrew notes, Brown appears to be wearing only his regulation-issue Mountie boots and is aroused carrying a huge knife while the naked woman cringes in terror.” he also worked tangentially on the robert pickton case (a serial killer who murdered dozens of women, mostly indigenous and mostly in prostitution). was he a man who should work on such a case? should he be a cop hearing women’s stories of male sexualized violence? should he be looking at photographic and other evidence of rape, torture, kidnapping?

to get more obviously back on topic, strangulation is the third leading cause of male-induced/violent death for women, second only to murder with knives and guns. strangulation is the second biggest red flag for lethal male violence, second only to him threatening you with death. imagine if we eroticized other leading causes of death for other groups of people: shooting someone during sex, stabbing them in the torso, etc. carefully and safely, of course. how about complications during pregnancy and birth in teen girls? that’s the number one killer of girls 15-19 worldwide. why not turn that into something sexy too? car accidents are also a common cause of death. let’s sex that up too. heart disease and cancer are big killers too. lets look at the leading cause of violent death for young black men: homicide. for black boys, it’s unintentional injury. why not eroticize what leads to their deaths too?

interestingly, the “rough sex gone wrong” defense came to the public’s attention in another strangulation murder case https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/08/nyregion/consent-sexual-assault-rough-sex.html

and here’s a recent case, a rare one in that the man seems genuine in his remorse because he quickly confessed, of a young man strangling a young woman to death in seconds. she also had an interest in it and sought it out. she died anyway. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5492075/Killer-strangled-woman-death-sex.html “the pair had a ‘shared interest’ in ‘erotic asphyxiation’ …Chloe had died in 'seconds’ after he had seized her neck during sex.”

the ads i linked to featuring men strangling women: what do you think of those? how do you feel about how it’s portrayed in pornography? is opposing those kink shaming too, because lots of people, esp men, get off on it, and the men who make that porn generally want to make such pornography and usually have a lot of hatred for women. same with those who make the ads. they find it arousing.

it boggles my mind on how things that people would get raked over the coals for if they presented as humorous, gets a free pass because some guy somewhere gets an erection from it. like that rcmp cop? can you imagine if he was telling jokes like that in a comedy club? what the same people who defended him would be saying instead? but seek out vulnerable women when you’re a white male police officer, “roleplay” with them, make porn of it n post it online n you’re the bdsm martyr of the year, cruelly punished for your private life by prudish busybodies who need to mind their own business and keep their noses out of people’s bedrooms. there’s that public vs private divide. anything sexual is private, even when public, and you cannot criticize the private. rape jokes are bad, terrible, trivialize rape and sexual trauma and misogyny, but rape play is hot as fuck. you can humor shame and speech shame but don’t dare kink shame.

now onto why i referenced anal stimulation and entry, inc pia. i did so precisely bc most females experience of it with males is rape, painful, unwanted, etc. the more it happens, the more likely it is to be rape. the increase in college age people engaging in pia is treated like a big catcally joke and proof of sexual liberation and how awesome porn is and how it’s hot sex, but it is almost universally rape for young women and girls. strangulation and choking of women is seen similarly, and women and girls are expected to eroticize, engage in, and tolerate both. i brought it up precisely bc i like anal stimulation (as outlined in that post, excluding pia) but recognize that it is profoundly harmful in how it is practiced especially for girls growing up and young women, as well as women generally. if i was glib with anal entry of women (with a penis or something smaller) in my fic or posting about what i want to do with b, i’d want people to pull me up on it. it would be contributing to this coercive, painful sexual environment women and girls are in where they don’t want it and find it painful even though they are told they should, sex should be painful for women, women are a collection of openings for male use, etc. i purposely reign myself in and keep it to myself most of the time because of this.

you cannot read panic fic, surf tumblr, etc without certain “kinks” namely strangulation (and to a lesser extent choking), and daddy kink and dd/lg smacking you in the face. similarly, if i smacked someone in the face with how i depicted anal entry of women with men, i’d hope they’d rebel against it, tell me about it, etc. by all means, kink shame away. someone engaging critically with what i post doesn’t make me fucking melt or shivel up, literally or figuratively, and if you (general you, including me) post something publicly, we can expect reaction to it, esp if it’s not a direct confrontation but a “i’ve noticed this happening on tumblr/in fic/etc…” i’d say letting undue critique roll off one’s back, or engaging back n forth as two people wish to, is growing up. and hon, i’ve felt like a freak sexually, but not for that interestingly, but for my interest in tribadism and outercourse. not severely, but it was and sometimes still is there. 

[misterbombastic]

First things first: we actually do know what elves called their dicks, because even the glorious JRRT couldn't keep his hands out of his pants. The poetic term (yes, elves seem to have engaged in erotic poetry) would be gwî, but for everyday usage gwib was the preferred term. Puntl is provided as the coarse, moderately transgressive term, and likely what you would be invited to suck if you went down on a male elf. Alas, due to the ban on the Noldorin language, we have no surviving slang for Fëanor's johnson.

Second, if we assume that JRRT's intention is the guiding light for inferred details of the history and function of Arda, we are left with several clues as to the genital features of elves. In early drafts of the Silmarillion and pre-LotR writings that would eventually give rise to the War of the Ring, JRRT called them "gnomes" rather than "elves," a detail that reflects his internal monologue about them and is consistent with his para-LotR writings about them, including mutilations, betrayals, incest, genocide, colonial violence, and misotheistic rebellion. His mental image during the construction of Ardan history was almost certainly closer to the Rankin-Bass imagery than the Peter Jackson interpretation. Thus we are left to interpret the idea of gnomes-- a Paracelsean ideology tied closely to alchemy-- and of their Germanic and Norse equivalents, nature and household spirits that include classic Germanic dweorgs (that is, dwarves) but with the added qualification of tallness as a common indicator of worthiness.

I discern here between dwarf-figures of Greek and British mythology, which tend to be lusty, massively endowed pranksters, and gnomes/dweorgs, which are rarely cast in a sexual light. Some textual support could be interpreted for the influence of Pan on the elves, given that Silvan elves (and their Rivendell cousins) are singing, dancing, merry-making, traveler-harassing figures throughout the books. If we adhere to this interpretation, elves are probably packing huge veiny wangs that could put your fucking eye out while you're trying to slip em the suck.

I feel that it is, however, more likely that JRRT would have viewed his elves as more romantic and less sexual. Certainly they reproduce at an exceedingly slow rate and for an incredibly small window of their adult lives. A Panic elf would be extremely unlikely to live for two thousand or more years and sire no more than three or four offspring. For this reason, we are most likely dealing with the less overt sexual characteristics of a Paracelsean elf, which rules out giant Priapus-style horse cocks that are eternally bone-ready, but leaves us with less to go on than we might need, if we're gonna pour a giant silicone elf dick.

Ah, but now we've alluded to reproductive evidence of elvish sexual activity, and down this road we find some very interesting possibilities. For one thing, the gnomes of Paracelsus were closely related to the concept of the homunculus, and tended to be sexless or at most secondary-masculine (think garden gnomes). We can assume, in combination with the romantic, Victorianistic leanings of JRRT, that male elves were not afflicted with unwanted boners, and found it fairly simple to reserve their sexual activity to intramarital intercourse. Additionally, in the extracurricular writing Laws and Customs of the Elves (LACE henceforth), we find some fascinating aspects of elvish sexuality laid bare. Elves are incapable, it seems, of adultery, which actually kills them. They are also heavily implied to be incapable of masturbation, and are explicitly hesitant to remarry after the death of a spouse, which carries over into the Silmarillion, when Fëanor's father seeks permission from the spirit of his mother (who has died in childbirth) to remarry. Clearly, something about their physiology and/or psychology is not compatible in any way with promiscuity, and the consequences of promiscuity can be literally fatal.

The lethality of sex can, I feel, be best comprehended as an immune function similar to rH incompatibility between mother and fetus. It would, from an evolutionary standpoint, benefit a male elf (ellyn) to be certain that his offspring are actually his own, since their gestation and childhood are protracted and may consume a great deal of resources. This may have resulted in a gradual evolutionary arms race, in which an ellyn might conjugate not only his genetic material but also a dose of antibodies and/or chimeric B-cells, which are keyed to attack all sperm without his specific antigen set. In return, the female elf (or elleth) might perhaps develop her own antibody/B-cell dosage, but this begs the question of how to confer them to the male, since transmission of microbes from vagina to penis is much less reliable than the inverse. I am getting a horrible idea and I will refer back to this concept in a moment.

So assuming that extramarital sex results in autoimmune-induced death similar to anaphylaxis in mechanism, we ask ourselves: what about the other compelling aspect of elvish sexuality, that of interbreeding with humans? Leaving out the question of DNA compatibility-- which is demonstrated in canon, and which we must accept as legitimate if we are to consider this topic at all-- we have a disturbing question to address. We have multiple incidents throughout the history of Beleriand and Middle-Earth of elven/human offspring, all of which occur between a Man and an elleth. Given that the two species are capable of creating not only hybrids but fertile hybrids (Elrond produced three offspring), it is foolish to imagine that in all of Ardan history there was never a potential ellyn-woman romance that resulted in offspring, unless there was something preventing reproduction between ellyn and woman that did not exist between man and elleth. The safest bet is not that all ellyn-woman romances remained chaste-- anyone who's met a teenager can tell you better than that-- but that ellyn-woman sexual activity is incapable of producing offspring.

This is extremely unusual, as the most obvious reason for sex-discriminant infertility is more likely to favor female humans than male humans. Human ova contain mitochondria, while human sperm consume their mitochondrial power for motility and do not confer mitochondrial DNA to their offspring. Either something is happening on an immune/cellular level, which would seem to conflict with our immunological theory of lethal adultery, or something is happening on the mechanical level-- something which is, perhaps, related to the transference of female immune material to the male partner.

Perhaps, to put it crudely, the ellyn just can't get it up.

In humans, the penis consists of several structures of erectile tissue which cradle the urethra between them. This specialized tissue is capable of interrupting venous return, creating penile engorgement and thus erection by trapping blood within the corpus cavernosum. This tissue is notoriously indiscriminant about stimuli, making it easy for male humans to ejaculate without even the participation of another human. Elves, on the other hand, can't even masturbate, an activity so universal among species with external genitalia that it's almost unimaginable for a species capable of poetry to be incapable of wanking. And yet human males can couple with elven females. This implies some weird-ass shit, so I suggest you pour yourself that drink right now.

Male elves achieve erection by external constriction. To have sex, they need some biological equivalent of a cock ring. Whether their penises are "innies" or just flaccid except during intercourse, they are incapable of restricting venous return on their own... and yet the elven vulva must be compatible to some degree with penetration, or else man/elleth coupling wouldn't produce offspring. One may, if one is willing to consider extreme possibilities, entertain the idea that the elven vulva may exhibit some mechanical trait that assists the ellyn in achieving erection by constriction, by restricting venous return through strangulation.

Something that would not put off human males universally, although it might make man/elleth couplings more rare and account for the relative scarcity of elf/human offspring.

Something that would make it impossible for an ellyn to penetrate a woman, or to achieve orgasm and ejaculation with a human female.

Something that would even allow the ellyn to contribute internal disposition of antibodies and B-cells reliably, potentially through urethral penetration of the penis.

The elvish vulva, my friends, consists of outer labia, inner labia, a vaginal vestibule opening on a penetrable vaginal canal, and a set of tentacles.

In elven intercourse, the vulval tentacles constrict and penetrate the flaccid penis, simultaneously permitting/inducing erection and depositing immune bodies deep in the genitourinary tract, most likely the bladder, where they can swim up the ureters to the renal anastomosis and infiltrate the bloodstream. The erect elvish penis is then able to deposit its genetic-- and immune-- material within the vagina. Human females, having no corollary to these tentacles, can arouse a male elf and even engage in non-PIV sexual activity, but can never obtain genetic material from male elves, and therefore no ellyn/woman pregnancies occur.

For human females, this means you can have a hot elf boyfriend that can never get you pregnant, but he's likely to leave you eventually for somebody who can actually get him off. Male elves probably got the fuck around in Middle-Earth, since they could chow down on human pussy for decades before settling down with a nice elleth who would get knocked up as soon as they exchanged fluids.

For human males, this means that you're totally capable of landing a hot lady elf, as long as you don't mind her tentacles crawling up your dick every time you shark her in the ass while she's asleep, and as long as you don't mind that she can totally cheat on you and in fact might have chosen to fuck you specifically because she can screw around behind your back without breaking out in a fatal case of hives.

Aragorn was one kinky-ass fucker.

And if you read all the way through this drunken, giggling spiel, the silicone elf dick you're looking for is of normal to generous proportion, but it's strangled up and down with simulated tentacles, or at least constricted by a really tight cock ring.

I thought way the fuck too much about this. I consulted the LACE about this. Fuck every last one of you for goading me into this nightmare of grisly overanalytic humiliation. I hope all your girlfriends catch you.

[whumpprompts]

Whump Inspiration: Execution styles

So the Bad Guys have caught the Good Guy and want to kill them, oh yes oh no! But how? You want to almost kill the character without actually killing them, after all. So what are some ways they could try and kill the Good Guy in a way that still gives the character enough time to be saved?

Worry not because I made a list for all your enjoyment ;) feel free to add anything I may have forgotten!

”Regular” setting

-By drowning. Tie the good guy’s hands and feet together, add some weights and throw them off a pier.

-With poison. Injection, gas, drinking liquid, there are ways to go at this. It can be super painful or it can be merciful, just drifting off to sleep (making it harder for the saviors to realize the whumpee has been poisoned ;) )

-Shooting them. Maybe not a headshot because that’s a pretty, uh, quick way to kill someone. But maybe in the gut and wait for them to bleed out in huge amount of pain.

-Cutting. It could be their wrists or their throat; with quick help they can survive, but the blood loss is going to be severe and the scars that it leaves behind can be a good way for some emotional angst ;)

-Stabbing. It’s the same as above! With help you can survive, but it’s gonna leave some scars, both mental and physical.

-Starving. You’ll last about three to four weeks without food. It goes fabulously with other torture, if you really want to make the character suffer, since it takes so long to die without food. There’s a lot of time for the Bad Guy to make the whumpee regret ever being born!

-Dehydration. It takes about four to five days for a person to die without water. Perfect for situations where you want to torture your character without any actual physical pain but want the torture method to also be lethal.

-Beating them. This one is a winner for me, because there’s just something about beating someone until they’re pretty much just a pile of bloody pulp. Hit their head enough times or rapture a vital organ and the whumpee may die from a couple of hours to even weeks and months, even with daily beatings.

-Animal attacks. I mean, this one is a bit unlikely but it could be fucking amazing. Wild animals are beasts and they will try their best to kill you if they see you as a threat or food. Maybe the bad guy of the story is an animal smuggler with access to angry, starving lions.

-Weather exposure. Heat, cold, they’re both lethal. Leave the whumpee in a glass box in a desert and they’ll be dead pretty soon. Or lock them in a freezer naked.

-Hanging (and strangulation in general). If you don’t break your neck with the fall, it takes several minutes full of kicking and struggling until you finally pass out and die.

-Drug OD. Kinda like poisoning, but if (and when) the whumpee survives, they might have to struggle with an addiction. Great for emotional shit. Mm.

-Burning. Maybe a bit extreme but oh, everybody’s into something. Set their cell on fire or straight out toss the Good Guy into a pile of dry wood with the intention to set the pile on fire.

Fantasy/scifi setting

-Just toss them into space and let them float around. It’s cold, empty, dark, and literally all hope will be lost.

-Spells. Go wild with this one. Spell that makes you die in agony? Spell that makes you lethally sick fast? Spell that makes you lethally sick.. slowly? Torture spells?

-Literally any device you can think of! In a scifi/fantasy setting anything within the limits of your world is possible, so maybe the Bad Guys have some sort of evil technology that kills you by some very evil way.

-Monsters. I mean; Monsters that suck out your soul. Monsters that will rip your skin off and eat you. Monsters who will burn you. Demons. Vampires. Dragons. Maybe these monsters are controlled by the bad guy, or maybe they ARE the bad guy.

-Superpowers. Kinda like spells but not quite. Bad Guy can inflict pain without ever touching you? Stop your heart by will?

-Maybe the Good Guy has a weakness that the Bad Guy can explore, like kryptonite to superman.

[dvthoughtsuk]

Physical Abuse

So today I’m going to tackle the most well known form of abuse in romantic relationships. When many people think of Domestic Abuse, they imagine physical inflictions of pain. The typical image of a woman cowering from clenched fists, a woman with a black eye and swollen lip. Although it’s detrimental to think of this as the most prevalent form of abuse, it can start subtlety. So it’s important we understand all levels of severity of physical abuse.

What is Physical Abuse?

Physical abuse in a romantic relationship is anything you partner does to intentionally, deliberately hurt you. This can be quite minor at first, but in most cases abuse escalates over time. Attacks become more frequent, longer and more violent. The age old “I’m sorry, I won’t do it again” may be used several times along with excuses to justify this behaviour. Here I’ve provided a list of different forms of physical abuse.

Slapping, hitting and punching. This is a very obvious sign, however could start of subtly e.g (slaps on the back of the head, seemingly playful hitting that you’re just simply uncomfortable with).

Pushing and shoving. Again this can be subtle, but at the same time it could not be. Whatever you are uncomfortable with is not ok!

Biting or kicking. This is more violent territory and it’s hard to explain this as anything other than that.

Burn you. Extremely violent.

Choking or holding you down. Choking is a very severe form of abuse, and foreshadows something much darker. I will do a separate section on strangulation.

Throw things. Whether you’re injured by this or not, it is still physical abuse!

The dangers of strangulation

It is so important for me to discuss this with you. Choking/strangulation is a particularly lethal form of abuse. And can foreshadow death. It is possible to show no symptoms after being strangled, but pass away weeks later due to brain damage through lack of oxygen or internal injuries.

Some immediate symptoms you can experience directly after being strangled are: loss of consciousness, nausea, seizures, memory loss, neck pain, sore throat, hoarseness, bruising on the neck, ringing ears and bloodshot eyes.

“If your partner has strangled you in the past, your risk of being killed by them is ten times higher”

“Strangulation is one of the most lethal forms of domestic violence: unconsciousness may occur within seconds and death within minutes”

I will always urge you to report your abuse, however I particularly urge you to if your abuser has choked/strangled you. It is not worth the risk, you should immediately seek medical help if you have been strangled. Especially if you became unconscious.

I also urge you to call the police, and take advantage of all the safeguarding they have available to you! You can leave.

My experience with Physical Abuse

I always think it’s important for me to share bits of my story with you. So you can see how abuse plays out in a real scenario. I remember very clearly the first time I was physically abused. My abuser would often trap me in rooms. He would threaten to hit me and even kill me, although a little part of me thought it was just threats. During one of these situations, he grabbed me by the hair. That was that. The first time he’d ever put his hands on me.

He apologised (of course) and because he hadn’t punched me, or slapped me, for some reason I didn’t think it was bad. I couldn’t report my boyfriend grabbing me by the hair, could I? Eventually however, this led to punching me (in the legs at first, so the bruises were hidden), biting me and choking me. Shortly after this escalated, I fell pregnant. I vaguely remember the relationship being ok, not for long though. He punched me in the ribs one time, and due to the sheer pain and time it took to heal, I was sure it was fractured. But again, how could I explain this to a medical professional?

These attacks were often from arguments, majority after being verbally abused and my abuser seemingly being triggered by anything. It took the slightest thing. My abuser punched me in the eye during an argument, I was pregnant at the time, and had to attend work etc, with a black eye. An excuse of my friends child throwing a toy at my eye seemed to be a good cover story. Towards the end of my pregnancy, my partner stopped. It was a fairytale. Then around two weeks after my son it started again.

We were living in our own home at this point, so my ex became even more of a loose cannon, being set off by just about anything. The worst attack was when he had strangled me, literally picked me up by my neck, and squeezed. He’d done this many of times before, but this time seemed longer. I felt my vision going blurry and sparkley. My legs began to weaken and give way. I remember briefly passing out, only for a few seconds, and having a seizure on the floor. In my dream like state, all I can remember is him watching me with evil eyes, whilst I lay on the floor jolting and unable to control my body. All I had heard afterwards was “I almost did it that time”.

All in all I endured being whipped by a belt, kicked, punched, bitten, slapped, all sorts of items thrown at me, being spat at in face, pushed, you name it - he did it.

I would not wish this upon anyone, and it is my goal to stop this happening. There are so many things available to help you. And although staying for two years, I left. And I want to inform you the Police, Womens Aid, the National Centre Of Domestic Violence all have things in the place to help you. You will be safe, and you can leave! A post is coming with all helplines and online chats available, also future posts guiding you on the injunctions and safeguarding schemes you will be offered if you choose to report abuse.

The next topic will be Sexual Abuse and I plan to post this within the next few days. However keep checking my blog for posts on topics I’ve discussed above. Stay safe and thank you for taking the time to read my blog ❤️

https://www.thehotline.org/2016/03/15/the-dangers-of-strangulation/

https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/healthy-body/getting-help-for-domestic-violence/

[toldnews-blog]

New Post has been published on https://toldnews.com/world/united-states-of-america/i-team-stalkers-hack-to-harass-victims-in-their-own-homes/

I-Team: Stalkers Hack to Harass Victims in Their Own Homes

What to Know

Domestic violence incidents — including murders — often begin with abusers stalking their victims

Law enforcement officials say harassers are increasingly using technology to get at their victims — tracking their every move

Smart home devices, even home security devices, can be weaponized to “cyberstalk,” they say

Domestic violence incidents — including murders — often begin with abusers stalking their victims.

Law enforcement officials say harassers are increasingly using technology to get at their victims — tracking their every move. Smart home devices, even home security devices, can be weaponized to “cyberstalk,” they say.

Ferial Nijem says she was abused by her ex for years. 

“My abuser was able to utilize our home technology to stalk and harass me even from thousands of miles away,” she said. 

Nijem said her ex had access to the home’s smart home technology like security cameras, lighting and sound systems.

“You’re asleep in the middle of the night, and all of a sudden over the sound system comes this blaring music that startles you awake. That’s what would happen to me,” she recalled.

Nijem said her ex was watching her come and go with the home security cameras. He would also send her text messages — threatening yet another sleepless night, she said.

“So every conversation, every step I took was monitored,” she said. “You’re literally being stalked and harassed within the confines of your home.”

At first, Nijem had no idea her ex still had access. When she finally had the courage to go to police, she says an officer eventually led her to a domestic violence counselor.

“I was forced into a shelter because of that situation and it was, you know, it was a decision that, it wasn’t an easy decision,” she said.

As for changing her password, Nijem says she was afraid, and that getting out of a stalking situation is not easy.

“When you’re in a… relationship that involves domestic violence, you don’t have those powers.  You don’t have that level of control. There are consequences to those type of actions,” she said. 

And her story is not an isolated one. “Thomas” asked that we shield his identity because he still fears being cyberstalked by his ex.

“He took over my entire online life… he took over my email, my social media accounts even my online banking,” he said.

Thomas says that after a bitter breakup — unbeknownst to him — he was being tracked.  He said his ex hacked his ride-sharing apps and often showed up at the same place he went out to time and again. Knowing a person’s location is key for a stalker.

“I later discovered that he was tracking my Uber rides, my Lyft rides. He knew where I was going, where I was coming from.”

And then, the worst — he said a hacked text message blast to his family and friends outed him as a gay man for the first time.

“I was put in a real jam — because of my conservative Christian upbringing my family had no idea. The mental abuse turned into the physical abuse. I was stressed out, I was tired, I was constantly anxious and you could see it.”

Experts said cyberstalking is on the rise. At Safe Horizons, a leading victim assistance organization, counselors said cyberstalking often leads to domestic violence.

“It’s more likely that a person who is stalked by an intimate partner is going to lead to physical violence and even lethality,” said Maureen Curtis who is vice president of criminal justice programs at Safe Horizon.

According to a January 2019 report by the New York City Mayor’s office, from 2013 to 2018, the NYPD made 3,507 stalking arrests. Sixty-four percent of those cases included domestic violence.

“When they look at homicides, they often see stalking and strangulation previously in that relationship,” Curtis said.

The head of the FBI Cyber Division in New York said the more devices like phones or homes systems, the more opportunity for a bad actor to take advantage.

“Anything that can be accessed via the internet for the most part is capable of being compromised,” Agent Ari Mahairas said.

Mahairas said with 5G’s faster processing speeds coming, many more devices —and potential vulnerabilities — lie ahead

“Each one of those devices represents a door or a window that can be opened if not locked securely…. In 2022, they’re estimating 30,000,000,000 devices that are connected.  That’s your smart refrigerator, your fitness band, wireless via autonomous vehicles, drones,” Mahairas said.

Mahairas says manufacturers and consumers need to improve cybersecurity.

“If [a device] allows you to implement two-factor authentications, do that as well, so what we begin to do is start building layers of security which is quite important.”

Nijem says that when smart home technology turns into a weapon, victims of cyberstalking may not make smart life decisions. For her, it took too long to seek help.

“Get the help to get yourself out of it and don’t have shame in that. There is nothing shameful about going through something like this.”

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[placetobenation]

Welcome to the Wednesday Walk Around the Web, where we weave & wind through weblinks weekly. Hopefully you will find the links on offer amusing, interesting, or informative.

This week’s Walk comes with a content warning for murder, white supremacy, abuse, and other miseries that define our moment.

It’s hard to know what to even say and what to even do when the most powerful organized crime syndicate in the US, the cops, start rioting once again in revenge for the mere suggestion that they shouldn’t murder so many black people in cold blood, that a mob with a habit of strangulation should be held to account for its crimes, that buffoons who fall off of their murdermobiles and immediately pepper-spray an empty crosswalk should not have access to lethal weaponry and the tools of chemical warfare, that thugs who openly drive into groups of people should be met with more than utter cowardice on the part of politicians who supposedly have authority over them.

Likewise, it’s hard to know what to even say when the president has protestors tear-gassed so he can stage a Christofascist photo op.

So what can one say? The most important voices to listen to on the white supremacy baked into the United States (et alia) and seeping out of every crack in its national edifice are the voices of those in the communities that are targeted. Historian Keisha N. Blain sketches the context of the current uprisings. Historian Carol Anderson does something similar highlighting the complicity & active participation of cops & government in Jim Crow-era lynchings, in parallel to the ropeless lynchings we see today. Some time ago, Samuel Sinyangwe described his data-driven analysis of what does (demilitarization, investing in more appropriate first responders) and does not (body cams, skin-deep training sessions) work to curb the brutality of law enforcement, with much more detail here.

And what can one do? You can go protest, of course — in full consideration of limited precautionary measures for protesting during the pandemic (as well as methods of treating and cleaning up after tear gas assaults) and if you’re not immunocompromised or otherwise particularly vulnerable to COVID-19. You can give to bail funds if able. You can film the thugs when you see them prowling the streets.

Not all methods of fighting back can be as large-scale as seizing a police precinct. Acts of solidarity can come from near or far, like bus drivers in Minneapolis who refused to collaborate with the cops to abduct protestors en masse, or even K-pop fans who flooded the Dallas cops’ video-snitching app with videos of their favorite artists.

Facebook, for its part, amplifies fascist propaganda and pretends that some of its employees have a conscience about it while simultaneously suspending someone who does valuable work with historical photos for…posting the photos.

One last note on Minneapolis: Feeling that the Minnesota governor’s response lacks a certain element of total acquiescence, Minneapolis cops’ union president Bob Kroll has been conspiring with the state’s senate majority leader to stage a coup and seize control of the state’s National Guard from the governor.

RIP Tony McDade, a black trans person murdered by cops. Due to this and the ongoing pandemic concerns, the LGBTQIAP+ community has decided to skip Pride Month and proceed directly to Wrath Month.

This Week in History: On June 1st 1927, Fred Trump was arrested at a KKK rally.

The US Supreme Court rejected a California church’s attempt to spread COVID-19 in the most efficient way it can via business-as-usual services. Barely, in a 5-4 decision, sparking a blistering dissent from Justice Blackout O’Rapist.

Perhaps it doesn’t speak to the better angels of our nature to think about a group of people in terms of their worst members, but I can’t help but gawk in the manner of a zoo-going child at evangelical Christians like this man who spent ten years stewing about one of his daughter’s exes, then wrote him a letter strewn with scriptural demands for restitution via Dorian Grayification, as an alternative to literal slavery. This touches on so, so many things: the desperate yearning to limit and control women’s sexuality that the concept of virginity derives from; the vicious possessiveness people feel over their children; the emotional fragility and inability to express oneself in any way other than ludicrous anger that lies at the heart of mainstream masculinity; the cultlike echo chamber that surrounds these people to the extent that they start claiming to have literally seen a literal hell; the misuse of and entitlement to Jewish scripture by Christian conservatives…there’s an entire sociology curriculum here, plus some theology studies on the side.

We’ll now turn to matters other than the gaping maw of despair actively swallowing us whole. This Week in Actual Possible Consumer Products: The Testicuzzi is a tiny contoured hot tub intended to simmer a person’s balls. According to the official website it started as a riff between friends, who shortly launched R&D on it through the power of excess expendable income and/or venture capitalist investment — truly a vivid demonstration of late-capitalist decadence.

So, how’s at-home schooling going for everyone toward the end of the school year? Not so great, it seems, for students whose AP exams weren’t accepted because the submission systems can’t open their photos.

Deepfakes don’t need to be dystopian nightmares — they can also bring us Notorious B.I.G.’s rendition of Modern Major General.

This Week in Things I Learned About Computer History: Task Manager, one of the most valuable and most useful additions to Windows, was a side project one programmer tinkered on on his own time. This was also the same person who wrote Space Cadet Pinball, so he performed two great services to computing culture.

I’m sure emergency room workers can develop a sort of gallows humor about the more absurd parts of their jobs, such as one ER that maintains a display of fishing lures extracted from patients.

“It was all a dream!” is a popular oh-so-edgy fan theory about movies & TV shows, often a crude way of jamming a childhood favorite into a blinkered view of adult seriousness. Folks really need to cool it.

(Banner photo credit)

[fromtheothersideby]

And so here I am, asking bluntly – is the closedown of the country the right answer to the coronavirus? I’ll be accused of undermining the NHS and threatening public health and all kinds of other conformist rubbish. But I ask you to join me, because if we have this wrong we have a great deal to lose. I don’t just address this plea to my readers. I think my fellow journalists should ask the same questions. I think MPs of all parties should ask them when they are urged tomorrow to pass into law a frightening series of restrictions on ancient liberties and vast increases in police and state powers. Did you know that the Government and Opposition had originally agreed that there would not even be a vote on these measures? Even Vladimir Putin might hesitate before doing anything so blatant. If there is no serious rebellion against this plan in the Commons, then I think we can commemorate tomorrow, March 23, 2020, as the day Parliament died. Yet, as far as I can see, the population cares more about running out of lavatory paper. Praise must go to David Davis and Chris Bryant, two MPs who have bravely challenged this measure. It may also be the day our economy perished. The incessant coverage of health scares and supermarket panics has obscured the dire news coming each hour from the stock markets and the money exchanges. The wealth that should pay our pensions is shrivelling as share values fade and fall. The pound sterling has lost a huge part of its value. Governments all over the world are resorting to risky, frantic measures which make Jeremy Corbyn’s magic money tree look like sober, sound finance. Much of this has been made far worse by the general shutdown of the planet on the pretext of the coronavirus scare. However bad this virus is (and I will come to that), the feverish panic on the world’s trading floors is at least as bad. And then there is the Johnson Government’s stumbling retreat from reason into fear. At first, Mr Johnson was true to himself and resisted wild demands to close down the country. But bit by bit he gave in. The schools were to stay open. Now they are shutting, with miserable consequences for this year’s A-level cohort. Cafes and pubs were to be allowed to stay open, but now that is over. On this logic, shops and supermarkets must be next, with everyone forced to rely on overstrained delivery vans. And that will presumably be followed by hairdressers, dry cleaners and shoe repairers. How long before we need passes to go out in the streets, as in any other banana republic? As for the grotesque, bullying powers to be created on Monday, I can only tell you that you will hate them like poison by the time they are imposed on you. ll the crudest weapons of despotism, the curfew, the presumption of guilt and the power of arbitrary arrest, are taking shape in the midst of what used to be a free country. And we, who like to boast of how calm we are in a crisis, seem to despise our ancient hard-bought freedom and actually want to rush into the warm, firm arms of Big Brother. Imagine, police officers forcing you to be screened for a disease, and locking you up for 48 hours if you object. Is this China or Britain? Think how this power could be used against, literally, anybody. The Bill also gives Ministers the authority to ban mass gatherings. It will enable police and public health workers to place restrictions on a person’s ‘movements and travel’, ‘activities’ and ‘contact with others’. Many court cases will now take place via video-link, and if a coroner suspects someone has died of coronavirus there will be no inquest. They say this is temporary. They always do. Well, is it justified? There is a document from a team at Imperial College in London which is being used to justify it. It warns of vast numbers of deaths if the country is not subjected to a medieval curfew. But this is all speculation. It claims, in my view quite wrongly, that the coronavirus has ‘comparable lethality’ to the Spanish flu of 1918, which killed at least 17 million people and mainly attacked the young. What can one say to this? In a pungent letter to The Times last week, a leading vet, Dick Sibley, cast doubt on the brilliance of the Imperial College scientists, saying that his heart sank when he learned they were advising the Government. Calling them a ‘team of doom-mongers’, he said their advice on the 2001 foot-and-mouth outbreak ‘led to what I believe to be the unnecessary slaughter of millions of healthy cattle and sheep’ until they were overruled by the then Chief Scientific Adviser, Sir David King. He added: ‘I hope that Boris Johnson, Chris Whitty and Sir Patrick Vallance show similar wisdom. They must ensure that measures are proportionate, balanced and practical.’ Avoidable deaths are tragic, but each year there are already many deaths, especially among the old, from complications of flu leading to pneumonia. The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) tells me that the number of flu cases and deaths due to flu-related complications in England alone averages 17,000 a year. This varies greatly each winter, ranging from 1,692 deaths last season (2018/19) to 28,330 deaths in 2014/15. The DHSC notes that many of those who die from these diseases have underlying health conditions, as do almost all the victims of coronavirus so far, here and elsewhere. As the experienced and knowledgeable doctor who writes under the pseudonym ‘MD’ in the Left-wing magazine Private Eye wrote at the start of the panic: ‘In the winter of 2017-18, more than 50,000 excess deaths occurred in England and Wales, largely unnoticed.’ Nor is it just respiratory diseases that carry people off too soon. In the Government’s table of ‘deaths considered avoidable’, it lists 31,307 deaths from cardiovascular diseases in England and Wales for 2013, the last year for which they could give me figures. This, largely the toll of unhealthy lifestyles, was out of a total of 114,740 ‘avoidable’ deaths in that year. To put all these figures in perspective, please note that every human being in the United Kingdom suffers from a fatal condition – being alive. About 1,600 people die every day in the UK for one reason or another. A similar figure applies in Italy and a much larger one in China. The coronavirus deaths, while distressing and shocking, are not so numerous as to require the civilised world to shut down transport and commerce, nor to surrender centuries-old liberties in an afternoon. We are warned of supposedly devastating death rates. But at least one expert, John Ioannidis, is not so sure. He is Professor of Medicine, of epidemiology and population health, of biomedical data science, and of statistics at Stanford University in California. He says the data are utterly unreliable because so many cases are going unrecorded. He warns: ‘This evidence fiasco creates tremendous uncertainty about the risk of dying from Covid-19. Reported case fatality rates, like the official 3.4 per cent rate from the World Health Organisation, cause horror and are meaningless.’ In only one place – aboard the cruise ship Diamond Princess – has an entire closed community been available for study. And the death rate there – just one per cent – is distorted because so many of those aboard were elderly. The real rate, adjusted for a wide age range, could be as low as 0.05 per cent and as high as one per cent. As Prof Ioannidis says: ‘That huge range markedly affects how severe the pandemic is and what should be done. A population-wide case fatality rate of 0.05 per cent is lower than seasonal influenza. If that is the true rate, locking down the world with potentially tremendous social and financial consequences may be totally irrational. It’s like an elephant being attacked by a house cat. Frustrated and trying to avoid the cat, the elephant accidentally jumps off a cliff and dies.’ Epidemic disasters have been predicted many times before and have not been anything like as bad as feared. The former editor of The Times, Sir Simon Jenkins, recently listed these unfulfilled scares: bird flu did not kill the predicted millions in 1997. In 1999 it was Mad Cow Disease and its human variant, vCJD, which was predicted to kill half a million. Fewer than 200 in fact died from it in the UK. The first Sars outbreak of 2003 was reported as having ‘a 25 per cent chance of killing tens of millions’ and being ‘worse than Aids’. In 2006, another bout of bird flu was declared ‘the first pandemic of the 21st Century’. There were similar warnings in 2009, that swine flu could kill 65,000. It did not. The Council of Europe described the hyping of the 2009 pandemic as ‘one of the great medical scandals of the century’. Well, we shall no doubt see. But while I see very little evidence of a pandemic, and much more of a PanicDemic, I can witness on my daily round the slow strangulation of dozens of small businesses near where I live and work, and the catastrophic collapse of a flourishing society, all these things brought on by a Government policy made out of fear and speculation rather than thought. Much that is closing may never open again. The time lost to schoolchildren and university students – in debt for courses which have simply ceased to be taught – is irrecoverable, just as the jobs which are being wiped out will not reappear when the panic at last subsides. We are told that we must emulate Italy or China, but there is no evidence that the flailing, despotic measures taken in these countries reduced the incidence of coronavirus. The most basic error in science is to assume that because B happens after A, that B was caused by A. There may, just, be time to reconsider. I know that many of you long for some sort of coherent opposition to be voiced. The people who are paid to be the Opposition do not seem to wish to earn their rations, so it is up to the rest of us. I despair that so many in the commentariat and politics obediently accept what they are being told. I have lived long enough, and travelled far enough, to know that authority is often wrong and cannot always be trusted. I also know that dissent at this time will bring me abuse and perhaps worse. But I am not saying this for fun, or to be ‘contrarian’ –that stupid word which suggests that you are picking an argument for fun. This is not fun. This is our future, and if I did not lift my voice to speak up for it now, even if I do it quite alone, I should consider that I was not worthy to call myself English or British, or a journalist, and that my parents’ generation had wasted their time saving the freedom and prosperity which they handed on to me after a long and cruel struggle whose privations and griefs we can barely imagine. - Peter Hitchens https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-8138675/PETER-HITCHENS-shutting-Britain-REALLY-right-answer.html 

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