#the one in charge was legally dead for 7 months

[pagetbewbster]

I'm not siding with director Bailey because the man is a shitty, power-tripping "wank weasel". However, we have to consider the possible reason he's so fixated on the BAU in particular. Does he just not like Emily and Dave, or is the fact that from the outside, all he knows is that they like to spend money based on theories that only make sense to the 6 of them AND they blew up the jet.

I know they HAD to blow up the jet, but it's hilarious that nobody has once acknowledged that the stingy budget guy might not like them because they blew up a freaking jet.

[detective-inspector-her]

Incorrect Quotes: Alive Gordon AU that I semi-abandoned but want to share the dynamics for.

China: Self-care is suppressing all your trauma until it comes back and hits you in the face with the force of 7 very large trucks.

Stephanie/Valkyrie: I desire moisture.

Desmond: Please just say "I want water" like a normal person.

Desmond is helping Skulduggery break out of prison

Desmond: Sooo… Does this make us partners in crime?

Skulduggery: Don’t push it.

Desmond: Oh my gosh, we can be like Harley Quinn and the Joker!

Skulduggery: If you don’t stop talking, they’re adding “murder” to the charges.

Stephanie/Valkyrie: We can’t tell you because you’re not a member of the club.

Skulduggery: What club?

Desmond: The hating Serpine club.

Skulduggery: …The fuck? I should be the leader of that club!

Desmond: ‘Technically legal’, the two best words in the the English language, right before ‘cowboy spectacular.'

Stephanie/Valkyrie: Dad… I’m bleeding…

Desmond: Oh god… what’s your blood type?!

Stephanie/Valkyrie: B positive…

Desmond: I’m trying to but you’re bleeding-

Skulduggery: Please confirm to your knowledge that you are not a fully robotic being, were born an organic creature, and do in fact possess what many cultures would call a soul.

Stephanie/Valkyrie: What? “To my knowledge”? Do a lot of people not know if they’re robots?

Skulduggery: Thank you for your confirmation.

Desmond: Oh, so you two are getting along very… cordial now?

Skulduggery: Cordial? Nah, we're friends.

Desmond: Friends?

Skulduggery: Yeah. After you stopped us fighting, we got to talking. Seems like we have some common interests.

Stephanie/Valkyrie: We both love butterflies.

Desmond: Aww–

Stephanie/Valkyrie: And beating people up.

Desmond: Oh, okay.

Desmond: Nice rock.

Stephanie/Valkyrie: Thanks, Skulduggery gave it to me.

Skulduggery: I threw it at you!

Stephanie/Valkyrie: Isn't he the sweetest?

Stephanie/Valkyrie: Just be yourself. Say something nice.

Desmond: Which one? I can't do both.

Desmond: How do you want your coffee?

Stephanie/Valkyrie: Black, like my soul.

Desmond:

Desmond: Steph, your soul is a latte.

Desmond: Do you want this handful of moss?

Skulduggery: Why would I want a handful of fucking moss?

Desmond: Damn, you could’ve just said no.

at a zoo

Stephanie/Valkyrie: What are they in for?

China: Valkyrie, this isn't a prison.

Stephanie/Valkyrie: So they can leave?

China: No, but-

Stephanie/Valkyrie, pointing at a meerkat: I bet that one murdered someone.

Desmond: How do you tell someone their breath stinks?

China: Hey, I'm bored, let's drink mouthwash.

Skulduggery: Valkyrie doesn’t look very happy.

Desmond: She's happy. She's just like that.

China: Alright, listen up you little shits.

China: Not you Valkyrie. You’re an angel and we’re thrilled you’re here.

Desmond, driving and singing to the Little Einstein's theme song: We’re Going on a Trip-

Skulduggery: In our favourite piece of shit!

Tanith: Doing 95!

Stephanie/Valkyrie: We’re gonna fucking die!

Skulduggery: Accidentally indulged in too much ‘free time’, turns out I’ve been reported missing for over six months and presumed dead by most local and national authorities.

Desmond: When I get Doordash I order 20 Cheeseburgers at a time and heat them up throughout the week so that I don’t have to pay the delivery fee multiple times.

China: I hope you understand how food poisoning works.

Desmond: I hope food poisoning understands how I work. I never met a burger i couldn’t eat.

Ghastly: Say no to drugs.

Skulduggery: Say yes to drugs.

China: It doesn't matter if you say yes or no to drugs. If you're talking to drugs.. then you're on drugs.

Skulduggery: gets set on fire and screams in agony

Skulduggery: Nah, I’m just kidding. Fire does nothing to me.

Cop: What are your names?

Desmond: Don't tell them, Skulduggery.

Cop, writing: Skulduggery…

Desmond: Crap.

Skulduggery: Nice going, Desmond.

Cop:

Skulduggery: Uh oh.

Tanith: Unfortunately, due to several experiences in my youth, I cannot just 'walk up and join a circle of people talking', but it does sound lovely, thank you.

Stephanie/Valkyrie: I don't follow the rules. I follow dogs on social media.

China: What’s the dumbest thing you believed as a child?

Stephanie/Valkyrie: That naptime was a punishment.

Tanith: Sweet dog you got there.

Police: Yes, this is our new drug sniffing dog.

Tanith: Still training huh?

Police: What do you mean?

Tanith:

Tanith: Never mind.

Stephanie/Valkyrie: Can we get a birthday cake?

Desmond: It’s not your birthday.

Stephanie/Valkyrie: The cake won’t know!

Desmond: You believe me?

Ghastly: Desmond, you’re the last good person on this planet. I‘d believe cartoon birds braided your hair this morning.

Stephanie/Valkyrie: Your Honor, I hereby submit the following to the court:

Stephanie/Valkyrie: China, what the actual FUCK?

China: We need a distraction.

Skulduggery: Is anyone here good at jumping up and down and making weird noises?

Desmond, whispering: My time has come.

China: Sometimes I like to place my hands on someone’s cheeks, look into their eyes…

China: …And violently jerk their head until it snaps.

Stephanie/Valkyrie: …That took an unexpected turn.

Tanith: So did their neck.

Desmond: I don’t know, this plan seems complicated.

Stephanie/Valkyrie: You once said that about an orange.

Desmond: They don’t make sense. Apples, you eat their clothes but oranges you don’t.

[politicalblade]

Israel is literally torturing detainees by making them stick hot metal up their butts and putting them on an electric chair.

Zionists would have you believe that Israel is moral. The Biden administration would have you believe that Israel is moral. Israel would have you believe that they are moral.

There is nothing moral about this.

The full article under the cut:

The men sat in rows, handcuffed and blindfolded, unable to see the Israeli soldiers who stood watch over them from the other side of a mesh fence. They were barred from talking more loudly than a murmur, and forbidden to stand or sleep except when authorized.

A few knelt in prayer. One was being inspected by a paramedic. Another was briefly allowed to remove his handcuffs to wash himself. The hundreds of other Gazan detainees sat in silence. They were all cut off from the outside world, prevented for weeks from contacting lawyers or relatives. This was the scene one afternoon in late May at a military hangar inside Sde Teiman, an army base in southern Israel that has become synonymous with the detention of Gazan Palestinians. Most Gazans captured since the start of the war on Oct. 7 have been brought to the site for initial interrogation, according to the Israeli military. The military, which has not previously granted access to the media, allowed The New York Times to briefly see part of the detention facility as well as to interview its commanders and other officials, on condition of preserving their anonymity. Once an obscure barracks, Sde Teiman is now a makeshift interrogation site and a major focus of accusations that the Israeli military has mistreated detainees, including people later determined to have no ties to Hamas or other armed groups. In interviews, former detainees described beatings and other abuse in the facility.

By late May, roughly 4,000 Gazan detainees had spent up to three months in limbo at Sde Teiman, including several dozen people captured during the Hamas-led terrorist attacks on Israel in October, according to the site commanders who spoke to The Times. After interrogation, around 70 percent of detainees had been sent to purpose-built prisons for further investigation and prosecution, the commanders said. The rest, at least 1,200 people, had been found to be civilians and returned to Gaza, without charge, apology or compensation. “My colleagues didn’t know whether I was dead or alive,” said Muhammad al-Kurdi, 38, an ambulance driver whom the military has confirmed was held at Sde Teiman late last year.

“I was imprisoned for 32 days,” said Mr. al-Kurdi. He said he had been captured in November after his convoy of ambulances attempted to pass through an Israeli military checkpoint south of Gaza City. “It felt like 32 years,” he added. A three-month investigation by The New York Times — based on interviews with former detainees and with Israeli military officers, doctors and soldiers who served at the site; the visit to the base; and data about released detainees provided by the military — found those 1,200 Palestinian civilians have been held at Sde Teiman in demeaning conditions without the ability to plead their cases to a judge for up to 75 days. Detainees are also denied access to lawyers for up to 90 days and their location is withheld from rights groups as well as from the International Committee of the Red Cross, in what some legal experts say is a contravention of international law. Eight former detainees, all of whom the military has confirmed were held at the site and who spoke on the record, variously said they had been punched, kicked and beaten with batons, rifle butts and a hand-held metal detector while in custody. One said his ribs were broken after he was kneed in the chest and a second detainee said his ribs broke after he was kicked and beaten with a rifle, an assault that a third detainee said he had witnessed. Seven said they had been forced to wear only a diaper while being interrogated. Three said they had received electric shocks during their interrogations.

Most of these allegations were echoed in interviews conducted by officials from UNRWA, the main U.N. agency for Palestinians, an institution that Israel says has been infiltrated by Hamas, a charge the agency denies. The agency conducted interviews with hundreds of returning detainees who reported widespread abuse at Sde Teiman and other Israeli detention facilities, including beatings and the use of an electric probe. An Israeli soldier who served at the site said that fellow soldiers had regularly boasted of beating detainees and saw signs that several people had been subjected to such treatment. Speaking on condition of anonymity to avoid prosecution, he said a detainee had been taken for treatment at the site’s makeshift field hospital with a bone that had been broken during his detention, while another was briefly taken out of sight and returned with bleeding around his rib cage. The soldier said that one person had died at Sde Teiman from trauma injuries to his chest, though it was unclear whether his injury was sustained before or after reaching the base.

Of the 4,000 detainees housed at Sde Teiman since October, 35 have died either at the site or after being brought to nearby civilian hospitals, according to officers at the base who spoke to The Times during the May visit. The officers said some of them had died because of wounds or illnesses contracted before their incarceration and denied any of them had died from abuse. Military prosecutors are investigating the deaths. During the visit, senior military doctors said they had never observed any signs of torture and commanders said they tried to treat detainees as humanely as possible. They confirmed that at least 12 soldiers had been dismissed from their roles at the site, some of them for excessive use of force. In recent weeks, the base has attracted growing scrutiny from the media, including a CNN report later cited by the White House, as well as from Israel’s Supreme Court, which on Wednesday began to hear a petition from rights groups to close the site. In response to the petition, the Israeli government said that it was reducing the number of detainees at Sde Teiman and improving conditions there; the Israeli military has already set up a panel to investigate the treatment of detainees at the site.

In a lengthy statement for this article, the Israel Defense Forces denied that “systematic abuse” had taken place at Sde Teiman. Presented with individual allegations of abuse, the military said the claims were “evidently inaccurate or completely unfounded,” and might have been invented under pressure from Hamas. It did not give further details.

“Any abuse of detainees, whether during their detention or during interrogation, violates the law and the directives of the I.D.F. and as such is strictly prohibited,” the military statement said. “The I.D.F. takes any acts of this kind, which are contrary to its values, with utmost seriousness, and thoroughly examines concrete allegations concerning the abuse of detainees.” The Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence agency, which conducts some of the interrogations at the base, said in a brief statement that all of its interrogations were “conducted in accordance with the law.” Yoel Donchin, a military doctor serving at the site, said it was unclear why Israeli soldiers had captured many of the people he treated there, some of whom were highly unlikely to have been combatants involved in the war. One was paraplegic, another weighed roughly 300 pounds and a third had breathed since childhood through a tube inserted into his neck, he said. “Why they brought him — I don’t know,” Dr. Donchin said. “They take everyone,” he added.

How Detainees Are Captured

Fadi Bakr, a law student from Gaza City, said he was captured on Jan. 5 by Israeli soldiers near his family home. Displaced by fighting earlier in the war, Mr. Bakr, 25, had returned to his neighborhood to search for flour, only to get caught in the middle of a firefight and wounded, he said.

The Israelis found him bleeding after the fighting stopped, he said. They stripped him naked, confiscated his phone and savings, beat him repeatedly and accused him of being a militant who had survived the battle, he said. “Confess now or I will shoot you,” Mr. Bakr remembered being told. “I am a civilian,” Mr. Bakr recalled replying, to no avail. The circumstances of Mr. Bakr’s arrest mirror those of other former detainees interviewed by The Times. Several said they had been suspected of militant activity because soldiers had encountered them in areas the military thought were harboring Hamas fighters, including hospitals, U.N. schools or depopulated neighborhoods like Mr. Bakr’s. Younis al-Hamlawi, 39, a senior nurse, said he was arrested in November after leaving Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City during an Israeli raid on the site, which Israel considered a Hamas command center. Israeli soldiers accused him of having ties to Hamas.

Mr. al-Kurdi, the ambulance driver, said he had been captured while he attempted to bring patients through an Israeli checkpoint. Israeli officials say that Hamas fighters routinely use ambulances. All of the eight former detainees described their capture in similar ways: They were generally blindfolded, handcuffed with zip ties and stripped naked except for their underwear, so that Israeli soldiers could be sure they were unarmed. Most said they were interrogated, punched and kicked while still in Gaza, and some said they were beaten with rifle butts. Later, they said, they were crammed with other half-naked detainees into military trucks and driven to Sde Teiman. Some said they had later spent time in the official Israeli prison system, while others said they were brought straight back to Gaza. During his month at the site, Mr. Bakr spent four days, on and off, under interrogation, he said. “I consider them the worst four days of my entire life,” said Mr. Bakr.

How the Site Developed

During previous wars with Hamas, including the 50-day conflict in 2014, the Sde Teiman military base intermittently held small numbers of captured Gazans. A command center and warehouse for military vehicles, the base was selected because it is close to Gaza and houses an outpost of the military police, who oversee military detention facilities. In October, Israel started using the site to detain people captured in Israel during the Hamas-led attack, housing them in an empty tank hangar, according to the site commanders. Once Israel invaded Gaza at the end of that month, Sde Teiman began receiving so many people that the military refitted three other hangars to detain them and converted a military police office to create more space for interrogations, they said. By late May, they said, the base included three detention sites: the hangars where detainees are guarded by military police; nearby tents, where detainees are treated by military doctors; and an interrogation facility in a separate part of the base that is staffed by intelligence officers from Israel’s military intelligence directorate and the Shin Bet. Classified as “unlawful combatants” under Israeli legislation, detainees at Sde Teiman can be held for up to 75 days without judicial permission and 90 days without access to a lawyer, let alone a trial.

The Israeli military says these arrangements are permitted by the Geneva Conventions that govern international conflict, which allow the internment of civilians for security reasons. The commanders at the site said that it was essential to delay access to lawyers in order to prevent Hamas fighters from conveying messages to their leaders in Gaza, hindering Israel’s war effort. After an initial interrogation at Sde Teiman, detainees still suspected of having militant ties are usually transferred to another military site or a civilian prison. In the civilian system, they are supposed to be formally charged; in May, the government said in a submission to Israel’s Supreme Court that it had started criminal proceedings against “hundreds” of people captured since Oct. 7, without giving further details about the exact number of cases or their status. There have been no known trials of Gazans captured since October. Experts on international law say Israel’s system around initial detention is more restrictive than many Western counterparts in terms of the time it takes for judges to review each case, as well as in the lack of access for Red Cross staff. Early in its war against the Taliban in Afghanistan, the United States also delayed independent review of a detainee’s case for 75 days, said Lawrence Hill-Cawthorne, a law professor who wrote an overview of the laws governing detention of nonstate combatants. The U.S. shortened that delay in 2009 to 60 days, while in Iraq cases were reviewed within a week, the professor said. Israel’s decision to delay judicial review of a case for 75 days without providing access to lawyers or the Red Cross “looks to me like a form of incommunicado detention, which itself is a violation of international law,” Professor Hill-Cawthorne said. After Mr. Bakr disappeared suddenly in January, he said, his family had no way of finding out where he was. They assumed he was dead.

Where the Detainees Live

Inside Sde Teiman, Mr. Bakr was held in an open-sided hangar where he said he was forced, with hundreds of others, to sit handcuffed in silence on a mat for up to 18 hours a day. The hangar had no external wall, leaving it open to the rain and the cold, and guards watched him from the other side of a mesh fence. All the detainees wore blindfolds — except for one, known by the Arabic word “shawish,” which means sergeant. The shawish acted as a go-between the soldiers and the prisoners, doling out food and escorting fellow prisoners to a block of portable toilets in the corner of the hangar. Weeks later, Mr. Bakr said, he was appointed as a shawish, allowing him to see his surroundings properly. His account broadly matches that of other detainees and is consistent with what The Times was shown at the site in late May. The commanders at the site said detainees were allowed to stand up every two hours to stretch, sleep between roughly 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. and pray at any time. For a brief period in October, they said, detainees were allowed to take off their blindfolds and move around freely within the hangars. But that arrangement ended after some detainees became unruly or tried to unlock their handcuffs, the commanders said. Exhausted after the journey to Sde Teiman, Mr. Bakr fell asleep soon after his arrival — prompting an officer to summon him to a nearby command room, he said. The officer began beating him, Mr. Bakr said. “This is the punishment for anyone who sleeps,” he recalled the officer saying. Others described similar responses to minor infractions. Rafiq Yassin, 55, a builder detained in December, said he was beaten repeatedly in his abdomen after trying to peek from underneath his blindfold. He said he began vomiting blood and was treated at a civilian hospital in the nearby city of Beersheba. Asked about the claim, the hospital referred The Times to the health ministry, which declined to comment.

The Israeli soldier who witnessed abuses at a hangar said one detainee was beaten so hard that his ribs bled after he was accused of peeking beneath his blindfold, while another was beaten after talking too loudly too often. The Times did not witness any beatings during the visit to the hangar, where some detainees were seen praying while others were assessed by paramedics or brought by the shawish to wash in a sink at the back of the hangar. One man could be seen peeking beneath his blindfold without immediate punishment. Like the other former detainees, Mr. Bakr recalled receiving three meager snacks on most days — typically bread served with small quantities of either cheese, jam or tuna, and occasionally cucumbers and tomatoes. The military said that the food provisions had been “approved by an authorized nutritionist in order to maintain their health.” According to several former detainees, it was not enough. Three said they lost more than 40 pounds during their detention. Some medical treatment is available on site. The commanders brought The Times to an office where they said medics screened every detainee on arrival, in addition to monitoring them every day in the hangars. Serious cases are treated in a nearby cluster of tents that form a makeshift field hospital. Inside those tents, patients are blindfolded and handcuffed to their beds, in accordance with a health ministry document outlining policies for the site, which was reviewed by The Times. During the visit, four medics at the hospital said those measures were necessary to prevent attacks on the medical staff. They said that at least two prisoners had tried to assault medics during their treatment. But others, including Dr. Donchin, said that in many cases the handcuffs were unnecessary and made it harder to treat people properly.

Two Israelis who were at the hospital last year said that its staff members were much less experienced and more poorly equipped during earlier phases of the war. One of them, who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid prosecution, said that at the time patients were not given enough painkillers during painful procedures. Physicians for Human Rights, a rights group in Israel, said in a report in April that the field hospital was “a low point for medical ethics and professionalism.” The hospital’s current leadership acknowledged that it had not always been as well-equipped as it has become, but said its staff was always highly experienced. Dr. Donchin said in some respects the treatment at the field clinic was now “a little better” than in Israeli civilian hospitals, mainly because it was staffed by some of the best doctors in Israel. Dr. Donchin, a lieutenant colonel in the military reserve, was a long-serving anesthesiologist at a major hospital in Jerusalem and now teaches at a leading medical school. The facilities and equipment seen by The Times included an anesthesia machine, an ultrasound monitor, X-ray equipment, a device for analyzing blood samples, a small operating theater and a storeroom containing hundreds of medicines. Doctors serving at Sde Teiman who spoke to The Times said they were also told not to write their names on any official documentation and not to address each other by name in front of the patients. Dr. Donchin said that officials feared they could be identified and charged with war crimes at the International Criminal Court. During The Times’s visit, three doctors said they did not fear prosecution but sought anonymity to prevent Hamas and their allies from attacking them or their families.

How the Interrogations Work

Roughly four days after his arrival, Mr. Bakr said he was called in for interrogation. Like others who spoke to The Times, he remembered being brought to a separate enclosure that the detainees called the “disco room” — because, they said, they were forced to listen to extremely loud music that prevented them from sleeping. Mr. Bakr considered it a form of torture, saying it was so painful that blood began to trickle from inside his ear. The Israeli military said that the music was “not high and not harmful,” played within earshot of Israelis and Palestinians alike, and was meant to prevent the detainees from easily conferring with each other before interrogation. The Times was not shown any part of the interrogation complex, including the area where music was played. Wearing nothing but a diaper, Mr. Bakr said, he was then brought to a separate room to be questioned. The interrogators accused him of Hamas membership and showed him photographs of militants to see if he could identify them. They also asked him about the whereabouts of hostages, as well as a senior Hamas leader who lived near Mr. Bakr’s family home. When Mr. Bakr denied any connection to the group or knowledge of the pictured men, he was beaten repeatedly, he said. Mr. al-Hamlawi, the senior nurse, said a female officer had ordered two soldiers to lift him up and press his rectum against a metal stick that was fixed to the ground. Mr. al-Hamlawi said the stick penetrated his rectum for roughly five seconds, causing it to bleed and leaving him with “unbearable pain.” A leaked draft of the UNRWA report detailed an interview that gave a similar account. It cited a 41-year-old detainee who said that interrogators ��made me sit on something like a hot metal stick and it felt like fire,” and also said that another detainee “died after they put the electric stick up” his anus. Mr. al-Hamlawi recalled being forced to sit in a chair wired with electricity. He said he was shocked so often that, after initially urinating uncontrollably, he then stopped urinating for several days. Mr. al-Hamlawi said he, too, had been forced to wear nothing but a diaper, to stop him from soiling the floor. Ibrahim Shaheen, 38, a truck driver detained in early December for nearly three months, said he was shocked roughly half a dozen times while sitting in a chair. Officers accused him of concealing information about the location of dead hostages, Mr. Shaheen said. Mr. Bakr also said he was forced to sit in chair wired with electricity, sending a current pulsing through his body that made him pass out.

Released Without Charge

After more than a month in detention, Mr. Bakr said, the officers seemed to accept his innocence. Early one morning in February, Mr. Bakr was put on a bus heading to Israel’s border with southern Gaza: After a month of detention, he was about to be released. He said he asked for his phone and the 7,200 shekels (roughly $2,000) that had been confiscated from him during his arrest in Gaza, before he reached Sde Teiman. In response, a soldier hit and shouted at him, Mr. Bakr said. “No one should ask about his phone or his money,” the soldier said, according to Mr. Bakr. The military said all personal belongings were documented and placed in sealed bags after detainees arrived at Sde Teiman, and returned on their release.

Around dawn, the bus arrived at the Kerem Shalom crossing point, near the southern tip of Gaza. Like other returned detainees, Mr. Bakr walked for roughly a mile before being greeted by aid workers from the Red Cross. They fed him and briefly checked his medical condition. Then they brought him to a nearby terminal where, he said, he was briefly interrogated by Hamas security officials about his time in Israel. Borrowing a phone, he called his family, who were still 20 miles away in Gaza City. It was the first time that they had heard from him in more than a month, Mr. Bakr said. “They asked me, ‘Are you alive?’”

[fandomside]

Nirvana in Fire Rewatch Episode Twenty-One

Events:

Gong Yu tells the rest of her story. Apparently her father was quite happy to kill one baby, but balked at killing the second. The family went on the run and the father was killed 3 years later by Xie Yu's people.

Liyang watched over Jingrui 24/7 for the first few years to prevent Xie Yu killing him. After that the Zhuo family became so useful that he was safe.

Xie Yu has called out the Capital Patrol, who are under his command, but they can't enter the manor for legal reasons. They can block Prince Yu though.

Xie Bi threatens suicide to attempt to talk his father out of killing the Zhuo family. Xie Yu calls his bluff.

The Zhuo family fight the guards. Jingrui joins them. Niannian joins in but the prince doesn't, because he'd earlier (last episode) promised Xie Yu not to interfere. Yujin joins in to protect Gong Yu. Yue Niuze joins in. Meng Zhi holds back at first, then can't help himself.

Xia Dong sets off a flare that gives Prince Yu an excuse to act.

MCS leads everyone through a special door that leads to the family shrine. They go out onto a lakehouse. Meng Zhi and Yue Niuze guard the bridge as a chokepoint. More archers are sent for.

Prince Yu can't talk his way past the Capital Patrol, but Yan Que (Yujin's father) shows up. That gets Xie Yu out there to deal with them personally.

Gong Yu offers herself up for the Zhuo's vengeance, since her father killed their son. Zhuo-furen declines.

Archers start shooting at the lakehouse.

Liyang interrupts the stand-off outside and threatens suicide if Xie Yu doesn't let people in. Unlike with his son, Xie Yu takes this seriously. The shooting stops and it's all over.

Liyang extracts a promise from Prince Yu (at knifepoint!) that he will never harm the Zhuo family.

Names and titles:

Zhuo-furen calls her husband fujun, which at first I mistook for fuqin.

Xie Yu refers to his daughter as daxiaojie.

Xia Dong calls MCS dacai (great talent) in an unfriendly way.

Master Zhuo calls MCS Mei-zongzhu.

Prince Yu calls Liyang gumu, and she calls him Jinghuan (his given name, Yu is his title).

Characters:

MCS shows a very unpleasant side of himself tonight. He's almost vicious when talking with Xie Yu. No one present can doubt that he's a very dangerous man. Xia Dong certainly doesn't; she's disgusted, but they agree not to interfere with each other.

Xie Yu calls Xie Bi, his son and heir, weak for not being instantly willing to see the Zhuo family dead.

Prince Yu was getting nowhere trying to talk his way into the manor. Then Yan Que turned up and everything changed. Prince Yu was no longer in charge and didn't even notice, he was just pleased he was suddenly winning.

All Prince Yu could do was wave his army about. Yan Que just walked up some steps and it was more threatening than anything Prince Yu did.

Liyang hates Prince Yu, but she believes he'll be the next Emperor.

Meng Zhi is shocked and horrified that Xie Yu would dare use the Capital Patrols for his own private business.

Gong Yu is about four months younger than Jingrui.

Gong Yu's father was in an assassins' guild.

The chief of the Capital Patrol is called Ouyang Chi.

MCS was scared when the shooting started.

Misc:

Archers are the real danger. High level martial artists can catch or deflect arrows to a certain extent, but they're scared of archers more than hundreds of armed and armoured soldiers.

How did MCS know about the special door leading to the family shrine?

[woodsfae]

Babylon 5 s02e07: A Race Through Dark Places

s02 Table of Contents • previous episode

Station budget relies on the civilian traffic, but the military traffic has been higher than usual, so they’re running on a deficit, since the military doesn’t reimburse the station for funds lost by the mandatory re-routing of civilian business. And they want want to charge Sheridan and Ivanova 30 credits a week to stay in their current quarters, which are a whole 7 square feet bigger than the next size down which would remain free. All this sounds exactly some some bs the USA would pull and is completely believable.

My!!! guy!!!! Bester is back! And on a day when I’ve found a totally legal and normal way to screencap for some gifs again. hell to the yeah. Prediction: I’m gonna like this one. He’s got a new, scary sidekick.

Oh I love him, he’s so terrifying and perfect.

Telepath: “He’s dead.” Bester: “It doesn’t matter. I caught it, just before he died. Betrayed by his final thoughts.”

He’s my special little guy. But does this mean Talia is involved with the underground telepaths?? She was really not down with whatsherface not going to PsiCorps.

Sheridan is just down to fight whenever anyone squares up even a little. What is 30 credits? I have nothing to compare it against. Is it like, a nice meal for two? A month’s wages for a dock worker? I feel like this is the first hard number for a price I’ve seen so far.

Going for the easy questions I see, Delenn! Just quickly, explain humanity. Awww she’s so cute. Dinner date with Sinclair! He was dtf (down to fight) 2 seconds ago and now he’s dtf (down to flee) and figure out if this is a date or not.

Sheridan: “One day they’re shooting at you, the next they’re taking you out to dinner. Hah! What a universe.”

He looks bemused and delighted. I’m delighted. This episode will have everything if only Susan and Talia will be allowed to be onscreen at the same time.

OMFG they’re in the same room at the same time!!!

Sheridan: “I’d like to talk to my people for a moment.” Bester and Talia: *leaves the room* Me: “Talia where the fuck are you goin...oh. Telepath. well frag that.”

Garibaldi: “Want, agree, that has nothing to do with it. The law is the law.”

And that’s ACAB baby. When the law is unjust, those that uphold the law are unjust.

Garibaldi: “That’s damn ironic, isn’t it? That the corps got started because we were afraid of telepaths? Now we’re victims of our own fears. And we took away every right they had and shoved them into a big, black box called Psi Corps. Now look at em. Black uniforms, jackboots, giving orders. Some days they scare the hell out of me.“ Sheridan: “Yeah If you ask me, we created our own monster. And maybe we deserve it.“

Good advice by Ivanova. Read the logs about the Jason Ironheart Incident.

Lots of good background info being dropped. Talia wouldn’t notice a surface scan, she keeps walls up to block out the background noise, but Bester wasn’t and heard someone calling him a murderer.

“Bester will try to stop up, so we don’t have any choice. We have to kill him.”

I agree, but also, oh man my special guy. :(

DELENN YOU BABE. Well no wonder Sheridan falls for her. She’s humaning it up like a bossbabe for this date.

It’s genuinely astonishing that Ivanova has nothing whatsoever to do with the underground (that she’ll admit to). I think odds are relatively good that she actually does. Perhaps Dr Franklin is? He’s been a little revolutionary.

Date’s going well. Humor is an excellent bonding point.

Bester reaching out to Talia civilly. We love to see it, only for the drama.

Love to see the return of Jason Ironheart CGI Ascended!

Also love the lingering, artful shots of Talia being angsty in profile.

The penny!! Is she or isn’t she a telekinetic?? I am once again asking for Talia Telekinesis Skills. AND YES THERE IT IS BABYYYYY. Now that’s some self defense.

Earthforce locked them out of their rooms! Those asshats. It’s so sweet how willing Susan is to go along with all Sheridan’s schemes.

Mary Had A Little Lamb has never been so ominous.

OK, so now that they’re sleeping in Sheridan’s office she’s quite a bit more disgruntled.

Ivanova: “Were you like this when you were married?” Sheridan: “Yeah!” Ivanova: “That woman was a saint.”

John you have a huge crush. Repeating all the jokes you heard from your dinner date and practically blushing over thinking about it is peak crush behavior.

DS9 nod? Those are raktajino mugs that Bester and Talia are using.

Fishing for info, fishing for informants, and unfortunately not so distracted that he missed the assassins. Who should really learn to shield their thoughts if they’re gonna be assassinating level 15 telepaths. And throwing Talia in a closet. A literal closet. lol.

This is the one and only anger fit Garibaldi can throw that I support.

Oh well, not really a closet I guess. Man, she gets manhandled a lot.

I agree, wake up girlie. The Corps are not benign and you don’t even believe what you’re saying.

Dun dun dun! Franklin does have connections. Called it.

Oh, the gloves are a PsiCorps requirement! Continuing yikes. Excellent control mechanism. They’re a high control cult. What you wear, where you live, who you talk to, who you touch, how you live, where and how you work, who you marry. About as high control as you get.

oooof, and forced pregnancy. I wonder if the baby got a guide for a year and then it was on its own as soon as it could walk.

“You’re asking me to take everything I believe and turn it upside-down.”

yeah, that’s hard to do when you’re ready to deconstruct from cult life, let alone when you’re kidnapped by kindly telepaths who insistently tell you horror stories of PsiCorps as some kind of guided deconstruction.

Invoking Jason Ironheart is absolutely the way to get Talia to help. I’m rooting so hard for them! And for Bester to survive and continue to commit atrocities for my viewing pleasure. I’m a simple person.

DOCTOR STEPHEN FRANKLIN YOU DUPLICITOUS BADASS! This episode is everything. I’m vibrating. Generally I like to feel good about predicting things even partially correctly but I only said maybe Dr Franklin has connections, not that he’s running the whole operation, and I’m gonna own that being only very partial. This is baller.

He’s a conspiracy theories that are real guy like Sheridan is, but only for telepathy! Secret doctor network!! The unofficial clinic!!

Alas, Sheridan, but “I agree but the laws“ is not moral best practice.

Bester! My evil little fellow.

Talia grew a hell of a spine in the last ten minutes.

Collective telepathy!!!

“The corps is Mother. The corps is Father. I know where my loyalties lie.”

I don’t see how this could play out any way but that these people are dead, but that would also be totally bonkers considering she just planned something with Dr Franklin and Sheridan.

LITERALLY all faked? d a m n

I am extremely into collectivist telepathy. It’s super tragic that they are discouraged from touching even each other. All of them must be just so touch starved.

Doctor Franklin has just shot up a mile in my estimation of him as a person. He got a lot of points for treating Poor Murdered Child, but I also don’t like thinking about that episode. (0/1 stars, will never watch again)

Ah, so Sheridan also has a way with pedantry. Is this a commentary on how rigid military regulations makes for twisting-the-hell-out-of-the-rules geniuses?

Insert incoherent babble here about gloves-off Talia smiling at be-robed Susan smiling at her! Oh this episode is everything I could have wanted. Definitely a 5/5 star one for me! And certainly my favorite of the season so far!

next episode

[cyarskj1899]

I will never forgive peacock for this ever

21 Totally Accurate Tweets About Peacock’s Casey Anthony Docuseries

Xaviera BryantDecember 8, 2022

Peacock‘s Casey Anthony docuseries, “Where The Truth Lies,” may have given the network a boost in ratings, but it did nothing to change her public perception.

Throughout the exclusive three-part documentary series, Casey finally tells “her side of the story” and addresses the public that has made so many assumptions for the past 13 years.

In 2008, Casey’s 2-year-old daughter, Caylee, disappeared. 

She waited 31 DAYS before reporting her missing.

Six months later, the child’s remains were found in a wooded area near the family home. 

Casey was ultimately charged with murder and during her 2011 trial, her legal team said that Caylee had drowned in the family pool. 

On July 5, 2011, Casey Anthony was acquitted of murder, but she was convicted of four counts of providing false information to law enforcement and served prison time. 

In “Casey Anthony: Where The Truth Lies,” the 36-year-old makes several shocking claims and alleges that her father, George Anthony, staged Caylee’s drowning.

Casey recalled the events of June 16, 2008, saying, “I wasn’t feeling that great, and I wanted to lay down. I had her lay in bed with me.”

“I was awoken by [my father] shaking me and asking me where Caylee was,” she continues. 

“That didn’t make sense. She would never even leave my room without telling me. I immediately started looking around the house. I go outside and I’m looking to see where she could be.”

Casey claims she saw her father holding Caylee.

“He was standing there with her. She was soaking wet. He handed her to me. Said it was my fault. That I caused it. But he didn’t rush to call 911 and he wasn’t trying to resuscitate her. I collapsed with her in my arms. She was heavy, and she was cold.”

“He takes her from me and he immediately softens his tone and says ‘It’s going to be ok.’ I wanted to believe him. He took her from me and he went away.”

Unfortunately, Casey Anthony needs more people because no one is buying her latest version of what happened to Caylee.

Read 21 totally accurate tweets about “Where The Truth Lies” below.

I don’t give a deum how they flip it ,switch it,turn it ,toss it Casey Anthony is a disgrace of a mother and she shouldn’t have a uterus.I don’t feel bad for her or for the daddy YALL KNOW WHAT HAPPENED to that baby !!!!

— Cardi B (@iamcardib) December 5, 2022

I watched the Casey Anthony shit unfold in real time, no documentary, or conspiracy theories on apps can tell me she did not murder that baby, idc idc idc. Its disgusting that she did not get convicted actually

— Tittygate 2022 (@jiggyjayy2) December 7, 2022

The Casey Anthony case was probably one of the wildest of our generation. Chloroform in the car, the grandma saying the car smelled like a dead body, the duck tape, the trash bags, the Google searches, how long she took before she reported that girl missing, her partying…WILD.

— nat king carr ?✨ (@laugh_track_nat) December 7, 2022

Convinced Peacock released that Casey Anthony docu just to reunite us all… because if we can all agree on anything, it’s that she is a liar and got away with murder.

— Ali (@danielson_ali) November 29, 2022

I’m tired of seeing people talk about how Casey Anthony could be innocent. What mother waits 31 days to report her 2 year old missing? A guilty one.

— taylor (@tieyoo) December 7, 2022

i would rather take a cheese grater to my eyes than to watch a series that lets casey anthony try to convince the world she isn’t a child murderer.

— holly (@wahaholly) November 29, 2022

Still blown at how Casey Anthony blamed a made up Black woman for killing her kid. Like just made her completely up and had to the police looking for someone, anyone that was Afro-Latina.

— Aerin Creer (@FromAerin) November 25, 2022

Casey Anthony can make 10 million documentaries. The world knows the truth. We know what you did. No one waits 31 days to report their child missing and is innocent. Period.

— Enna_j (@J_bitty101) November 30, 2022

Soo Casey Anthony lied about being pregnant until she showed, lied about who the dad was, lied about what she searched on the family computers, lied about working at universal, lied about the “nanny” etc && YALL still think she’s being honest about not killing Caylee? Hellll no.

— FL girl (@thtFLgirl) December 1, 2022

My face the entire time I’m watching the casey anthony documentary pic.twitter.com/laU4RtSkuo

— macin (@MacinRigg) November 30, 2022

If you miss being gaslit by a narcissist I highly recommend the new Casey Anthony documentary on Peacock. You get hours of gaslighting, narcissistic behavior without having to contact your ex!

Seriously who thought this documentary was a good idea?

— ??????? (9-3) ❤️? (@HeatherKleinXo) November 30, 2022

Anyone notice how in Episode 2 of the Casey Anthony documentary on Peacock she says she didn't remember her fathers abuse till she was in jail. Then in episode 3 she says she kept Caylee away from her Dad as an infant bc of the abuse. This idiot still can't keep up with lies.

— Grace (@grace_hackney) November 29, 2022

Casey Anthony getting a documentary is the definition of white privilege.

— jazmean (@_jazmynbliss) November 29, 2022

Watching this Casey Anthony documentary and I swear I hear someone in the background feeding lines to her.

Please tell me y’all hear that voice saying “that I caused that” in the background before she says it! pic.twitter.com/aHcIcZlkzB

— THIQUE COZY CHURCH GIRL 켈리 (@RainbowQuartzz) December 5, 2022

the only thing i’ve gathered from this casey anthony documentary is that her and her daddy are guilty pic.twitter.com/jPHaTkE2pe

— Your Fave (@PartitionBeat) December 4, 2022

The Casey Anthony Peacock documentary is a great way to recalibrate your spidey senses. If you hear her dramatic tone and see her faked affect and believe a word she says, do not trust yourself to be a good judge of anything lol

— Gretchen Lynn (@Bubola) November 29, 2022

i turned the casey anthony documentary off as soon she said caylee drowned. she was literally found in a plastic trash bag with DUCT TAPE over her mouth. i'm not listening to 3 hours of lies.

— dyslexic heaux (@dxhoex) November 29, 2022

imagine making a 6 hour documentary to convince everyone casey anthony is innocent and instead it makes everyone go “oh i believe she did it even more now actually”

— ashley ray (@theashleyray) November 30, 2022

Here me out…watch the new Casey Anthony documentary on @peacock then rewatch every other documentary related to the death of Caylee Anthony and ask yourself why was George Anthony never fully investigated as a suspect or person of interest? Let’s chat ?

— K E V O N T É (@kevonteford) November 30, 2022

casey anthony is such a bad liar how can anyone take this documentary seriously pic.twitter.com/LZqKV7Wdrl

— dyslexic heaux (@dxhoex) November 29, 2022

Not even two minutes into the Casey Anthony documentary and for the 100th time, this bitch is guilty.

— Moooeee?? (@Edgar_Allan_Moe) December 1, 2022

Let me know your thoughts in the comments below or join the convo on our socials. (Facebook, Instagram)

Let me know your thoughts in the comments below or join the convo on our socials. (Facebook, Instagram)

Sent from my iPhone

[theestervashti]

"A Dream of Might." From Esther 2: 15-16.

The prophetess says we need to entice or seduce oppressed persons with the chance to self-determine. This process requires something neither the church nor the state can provide, self-definition.

Both institutions educate and illuminate the potential of the self, or are supposed to but only the intuition of the individual soul can prove to itself there is indeed a rationale for its existence on this plane.

For some reason, the human race has hated this idea. We are relentless and ruthless about forcing comformity on others, and the penalties such as the attack on Israel on October 7 are often extreme. Now there is a retaliation and it must be thorough, with care for the details of the campaign not the persons involved until such time as real and perceived penalties against the Jewish people are erased from this world forever.

What happened on October 7 is the most significant event in modern times as it proves fundamentalist Christians, not Jews are the antithesis of the soulful self rather than its essence as they claim. We need to ask over and over what kinds of persons would do such a thing and what was their motivation? There isn't an answer that unrequits the matter, not in the least. The people of Gaza collaborated with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and the Republican Party complex to commit atrocities never seen before in the Holy Land. For this, there can not be even an ingot of understanding shown.

Even before October 7 it was clear the Jew was in need a firm definiton of the Jewish Self, and now that it is a matter of life or death, there is greater urgency to do so but the meaning of the term is perennially the same: "I am not the child of a slave. My children will not be slaves. The people around me shall not live in slavery."

A Jew shall not be a slave in practice, shall not keep slaves, shall not think the thoughts of a slave or a slaver, shall fight slavery in all of its forms and locations at all times. The only time a Jew is allowed to be a slave is as a slave to one's true love. If you are lucky enough to find such a master then you are very blessed.

Otherwise self-determination and self-definition are legally and spiritually allowed and can be observed by all men at all times. The text below says Esther, "unity of many laws within the One" is the cousin of what is called Abihail, "a dream of might."

For us, that dream will be fufilled after the war when those filth from America, who dug under Israel, Egypt, Lebanon and elsewhere are all dead, never to trouble mankind again. The other dream the one called tebeth, "to be kept under the finger of a good man, to be kept forever, and stable."

Mordecai "to crush the oppression" sends Esther into the fray of the Court of Persia to win the people there over to these ideas. Everyone graviated towards her:

15 When the turn came for Esther (the young woman Mordecai had adopted, the daughter of his uncle Abihail) to go to the king, she asked for nothing other than what Hegai, the king’s eunuch who was in charge of the harem, suggested. And Esther won the favor of everyone who saw her. 

16 She was taken to King Xerxes in the royal residence in the tenth month, the month of Tebeth, in the seventh year of his reign.

The Values in Gematria are:

v. 15: And Esther won the favor of everyone who saw her. The Number is 10503, י'ך‎ג ‎"like that." Esther was unique. Who doesn't want to be unique and also admired?

v. 16: She was taken in the Seventh Year. The Seventh Day of our lives in Torah time is the year in which we realize we are unique and find the effort to be ourselves to be effortless. It takes a long time, but it is worth trying. Tebeth will not happen between two people who are still working on their personal imaging.

The Number is 6360, וגס‎, "gross, dirty, sketchy, vulgar, foul-mouthed, blatant, uncouth, clumsy, impolite, indelicate, rude, crude, rough, course, anything ill-mannered has to go away."

In other words one must always foster and maintain a good impression of one's dearest. This will automatically shortchange society of a share of wickedness which all dysfuctional couples are sure to contribute.

[virginiaprelawland]

Uncovering the Conspiracies Leading Up To The Alex Murdaugh Trial

By Elizabeth Wolnik, George Mason University Class of 2024

January 12, 2023

Alex Murdaugh is one of the most well-known lawyers in the state of South Carolina. His family has dominated the legal scene in Hampton, South Carolina for almost 100 years. His father, grandfather, and great-grandfather were Hampton’s elected prosecutors for 87 years straight [3]. The family’s civil litigation firm, Peters Murdaugh Parker Eltzrith and Detrick was founded by Randolph Murdaugh Sr. in 1910. Alex Murdaugh was most well recognized in the legal world for his representation of people in the areas of personal injury law [1]. He also would represent his clients in trucking cases, wrongful death cases, and product liability cases. Murdaugh was also a part time prosecutor for the 14th Judicial Circuit. However, Alex Murdaugh’s public persona drastically changed when the investigation into his wife and son’s tragic death led him to be a person of interest in the case. The South Carolina Grand Jury found Murdaugh guilty of two counts of murder and two counts of possession of a weapon during the commission of a violent crime, in connection to the deaths of his wife Maggie and son Paul. Maggie and Paul Murdaugh were killed in June 2021, but it wasn’t until July 2022 that the South Carolina State Bar disbarred Alex Murdaugh from practicing law [1].

On the night of June 7, 2021, Alex Murdaugh placed a call to 911 at 10:07 pm to report that he found the dead bodies of his wife and son [6]. Murdaugh stated that he was visiting his mother and father and only discovered the bodies of his wife and son once he returned home [3]. Maggie and Paul Murdaugh were killed on their property and their bodies were found near dog kennels. The coroner revealed that Maggie and Paul had suffered multiple gunshot wounds and their estimated time of death was between 9 and 9:30 pm [6]. After a 13-month investigation into the murders, the South Carolina Grand Jury stated that Alex Murdaugh used a rifle to kill his wife and a shotgun to kill his son. However, they do not include any details from law enforcement to prove how they linked Murdaugh to the killings [3]. Two unnamed sources who were involved with the investigation have disclosed that authorities have cell-phone videos that put Alex Murdaugh at the scene of the crime just before the murders took place [5].

Since the death of his wife and son, Alex Murdaugh has been jailed and many criminal charges have been filed against him [3]. Murdaugh’s family initially became involved with controversy when a woman named Mallory Beach was thrown off a boat and killed when Paul Murdaugh was driving the boat while intoxicated [1]. This incident occurred in February of 2019 and Paul was still awaiting trial when he was murdered in 2021 [8]. Paul was 20 years old at the time of the incident and was arrested and indicted on one count of boating under the influence (BUI) causing death and two counts of causing greater bodily injury. There were five other passengers on the boat when Paul got behind the wheel, and it was reported that they crashed into a bridge piling at 2 in the morning. Mallory Beach was thrown from the boat, and her body was not found until a week later. Paul continued to plead not guilty and was released from prison on a $50,000 bond with no trial date set [8].

Just days after Alex Murdaugh’s law firm discovered that he was stealing up to $8.5 million from them, he hired his cousin Curtis Eddie Smith in a suicide for hire plot [3]. The plan was for Curtis to shoot Alex and have the incident be framed as a suicide so Alex’s surviving son could collect on a $10 million life insurance policy. When it was time for the “suicide” to take place, Murdaugh only retained superficial injuries, and he was admitted into the hospital. According to one of Murdaugh’s lawyers Jim Griffin, Murdaugh suffered from “an entry and exit wound, a skull fracture, and minor brain bleeding in two places” [8]. Murdaugh lied to the police and told them that he was shot by a stranger on the side of the road [3]. Two days after the shooting, Murdaugh resigned from the family law firm in order to enter rehab for his sustained head injury [6]. Just over a week later, Curtis Eddie Smith was arrested in connection to the assisted suicide and was charged with assault and battery of a high aggravated nature, pointing and presenting a firearm, insurance fraud, and conspiracy to commit insurance fraud. About a month later, Murdaugh was arrested upon his release from a Florida drug rehab facility and was charged with two felony counts of obtaining property by false pretenses after an investigation into the family housekeeper’s death led law enforcement to believe that Murdaugh stole the settlement money that belonged to the housekeeper’s surviving relatives. According to the housekeeper’s heirs, they had received none of the $4.3 million settlement that was arranged by Murdaugh in secret [6].

Many of the other charges brought against Alex Murdaugh include an indictment for an eight-year long money laundering and painkiller ring [3]. Investigators revealed that Murdaugh wrote 437 checks worth $2.4 million and that his friend cashed them over eight years, keeping some of the money for himself, and spending the rest on a wide range of illegal activities. Murdaugh was found to be involved in misappropriating money from his law firm, defrauding clients, and a long list of computer offenses [4]. In late 2021, Murdaugh was indicted on 48 related counts including forgery, breach of trust with fraudulent intent, and money laundering. In January 2022, Murdaugh was also indicted on 21 more counts of breach of trust with fraudulent intent and six counts of computer crimes [5].

The defense attorneys and prosecutors for this case have had a lot to worry about, and the trial hasn’t even started yet. Alex Murdaugh’s attorneys have many different theories on what actually happened the night of June 7, 2021, since Murdaugh has continued to plead innocent. Their main hypothesis is that Curtis Eddie Smith was the one who killed Maggie and Paul Murdaugh [2]. Murdaugh’s attorneys argue that there was unknown DNA found under Maggie’s fingernails and that Smith’s DNA has not been tested yet. Alex Murdaugh’s lawyers continue to point the finger at Smith because he failed his lie detector test, even though lie detector test results are generally inadmissible in court. The defense attorneys have another theory that states that Paul Murdaugh actually killed his mother when he found her with the groundskeeper at their family hunting lodge, and that the groundskeeper shot Paul [2].

While the prosecution has not revealed much about their strategy or their evidence, they have continuously had a retort to every statement brought by the defense in pretrial motions. Their main claim is that Alex Murdaugh was a drug addict who helped run a money laundering and pain killer ring and stole large amounts of money from his clients and law firm in order to keep this secret life afloat [2]. They theorize that Murdaugh killed his wife and son in order to gain sympathy and to distract the public’s attention from the financial crimes that were being brought against him [10]. Prosecutors point out that Smith’s spike on the lie detector test where he failed in response to the question about the murders could have been from an emotional reaction, even if he was not involved [2]. While there is no eyewitness or video recording of the murder of Maggie and Paul Murdaugh, the prosecution mentions that people are frequently convicted through scientific and circumstantial evidence. South Carolina Deputy Attorney General Creighton Waters said, “If every murder case needed a confession and an eyewitness, it would be open season out there”. [2].

This will be a hard case for the prosecution, since Alex Murdaugh has no criminal history and is part of a wealthy and well-connected family in South Carolina [2]. The State is not seeking the death penalty against Murdaugh but is instead seeking life in prison without the possibility of parole [10]. Murdaugh’s legal team recently requested a motion to compel pertaining to the release of evidence by the prosecution. Judge Clifton Newman, who is assigned to this case, accepted the motion which focuses on possible blood spatter on the shirt Murdaugh was wearing the night of the murders. The South Carolina Law Enforcement Division, or SLED, employed Tom Bevel for the investigation. Bevel is an expert who specializes in bloodstain pattern analysis, crime scene reconstruction, and shooting-incident reconstruction. Judge Newman has ordered the prosecution to release all communications and documents with Bevel to the defense [10].

Murdaugh’s defense team is also seeking to exclude the admission of evidence pertaining to Murdaugh’s alleged financial crimes, claiming that “prior bad acts evidence” is inadmissible under Rules 402, 403, and 404 of the South Carolina Rules of Evidence. State prosecutors are fighting this motion, stating that Murdaugh’s financial crimes were the primary murder motive [10]. Because this is a high-profile case, Judge Newman has issued a court order preventing the public release of juror information to protect their identities [11]. This court order prohibits legal counsel, court personnel, law enforcement, or the media from disclosing the name, address, employment or other information relating to the summoned jurors. The State has also filed two motions in limine, which is a motion that determines whether certain evidence can be presented to the jury at any stage of the trial, to seek the exclusion of the polygraph evidence of Curtis Eddie Smith and the exclusion of evidence related to a possible “third party guilt”. In the State filing it is mentioned, “Despite the inadmissibility of polygraphy, counsels for defendant have endeavored mightily to explore the subject- any inaccurately at that- in a highly publicized filing…As such, the State expects the defendant to attempt to broach the subject at trial by any means necessary” [11].

The trial for Alex Murdaugh is set to begin on January 23, 2023 and will go on for three weeks [2]. The total number of charges that Murdaugh is facing is up to 100, but the trial that is being prosecuted by the South Carolina Attorney General’s Office will only focus on the murder charges [7]. Currently Murdaugh is sitting in jail on a $7 million bond [4]. The trial is to be televised since the public interest around the case has grown exponentially. Many books and documentaries chronicling Alex Murdaugh’s life are in the works as well [9]. The story surrounding the downfall of a powerful lawyer with immense social and political dominance is one that will go down in history, but it is the public’s duty to remember those who were devastatingly impacted by the crimes of Alex Murdaugh.

______________________________________________________________

[1] https://www.newsunzip.com/wiki/alex-murdaugh/

[2] https://www.live5news.com/2022/10/22/murdaugh-uses-public-docs-sow-doubt-he-killed-wife-son/

[3] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/alex-murdaugh-charged-murder-deaths-wife-maggie-son-paul/

[4] https://people.com/crime/alex-murdaugh-blames-cousin-murders-wife-son/

[5] https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/07/alex-murdaugh-charged-with-double-murder-of-wife-and-son.html

[6] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/crime-courts/alex-murdaugh-indicted-murder-charges-summary-timeline-rcna38026

[7] https://www.live5news.com/2022/08/19/state-grand-jury-issues-new-indictments-against-alex-murdaugh/

[8] https://people.com/crime/murdaugh-family-murders-everything-to-know/

[9] https://www.thestate.com/news/local/crime/article267226547.html

[10] https://www.greenvilleonline.com/story/news/local/south-carolina/2022/12/21/alex-murdaugh-murder-trial-sc-ag-not-seeking-death-penalty/69746601007/

[11] https://www.greenvilleonline.com/story/news/local/south-carolina/2023/01/05/new-documents-reveal-more-about-alex-murdaugh-murder-and-laffitte-fraud-cases-double-murder-sc/69773313007/

[room-archive]

By now, some of you might have heard about the situation in Poland. The following text was posted on FB by a Polish friend of mine following the events of 07. August 2020 in Warsaw. It describes what happened, and the context of what led to the events of yesterday. Please reblog and share this post to spread awareness about the current situation.

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

For a very long time it has not been easy for me to write and talk about my country. Publicly, for a very long time I haven't. Disagreeing with most of what the current government stands for, that would have become a full-time job. Feeling that one is powerless, one can easily become indifferent and either emigrate abroad or immigrate inside to the bubble of like minded friends, trying to just go on with life regardless, to wait out the storm, to hope for the world to change one day on its own. I am guilty of doing both. But yesterday, I believe that Poland came to its turning point. We went to sleep in a troubled democracy and woke up in an authoritarian country that uses the full force of the state apparatus to oppress and unjustly prosecute members and allies of the LGBT+ community.

No good person can stay indifferent facing these circumstance.

General context:

👉 It all began members of the activist collective "Stop Bzdurom" (eng. Stop the Bullshit) spray-painted and cut the tires of an anti-abortion van. This van was taped with graphic images of dead fetuses and frequently driving through the streets of Warsaw. While the activists spray painted the van, the driver intervened and it came to a light physical quarell with pushing and elbowing. This is the video of this altercation: https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=1324521857722944&id=137358556439286

👉 On the basis of that, the Public Prosecution (which is under total political control in Poland - the Minister of Justice IS the Attorney General) decided to press charges of violent assault and destruction of property against one of the members of the collective - Margot. Margot identifies as a non-binary person (it will be important later in the story). Under those charges Margot could face up to 7 years in prison.

👉 Some weeks ago, Margot was dragged out of her apartment by police in civil clothing. At that point, police refused to give any information about her whereabouts or charges. It took many hours to establish that she was taken to the prosecution office for interrogation and to provide her with a lawyer. The prosecution filed for two months of arrest, awaiting trial. The court initially denied prosecution's request and released Margot. At that stage, this story could have ended as yet another, relatively harmless episode in our disfunctional democracy - unjust and infuriating of course, but at the end smoothened out by the somewhat independent parts of our judiciary.

👉 In between that and yesterday, the same collective hanged rainbow flags from monuments in Warsaw. One of those was a statue of Jesus. This was follwed by a wave of arrests under the charges of "desecrating monuments and offending religious feelings". The arrested were charged while our prime minister and president were visiting desecrated monuments and placing commemorative flowers.

And then yesterday happened:

👉 The prosecution appealed the court's denial to put Margot under arrest. Another court, for reasons still unclear, reversed the decision and decided to put Margot in jail for two months before any trial. There could not possibly be any reason to make such a decision legitimate. Margot is a special case because Polish arrest and correctional facilities are an extremely dangerous place for a (visibly) queer person like her.

👉 When Margot learned of the decision, she happened to be in the office of the biggest Polish LGBTQ+ NGO - Kampania Przeciw Homofobii (eng. The Campaign Against Homophobia). With the police on the way to arrest her (quite symbolic, isn't it), a few NGO’s asked people to gather in front of the office in a demonstration of solidarity. A few hundred people and plenty of journalists showed up, including multiple members of parliament from left and center opposition parties.

👉Margot decided that if she has to go, she won't just go quietly but as publicly as she can. She walked through the demonstration up to the police officers, offering herself to be taken away. They refused to arrest her. We thought they got scared of the public support and the cameras. It looks like we couldn't have been more wrong.

👉 The spontaneous demonstration moved to a nearby allegedly desecrated monument. There, peacful demonstrators were met by an excessively large police force seperating them from the monuments. And then someone has given an order to make an example out of demonstrators and turn the arrest into a show of power.

👉 First, an unmarked car approached. A bunch of police officers in civil clothing dragged Margot inside. For all that has happened later the crowd remained non-violent.

👉 Then, demonstrators sat down around the car to prevent it from leaving. (see Photo) The police attacked with an unprecedented brutality. Tens of undercover police officers arrived and together with their colleagues in uniforms they begun brutally attacking, beating, suffocating and throwing the demonstrators into police cars driving away with them. All that during broad daylight, in front of TV cameras. Without any shame or hesitation. Multiple photos of police brutality bellow. All questions about the basis of the detention were met with laughter. The protestors were not even called upon to disperse. Just faced with violence for the sake of power - no law, no order. TV cameras have caught police officers giving eachother orders to arrest "three random people from the crowd". Bystanders and people passing by were also arrested.

Yesterday in Warsaw is was enough to be in a wrong place, wrong time. We witnessed a straight up round up.

👉To paint the picture of the excess of the police brutality in more detail, I'll quickly describe one of the detentions. During that whole time, MPs (Member of Parliament) were present at the site. Now, they hold immunity from being arrested, but I don't believe anyone in Poland ever imagined that this immunity would have to be used in such a way. Among the photos below, there is one of a blonde woman, holding her hand on the back of a demonstrator, who's being pushed to the ground by the police. That women is an opposition MP who left yesterday's protests injured by the police and described in detailes what had happened. She saw police officers throwing the protester in the picture to the ground and kneeing her down. Her head was bleeding on the pavement. The MP run torwards them screaming to let go and pushing the police away. She lied down on the protester to guard her with her own body. Only then the police let the MP to put her purse under the bleading head of the protester (seen photo) and take care of the head-wound. The protester was then taken away by the police to an unknown location. That story is just one among many horrifying stories from yesterday.

👉 Later, noone knew where exactly the detained people were taken. We guess that around 50 people were arrested.

50 political prisoners.

Police has been refusing any information. The demonstration has moved under the main police stations and the second wave of random arrests happen (you can see it on the video: https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=295720058542451&id=107750507339408).

👉Members of parliament and attorneys have been present at the police stations all night trying to get any information and to provide legal help to the detainees. In order to prevent this contact, police has started to move the arrested people out of Warsaw- a tactic straight up from the harshest repressions of the communist times. On one of the photos below you can see two MPs standing in the way of a police van in the middle of the night to prevent that from happening. People were being dragged out of the police stations to the transport vans. They were shielded on the way to the car by other police vehicles to make identification impossible. Few of them managed to scream out their last name. Attorneys were immediately requesting access to their clients, and were met by police officers bluntly lying that such a person was never there.

👉 To paint the picture in more detail, again, of what was happening on the police stations- below you have a photo of a lady reading a piece of paper standing in a window with bars. That's yet another Polish MP, reading a list of the people being held at that particular station to the desperate families searching for their loved ones.

As for today, we are still unsure about what is going to happen.

We know that the arrested people are being presented with bullshit charges, citing ”the participation in an illegal gathering with an aim of violently assaulting a person or a property". Those charges don't stand on any grounds - not only we have photos and videos - the whole peaceful protest was on live TV.

We know that the Polish Ombudsman and the National Mechanism for the Prevention of Torture has started visiting the police stations.

We know that the first international institutions have started to speak out. Example is in the photos below. With the gravity of what is happening, I'd urge for more and sooner.

Poland is not living up to any standards of a free country. Poland is below anything, that should ever be accepted within the European Union. The long-standing aspiration of my country to become a part of the "West" has shifted towards countries like Russia in a matter of a night.

I will fight this, my friends will fight this. We will not let this go gently into silent night.

But I am not sure how much more fight we have in us.

I'll end with asking all of you abroad for support. Let people in your countries hear about this. We in Poland may not be enough.

[deramin2]

Taliesin's remarks feel in dialogue with Ursula K. Le Guin's famous remarks in her 2014 acceptance speech of the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters:

"Yet I see sales departments given control over editorial. I see my own publishers, in a silly panic of ignorance and greed, charging public libraries for an e-book 6 or 7 times more than they charge customers. We just saw a profiteer try to punish a publisher for disobedience, and writers threatened by corporate fatwa. And I see a lot of us, the producers, who write the books and make the books, accepting this — letting commodity profiteers sell us like deodorant, and tell us what to publish, what to write. Books aren’t just commodities; the profit motive is often in conflict with the aims of art. We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable — but then, so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art. Very often in our art, the art of words."

(You should read or watch the whole speech. It's short, but earthshaking.)

Taliesin's words are the horror genre warning of the same conflict in the related artistic industry of Hollywood. An industry that birthed him, that is a multigenerational legacy for him, and also nearly broke him as a teenager. Until he found a niche in it voice acting. And then this weird world of professional TTRPGs found him through the act of creating with his friends.

Critical Role found its start at formerly independent studio Geek & Sundry, which had been sold to corporate media behemoth Legendary Entertainment the year before (2014). In 2016, ten months after Critical Role started airing, Legendary were devoured in turn by Chinese conglomerate Wanda Group. These corporations funded them and let them experiment and grow, waiting to see how productive their TTRPG cash crop yields would be after a few years of cultivation. They developed what Critical Role could be with D&D.

Marisha (as producer and creative director of G&S), Matt (actor), Taliesin (actor), and Ivan Van Norman (game master, now head of Darrington Pres) were all part of Sagas of Sundry: Dead on the newly launched Alpha streaming platform. Here they tried costumes and sets and an indie horror TTRPG that focused more on intense expressive roleplay with key moments of luck and ability decided by the mechanics. Directly after filming Taliesin remarked that it felt like a new form of commedia dell'arte. This was the golden age of Geek & Sundry where the possibilities of the medium seemed only add limited as the imagination.

The follow-up was Sagas of Sundry: Madness with Marisha (creative director, producer, and player whop had to trust her team to handle certain things she was not allowed to have meta-knowledge of); Liam (actor), and Ivan Van Norman (game master). They pushed the format even father with a set that was part stage, part escape room. They gave incredible and intense performances. It had a great reception. It felt very avant garde.

And then it all unraveled. Legendary pulled the plug on Alpha. Critical Role had been VERY careful with their IP and managed to break off into their own independent company. A huge and terrifying leap into the unknown to save their creation that was precious beyond measure to them, and discardable to the powerful. Geek & Sundry didn't survive the summer. A footnote in corporate bookkeeping. SoS: Dread eventually made its way onto YouTube. SoS: Madness did not (legally), and it only survives through piracy.

So now here they are, years later, nurturing their creation themselves. Probably not growing fast enough for VC tech bros, but enough to have their own production studio, two animated series, a game publishing press, a music label, a charity, comics, books, and now their own streaming platform where no one can shut it down or demonetize it but them. There was plenty of money to make so much art and support so many other artists when corporate interests weren't talking a cut.

In the last year, they sold out both Wembley Stadium in London and The United Theater on Broadway in LA. The United Theater opened in 1927 as the flagship theater of United Artists. United Artists was founded in 1919 by like-minded big-name silent film Hollywood creators who were already fed up with the predatory treatment of corporate studios. They wanted a studio where they could own their own work. It was a famous worker's rebellion for their own rights under their own control.

But eventually legal trouble and poorly received pictures sank United Artists and the corporate machine devoured it. Today it exists in-name-only under Amazon. A legend about the artists that tried to escape the Hollywood machine that eats people. Each new generation improving on the Torment Nexus based on the warnings of the storytellers ahead of them pleading for it to stop. Calm capitalists who think they're helping revolutionize the world and that a few measly lives is a reasonable price to pay for progress. After all, it's not usually their lives being  sacrificed; it's just artists and crew.

In a 2017 episode of the Dungeon Life documentary by Todd Kenreck—also now lost media—Taliesin said, "I live in LA where we are—it's a city made of aspirations. And some of them are designed to be eaten by others so they can maintain their youth. And some are designed to blossom into beautiful creatures. There's tons of aspirations. But this is a wonderful—I'm so proud of this and pleased with this."

Nearly seven years later, Critical Role is still an aspiration blooming into a beautiful creature. Saved from the jaws of a malevolent entity that tried to eat them to maintain its youth. Their own acting partners in their own company, playing their own game, to their own music, in front of their own audience, on their own platform (as well as Google's and Amazon's). Working with a great many other creatives and backend folks to all bring it together (and who are no less important to their success). Telling a story about the town that eats people in the preserved remnants of one of its victims while trying to not be another.

Taliesin's closing remarks:

"Friends, colleagues, precious audience, they say that art is as close to immortality as most could ever hope to achieve. And therefore, it is always covered by the powerful, and it is prescious beyond measure to the creators who would see their visions realized.

"Tonight, our Circle of the Silver Screen have reminded us of a vicious truth: Art demands sacrifice. And all that raw material has to come from somewhere."

[news-of-the-day]

9/29/22

The referendum held in the territories Russia conquered came out as for annexation, so Russia said they would formally absorb those areas tomorrow.

There were explosions under the Nordic Sea that damaged the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines that Russia uses to transport gas to the rest of Europe. The general consensus is sabotage, although no one can launch an investigation into the cause due to the gas currently spilling out. (Russia had shut down Nord Stream 1awhile ago, claiming mechanical problems on its end, but gas had remained inside. Germany scrapped Nord Stream 2 when the war began.) Russia is blaming the US, the Ukraine and Poland are blaming Russia.

UK Prime Minister Truss announced a series of tax cuts as well as lowering government spending in hopes of turbo-charging the economy after COVID and Brexit. One major worry is the government is subsidizing fuel after soaring prices thanks to the war, which means the government will have to borrow billions. Consequently the markets went crazy and the Bank of England stepped in to buy £65B of bonds to calm the situation.

Giorgia Meloni won the Italian elections on Sunday and will become Italy's prime minister next month. Meloni is very right wing and a known admirer of Moussolini. Her platform is anti-abortion, anti-gay marriage (which was legalized in 2016), etc. There are worries in the EU about her stance on the war and Russia, which could threaten the united front.

Hurricane Ian hit Cuba, knocking out power to the entire island. It then moved onto Florida as a category 4, and is currently over it as a tropical storm. Massive areas of western Florida received extensive damage with 2.5M people without power. Boats are and their passengers are missing. Cuba is slowly coming back on line.

Last weekend Hurricane Fiona, which had previously shut down Puerto Rico, headed up north and then hit Newfoundland, causing massive damage with houses being washed to sea and great erosion on the coast.

Iranian protests are continuing with at least 41 dead. Iran also launched missiles against Iraq's northern, Kurdish region. Iran has been bearing down on Kurds recently, and with the protests it's ramping up, saying Kurds are involved with demonstrations.

Tensions are hot again in Iraq with al-Sadr's supporters attempting to storm the Green Zone. Several rockets were also fired.

Trump has made the claim that the FBI planted evidence amongst his files, so special master Dearie is now asking by tomorrow for his lawyers to declare whether that is true or not. I also just learned that Trump is required to pay for the special master and his staff, although Trump wanted that hoisted onto the taxpayer.

Correction 9/29/22: Fixed some bulletpoint and link mistakes.

1) BBC 2) NYT 3) BBC 4) CNN, France24 5) Reuters, AP 6) BBC 7) Al Jazeera 8) Al Jazeera 9) NBC

[katiemcgrath]

Let’s go through these names:

Sarah Reed (Black), 32, had severe mental health issues which was known to prison officers and doctors. She had been complaining about being unwell and untreated to her mum for a long time. She was found dead in her cell at Holloway Prison in 2012, they lied and said she was found hanging in her cell, she wasn’t - she was found in her bed. There’s video footage of a police officer punching her and grabbing her hair after she was arrested for shoplifting - the officer was suspended and faced no criminal charges. 

Mark Duggan (Black), 29, in 2011 Mark Duggan was shot by police in Tottenham, London, the police chased him in a minicab claiming he had a gun - a gun was later found 7 metres away from the minicab. Protests and riots in London and other areas of England ensued. The police were cleared of any wrongdoing. 

Sheku Bayoh (Black), 31, was murdered by police in 2015 in Fife, Scotland. Very similar to George Floyd, Bayoh was knelt on by police for 9 minutes. Much like George Floyd, Sheku Bayoh’s last words were also ‘I can’t breath’. The police were not charged. 

Christopher Alder (Black), 37, was a computer programmer for the British army. He was arrested in 1998 after he was punched at a nightclub and was supposedly ‘aggressive’ at a hospital. He was found  ‘face down on a custody suite floor, with his trousers round his ankles and his hands cuffed behind his back, while police officers made monkey imitations and references to banana boots and a hood with slits.’ The officers were cleared of any wrong doing. 

Smiley Culture (Black), 48, Culture stabbed himself in the heart (hmm) when police raided his home in London. His death was a contributing factor in the 2011 riots.  

Jimmy Mubenga (Black), 46, Mubenga was being deported - three private security guards held him down on the plane and restricted his breathing, despite already being handcuffed to the seat. His last words were also ‘I can’t breath’. Th officers were cleared of manslaughter. 

Michael Powell (Black), 38, Powell had many mental health difficulties and dealt with it by taking drugs. In 2013, his mother called the police on him after he started smashing car windows this a hammer, she was afraid and just wanted him restrained. Several police officers came and subdued him using pepper spray. He died in the back of the police van. All officers were cleared but it’s okay because over 10 years later, police have apologised for the pain and suffering he was in. 

Leon Briggs (Black), 39, Briggs died in custody in 2013 after being held under Mental Health Act but no medical intervention was sought, he became unconscious and died. Police officers were cleared of any wrong doing. They were suspended with full pay.

Ricky Bishop (Black), 25, police in Brixton, London, in 2001 claimed Bishop was attempting to escape so held him down, he had a heart attack. He was still in cuffs when he arrived at the hospital. All officers were cleared. 

Brian Douglas (Black), in 2005 PC Tuffey hit Douglas over the head with a police baton. Douglas was arrested and despite vomiting in his cell, he wasn’t taken to the hospital until 14 hours later,  he suffered a fractured skull and damage to his brain stem. No disciplinary action was taken against the police. 

Joy Gardner, (Jamaican), 40, “They say she was ‘illegal’, but she wasn’t illegal. She came here legally, she paid her fare, but she overstayed her time.“Then they broke into her flat, put 13 feet of tape around her head and a belt on her legs, and they suffocated her.” The police were cleared.

Roger Sylvester (Black), 30, Sylvester suffered from mental health illnesses. He was arrested in  1999 and held down by six officers. He fell in to a coma and never regained consciousness. The police were cleared of any wronging.

Azelle Rodney (Black),16, was shot by police 6 times in 2013. The officer said he suspected Rodney was hiding a machine gun. No machine guns were found on his person. The officer in question was arrested and sent to trial but the jury found him not guilty. 

Habib Ullah (South Asian), 39, ‘During one hearing Emma Forbes, who was present at the time, said officers had held Mr Ullah face down on the ground at one point, and said they had “their hands around his throat, pressing down and putting their hands in his mouth at the same time”.’

Faruk Ali (South Asian), in Luton 2014, two police officers laughed as they chased after Ali, (who is autistic and has the mental age of 5) in their car and the proceeded to beat him. Thankfully, Mr Ali is alive and well. This incident lead to protests and a demand for justice for people with mental health issues. The police officers were sacked but no charges were made against them. 

Adrian Thompson (Black), 34, Thomson was tasered by police after he was accused of breaking into flats when in fact he went to a friend’s birthday party. He died in the back of the police van. 

Jean Charles de Menezes (Brazillian), 27, was shot by police after they suspected him of being a terrorist a day after the London 7/7 bombings in 2005 (he was not, it was mistaken identity but police shot first). No officers were charged, his parents took the case of the ECJ but they lost the fight. 

Demetre Fraser (Black), 21, Fraser died after falling 11ft from a tower block in Birgmingham in 2014 after being chased by police. Police were not at fault according to met. 

Aston McLean (Black), 27, McLean was being chased by police in 2014 when he was hit by an armed response vehicle. McLean was pepper sprayed before he was hit. officers cleared. 

Olaseni Lewis (Black), 23, Lewis died after being restrained by 11 police officers. Officers were not charged but a law called ‘Seni’s law’ came into effect in 2018 ‘ Under the new legislation, hospitals will be required to publish data on how and when physical force is used.’

Anthony Grainger (Black), 36, was shot through the chest as he sat in a car in the village of Culcheth, Cheshire, by an armed police officer known as “Q9” in March 2012. Police were cleared.

David “Rocky” Benett (Black), Benett suffered with mental health illnesses. He was restrained for 25 minutes by up to five NHS staff members.  He had punched a female member of staff after being moved to a different ward to separate him from another patient he had hit, but who later attacked Mr Bennett and racially abused him.“Rocky died a brutal death,” Dr Bennett said. “He was pinned face down on the ground by the very people who we trusted to care for him.  “It breaks my heart every time I think about that night and it will live with me and my family forever.”

Alton Manning (Black), 33, “Manning, a prisoner on remand, and was killed on 8th December 1995 after being assaulted by prison officers at the private prison HMP Blakenhurst. An Inquest, which originally opened on Monday 12th January 1998 and concluded on 25th March 1998, unanimously decided that Alton Manning was unlawfully killed.” The officers were cleared. 

Mark Nune (Black), 35, police acted as judge, jury and executioner after shooting Nune during a robbery.   

- it’s not mentioned here so I’m not going to go into it right now by please search up Stephen Lawrence, it is an extremely important case and if there’s one thing you can do for his memory is learn about him and remember his name. 

[theparanormalperiodical]

Top 10 Controversial Horror Films That Are Famous For All The Wrong Reasons *gags* *cries*

At the beating heart of horror is offence.

From that undeniable sense of something not being quite right, to the CGI-blood-spurtin’-adrenaline-fuelled scenes that leave us shaking in our boots, horror pivots on the knife edge of controversy.

It’s used to drive plots. It’s used to drive hype. And at the end of the month, it drives studio executives to the bank.

Horror films can be traumatic enough. But there are some films that bear the cross of controversy more than others. There are some films that have been branded as so damaging to their potential viewers that merely circulating copies of the film is illegal.

And yet their infamy has forged cult viewership. What was once shielded from us has now become ‘must see’.

Today we are going to be counting down horror’s most controversial films and what made them quite so topical.

*I’m going to star the ones that you can actually watch without getting traumatised. Some are controversial not because of their content but because some religious or political groups disagreed with them*

#10 - The Blair Witch Project (1999)*

Let’s ease in with a classic - a classic you can watch without sleeping with the light on.

In this found-footage flick we see a team of film students as they explore a local urban legend. But what they find leads them to unknown and ungodly territory.

The problem with this film is that it was marketed as a true story. No, not based on a true story, a true story. Yep, they claimed what we were seeing was real, found footage of some teens going mad as they forage deeper into mysterious woods.

IMBd went so far as to report that the actors were dead. Then, the movie studio super-charged their efforts to confirm to the public that not only was this film 100% real, the three main actors were still missing. The parents of the actors then started receiving sympathy cards.

There’s even a mocked up website that perpetuates these claims. 

#9 - Night Of The Living Dead (1968)*

Time for another not-too-disturbing film.

This is the original zombie apocalypse film saw a group of Americans attempt to survive an incoming attack of the undead while trapped in a rural farmhouse.

But the Motion Picture Association of America wasn’t too happy about it. The film rating system was yet to be in place, allowing children to also show up for an afternoon screening and be greeted by a 97 minute montage of extreme violence.

“The kids in the audience were stunned. There was almost complete silence. The movie had stopped being delightfully scary about halfway through, and had become unexpectedly terrifying. There was a little girl across the aisle from me, maybe nine years old, who was sitting very still in her seat and crying”

#8 - Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986)

In this psychological film, we watch a random crime spree take place at the hands of a couple serial killers. Loosely based on real murderers Henry Lee Lucas and Ottis Toole, its controversial reputation was founded on the gore ‘n’ guts screened in the movie.

Whilst it didn’t receive much attention from the public, various classification boards across the world ensured new versions edited with certain scenes - often involving sexual assault and necrophilia - removed for viewers.

In 2003, the BBFC (the UK classification board) finally allowed the uncut version to be released and Australia followed suit in 2005.

#7 - I Spit On Your Grave (1978)

It’s the original rape-revenge flick. And it managed to piss everyone off.

Originally titled Day of the Woman, it tells the story of a fiction writer who exacts revenge on a group of four men who gang rape her.

Despite its pro-women claim-to-fame, the 30 minute rape scene begs to differ. Furious debate surrounds its feminist label as a film that forces the audience to endure rape from a female perspective and long-winded violence against men (something which is often reserved for women in horror). Regardless, the graphic violence earned it a steady ban in Ireland, Norway, Iceland, and West Germany.

#6 - Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984)*

You don’t get many controversial Christmas films. They typically stick to a cookie-cutter plot ‘n’ purpose every holiday season. But there are no strong women who need to rediscover the meaning of Christmas here.

Instead, we see a child traumatised by seeing his parents murdered on Christmas Eve go on a seasonal rampage as an adult.

A week after its release in the early 80s, it was pulled from theatres due to backlash. Marketing was focused on a Santa Claus killer with adverts often airing during family-friendly TV programmes and meant numerous children developed a phobia of Father Christmas. Large crowds protested cinemas with one notable protest involving angry families singing carols at the Interboro Quad Theater in The Bronx.

It was only in 2009 - 25 years after its original release - that a DVD of the film was first made available for purchase in the UK.

#5 - Psycho (1960)*

This legendary film follows the disappearance of a young woman after her encounter with a strange man called Norman Bates, one of horror’s most iconic figures. The controversy that would engulf this fim lay not in the violent attack on an innocent woman or even the disturbing content of the film.

Oh, no. It was because of what the leading lady was wearing.

In the opening scene of the film, we see Janet Leigh wearing nothing but a bra.

*gasp*

This racy attire was emblazoned across promotional material, meeting Hitchcock’s high standards of creating controversy around the movie. There was a no late admission policy for movie theaters, and the posters told viewers “Do not reveal the surprises!” to maintain a mysterious aura around the plot twist.

#4 - The Human Centipede (2009) (all of ‘em)

I’ve watched a lot of horror films, in case you couldn’t tell.

I’m used to watching a scary movie, shaking off the anxiety, and moving on with my life. But there are some that stayed with me. I only watched the trailer for the first movie, and it legitimately traumatised me. It gave me quite a severe, sudden bout of a depression for a solid month when I was 13.

Throughout horror’s goriest franchise, we see an evil doctor and amateur mad scientist attempt to sow several people together into a centipede-like chain from mouth to anus.

*retches*

At the heart of promoting the franchise was controversy. Tom Six, the director, forced a narrative that claimed from the first film that this was "100% medically accurate". He even alleged a Dutch doctor helped inspire the film, confirming that with an IV drip, this was entirely possible.

Although it didn’t receive furore that amounted to serious censorship or long-term banning, it was infamous for having its viewers vomiting in the cinema aisles.

The second film, however, was subject to much more severe controversy and could not legally be supplied in the UK until 2011 due to its heavy focus on sexual abuse, more graphic violence than the original film, and it’s pretty vile depiction of a murderer that was intellectually disabled.

Audiences were used to the graphic nature of the franchise by the third and final release. As the least-controversial and least-enjoyable film according to critics, it barely made a dent in the horror community.

Good riddance, I guess?

#3 - Faces Of Death (1978)

I’m not sure I’d recommend this one per se - but I will give it credit for being an interesting project.

This documentary-style film is a montage of footage of people dying in different ways. As a result of its very graphic and very real content, it was banned and censored in many countries. Only in 2003 was it released on DVD in the UK after a scene was cut featuring dogs fighting and a monkey being beaten to death.

Germany, Australia, and New Zealand followed suit, reversing their bans and releasing edited versions.

However, 7 years after its release, the media revamped its interest in the film after a maths teacher showed it to his class at a Californian high school. Two of his students claimed they were so traumatised they received a costly settlement to reimburse their emotional distress. Things took a darker turn a year later, when a 14 year old bludgeoned a classmate to death with a baseball bat; he claimed he wanted to see what it would be like to actually kill someone after watching Faces of Death.

#2 - Cannibal Holocaust (1980)

This Italian film’s title alone hints towards two frightening things: flesh-eating humans and genocide. In this found-footage movie we see an anthropologist lead a rescue team into the Amazon rainforest to find a group of filmmakers that went missing.

The rampant graphic content including sexual assault and animal cruelty showcased in the film (7 animals were killed during filming in some pretty horrific ways) led to it being banned in 50 countries.

Some also alleged that a handful of deaths seen in the film were real, as were the missing film crew. In fact, the actors portraying the documentarians signed contracts that stopped them appearing in motion pictures for an entire year to maintain the illusion of reality.

And only 10 days after its premiere, the director was charged with obscenity and the film confiscated. All copies were to be turned over to the authorities. There are currently a range of versions that have been edited to varying degrees and are allowed for circulation.

#1 - A Serbian Film (2010)

No.

Nope.

Don’t do it. Don’t watch this film.

A Serbian Film follows a retired porn star who agrees to feature in an “art film” for some cash. Little does he know this film will include rape, incest, pedophilia, necrophilia…

Just don’t watch it.

It is still banned in South Korea, New Zealand, Australia. It is supposedly a parody of politically correct films made in Serbia that are funded by foreign groups and allegedly speaks openly about post-war society and the struggle for survival.

*shakes head*

Off to have a 3 hour shower, brb.

If you, uhhh, liked this post please like and reblog.

And if you want to hear more about horror and the supernatural every week hit follow!

[beardedmrbean]

Chilling audio has captured disgraced legal scion Alex Murdaugh laughing that he has “allegedly done illegal stuff” in a jailhouse phone call with his surviving son – one year on from the still-unsolved double murder of his wife and son.

In the phone call, part of a trove of jailhouse calls obtained by The State, Mr Murdaugh is heard speaking to his adult son Buster Murdaugh from the Alvin S. Glenn Detention Center in Richland County, where he has been holed up since October on a string of financial fraud charges.

Buster is heard acknowledging that his father has done “illegal s***” as they discuss a search warrant that he believes was improperly served on Mr Murdaugh while he was behind bars.

“Well, I think it does matter, man… I mean, something’s got to give,” he says.

“I understand that you’ve done illegal s***. But it doesn’t mean you can just, you know, turn a cold shoulder to the laws of the United States.”

At that point in the call, Mr Murdaugh – who is also facing charges for allegedly orchestrating a botched hit on himself – makes an unsettling joke about his alleged crimes.

“Allegedly done illegal stuff,” he tells his son, laughing.

He then adds: “I’m kidding, anyway… so… It is what it is, you know? It is what it is.”

Mr Murdaugh’s team fought to prevent the release of the tapes to the local outlet, after it filed a Freedom of Information Act request. Their efforts to stop its release was thrown out by a judge.

Mr Murdaugh has had a spectacular fall from grace over the last year and found himself at the centre of a twisted tale involving unsolved murders, millions of dollars of allegedly embezzled funds, a suicide-for-hire plot and several mysterious deaths that are now under investigation.

The son of a powerful South Carolina legal dynasty first hit headlines last summer when his wife Maggie and youngest son Paul were shot dead in a brutal double murder at the family’s hunting lodge in Islandton, South Carolina, on 7 June 2021.

It was Mr Murdaugh who said he discovered their bodies, placing a traumatic 911 call that night.

No arrests have ever been made in the case, no suspects named and no charges brought.

At the time of their deaths, 22-year-old Paul was due to stand trial over the death of 19-year-old Mallory Beach in a 2019 boat crash.

Paul was allegedly drunk driving a boat when he crashed it, throwing his friend Ms Beach to her death.

He was charged with boating under the influence and faced up to 25 years in prison but was killed before his trial.

Three months after his wife and son’s deaths, Mr Murdaugh then allegedly hired a hitman to fake his own murder.

On 4 September, the attorney called 911 claiming he was ambushed in a drive-by shooting while he was changing a tire on the side of a road in Hampton County.

Mr Murdaugh was shot in the head and taken to hospital with superficial injuries.

One day after the shooting, Mr Murdaugh entered rehab for a 20-year opioid addiction and announced he had resigned from his law firm Peters, Murdaugh, Parker, Eltzroth, & Detrick (PMPED).

Days later, his law firm partners accused him of stealing millions of dollars from its clients going back years.

The partners had confronted Mr Murdaugh about the allegations and ousted him from the firm just one day before the shooting.

Mr Murdaugh’s version of events around the shooting rapidly fell apart and he confessed to police to paying an alleged hitman to shoot and kill him in an assisted suicide plot so Buster could get a $10m life insurance windfall.

Both Mr Murdaugh and his alleged accomplice Curtis Smith – who the attorney had previously represented – were charged over the incident.

Mr Murdaugh was released on bond on the promise that he enter rehab for his opioid addiction.

He was then arrested on his release from rehab in October on charges of stealing funds from the wrongful death settlement over the mysterious trip and fall death of the family’s longtime housekeeper Gloria Satterfield in 2018.

Mr Murdaugh is accused of siphoning off $3.4m of the $4m settlement meant for Satterfield’s sons to a fake company called Forge.

Questions have been swirling around Satterfield’s death ever since and investigators reopened a probe into her death.

Earlier this month, officials announced plans to exhume her body.

Satterfield worked for the influential Murdaugh family for more than 20 years when she was found at the bottom of some stairs at the family’s home.

She died weeks later from her injuries.

At the time, her death was regarded as an accidental fall – though her death certificate cited her manner of death as “natural”.

Mr Murdaugh reached an agreement to pay her family $4m in a wrongful death settlement – money he is now accused of swindling from his insurance company to help fund his drug habit.

An investigation was also reopened into a third mystery death connected to the Murdaugh family.

Stephen Smith, 19, was found dead in a road from blunt force trauma to the head in 2015.

His death was officially ruled a hit-and-run but the victim’s family have long doubted this version of events and said that rumours swirled in the community that a “Murdaugh boy” may have been involved.

In total, Mr Murdaugh is facing a staggering 79 charges from 15 indictments around the suicide-for-hire plot and schemes to defraud the Satterfield family and other victims out of millions of dollars.

[fiddlepickdouglas]

Viva Las Vegas, Pt. 22 - Agreed

Summary: Sunset Curve Alive AU, Willex, what does he want?, 2.9k

@trevor-wilson-covington is the bestie who makes these lovely edit, we stan supportive friends

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12, Part 13, Part 14, Part 15, Part 16, Part 17, Part 18, Part 19, Part 20, Part 21

“How did you get in?”

Every ounce of blood in Willie’s veins pulsed as it coursed through his trembling limbs. He could feel his mind rushing to put together a defense. There was nothing he had prepared - he’d never thought to prepare for this. Any illusion of freedom and safety fell like a vase onto a marble floor. There was fire in the room and Willie was nothing but a piece of paper.

“Persuasion,” Caleb stated obscurely. Sheldon leapt from his lap and toward his owner, glad to be free of the strange hold he’d been in. Willie remained lost for words as he watched Caleb turn and look at his sketches on the wall in a similar fashion as the time before. It made him clench his teeth and nearly begin huffing in anger.

“It wasn’t all that difficult to find you, especially considering your friends aren’t as good at keeping secrets as they believe.”

“Don’t you dare touch anything,” Willie seethed. It was already unsettling to know he’d sat there holding Sheldon for who knew how long.

Caleb turned back to him and chuckled darkly as he shook his head.

“I just wanna talk!” he said in that strange, business-like charisma he was so good at switching to. “I knew you would refuse if I asked nicely, so pardon the intrusion, but humor me, won’t you William?”

“It’s Willie.”

Sighing, Caleb only looked at him expectantly. Planted where he stood, Willie listened to his heart thump against his chest. A surge of loathing came over him as he looked at the man across the room. He wanted nothing to do with Caleb so why should he be forced to? Staring at him, despising  every second of his presence, he realized one thing: the longer he made Caleb wait, the longer the man would remain in his apartment. The only way to get rid of him was to let him speak. Anyway, he wasn’t sure he could stand the stalemate they were in anymore.

“What do you want?” he asked, not toning down the anger simmering under everything. His entire body vibrated with it.

“An agreement,” Caleb said. “See, legally I’m still your guardian. Things got a little messy a few months back, but they never got handled properly.”

“You said I was dead!” Willie bursted aloud.

Caleb held up his hands in defense.

“A mistake I won’t ever repeat. But you see, that’s only what I told your friends. It was much easier than explaining that you were missing, which was the official statement I gave back in Vegas.”

Willie squinted as he tried to understand what he was being told. He’d thought for sure Caleb would’ve claimed he was dead so he didn’t have to deal with everything.

“They found no body in the shed, so how do you think that looks on me?” Caleb continued. “Actually it looks bad for both of us: it means you committed arson, which is a felony with some pretty terrible consequences; and I am now the guardian of a runaway criminal who should’ve been able to keep his kid in line. Social services won’t get off my back, but that’s nothing compared to what you will face if you’re caught.”

Those words made Willie want to shrink away from existence. He knew Caleb was right. It was going to be impossible to prove his innocence if he ever had to face charges. Wait, was Caleb going to make those charges against him now?

“So what’s the agreement?” he asked warily. Fear seemed to fill every inch of him like a weight. Watching as Caleb stood and approached him, he went cold.

“You come back with me,” Caleb said as he moved toward him. “No hard feelings, no charges. We give them a story about how you were taken and I managed to find you -  I have plenty of enemies without a solid alibis I can put the blame on - and you’re free. I let you work in my club, and as long as you follow what I say,” -  Caleb pressed a finger into Willie’s chest for emphasis - “then you won’t ever have to worry about any jail time and social services can stop wringing my neck. We both get a clean slate. I’m offering you complete protection, which I should say is extremely generous after everything you’ve put me through.”

Willie looked back into Caleb’s eyes, trying to find a weakness, or something he could take advantage of. There was nothing. Caleb had thought through everything and more. A sudden nudge against his leg made him look down at Sheldon, who was mewing and peering up at him with his big eyes, like he knew something was wrong. It hit him that if he said no there was no saying what would happen to Sheldon.

“Why do you even want me back?” he wondered in frustration.

Caleb took in a deep breath before looking at him thoughtfully.

“Because, William. There’s one thing you need to know and it’s that I win. I have the power and I’m not letting someone like you take from me without paying it all back. You think you found freedom just because someone turned up with pretty blonde hair and sweet green eyes and made you smile?”

The dig at Alex made Willie clench his fists tighter and press his lips together.

“Oh,” Caleb said, tutting at Willie’s response. “You’ll forget about him. He’ll forget about you. It won’t take long. Especially when he realizes you didn’t stay around to fight for his side when I take his band to court.”

His whole body tensed and Willie shook his head.

“No!” he gasped. Tears quickly spilled onto his cheeks. “You can do what you want with me, but leave Alex and his friends alone!”

“Too late,” Caleb said, unbothered as he grabbed his coat from the chair. “That’s not part of the deal.” He pulled on his coat and moved toward the door. “I’ll let you decide, but the clock is ticking.”

As he made his way out, Willie stood in defeat. Frankly, there was no other decision he knew to make. He had no power to protect Alex if Caleb made charges against him for arson and he actually did go to prison. Before the man could get too far, Willie ran after him.

“Wait!” he cried.

Caleb stood at the top of the stairs and peered down at him, raising an eyebrow and listening intently.

“I’ll go.” He hated hearing the words come out of his mouth, but he had to. “Just please go easy on Alex and his band. They only went as far as they did because of things I told them.”

Nodding, Caleb considered his words. Willie bowed his head, the shame taking over.

“I’ll be here tomorrow evening,” Caleb told him. “Be ready.” And with that, he turned and disappeared into the night.

Willie stood in his doorway and felt everything crashing down upon him. All the things he’d worked for, all the things he’d made for himself here - they were as good as ash in the flames. There was a great knot in his chest that trapped out all hopes of ever getting any of it back. Before he knew it, Willie was heaving and gasping for air on the floor of his apartment, dizzy and distraught. Fresh hot tears came faster than he could clear them away, and none of it helped untie the vicious knot that kept growing and eating away at every sense of happiness.

He hated himself. Willie hated how foolish he was for never thinking through anything and getting himself in such a mess. All he could do was imagine what could’ve been if he’d just waited things out. He could’ve aged out and gotten away from Caleb peacefully. Could’ve found Alex when they had an album out and toured in Vegas again. He would be worth more to Alex like that than he was now, at least. This wasn’t what Alex deserved; not some poor, directionless, impulsive coward who would never overcome his past.

Still the thought of betraying Alex wracked him with sobs. What Caleb had said about him hadn’t been fair - they were more than that. And even with everything Willie had just done, he didn’t think they’d forget each other so fast. The way Alex had come right back to him after they found each other again was proof of that. Willie would never forget him, for sure, even if things did go badly. Alex had been the start of the best thing Willie ever had.

He loved Alex.

At some point the sobs and shaking faded away with all the energy he had left and he fell asleep, Sheldon curled up beside him. It wasn’t until some early morning hour that he woke again and moved to his bed. To no surprise at all, he was already having that dream again - the one where everything burned. Normally he would’ve stayed awake trying to ward it off with something that made him happy, but there was nothing left that wasn’t tainted with pain. Maybe if he’d had Alex there to hold him and tell him he was okay, but he was alone.

For the rest of the night he went between fitful sleep and panicked waking. He wasn’t sure what time it was when he heard a knock on the door, but judging by the light through the small window in the kitchen area, it was likely close to noon. Another knock sounded and he tried to shake all the tiredness away and straighten up his appearance before opening the door.

“Alex?” he murmured groggily at the sight of the beautiful blonde boy at the door. Looking at him, so perfect, so pure and sweet, made his heart crack in two.

“Hey, is it a bad time for me to come?” Alex asked. “You said stop by whenever, and I didn’t have a way to warn you so - ”

“Alex.” He couldn’t think of anything else to say. How could he explain it all? There was no way he could possibly tell Alex he was leaving him behind and going back to the man who had caused so much hurt. If only he could steal him away, too, but he would never want to subject him to life with Caleb. He had to figure out how to say goodbye without letting Alex down.

“Are you okay, Willie?” Alex was saying, brows knit together with worry.

Taking in a deep breath, Willie thought quickly for a response.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Um...something came up, and I need to be ready as soon as possible. And I just woke up.” He placed a hand on his face, partially because he was still dog-tired but also to avoid crying again. He hoped it looked like he was just sorry to change plans.

“Oh, I’m sorry, that sucks,” Alex said, his posture drooping with disappointment. Nothing about this made sending him away any easier.

“I’m kind of unsure how this whole weekend is gonna look, since things changed,” Willie said, trying to keep his voice steady. “I really wish I didn’t have to do it.” He meant that with every fiber of his being, even though Alex couldn’t have understood.

“I get it,” Alex responded patiently. “I don’t have to be in the studio anymore but I remember what that’s like. Stuff happens.” Always speaking with his hands, the way Willie would never forget. He could watch it all day, even if Alex weren’t in a good mood.

“I really did want to see you,” he said, pouring as much sincerity as he could into those words. Alex’s eyes peered into his with softness and warmth. Willie couldn’t get over how beautiful he looked, with the sun at the right angle to make him glow like an angel, and the discreet curl at the corner of his lips, eyes gleaming as if there wasn’t anything wrong at all in that moment.

“I know,” Alex said, almost quietly.

Unprompted, Willie’s hand brushed back a strand of hair hanging in Alex’s face, and then rested on Alex’s cheek. In that moment, there was something so delicate about him and Willie couldn’t stand knowing how soon that would break. For a while Alex simply stared back into his eyes and there came that feeling again. The one Willie had felt outside of the Pearl, and countless times afterward, telling him that he and Alex were more than just two cute strangers. 

He pulled Alex into a kiss, and they held each other as it deepened, the world falling away for a moment. Maybe he could say the proper things this way. If Willie could do that for Alex, maybe it would hurt less for both of them. All he hoped was for him to understand that everything Willie was doing was for him, given the options that he had. Or at least he could feel the sweetness of Alex’s love just one more time.

As they let go, he saw the look in Alex’s eyes. The surprise, the enjoyment, the confusion, the worry. There were no waves pulling him ashore, keeping him safe, calming his worries. Those were gone for good. They caressed each other’s faces and Willie felt Alex’s thumb rub across his cheek.

“I told you I missed you,” Willie said, finally gaining the strength to give him a goofy smirk.

Alex chuckled.

“I could tell,” he said, the smile on his face growing wider as he lowered his hands. That was a good thing. “But I guess we’ll have to reschedule.”

Willie simply nodded.

“Well, then, I won’t hold you up.” 

“Okay. Bye,” Willie said, trying to sound as casual as possible. He bit his lip to somehow keep everything together.

“Bye.” Alex pecked him on the cheek and then made his way up the steps, but turned before he’d made it to the top. “I’ll call you!”

Willie nodded again and sucked in a sharp breath. He watched Alex head back down the sidewalk until he was no longer in sight. That had been goodbye. It had been surreal, like none of it was really happening. Maybe he could wake up and everything would be just fine, after all. He knew that wasn’t likely, but it was a nice thought. Crying again was no use now. He had too much to get done before Caleb arrived. Sighing heavily, feeling both halves of his heart sitting in a pit in his chest, Willie went inside to feed Sheldon.

Mere hours later, he sat in the passenger seat of Caleb’s car. It was already dark. Caleb had really thought through everything, up to the point of bringing a trailer to pack Willie’s desk, dresser, and mattress, as well as the rest of his stuff. Sheldon was in the carrier he’d gotten from Bessie, resting in the back seat. All Willie felt up to doing was watching the desert pass by, stretching out in every direction, like a wide open cage.

The memory of riding in the truck ran across his mind. There was a sick irony that rose from the pit of his stomach. Willie remembered wondering about the difference between Caleb and his real father. Who was the better man? The one who had left him behind or the one at the steering wheel to his left? Now he was certain he knew the answer.

“Don’t worry about where you’ll sleep,” Caleb was saying. “Everything from your handiwork has been cleaned up. It took no time to get a new shed in place.”

Willie didn’t bother responding, keeping his gaze out the window toward the black sky above. He didn’t have to talk. They weren’t friends; they didn’t even like each other. At least he didn’t have to pretend anymore, so long as it didn’t get him in trouble. Any moment outside of working at the club would be a quiet rebellion, and that was nothing Caleb could take away. It would maybe take some time, but he’d get out again.

He remembered going to the record store and telling Kyle that he had to quit.

“What?” Kyle had replied, unable to believe what he was hearing. “You can’t be serious, man.”

“I have to move,” was all Willie could explain. “I can’t stay where I’m at anymore and I only have one place to go.”

The look Kyle had given him, the way he hadn’t expected such a change, somehow hadn’t hurt. Willie almost felt like he deserved more anger from Kyle. He hadn’t been able to tell Alex as much and face his reaction, so there was a sort of imbalance. It was like he needed someone to yell in his face and tell him he was being stupid, or that he was absolutely being the coward everyone thought he was for taking Caleb’s offer. A punch or a slap would’ve been welcome.

Instead Kyle had told him the job was his whenever he wanted to come back. He’d gotten sympathy, and a ‘hope everything’s okay, man.’ Sitting inside the car presently, Willie still didn’t understand. But it no longer mattered. The one optimistic thought came that at least he could visit Escobar again.

The hours stretched in sync with the darkness, and for a while, Willie had passed out. He began to stir again just as Caleb was approaching the freeway exit back into Vegas, and the nighttime lights flooded into the window. It had really been almost five months since he’d last been there. It seemed like forever, but sounded so short. Somehow, Willie already knew what he would do the first chance he could get out.

He was going up the Stratosphere and he was going to scream.

[steve0discusses]

S5 Ep 3: Apdnarg is Really Hard to Spell

 Yo guys, people are getting vaccinated, the sun is parting through the clouds, and I felt so nice that I even stopped listening to quite so many throwback 00′s BTS mashups (and yet I keep clicking on these dissonant catastrophes thinking “this time it’s got to be better. This time they’ll figure it out.” and like, no. Turns out you can’t match Brittany’s Toxic with BTS’ Black Swan. You can’t do that.)

This must be a sign that things are getting better. If anything, it means my personal tastes are improving. I mean I only clicked on like 3 “Dark Academia” Playlists where I could pretend I’m some sort of spooky witch in an abandoned library with a bad music player and basic taste in classical music (like can we ban Satie from Youtube for a little while?). Hell, I might even do a prompt update to this blog!

Yeah, you heard me, I’m actually going to stay ahead of the update schedule for Yugioh Abridged (maybe. I haven’t actually watched cuz of spoilers, I just noticed the thumbnail pop up on Youtube and was like “Damn it, they came out of hiatus??? I got hurry UP.”)

Anyway, speaking of the sky parting.

I’ll have you know my bro said this is actually more like a circumcision and it was one of the worst thing I have ever heard.

We get a chance to take in this lineup of confusing and varied character designs, and Joey. who is...still Joey.

The animators probably had to hold a strike in order for them to put Yugi in the audience, lets be real. There are TOO MANY PEOPLE in this shot and one is wearing a turban where you draw every single wrap. I hope those artists charged by the line.

Tea has a subplot where she’s just very frustrated with everyone she knows. They have been traveling together for like many weeks and got trapped in a foreign country so I get it. But at the same time, it’s kind of hard to picture Tea with female friends.

Because right now you got this 12 year old child, the other duelist who does not care about anything besides cards, and Kaiba’s 3 dragon cards that we’ve all collectively decided are female.

Hell it’s almost like the writers are asking themselves why Tea is here. Maybe they forgot. There’s no more ghosts to bus, no more people to knock out with her ass with random Olympic feats. Tea’s just sidelining.

(read more under the cut)

Mokuba is a itty bit bit taller this season, and so I guess that means he can legally climb on top of the cherry picker in order to give a riveting speech.

Really says a lot about Mokuba that he is so unphased about talking to, I dunno...an entire planet of people. Kind of a shame we never see this courage from Mokuba used for anything other than talking really, really big and giving everyone around him a really hard time.

Mokuba takes a moment to dunk on Yugi Muto, as is Kaiba tradition.

And then introduce the first pair of duelists, which obviously must be between the few people in this tournament that we actually know and care about.

Thankfully, in between last episode and this episode, Yugi has figured out who his own Grandpa is. This is a relief, because Yugi is such a mess, that I was fully convinced it would take over half a season for him to recognize it. I mean how long did it take him to figure out he shares a body with a ghost? Like half a season?

Instead Yugi recovered gracefully from not recognizing his grandpa, but it’s not like he bothered to tell anyone else, so the rest of our cast is just gonna be like “Is he my hairdresser? The guy who delivers my mail? Who is this guy who made absolutely no significant changes to his outfit or voice?”

Like sometimes this show goes full Spongebob silly kid’s show and you never know when to take it seriously or not. They might be sacrificing the entire cast next episode. I really don’t know. But for now their big concern is who is grandpa??? Like an innocent card version of “Are you my Mother?”

Faced with public speaking, Yugi decides to have a melt down.

We have seen him face monsters, we’ve seen him on TV dozens of times, he’s been in multiple competitions...but give a speech? Of course he can’t do that. The kid doesn’t attend enough school to know how to do that. Them’s learning skills.

And that was when a newly assembled wife-jet spliced through the sky like a souped up razer scooter and deposited 1 fully equipped Seto Kaiba in a Buzz Lightyear jetsuit.

THE RECOVERY.

Seto always watching over his Brother, ready to save this awkward party if it kills him (and it really should, that suit is held together by two seat-belts), making sure to get on that platform before Yugi starts going off about how he’s half an Ancient Egyptian. (Ah, life before social media. You could just be hella famous and also half a dead dude and people would just not know. I kinda miss the time before I knew literally everything about everyone.)

Please admire how close those flames are to setting Mokuba’s heavily hairsprayed mane completely alight. It would be an unforgettable spectacle.

These were absolutely just random ass jet packs that Gozaburo Kaiba made to kill hell tons of people, right? Like Seto found it in the family cabin, clutched to the heart of some crispy fried corpse and was like “neat! Mokuba! I found a cool toy!” and just plucked that thing out of that skeleton’s clutches and has been flying around for months?

Like this is Seto Kaiba’s Butter Glider, right?

Seriously what type of vehicle license do you need for one of these things? RIP My ‘Seto only has a scooter license’ headcanon.

Which I’m only even thinking about because I’ve had to try and make an appt with the DMV for days to get a freakin REAL ID. I went to sleep in 2019 and I could fly on a plane. I woke up in 2021 and it’s like “Want one last screw you?” and just...can 2020 please stop screwing me over? It’s March.

Anyway, the Jet is removed soon after, so no, this is not part of his new outfit. He goes right back to his Post-S4-Trauma-Normcore.

After wrestling this competition out of his brother’s hands and confusing everyone in the audience, Roland must have gotten the memo to cut the microphone before Seto got too excited and we were quickly ushered on to the next stage of the tournament.

One sec...the BTS Mashup playlist I just clicked on did a Black Swan X 7 rings mashup and it’s the worst thing my ears have ever heard.

Holy crap. I had to actually turn down my volume. Like...Ariana Grande already has music that has way too many overlapping singing parts on it--and then lets just stick a 52-person boy band on top? That’ll fix it. Yeah. Go ahead.

Wow. Even I had to change the song and you know how much I enjoy pop culture mistakes.

Spot the Mickey but like a million times easier because it’s a Massive Dick Shaped Dragon.

Yep. That’s my grocery shopping outfit. Except maybe not a lab coat and a duel disk. Wish I had a duel disk, that would make social distancing just a hell ton earlier. Just a “Yo, only one person in checkout, please” and then bap them on the head with a propelled discuss/hologram.

Anyway, Grocery shopping/Doctor man dueled the Purple Hair Boy, and considering that Purple Hair got screen time and shook Yugi’s hand once--I think that Doctor man doesn’t stand a freakin chance.

Good. I hate him.

Also, every time he breathes he’s gonna fog up his glasses. I have experience in this area. He can’t read his own cards in the same way I can’t read my phone if I’m in the refrigerated aisle.

So the way this tournament works, is everyone has to sit in the stadium to watch the show. Kinda like showing up to a football stadium just to watch a recorded TV monitor...but then again...that is how it feels to watch a football game at a football stadium when it’s live (at least with the tickets I usually get.)

And as we watch Grandpa waiting for his competitor, we find out that his competitor (Joey) is too busy eating snacks to give him the time of day.

Why do cartoon hot dogs always have lettuce? Is that seriously supposed to be relish? Or is there a place in the world where you put lettuce on your hot dog?

Sorry, bro has just informed of his favorite hot dog order, which is absolutely terrible so I will share it with you: a Five Guys hot dog with ketchup, mustard, pickle relish, onions, mushrooms, pickled peppers, and you guessed it--topped with freakin lettuce.

My own kin. How am I over 30 and just finding out that my baby brother thinks it’s normal to walk into a restaurant with normal god-fearing law-abiding people and order lettuce and mushrooms on a hot dog?

I have fully failed him.

The rest of this episode is watching both Joey Wheeler and Mokuba have a shared panic attack while Seto does freakin nothing.

Please remember that Seto has both a jetpack and a dragon wife plane and could have easily solved this problem. But nah.

Then again, Seto Kaiba has given this crew so MANY rides, that maybe he’s tired of being the Soccer Mom for the team?

Like they don’t actually say this episode, but Seto was the one in charge of like...this entire place, do you think he made the 2 for 1 special just to get Joey where it hurts the most? Or does it actually not take any subterfuge to screw Joey Wheeler because he’s just naturally this way?

Like Mokuba wasn’t there when Joey was told “stay right here, and then we will all go together to fight Dartz” and Joey was like “I’mma save Mai from herself although she told me not to!” and then he Hella Died. But, Mokuba did see the result, AKA, Joey’s dead body being carried on the back of Tristan. Maybe Mokuba never realized that Joey died because he went out of his way to be late?

Lets do a tally of every time I can recall with my dodgy memory that Joey was threatened to be DQ’d/pretty much was DQ’d either by his own fault or no fault of his own

-When he wasn’t allowed to go on the boat to Murder Island because he was a stupid nobody kid who did not have a dueling glove

-When he wasn’t actually supposed to be in Pegasus’ tourney and was, in fact, secretly using half of Yugi’s entrance ticket the entire time

-when Bandit Keith stole the ticket that Joey got from Yugi so then Joey had to borrow Mai’s ticket although she had just used it so it really shouldn't have counted. Because, really anyone could have just piggy backed off of each other’s ticket until the whole boat went through that castle.

-When his account was hacked to get entered into Kaiba’s tourney when Kaiba very clearly told him he could not apply solely because he was Joey Wheeler.

-When he was late to his sister’s eye surgery because he got mugged by Marik’s Rare Hunters, so she almost refused to do the surgery.

-When Joey got possessed by Marik, and as Marik, threatened to murder everyone else in the tournament including both of the Kaiba brother’s who’s tournament it was, and then chained himself to Yugi Muto to throw both of them to the bottom of the ocean.

-I think there was a point when he threatened to attack Kaiba in Kaiba’s own tourney while not possessed? Like several times?

-when he got struck by Lightning and almost did not stand up fast enough after being struck by lightning, which is apparently a type of DQ in Duel Monsters.

-When he tried to save Mai from getting hit by a fireball, but then Yugi did it instead, and then so many people were standing on the dueling platform that Kaiba couldn’t possibly DQ them all.

-When he entered the restricted area of the blimp in order to hassle Kaiba into landing the Blimp, which Kaiba did not do.

-When Marik killed Joey before Joey could press the “go” button on his duel disk to play the card that should have won Joey the match.

-When he was dueling a lawyer in a digital universe but then the dice was like...weighted? So Noah had to walk over and be like “The hell is this weighted dice? This is my perfect digital world? How did you even do that?” and then Joey won because the match was no longer legit.

-When Joey yelled at Noah too much and so Noah turned Joey to stone for being a rude ass spectator

-When Mai was like “Wheeler and Valon, listen closely: do NOT murder each other” and then Joey did a murder on Valon so she was like “I guess I have no choice, I was very clear” and killed Joey straight up.

-When Joey decided to block Seto’s fireballs while Joey Wheeler WAS a playing card, somehow disrespecting both Dartz and Seto Kaiba at the same time.

-When Joey was playing cards but then got absorbed into a giant Leviathan and basically couldn’t play anymore after that.

-There’s probably hell ton of S0 stuff I just haven’t seen yet.

-This episode

And Joey runs fast for a montage of wacky things that really have no business being in a theme park. Things like this:

(remember when Bakura almost died from a rock that ended up being a balloon? It comes full circle.)

The stuff that the Kaiba brother’s think is normal and fun.

Anyway Joey fights off a bunch of hologram snakes and bats and everyone is like “Should we tell him it’s just holograms???” And it’s like wow, guys, how many times have these ‘holograms’ straight up murdered Joey Wheeler and everyone else on this cast? Too many? Because I have a google doc with so many deaths on it. 7,805,844,048, to be exact.

Anyway, he gets there with five seconds to spare and Mokuba’s like “well at least you were still entertaining while we filmed you in front of a live audience being a total spaz for 15 minutes straight, so I’ll let you go.”

Grandpa and Joey start playing, Joey completely oblivious that this is just an older Muto, while Hawkins walks up awkwardly and is like “hey guys. I’m so sorry about this.”

(welcome to my font choices, for those new here, I have to make weird font color choices to make sure it’s legible for the colorblind and also for the non-colorblind. This one is not much contrast, so I may change it up in the future, but for now, this is Grandpa Muto’s new font. I apologize to every graphic designer reading this. Please don’t tell anyone who has ever hired me for graphic design about this blog.)

What’s funny about this exchange is that after they find out that Yugi’s Grandpa is Apdnarg (HOLY my brain cannot get around the spelling for that, and I will not change it in the caps. I cannot do a ‘pdn’ ever again), they don’t stand on his side of the field or anything. Hawkins is legit Solomon Muto’s only fan during this exchange and like...damn. Way not to back your Grandpa, Yugi.

Yugi immediately strides up to Mokuba to non-confrontation-ally inform him that he has stepped over a line and Mokuba is like “what are these things you say called ‘lines?’”

According to Mokuba, Solomon Muto begged him to be in the competition so he could relive his glory days (glory days making no sense here, because the game has only been released for the past 15 years, so glory days is like...the before times that can only be referring to disgraced archeologists and Pegasus ((who is, in his own way...a disgraced archeologist, too))) and Mokuba was like

“You trained Yugi Muto, right? Hey that’s good enough for me. This drama is gold. People will eat it up. Hell yes. Don’t be afraid to abduct him a little bit. Maybe trap a couple people in a digital hellscape for a little while? Now we go by Pegasus house rules here, so fire as many lasers as you want, but just make sure not to hit anyone in the face. Oh man, we are going to be swimming in cash. Love it, Muto Sr, love it.”

But I dunno, I feel like Grandpa won’t make it past next episode. It is Joey. We kinda need him to make it past Ep 4 of the arc. If Grandpa Muto becomes the new Joey Wheeler, that will be a weird transition for this show to make.

But that’s all for today, as always, here is the link to read these in chrono order becuase there’s SO MANY that you don’t need to read backwards--don’t do it--just use the chrono tag (and I don’t know if you can add compound tags, but I did separate the Season from the Episode, so if you write S4, it should only pop up stuff from S4. I didn't’ do that to seasons 1-3 though because I just...didn’t.)

https://steve0discusses.tumblr.com/tagged/yugioh/chrono

And because I brought it up: here it is, the best BTS Mashup that I found on my deep dive. Like legit--this one isn’t a mess:

Most of other ones are horrible in a fascinating way. Like I’m not even a BTS fan, I think I sort of age out of that metric, I’m just bored and quarantined. And lets be real, we all appreciate a good bop when we hear it.