#who stands accused

[al-kol-eleh]

Spencer Joseph

[winepresswrath]

steepling my fingers because in Louis' mind Lestat doesn't know Louis' favourite suit and he doesn't know that Louis knows about the embroidery. louis keeps all his love to himself when it comes to lestat and spends it so cheaply on armand.

[batsplat]

Former MotoGP winner Marco Melandri has had a pop at reigning world champion Valentino Rossi via his Italian online blog marcomelandri.it. Melandri believes Rossi was fed bespoke tyres by Michelin before the French company were ousted from the MotoGP series after Bridgestone tyres won the sole supplier contract. Moreover, Melandri believes this is the reason Rossi's domination of the series is slowly diminishing: 'This is down to the fact that they don't make tyres anymore just for him,' wrote Melandri. 'This statement is meant to say that maybe Michelin, in 2004, had more than a small hand in the results. More like an arm.' There's more: Melandri goes on to say he believes Lorenzo's 'armchair' celebrations at this year's MotoGP from Le Mans had a more sinister message: 'Taking a closer look at it, you start to see more: the chair was yellow... like Valentino's yellow... which would say: "I, Lorenzo, am taking your place on your yellow chair".' When questioned about the stunt at yesterday's MotoGP press conference, Lorenzo looked puzzled, replying: "But the chair was green."

x

more of the blog entry under the cut

"Lorenzo's celebration was serious stuff, with a subtle yet biting message that only some will pick up on. Did you get it? Let's take a look at it together," Melandri wrote on his official website marcomelandri.it, with his words subsequently translated into English by Italian website GPone.com.

"When I rode by on the cool down lap, I saw Lorenzo sitting in front of the video screen and my first thought was: 'He is enjoying the sight of his own victory.' But noooooo!!!

"Taking a closer look at it, you start to see more: the chair was yellow... like Valentino's yellow... which would say: "I, Lorenzo, am taking your place on your yellow chair."

"Am I sitting down with the popcorn to enjoy my spectacular victory??? No, I am sitting here watching you cross the finish line, because I already passed it..."

Melandri also blasted Rossi for his response to the celebration and comment about the one-tyre rule.

"Valentino's statement: "I did it ten years ago"... Weak... followed by: "Now, with spec tyres, the rider can't make such a difference." This is down to the fact that they don't make tyres anymore just for him," wrote Melandri.

"This statement is meant to say that maybe Michelin, in 2004, had more than a small hand in the results. More like an arm.

"I don't want to say that anyone is right or wrong, but only put forth my theory that aliens don't exist," added the San Carlo Honda Gresini rider, referring to the label applied to MotoGP's present big four of Rossi, Lorenzo, Casey Stoner and Dani Pedrosa.

And Melandri wasn't finished yet. He also gave his opinion on Rossi's 2011 plans and thinks it is simply too dangerous for Rossi to leave Yamaha if Lorenzo stays.

"I really want to see Valentino on the Ducati next year, but I think it is more likely he would go to Formula 1!" he wrote. "Not because the red bikes aren't competitive; I actually think they are much more competitive than you think. It is just hard for him to leave Lorenzo alone on the Yamaha, now that the bike has an incredible balance. It is too, too, too large a risk."

The Italian Grand Prix, the home event for both 2005 title runner-up Melandri and reigning seven time MotoGP champion, starts on Friday.

"In Italy they have a unique way of presenting bike racing to the general public: when Valentino wins and stages a celebration, it is an incredible show. But when others do it, they downplay the whole thing... hmmm!!!" said Melandri.

[redrobin-detective]

So watching the newest Spy x Family, I see everyone squealing over Uncle Franky (don’t get me wrong I am too) but I also think his outsider’s perspective is kind of sad. When Anya is waiting for Yor and Loid to get home, the line he says there struck me.

“Hey, do you like your mom and dad?”

Like that’s a weird question to ask a young child who, hopefully, should love their parents. But Franky I think is acutely aware that they aren’t Anya’s real parents and the Forger family is fake. Franky has worked with Twilight for years, knows him very well and has presumably seen him make and drop identities like one would an article of clothes. We’ve even had Franky directly accusing Loid of being too clinical, focusing only the mission. I think Franky believes that once Operation Strix is completed, that he’ll leave and Anya and move on to the next assignment.

 I think that idea has colored a lot of Franky’s interactions with Anya. Yes, he’s also a big kid and wants to run around and be silly. But I also believe he’s trying to give this girl a sense of happiness and family presumably before she’s dropped off at the nearest orphanage once her usefulness is outlived. Like we all know Loid is catching feels but he’s a Good Actor and it might not be readily apparent to his coworker. Idk it must be so sad for Franky to watch this little family interact, to sweep up a child so clearly desperate for love and family in a spy operation, only to realize it won’t last.

[blighted-lights]

gazes into the distance. what if velocity and anode were amicas before anode faked stealing a protoform and left caminus with lug. what if that's why velocity was so upset with anode during lost light. what if.

[skeletoninthemelonland]

cw // possible eyestrain

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Sound Sensitivity

[gotyouanyway]

the more i listen the funnier narvin gets sorry i want him so bad

[divinekangaroo]

One of the other things I wrote while away was brain-dump of bullet points on Lymond thoughts (as also I finished reading Game of Kings - what a bloody stellar ending, reuniting him with his mother!!!!), but without digging up my notebook, the key lingering take-away was:

This book did ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING that all those writing guides tell you NOT to do

[lord-squiggletits]

Something else that makes me sympathetic to Pharma's situation is like. Idk if there's an actual term for this or if someone smarter and more academic wrote it about some real life context that actually matters.

But, so we've already established among Pharma stans that the circumstances at Delphi were blackmail/torture with no real way out that wouldn't involve Pharma being responsible for people getting killed (either killing patients for the deal or having everyone die bc he failed his end of the deal).

And I feel like while "he's still in the wrong because he killed people" is part of it, another sort of implicit part is the idea that Pharma should've been willing to take more personal risk, maybe even risk dying? I mean, Ratchet does ask "why didn't you just detonate it near the DJD" (to which Pharma responds that he did try to get Sonic and Boom to do it, but they refused) so like

Idk I feel like we do have this social notion of martyrs as a very romantic ideal, people you can praise for being so brave and strong and righteous that they ended their own lives for their cause, while you can also coo about how sad and tragic it is that dying is what it took for them to do the right thing. But at the same time I feel like in reality, having an expectation that people become martyrs is kind of a toxic social norm bc like. It's very easy to demand that others sacrifice their lives for some Ultimate Moral Good when you yourself aren't experiencing the same hardships as they are. And ultimately it is kind of fucked up to tell someone "the moral thing you should've done was risk your life/kill yourself" because asking someone to pay their life to do the right thing is no small request. And sure, the typical response would be to call them a "coward" for caring more about saving their own skin instead of doing the right thing... but again, death is a really scary thing and self-preservation is a really strong instinct, so it kind of feels like having this binary view of "you're either a Brave Hero who sacrifices your life for everyone else or a Dirty Coward who's too scared of dying to do what's right" is kind of fucked up?

I guess the best way to describe it is that if someone willingly gives up their life as a sacrifice to others, it can be a noble thing because it's a choice they made willingly, but if it becomes a Moral Standard that in order to be a Good Person you have to be unafraid of throwing your life away and if you aren't willing to die you're a Cowardly Bad Person, that's when it becomes toxic.

Idk, I guess how this ties back to Pharma is that he was never in a position where he expected to make these kinds of moral decisions/ultimatums. He's a doctor who doesn't even get into combat, his job is to heal and not to kill, he's behind the front lines in a hospital that's supposed to be a safe, neutral place for him to heal people. So in the face of suddenly having a "murder people on behalf of me, or I murder everyone you swore to protect" ultimatum thrust upon him, I understand why Pharma wasn't """"""""""brave enough"""""""""" to "do the right thing" (whatever that would've been in the case of Delphi). You could argue that maybe a frontliner soldier accepted the burden of possibly dying for their cause and they've become used to it as someone who lives that reality every single day, but I feel like for Pharma, who's a doctor and a protected non-combatant (from what we can tell), that sort of risking of his life/living with the fact his life could be snuffed out any day isn't something he would've been prepared for at all.

And for me personally, from an outsider's perspective, it strikes me as kind of unethical to go "oh well he should've just detonated the bomb himself even if it killed him" bc again, there's a difference between witnessing a moral conundrum as a bystander versus being the person living with it and being under time pressure where it's do-or-die. Just as part of my personal standards, I feel like death is such a huge consequence/burden of someone's actions (literally you are no longer alive, any potential you had left is cut short, you cease to exist on this plane) that it feels rather callous to go "Well you should've just been willing to die for your beliefs if you really cared that much!!!"

[flowercrowngods]

and today in sometimes i write shit that fucks me up for weeks: time travel au steve & trees

Steve gets up. Goes into his room — not his room at all, it’s not his home, it’s not his — knowing Hopper won’t follow him, locks the door knowing El will unlock it if she needs him, and crawls under the blanket. He doesn’t cry, just curls up and lies there in numb misery of feeling too much, thinking too much, knowing too much, and not having the right words to express anything.

The air under the blanket gets too warm to really be comfortable, but he doesn’t want to move. He’s turned into a tree again, as El would put it. Another pang of guilt and misery runs through him, because he doesn’t want to be fucked up like that, fucked up enough for a child to call him a tree because he loses his reality a lot; but then the thought of being a tree almost feels so relieving it makes him want to cry.

Because trees don’t think about their friends dying. Killed. Murdered. By forces greater than this world’s imagination. Trees don’t watch the blood seeping from them over and over again until they lose their minds and go into shock that this world doesn’t support, instead tugging him back and forth until all there is is nothingness, because there is no time to think or feel or process, and once there is time, there is too much to even start. And no one to talk to about it. No one to listen.

If he could turn into a tree and never have a single thought again, he would without hesitation.

But he can’t, so he thinks, and the thinks until he falls asleep and the thoughts turn into memories morphed with fears until it’s Steve who kills them. Steve who fails. And Steve who does it over and over again. In the Upside Down, in Eddie’s trailer, at school, in Mike’s basement.

It’s Steve. Like it was Billy.

[…]

Walking on legs that haven’t quite accommodated to being upright yet, stiff and heavy in the dark of night, Steve makes his way through the forest, tumbling and stumbling, but never enough to make him stop. He’s heaving breaths now, willing the cold air into his lungs to stop everything from feeling so wrong, to break through the haze and the fog and the cotton, to pierce his insides with little pinpricks of ice as December is fast approaching. It only serves to make him more dizzy, his head spinning, glowing spots of black and white appearing in his field of vision until he leans against a tree, catching his breath and holding it.

Holding onto it with whimpers and wheezes and pathetic little groans that make him want to scream. He punches the tree, his hand numb with pain upon impact, his knuckles stiff and scraped up; bloody, even in the pitch black darkness.

Bloody. His hands are always bloody. It stains them, has seeped into his skin, like a reverse tattoo that only he can see. This, though… This is real. It’s his blood.

And so he punches again. And again, until his breath has evened out, and the pain has moved from his arm and his side over to his hand. Over to something real.

He flexes his fingers and watches them, can barely make out their shape, and focuses on the pull of his skin, the scrapes making it feel too tight — but in a real way. In a way that… he’s not going crazy. It’s real. It’s all real. And it’s burning, sizzling along with all of that anger, the grief, the confusion, the complete and utter fucking lostness. The loneliness.

Steve punches the tree one more time, then turns around to put more distance between him and familiar walls and stale air and worried glances so heavy they slowly scrape away the scar tissue growing over all those rawest of feelings.

He walks and walks without direction or destination, simply placing one foot in front of the other as his racing heart calms down and he is overcome with an absolute, all-consuming kind of exhaustion that makes him sway the very second he stops. His eyes are getting heavy, like his body is slowly coming to the realisation that his beside clock said 3:38 a.m. and that he hasn’t slept through the night for some days now, or maybe weeks, always awoken by nightmares — on days that he even dared to fall asleep.

No one should have to feel this kind of exhaustion, Steve thinks. Even after the Russians, after torture and fighting and more torture, followed by running and more running and almost dying in a car crash and then in a fire… Even after all that, he wasn’t as exhausted as he feels right now.

Probably because back then, he had Robin. Robin who would hold his hand, Robin who would share a glance with him and resuscitate everything that died inside of him with just one brave little smile.

God, she was so brave.

Steve leans against a tree, closing his eyes for just one second as he pictures Robin — alive and smiling and determined. Robin, in the passenger seat of his car at ass o’clock in the morning, grumpy and tired, leaning in to give him a hug hello and a hug goodbye. Robin, who would roll her eyes at his antics, his insecurities and his worries — Robin, who would explain hours later, her hand in his, that he had no reason to doubt or worry. That he was fine. That he was perfect. That everything else would slot into place soon and be perfect for him, too. Payback, she’d called it.

Payback, he thinks now as he heaves another breath, willing it through his constricted throat, and just barely keeping himself from screaming. Payback, because he failed. Payback, because he watched her die and nothing, nothing good will ever come out of that.

As much as he will try to save her, she will always have died. As much as he can try to keep her safe this time around, he will always have failed her.

That’s nothing he can take back. Ever. Nothing he can fix. Nothing he can make un-happen.

It’s the cruellest constant.

One that won’t leave him alone. One that won’t let him sleep at night, one that won’t leave his head even for a minute, flooding his consciousness with memories of blood and failure, weighing down his conscience until he can’t fucking breathe, and—

A sob escapes his throat even as he stumbles forward, continuing on his nonexistent path that feels a lot like running, fleeing from this new life, as though he could magically make his way back to the old one. Because they have died. They’re dead. He watched them. This new world won’t fix that. Won’t fix him. And he doesn’t deserve fixing anyway.

So he runs.

[al-kol-eleh]

Kamel Amin Thaabet

"Who Stands Accused?"

[raymondshields]

Man, knowing that I'm less than two weeks from my last final is really shaking me because I have so many things I said I'd do after I graduate and they're very close now!!!

One of them is going to be leaving all the discord servers I don't talk in and also pruning following / friends lists like hell and back. This will allow me to finally come off invisible on discord, and it'll be nice to have discord statuses available to me again ;~;

[suncaptor]

Also I do think people need to just. completely detach "the way this person is interacting bothers me in x y z way and I don't like people like that" and "this person is genuinely doing harm against me in a way that, regardless of what's going on with them, is not justified"

[sheltershock]

I’ve noticed that decent amount of Sasha fanart has this polarity to it.

Most of the art of him is either distinguished, bold and/or intimidating. He’s here, he has presence, and he’s going to be your greatest ally or your greatest adversary. And then there’s the other type of fanart that kinda looks like someone just dumped a bucket of water on him. The best term I can come up with is patheticness? Where you just want to just pat him on the shoulder with a “you’ll be alright.” It’s hard to describe but I see it all the time.

I like both honestly, all power to you artists!

This polarity also reflects how is actually is in the games, being introduced as this badass, possibly evil scientist character and then you spend some time with him and look at RoR and he’s actually just a massive dork with a committed aesthetic who’s willing to get into debates with children over geometry and the conviction of scientific discovery.

[discordiansamba]

respectfully if you guys could not tag other authors in the fandom to "work their magic stuff" on my ideas I would very much appreciate it.

[dyketubbo]

deleted a few posts mostly because after thinking about it some more i do still think that theres a focus from many of these creators on having a sort of clapback response where they denounce wilbur but dont actively support shubble (i dont know if shubble is fine with people who arent her friends using her actual name so im just saying shubble) and while its good to denounce wilbur i dont think they should be praised when they havent put in the effort to publically show support to shubble.

at the same time, shubble is clearly touched by the responses and they clearly feel supported by their friends who had also, on a surface level to us, seemed to just be responding to wilbur without uplifting shubble. i do think theres a need to stay critical. some of these creators do very likely care more about dunking on the abuser than they do actively supporting the victim and making sure you dont fall into blindly supporting anyone who can make a snappy comeback is good

at the same time being critical means realizing theres a lot more to this than "anyone who waited for wilbur to say something must not have believed shubble and mustve been complicit" considering responses like billzos and sophies, as well as shubble themself saying that "not wanting to" is not why she didnt name wilbur. billzo admits to being scared of wilbur. sophie said wilbur made her feel small. theres clips of wilbur hurting and scaring his friends and making light of how he does so

a part of what sophie talked about was how wilbur would make light of how he abused her. he wasnt worried that he was hurting her, and he even pointed out that it looked like abuse. shubbles incredibly brave for speaking up. but that doesnt mean anyone else who didnt until now was complicit.

a lot of wilburs "jokes" look worse in retrospect because.. thats what happens when you go through abuse, or when you have a shitty friend. you start to realize more and more how they were hurting you and got away with it because they shrugged it off either as a joke or just as part of who they are (shubble actively pointed out that wilbur would dismiss his behavior as "just who he is")

those who just want to get a dunk in shouldnt be praised. those who really do stay quiet or do the bare minimum should be scrutinized. always keep an eye out for suspicious behavior no matter where you go. lexie talked about her own abuse within that circle of creators and the very fact that there were two people being abused within the same circle is horrible. but keep an eye out for any creator. keep an eye out within any community, even your own. its not just the men in brighton. its not just minecraft creators. abusers and toxic friends are everywhere, and silence can be complacency but it can also be fear

dont blame yourself if you didnt see the signs before. but take it as a sign to keep an eye out. and remember we cant see everything behind the scenes. you never really know everything going on. its getting increasingly clear that wilbur mistreated a lot of people in his life and like. idk im making an emotional post because this shit sucks a lot and like weve said before this is a topic very personal to us as an abuse victim and one whose had many toxic friends

shubble feels supported. she has a community and ultimately it is still amazing to see how many people are denouncing wilbur and its amazing to see the people who do show support to shubble herself. support for lexie is slowly but surely getting there as well. i think this is a sign that while horrible things will always happen that the community is slowly but surely getting better at responding. and i hope anyone else who was scared of or mistreated by wilbur is able to think back on that and realize it was awful and find their peace as well.

i think its good to be critical to anyone who may have genuinely been complacent, especially those like phil and tommy and even quackity who have been extremely close to wilbur and as of writing from what i know have yet to publically respond. but i dont think there should be a place for outright cynicism and accusing everyone who didnt speak until now of secretly being complicit. theres more to it than that. theres always more to it than that