#especially if there's a miscarriage of justice

[gofancyninjaworld]

OPM webcomic chapter 142 review: Unforgivable.

Story

So after nearly two years of absence, ONE once again drops a ninja update of the webcomic on us. This is a normal-sized (15-16 pages) webcomic chapter, but we've no idea whether there are any follow-ups to come soon. Combined with the fact that this is an action-packed release with very little in the way of conversation, it's a chapter that just whizzes by in a kinetic stream of beautifully-composed action shots.

We open with the city under attack. A bird (looks like a crow) is perched on a telegraph pole. As it is startled into the air by the laser beams cutting through the building in the background, we see the building explode. The next scenes are confused voices emanating from the surrounding buildings, with people asking what is going on so early, what alarms there are, urging loved ones to get up and get out… and these voices become less coherent as the horror of the reality overtakes them.

The robots march through the city, systematically and thoroughly destroying every building, car, person, and object in sight. They miss no one and overlook nothing and they keep formation to ensure that no one gets a chance to double back and slip through their ranks. This is not an attack. It is an extermination.

Their progress is halted by a figure landing in front of them. It's Genos and the footprint he stamps into the road is apparently a challenge, a wordless declaration that none shall pass this point. He doesn't spend time posturing, but charges straight into the ranks of the robots and…

…robots start to disintegrate, some punched so hard they fly to pieces, some slashed in two, some apparently shocked. Genos mows them down so fast they appear suspended in the air, their slowly falling bodies the only indication he had ever been there. As the entirety of the division is destroyed, we finally see Genos again, walking through them in the same manner that Saitama had walked through the attacking robots the night before.

A figure appears before Genos in the dust and smoke, and he punches it, realising too late that it's Saitama. Fortunately, Saitama had adroitly dodged around him, and no harm was done. Saitama smiles slightly as he declares that Genos has become strong: the doctor's final upgrade was a success.

Genos does not acknowledge the praise, thinking briefly before suggesting that he and Saitama split up, Saitama to tackle the remaining forces in the city while he Genos goes ahead to Metal Knight's hideout. For a few moments, Saitama is silent. He slowly turns around and then waves to Genos as he starts walking off, telling Genos that he understood and the latter was to be careful.

Genos doesn't spend time looking wistfully after Saitama. If anything, the inner rage stoking him seems to flare up even hotter. He takes off (the very first time we've seen him fly in the webcomic -- anyone wishing to dispute that is confusing it with the manga) and flies off. En route, he encounters a monster nonchalantly perched on a building, playing with a truck like it's an overgrown Lego piece. Thinking that it stands to reason that Metal Knight would use monsters as biological weapons in conjunction with robots, Genos slashes at the air with his fingers, and the monster is cleaved in several places as if with a sword. Genos isn't to know it but it is Meat Dumpling and with the monster's destruction, Zaedat's murder is avenged.

Unforgiveable, Genos says to himself, as he flies off.

That's where the chapter leaves off. Shall we meta?

Meta

A: It's Needs O'Clock

I'm going to try to make this the only place I compare this with the manga. Manga readers will notice a similarity between the slashes that Genos used to dispatch Meat Dumpling and Bomb's Whirlwind Cutting Iron Fist. It can't be because of the former having observed the latter in the webcomic as Bomb never used such a move in the webcomic. It's something he (well, Kuseno) has come up with independently.

One of the things you have to accept as a webcomic reader is that characters are capable of doing things when the narrative requires that they are: there isn't time or space to go into development unless it's super-critical to the plot. If you want to see characters grind, you need to read the manga. It doesn't bother me, but it's something to note and respect.

B: A whodunit resolved

With the appearance of Meat Dumpling, an important set of troublesome coincidences ties itself up into an incriminating body of fact beyond a reasonable doubt. The fact that Meat Dumpling was out there in the middle of a robot uprising clinches it: it was sent out precisely to target Zaedats. This ties in perfectly with how Destro and Erimin were able to recover both Zaedats and Infelsinave: the monsters are under their control and of course the monsters relinquished them without a fuss (or without harming those precious heads of theirs).

this looked like such bad luck, including the suit's failure to allow him to escape, but no longer

Those two Neo Leaders weren't unlucky, they were the subject of hit jobs so that their resources could fall under The Organization's control.

A's total lack of surprise was also suspicious but then again, it's A: a guy without a shred of morality

Hoo, so now we know that the robot uprising and the cyborg conspiracy (and whatever fuckery is going on at the Neo Heroes) are all linked. We suspected it was because the body suits they'd been handing out to Neo Heroes looked suspiciously like modified versions of the suits Hammerhead and crew the Organization allowed them to steal. Sonic recognising those suits strengthened our suspicion.

The appearance of cybernetically modified, remotely-controlled monsters whose actions happened to benefit the Neo Heroes but not pro-heroes strengthened our suspicions still further.

With the Machine Gods (an Organization special) declaring to Genos that the day of reckoning was about to begin, we knew that The Organization was up to something big.

However, there was still a tiny bit of room for there to be another bad actor to take advantage of the situation to carry out their evil plans. With the monster appearing, there is doubt no longer: Destro, Erimin, the rampaging robots, the Machine Gods, and the Neo Heroes are all of a piece.

If someone had tried putting these pieces together, they'd have been shouted down as a swivel-eyed conspiracy theorist. But there you go: occasionally, what seems to be a shadowy, well-resourced, well-organized conspiracy to subvert justice and subjugate society IS JUST THAT.

Only just about nobody believes it…

C: Half the Reason

…except Genos and Kuseno. Genos seemed mad to a lot of readers when he first came to Saitama talking about rampaging cyborgs and the total extermination of everyone in his home town, and of shadowy enemies that were all but impossible to track down. We'd seen monsters, sure, but what was this about cyborgs? Was he making it all up? Even though we saw at least one cyborg associated with The Organization early on in the series, we had no real leads as to what was really happening, how extensive it was, and how it all fit together (well, we still don't have the last) until now.

Why would anyone in their right mind give up their human body and become a living weapon? Well, One-Punch Man has been clear that there are many reasons that people become cyborgs for, but in Genos's case we now have half the reason: because nobody wanted to believe that what had seemed a random series of attacks was part of a much greater war, and thus nobody was prepared to challenge it. This was the only way available to him to take that stand.

Something that is both observable to readers within their own lives and observable to readers within the confines of the story is that it is really difficult to kill everyone in a place. Kill at least one person? Not too bad. A few? Tougher. Many? Tougher still. Most people? That's quite the ask, even with heavy artillery. Everybody? That takes some serious planning and execution. We've noticed that monsters, for all their strength and size, are remarkably bad at killing lots of people: they can nab some people randomly and knock some buildings down, but the sort of kill numbers are far lower than one would initially expect -- if one forgets about the propensity of people to save themselves. We're not chickens stuck in a chicken coop, painfully shivering as we're grabbed one by one. The heroes are useful, yes, but damn do the monsters help by being more interested in intimidating people than killing and eating them for the most part.

Chillingly, the most economical explanation is that once the method of achieving total kills was validated, it no longer needed the human input of a cyborg and could be automated.

The difference between what monsters do and what the robots were doing is chillingly clear. Not a single person woken up early that morning survived. That's the sort of thoroughness it takes to kill everyone in a town and I praise ONE for showing this to us in such an economic manner. This scene must have been a horrible flashback to Genos's fateful day. It really takes a certain kind of mind to execute this. One thing often misunderstood in the story is the word 'bosu' -- it does not so much mean mad as it means rampaging, out of control. The mad cyborg is less mad than it does go on systematic rampages, rampages that have resulted in the total destruction of multiple towns. The only thing special about Genos's former town is that it's the last known place struck.

And his literally taking a stand to stop repeats of these exterminations is incredibly admirable.

D: Prelude to a Tragedy

However, happy as everyone is to see Genos wrecking the bots like wrecking is going out of fashion, I don't think there are many who are optimistic about what is unfolding. For it's the first act in a tragedy. A tragedy whose full impact we are surely going to see unfold over the rest of the arc, and quite possibly in many arcs to follow. Genos is going to attack Metal Knight, the latter having successfully been framed by Drive Knight. The chances that the Metal Knight who has been watching Organization operatives with such suspicion is himself the culprit is slim. However, Drive Knight gloating about how Metal Knight was blindsided by the rise of the Neo Heroes very strongly suggests that the doctor, for all his crabby, misanthropic presentation, is indeed innocent.

There's still room for reasonable doubt when it comes to Bofoi's intentions and actions, but Genos is not in the mood to listen. He's entirely fixated on killing. Whether he kills Bofoi, is killed by him, or they take each other out, the only beneficiaries are the enemies of mankind currently trying to break civilization with machines and modified biological weapons.

Perhaps Saitama should not have let Genos go alone with only the exhortation to be careful. Genos will need all his wits and all the luck he has never had to thread this particular needle without tragedy.

Good luck: the ease with which the unforgiving can become the unforgiven is truly terrifying.

#OPM #OPM webcomic #review #Genos #Saitama #Metal Knight #Drive Knight #The Organization #the day of chaos #so this is what it's come to: there's never a good time to face evil but this showdown looks to be particularly heavy #especially if there's a miscarriage of justice #Saitama I hope your faith in your disciple is rewarded

[cemeterything]

is all true crime bad? genuine question. not referring to the very obvious disrespectful ones that are usually brought up when discussing the topic but rather documentaries and things of the sort. I feel like a lot of the documentaries around real crimes I watched bring up issues that aren't really talked about and a lot of the times are covered by institutions/media and also inform people on various things that they probably wouldn't have been aware otherwise so to me they can be very informational. there's also cases where victims of abduction for example have been recognised years later because of media like this which is objectively a good thing so I would like to know a little more about other negative impacts that might not be so obvious. if you have any source I can research on that's also great. sorry to bother!

i think that "true crime" in itself is a nuanced and varied topic and have no intention of tarring everyone who has an interest in it with the same brush, because there are definitely respectful ways of engaging with it that do their best to avoid and minimize harm. however i think that the popular culture depictions of true crime and capitalization on it as a form of entertainment tend to do more harm than good to both victims, who are frequently exploited for "content" and/or have their trauma dredged up for consumption, and consumers/producers, since a lot of mainstream true crime media reinforces harmful stereotypes, paranoia, surveillance tactics, and social divisions, and sensationalizes human cruelty and suffering. not to mention that this kind of approach to and fascination with horrific crimes and unusually cruel and violent criminals may encourage more people to inflict violence on others in order to gain notoriety and fame.

i don't think it's wrong to be interested in these things and to want to understand what makes people do horrific things to other people. one of my hyperfixations is the history of decapitation/capital punishment and its legacy, which is a topic that is fraught with issues surrounding the abuse of some of the most marginalized and vulnerable members of society. i myself am fascinated by it partly because of my own past experiences with abuse and marginalization. being interested in unpleasant things doesn't make you inherently a bad person, and thought crimes don't exist. however it's really important, especially when it comes to topics like this, to be self aware and critical of the information you're given, and to be careful not to be taken in by popular opinion and stereotypes without questioning them, or to get so immersed in your pursuit of knowledge and understanding that you lose your grip on reality and fall victim to misinformation and bias. believing too strongly in your personal ability to recognize and identify criminals and "criminal traits" and "solve" crimes, especially when the justice system is as flawed as it is, is more likely to lead to incorrect assumptions, the persecution of the marginalized and vulnerable, invasions of privacy and miscarriages of justice than it is to help.

[lovelykhaleesiii]

Guurll I saw your requests are open and 1. I LOVE YOUR STUFF (esp. Aemond related but I sort of became an Aegon girlie thx to u). and 2. I love me some Aemond angst so here's my idea, I know is not original and probably there is something similar out there but hey, it is original in my head and I'm sure your talented hands will turn it into a bomb as always :)) - Aemond is married to this badass, sarcastic but super loving woman who loved him from the first glance and would do anything for him. Problem is, the war came, he left for Harrenhal and while he's away she finds out she pregnant; but what she also finds is about his whereabouts with Alys and she literally turns crazy heartbroken and angry, loses the child (if you're not ok with this please leave it out) but still informs her family they need to support him and this is how he survives the "dance". Aemond finds out about the shit he caused and feels shitty to say the least. He comes back home, his wife doesn't want to have anything to do with him and he tries to make amends and put the pieces back together. So basically angst lvl 9000 with slight fluff at the end. Please feel free to play with this as you see fit and remember I just gave you my heart for giving me the chance to send this in!!:X:X

The Spoils of Lies

PAIRING: Aemond Targaryen x fem!Wife!Reader, Aemond Targaryen x Alys Rivers [implied]

WORDS: 1,863.

WARNINGS: mentions of adultery, mentions of pregnancy/miscarriage, mentions of grief/mourning, brief reference to suicidal thoughts.

A/N - ugh I am a sucker for angst, nonnie!!! this concept makes me so wild for Aemond, cause he’s always presenting himself as a dutiful, loyal being. but he fucked up big time here 👀 also thank you x my agenda is to make people feral over both Targ boys! and thank you for the kind words nonnie, hope I did your request justice ♥️

If there was an earthly possibility you could rewind the clock, turn back time itself with your bare hands, to a moment you were the happiest, you would in a heartbeat. A moment in time where you found yourself in the warm, familiar embrace of your devoted husband, Aemond Targaryen, the intense feeling of your heart being full of sheer affection and love.

Although, many would agree, mixed with the fate of the Targaryens, good things could never truly last… And that was no exception to your marriage with the Prince Regent.

Aemond made no hesitation in deciding to fight the resistance against his elder brother’s throne, often declaring and meeting such treachery, punishable by death. With much inevitability, Aemond would be absent, gone for months on end, away from your company with nothing but lengthy distance separating you both.

And much to your luck, a few months prior to Aemond having to leave, the Gods had blessed you dearly with the heartfelt news that you were with child... Aemond had always been eager to start his own family, especially after being betrothed to you.

"Our child shall be blessed with his or her father's resilience and its mother's grace and wit... Rest assured, my love, I shall return for the birth. What kind of a father would I be to miss the birth of their firstborn, let alone not be present to hold you?"

Aemond had you strategically relocated and confined under secure protection of some desolate keep in the Reach, not even your relatives being aware of your whereabouts.

Yet as the arduous days lingered on, the small talk of warfare that would often waft into your listening ear, began to dissolve with soft wisps of a young Prince taking the favour of some woman began to stir. Initially, you presumed the Prince in discussion could practically be anyone… Prince Daemon, Prince Jacerys, mayhaps even Prince Daeron. Aemond’s involvement was the least of your concern, that was until someone had mentioned in conjunction to such gossip, that the woman in reference, had resided in Harrenhal.

Harrenhal, where Aemond himself, as far as you had been informed, was his current whereabouts, where he was supposed to find himself undertaking decree over the hostage traitors.

Such rumours, the vile accusations [or so you had naively convinced yourself to believe] had spread to the concerned ears of your immediate relatives. Immediately you were determined to set the record straight, sending ravens with letters, adamant on reassuring your relatives, that your solid stance as well as theirs was to remain faithful to Aemond and the succession of his elder.

"Do not to indulge in the horrendous lies, spread about by the foes, themselves."

Little did you know, your words would come to haunt you with the terrible truth, and consequences with it...

"Just tell me the truth of it, Aemond. You need not deny what others have confirmed."

Sighing, Aemond shook his head incessantly, looking down at his shuffling feet against the solid concrete, leaning himself defeatedly over the creaking, wooden chair.

"Just have the decency to speak the truth!" Infuriated and exhausted, one hand resting over the slight curve of your once prominent, rounded belly, now aching with a dull pain, the other slamming against the oak desk of some private, council chamber.

"I-I... I cannot."

The swell of hot tears begin to cloud your clear vision, as your face grimaces in a fusion of rage, sorrow and grief... As the gossip began to churn from whispers to outright concern, many lords and ladies in calling, had reluctantly granted your persistent questioning with their own testimonies. Each testimony, aligned with the other, and you spared yourself knowing any further beyond the truth that Aemond had bedded a strange woman, by the name Alys... That he had fallen for her, sparring her from death, only to remain by her side, than yours...

You found yourself, constantly enraged and stricken with the raw agony of heartache, clutching at your breast, and another at your belly, where your once growing babe was protected inside. Constant tears falling across your cheek, as you struggled to breath, incompetent to find rest. Your body grew weaker without the slumber, your appetite diminished or repressed, you could not say, yet you found yourself scarcely replenished. That was until the dreadful night, you felt a hot ooze, pooling from between your inner thighs. Hiking your modest gown up, only to find your fingers glazed with a crimson red, a sharp lightening of pain shooting from your stomach towards your bloodied entrance.

"Th-The baby-"

That night was a gruesome one indeed, that only ended with greater devastation. You did not think your heart could take any more anguish, hoping that the torturous labour would end your own meaningless life in the process. Yet, the Gods willing, you found yourself awake by dawn. With only having spent a day to recover and recuperate, you made the sole decision to seek Aemond out for yourself. Against the wise advice of the maesters and your ladies, they had succumbed to your wishes, only implying they arrange the travels for you, as means to lessen the burden.

During the journey, you found yourself soaked in your own thoughts, with moments of silence and numbness in between, to spare you from the hurt. In time, you had safely arrived, only to be met with Aemond's shock and false excitement.

Sparing no time for him to devise a plan, you spat of what you knew, with Aemond harshly ushering you to where you stood now.

"Ahh- So the husband who spoke of honour and duty, seems to have his tongue tied, just as a coward would incline to denial..."

"Y/N- m-my love, ñ-ñuha ōños [my light]-" Aemond's blatant stutter on his low words, was a sight you had never witnessed before, plucking at your heartstrings.

"Sh-She is a renowned witch. One that had deceived me so. I-I did what I did, not out of love but of craft... Deceit. M-My true love, Y/N-"

He strides over to you with a swiftness that caught you off-guard, too late to back away in defence. His calloused hand reaches over, gripping your soft palm tightly, his thumb stroking your skin.

"It has always been you, ābrazȳrys [wife]. I need you to believe me, just this once, even if it is against the world, I ask too much of you, I know."

"A-Aem please, you have no idea-"

"You came all this way in your condition to see me, to hear the truth... This is my truth, Y/N."

Aemond promptly fell to his knees, tugging your arm towards him, you weakly tried to resist, yet failed to pull away. His defined lips instinctively kissed over your tender skin, trailing up your arm ever so slowly, sending chills to coarse through your spine.

"Aem-"

"Please Y/N... I wouldn't dare to live with myself if it meant you alone in the world, you alone hating me for the troubles I have done untoward you and our precious babe."

The babe... Your mind caught in a haste with Aemond's overwhelming presence, drifted from the fact you were no longer with child.

"I-I lost the babe, Aem... Last night. I-I bled-"

Halting in his affections, Aemond's viable eye remained fixated onto your stomach, as your hand instinctively planted itself against the silk fabric, rubbing at your empty womb. Silence drowned the room, only the faint depth of Aemond's staggering, dense breath could be heard.

"A-Aemond-" You breathlessly whimper, pulling your hand away from his loosened grip, as your fingers reassuringly comb through his delicate, neat strands.

"Y-You lost the babe... W-Was it because of- Me?"

You took a few sparing seconds to decipher whether to respond truthfully or to sugar-coat your response. In the moment of hearing the cold, hard truth, you wanted nothing more than to rid yourself free of Aemond and his cruelty. At one point in your trek, you felt the slightest temptation to disappear, bribing the driver to take the wrong turn only to cease your existence in Aemond's life altogether. Although considering the rawness of the situation, the truth was what you came for, and was what you intended to speak of.

"Th-The maesters believe, it was the-ugh- strain of the spoils of the war. They believe that I-I was under great stress, the babe simply could not cope."

Aemond's handsome face fell towards the floor, the swaying of his hair in motion to the shaking of his head, in utter disbelief. The stinging tears once more existent, streaked across your flustered face.

No further words echoed through Aemond, nor could you endorse the courage in yourself to speak. His lean arms snaked around your waist firmly, pulling your feeble frame closer towards him, burying his face against you.

Although muffled, you could discern the sobbing cries of Aemond's pain, triggering your own mournful cries once more. A few minutes passed, until he could gather himself, persistently pleading his apology to you, over and over again.

"It is all my fault. I-I had neglected you for far too long, failing my duty to devote myself to you, Y/N as a husband and as a father. I failed to uphold the vows I spoke of to you. Because of my weak mind, I killed our child."

The brutality in his words, his whimpering tone, and shaken hands as you released his embrace, cupping his wet cheeks, as you leaned towards him.

"You did not kill our child, Aem... The Gods can be cruel, just as they can be merciful... I, too, can be merciless. I could ask that you bid me free from the clutches of duty as your wife. And yet... I can be just as forgiving-"

"Tell me the truth of it, Aemond... Do you wish to keep me as your wife? To never again leave me to ponder and suffer in the whirlpool of vicious lies and gossip."

Aemond's doeful eye eagerly gazes up towards, a fleeting shimmer of yearning glistened across his blackened pupil.

"Yes, yes, of course, ābrazȳrys [wife]. You bless me once again with your everlasting kindness. A kindness that I am undeserving of. Ride with me on dragon-back. I want to go home, I want to be with you now."

"And what of the witch? What if she tempts you again? I cannot bear to go through this again, Aemond. Spare me that."

Proudly standing once more to his sturdy feet, his fingers now interlocked with yours lovingly.

"I shall have her head, if it pleases you my dearest. Punishment by death on the account that she con a royal Prince into adultery."

The familiar, stern tone that would adorn your ears like sweet honey to your lips, finally returned, subtly easing the ache in your heart. Earning a faint, warm smile scorned across your pretty face, Aemond lowered his head towards your height, planting a soft kiss across your forehead.

"I promised my sword to you, I promised my love to you, I promised my life to you. I intend to keep those promises till the end of my days."

general taglist [bold means I could NOT tag you] - @evenstaris @chompchompluke @fan-goddess @malfoytargaryen @hightowhxre @bibli0thecary @m1ndbrand @connorsui @elegantsplendour @randomdragonfires @sylasthegrim @arcielee @s-we-e-t-t-ea @sahvlren @aemondtargaryensrider @watercolorskyy @hypnos-daughter-certified @urmomsgirlfriend1 @backyardfolklore @snowprincesa1

Aemond taglist - @megatardisbaby @harrypotteranna23-blog

credit for dividers - @/firefly-graphics

#aemond targaryen #ewan mitchell #aemond the kinslayer #aemond targaryen imagines #aemond targaryen imagine #aemond targaryen fanfic #aemond targaryen fanfiction #aemond targaryen smut #aemond targaryen angst #aemond x y/n #aemond x fem!reader #hotd #house of the dragon #hotd imagines #hotd imagine #hotd fanfic #hotd fanfiction

[chiefdirector]

Hostage Taking | Tim Bradford | The Rookie

Act One | Chapter 16 | Chapter 17 | Chapter 18 | Chapter 19

Content Warning under cut: Episode 3x05. Themes of Racism (Doug Stanton, at the end), bombing and other canon typical plights. Read at own risk.

“So when do you think you’ll be back from court?” (Y/N) asked, walking alongside Harper towards the evidence lockup.

“Eh,” Harper said. There was nothing Harper hated more than court duty, especially when the case was so clear cut that she didn’t need to be there. “Hopefully soon, that way I can enjoy having Nolan on front desk duty for the rest of the day. Let him enjoy the general public”

“Is he really that bad to ride with?” She stopped at the door.

“No, and that's what sucks. He’s too nice, and sometimes I don’t need all that positivity.”

(Y/N) just shook her head as Nyla just winked at her as she entered the evidence room. Turning on her heel, (Y/N) passed Lopez as she wandered back to her desk, trying to figure out what to do with her day. Most of her cases were closed, the Damian Barrett case had all but run dry and Grey had all but forbidden her from working on her own case alone, despite how much she wanted too.

Sitting down, she gathered all of the papers on her desk, stacking them neatly, before organising them alphabetically, and then chronologically. Next on her hit list was the pen pot. Grabbing the container, she tipped them out, testing them one by one on a loose post-it.

She had only just opened the chess on her computer when the radio belonging to the blonde officer who worked opposite her rang out. “Sargent Grey, this is officer Nolan, go to channel nine.”

(Y/N) stifled her laugh as she moved her pawn two spaces, of course it was Nolan she thought. Even in her short time back in the precinct, Nolan’s reputation had been shared with her. Her good humour was cut short as the rest of the conversation rang out through the handset.

Grey replied quickly “Nolan this better be important”

“Sure is buddy” An unknown voice rang out. (Y/N) closed the chess game as she began to listen more intently.

“Who’s this”

The stranger’s voice rang out again. “The guy sitting in your parking lot with an ammonium-nitrate fertiliser bomb.”

Without hesitation, (Y/N) rushed up from her seat and made her was over to where she could see Nyla and Grey looking down at the radio, officers silently surrounding them, all listening to the bomber

As she got closer, she could hear the stranger’s voice again. “I have cameras on every exit. Do you understand me? If anyone leaves, everyone dies”

“I can confirm the cameras, sir.” Nolan’s distant voice chimed in, “Our bomber has a dead man's switch, sir.”

“Okay,” Grey said, voice solemn and serious, “You have my attention. Tell me what i can do for you.”

“Rectify an extreme miscarriage of justice. I demand the immediate release of Donalf Feltt from the Primedale Department of Corrections.”

(Y/N) moved to the computer near her, typing in the given name as Harper moved beside her. His record showed immediately. Donald Feltt, ID no: 4076696, sentenced to life without parole on multiple charges: Possession of an illegal substance, undocumented concealed firearms, animal abuse, drug trafficking, battery, and murder.

Grey tensed his shoulders as he read the screen out loud to the bomber, trying to confirm that they were both on the same page.

“That's him,” The man confirmed, “and it’s not going to be a back-door parole for my boy. Feltt walks out of there today.”

“Back-door parole?” (Y/N) asked, looking up from the screen

“For when you die in prison,” Harper replied. “Our bomber’s done time.”

“Most likely with Feltt,” Grey lifted his radio up again, “All right. That’s a big ask. It’ll take time.” He lowered the radio and looked to Harper, “We need someone on the outside.”

“I’ll call Lopez, she left already.”

Grey nodded his head, raising the radio again, now on the general channel to alert the units, both in and out of the precinct of the tactical lockdown and what to do. Once he was done, he turned to face (Y/N). “You should go down with everyone else to the parking garage, you’ll be safe there.”

“Like Hell I am, now what do you need me to do?”

----------

“It’s morse code.” Grey said, looking at the camera feed pointed towards the brown van, (Y/N) moved to get a dictionary, only to be stopped by the Sargent raising his hand. “S-C-R-L-I”

“He has a scar?”

“On his left eye. Good man, Nolan.”

“So,” (Y/N) said, opening the laptop she had bought over, typing as she spoke. “If we assume he did time with Felt. We know that he is a white male with a scar on his left eye.” Pressing enter, she quickly read the results aloud. “Graham Porter. He did three years at Primedale, a couple of misdemeanours prior. Nothing that screams mad bomber.”

“How does a guy like this get on with a guy like Feltt?”

“Let’s hope Lopez can find out,” Harper said, returning from the parking garage.

----------

“So Graham Porter is in desperate need of money?” Nyla asked as she regrouped with Grey again, this time joined by Chen and both Bradfords.

“So why not demand a ransom?” Grey responded “Why give us a head fake on Feltt”

Chen stepped forward. “Maybe it’s not a head fake. Maybe Feltt’s paying Graham to bust him out of prison.”

“Feltt’s a murderer, not a cash-heavy narcos.” (Y/N) said, looking over to Tim, allowing him to finish her statement off.

“If this Feltt’s gambit is smoke, we’re chasing our tails trying to free him. Meanwhile, an accomplice robs a bank or something.”

Grey considered the next step for a moment. “Contact West and Stanton, have them check out a nearby check cash-in place. I’ll contact the chief to see if we can get more boots on the ground.”

Nyla nodded, going off to make the call, leaving Tim, Lucy and (Y/N). The three stood in silence for a moment before (Y/N) turned to her laptop again.

“What are you doing?” Tim asked, looking over his wife's shoulder.

“Googling him.”

----------

It didn’t take long for Grey and Harper to find their way back to the other three. There wasn’t much luck on either end, apparently everything was “Code Four” with Stanton and West, and the rest of the LAPD was spread thin by having an entire precinct down so that not many more men could be spared.

“We found something.” (Y/N) crossed her arms. “I ran his name through the web. He had a YouFundMe, set up by his girlfriend, Kelsey Adams. I asked Lopez to run her down, there was nobody there, no cell answer either.”

Tim moved to stand near (Y/N), disliking this whole situation. “This whole thing is weird. Kelsey is using an assumed identity. Her social security numbers are fake. No record No picture.”

“According to Lopez, Kelsey and Graham are inseparable. So she is likely involved.”

“But how?” Harer asked, If it's not about money or Feltt…”

They sat in silence, contemplating Nyla’s question. (Y/N) uncrossed her arms, letting her hands fall down and began to play with her ring.

Lucy was the one to break the silence. “What if this is all a distraction meant to pull our focus outside the station, when we should really be looking inside?”

“What kind of woman would be crazy to be inside a building ith her boyfriend parked outside with a truck full of explosives?”

Tim rolled his eyes at Nyla’s question, before sending an incredulous look towards Lucy. The two of them had a silent conversation before taking off towards the parking garage, leaving the three officers with the words “Freegan Frida.”

As the pair left, Grey looked at the two detectives. “What the Hell is a ‘freegan?’”

----------

(Y/N) and Nyla moved through the corridors with their guns raised, silently sweeping each room for Adams. Tim had alerted them of the woman’s presence when she had left the garage, leaving the other’s trapped. Grey had taken one half of the building, whilst the detectives took the other. The two had found nothing until they approached the evidence room, finding the door broken.

On Nyla’s silent command, (Y/N) entered the evidence room, looking around for the suspect whilst she called Grey, alerting him of the situation and that a search was underway. As Harper spoke, (Y/N) moved through the evidence locker, looking down the aisle. It only took moments for her to find Kesey, rummaging through a secure bio-evidence bag.

“Hands up.” she commanded, “Don’t move.”

“Please, I have to find it,” the woman begged.

Harper approached from behind. “Find what?”

“He thinks I’m dead, If they run my prints…”

“Are you trying to destroy evidence?” Harper asked, moving closer to Kelsey.

“No,” Kelsey exclaimed, panic and desperation clear in her voice. “It’s my husband. He’s a loan shark in El Paso. He hurt me. I ran away three years ago, got a new identity, the works. So he would never find me. Then there was a robbery where I work. The cops took a bunch of stuff, things with my prints.”

“So when they run the prints, they will get a hit on the real you.” (Y/N) stated. The tree women stood in silence for a moment before (Y/N) continued speaking. “Look, we will try and help you but you need to get Graham to stand down.”

----------

(Y/N) listened to Grey speak to Graham as he told him to stand-down. That he knew what their plan was, that Kelsey had told him that the bomb was fake. That he was going back to prison for a long time. She also listened in as Graham demanded the S.W.A.T team back off, and when he threatened Nolan’s life if they didn’t.

She swallowed the lump in her throat and that grew at the threat. She hated this whole situation. She hated that it was Nolan that was trapped, she hated how the entire precinct was shut down because of this madman, she hated how there was nothing that she could do to help Nolan. She hated it all.

She only began to feel marginally better when she heard Nolan’s voice ring out on the radio. “Sargent Grey, this is Nolan. One is custody. We’re code four.”

Although, hearing the click ring out afterwards reassured her somewhat.

----------

“Oh God, what happened earlier?” (Y/N) said, curling up on the sofa as Tim grabbed two beers from the fridge before joining her.

“Stanton let Jackson get assaulted. Bastard did nothing.”

“Is Jackson okay?”

“He was taken to the hospital. Bruised and beaten but nothing he can’t recover from. Physically anyway.” Tim moved to wrap his arm around (Y/N)’s shoulders, pulling her into his chest. “Stanton is on administrative leave. Grey took his gun and badge.”

“What happens now?”

“This will be the end of Stanton, I don’t see him coming back from this.”

(Y/N) nodded, processing the information. “We should go see him tomorrow. See how he’s doing, if he needs anything.”

Tim just hummed in agreement, moving to place a kiss on the side of (Y/N)’s head.

Act One | Chapter 19 | Chapter 21

Series Masterlist | Masterlist

Tags: @xceafh @kmc1989 @buba424 @salty0cracker @iamasimpingh0e @malindacath @agentred27 @hufflepuffwhore13 @tessalynni @anaferreira-4

Tags are open :)

#tim bradford x reader #tim bradford #tim bradford imagine #the rookie #the rookie imagine #chiefdirector #bottom of the river

[imfromthemiddlekingdom]

I love how stanikins bend over backwards to attempt to make Obi-Wan and the Jedi look callous and uncaring when all evidence points otherwise.

Obi-Wan is too harsh on him after he endangers his men and Ashoka to save a droid with confidential information on it which he didn’t wipe purposefully, oh no!!! He’s abusive!!!

Obi-Wan putting the good of the Galaxy above the ones he love because it’s his duty and philosophy to put the good of the collective above the good of the few he loves. Oh no!!!! He’s heartless!!! He should’ve let Anakin jump off the moving vehicle to save padme because muh love story!!!! He should’ve known that Anakin’s dreams about his mother dying was a vision and not a dream!!! Definitely not like Anakin told him it was a vision, “just a dream” verbatim from Anakin himself!!! Like if we take legends into consideration then Obi-Wan, someone who is strong in the Unifying force, would definitely have done shit if Anakin told him outright it was a vision but how was he supposed to know when Anakin himself 1) never had a vision before this and 2) never told his master what occurred in said vision?

Obi-Wan would’ve made Anakin fess up to the Tusken massacre if Anakin told him!!! He should’ve been a safe space for Anakin and been accepting like Padme and covered this horrendous miscarriage of justice out of love!!! He didn’t provide a safe space for a mass murderer therefore he deserves blame for it!!!!

The council didn’t want to admit a very clearly traumatized slave child who’s recently been freed because he would not be able to fully commit to their philosophy of non-attachment due to his experience and asking him to change how he viewed the world so shortly after being separated from his one support in life would be cruel so they denied him, therefore he was right to hate them!!! Especially Mace Windu because, checks notes, he was mean (???) to him (???) in the first act of the phantom menace???? Like have y’all not watched TCW and how Mace interacted with him????

Stanikins literally have every excuse under the sun to justify his every atrocity without giving him any agency in his own choice. His story is a tragedy!!! Let it be a tragedy!!! He was a slave boy with godly powers and traumatized beyond imagination! He could’ve been great if the circumstances were different, if one thing changed he would’ve been the greatest Jedi there were, but because he is literally doomed by the narrative, we cannot see him be the person he could be. He has great capacity for kindness of selflessness but because of his experience fear wins out and he desperately holds onto all the affection and love he could because his time as a slave taught him to do so. It’s a disservice to take away his agency, to make all his bad and disastrous decisions the fault of someone else, is to make him one dimensional. Let him be the villain he is and mourn the child he was and the person he could’ve been if he wasn’t doomed by the narrative before the prequels even came out. Let him be tragic. Let his decisions be tragic and doomed and unavoidable. Let him be sucked into villainy the moment he decided that his revenge is worth more than the lives of those that did not participate in the murder and torture of his mother. Let him be utterly unredeemable because of his actions. Let him doomed by his own actions as well as the narrative. Let him be himself instead of woobifying him into a victim of everyone else’s actions but his own.

He choose to massacre the Tuskens. He choose to massacre the Jedi. He choose to hunt any remaining Jedi left in the Galaxy for 20 years. He choose to put the life of his wife above the people who raised him and took him into their culture. He choose to do that himself. And it is tragic. It is sad. But it is no one’s fault but his own. His formative years shaped him into one who jealously hordes all forms of affection form those he loved most as a trauma response. He understands Jedi teachings (literally a whole arc in TCW where he teaches Ashoka what it means to be a Padawan and Jedi) he just doesn’t internalize it because of his trauma. He takes no one’s council but his own (showcased when he went to Yoda to ask for a method of cheating death and Yoda’s advice was sound if he were talking to any other Jedi other than Anakin).

Star Wars may be a a story of hope but it is also a tragedy. It’s about a boy how could’ve been great, it’s about a boy who was so full of hope and dooming himself because he’s too afraid and refuses to let the fear go so it turns into anger and hate. Taking away Anakins agency and blaming his actions on other people takes away the tragedy that is having someone great fall. A boy who was bad cannot fall and be doomed. It’s only those that have the potential to be great that falls the hardest and by taking away his own culpability in bringing in a genocidal empire (one he wished to rule no less) takes away the inherent tragedy of seeing someone so bright fall so low.

#anti anakin skywalker #Anakin skywalker critical #Star Wars #Star Wars is a tragedy #the only way for Anakin to fall from grace is if he had the capability to be kind and compassionate #and that’s what makes it a tragedy #jedi positive #pro jedi

[lifewithchronicpain]

I have been watching the Curious Case of Natalia Grace, mainly for the second season where Natalia actually gets to speak for herself. It is so beyond upsetting, do not watch unless you're ready to rage.

There is a Lot to the story but I will sum it up as best I can. Natalia is a Ukrainian orphan with dwarfism, specifically Spondyloepiphyseal dysplasia congenita. Because of her disability she would need many surgeries for her feet, and money concerns related to this is considered one potential cause for what was to happen. After being passed around, a family called the Barnett's adopted her.

According them, Natalia was really an adult that was secretly trying to kill them. If it sounds familiar it's because it's the plot of the movie Orphan. This poor girl wound up with an incredibly abusive family that eventually decided they didn't want her but because the mother was so concerned with her image, she couldn't be seen as getting rid of a disabled child. So she tried to pass Natalia off as an adult pretending to be kid, and after lies and faked drama the Barnett's actually got Natalia legally re-aged to 22.

Natalia was actually about 8 years old. Dental records, DNA tests, doctor's records, her own biological mother, who gave her up because she couldn't care for a disabled child, all say she was born in 2003 and was a child at the time of these events.

So Natalia was put in an apt at age 8, and Mrs Barnett forced her to tell people she was 22. Ableism and ignorance of little people plays a huge part here, otherwise no one would have believed her age was 22 nor would it have been legally changed. Even though neighbors thought she was young, they went with the lie and proceeded to view entirely childish behavior as weird and annoying. Because she lacked the fucking boundaries and sense of stranger danger of a typical 8 year old!!!!! They also said she said a lot of sexually stuff, and I don't know why I should need to explain to you what 8 year olds do when they hear things!!! An 8 year old with no adult, looking to anyone for company and just help. It's beyond upsetting to think of what it must have been like for her during this time.

Natalia was evicted after a year and moved to another apartment. Not too long after being there she met a family that recognized she was a fucking child, took her in, and called the goddamn cops. First people in Natalia's poor life to do something for her. She is still with them to this day, with what looks like a beautiful loving family.

The Barnett's were charged, the husband was ables to get acquitted in part because the judge decided her Legal age would stand, and he could only be accused of abandoning a disabled person and not a minor. Meanwhile no one could let the jury know she was really a minor when this happened. Huge miscarriage of justice and the wife was never taken to trial.

It's a hard documentary to watch, especially when you get a lot of the Barnett's story first without much dissecting of the facts. But then you do get Natalia's side, and the Barnett's lies are laid to waste. One of them being that Natalia had pubic hair and a period. She never did, the wife made her say it to the husband. I mean, there's a lot of fucked up shit that happened to Natalia that I have not mentioned. I'm also not getting into the drama within the Barnett family except to say the husband tried to blame it all on the wife, claims he was abuse and avoids accountability, and is the most pathetic excuse for a human being, honestly. The wife is no better, she's just a monster.

The thing that pisses me off so much though are the attorneys, especially this one guy that Knows Natalia was a child and acts like she has to take accountability for being a troubled child. Of course he offers up all excuses for his client.

And that's the rub, Natalia had her childhood robbed from her, then and now. She's not ever granted the view of her behavior as mitigated by being a child. They even showed one of her neighbors refuses to accept she was 8 and not 22, and she knows for sure because she was hussy and just knows how to put on an act. It just amazes me how quick we are to jump to the most negative explanation for something and ignore any evidence to the contrary.

I'm just glad Natalia was able to have a voice in this drama, and that she finally has the family she had always wanted.

#natalia grace #ableism #abuse #child abuse #domestic abuse #adoption

[cinematicnomad]

i'm 32. i've never had an abortion. i grew up moving around the world. at all points of my life, i have always, always, considered in the back of my mind what i would do if i needed one. college in particular stressed me out—from 2009–2013, i lived in a rural small town that didn't have an abortion provider, just one of those malicious "crisis pregnancy centers" that PRETEND to provide options but really guilt and shame and lie to people with uteruses to deny them care.

so i always made sure to know where the closest abortion provider was. my friends and i talked about this, shared our individual plans with each other. at the time, it was a good 2 hour drive away, and i didn't have a license, let alone a car. but i did have older siblings and friends that i knew i could rely on. people i could turn to if i really needed help. my fears at the time mostly surrounded potentially having to reveal any personal details about my private life to them—i have a hard time asking for help, and tend not to share my thoughts or emotions with others, especially family (case in point, i almost posted this on twitter but then DIDN'T bc my sister and brother follow me). i'm in therapy, i'm working on it!!—but i never worried about being able to access abortion care.

i've never had an abortion, but i did have a miscarriage. i was 18 and i didn't even realize i was pregnant. my miscarriage was, thankfully, early and painless and i didn't know what it was until my period came for real and i spoke with my OBGYN about what happened.

i think about that 18 year old version of me all the time. i had just finished my freshman year of college. i had ended things with the guy bc i was hoping to (and would shortly) get back together with my other ex. i was more concerned with watching the latest true blood episode and meeting up with my friends still in high school at their after-prom, than with worrying about whether or not the guy at college had knocked me up.

abortion in austria (where i was at the time) has been fully legalized since 1975. if i had not had a miscarriage, i would have had options. if i had not realized until later in that summer, once we were back in the states, i would have had to have an incredibly uncomfortable and upsetting conversation with my conservative parents. but even then, i know, i would have had options. miscarriage for many people is a traumatic event. a painful loss, both emotionally and physically. for me, it was a blessing. but even if it hadn't have happened, i know i would have an abortion.

reading the latest NYT article (free link!!) about the dobbs decision fucking kills me. i keep having to stop. i keep welling up with tears. these 5 justices calculatingly (and at least some of of them, i believe, maliciously) stripped the country of roe v. wade. they turned back the clock and denied millions of people access to safe abortion, to their right to choose, to their bodily autonomy. just because i never had an abortion does not mean that this loss is felt any less keenly.

i find, time and time again, that i do not understand how some people go through this world and their life seemingly looking for ways to harm others. seeking to strip them of their rights. to deny them their humanity. i cannot comprehend how they seem to take glee in punishing people they view as other for the v basic fact that they exist.

this is long and i don't even know what point i'm making except for: i am so grateful for the fact that when i was 18, i had options, and i am so very, very, very fucking sad for the fact that there are 18 year olds today (and 20 year olds, and 28 year olds, and 15 year olds, and 36 year olds, and WHATEVER) who are being denied their right to choose. it's not fair. it isn't right. i want, so desperately, to change this.

and now the plea: please vote. please care. please advocate and donate and protest and be loud and be heard and demand better rights for yourself and others. please consider the courts when you cast your ballot: not just the supreme court, but the lower courts as well. if you don't, there will only be more decisions like this, the consequences of which will continue to ripple out for years on end causing harm to untold numbers of people.

#this is long #and random #i don't know #this article has made me so upset i'm sorry #abortion #politics #kat liveblogs her life

[whinlatter]

author's note | chapter 8: bones 🦴

thank you for reading chapter eight of Beasts! this week, it's hotting up politically - ginny meets with the minster of magic, enjoys a hot beverage with all of her ex boyfriends, finds out about the clinton impeachment and rides the east coast mainline from edinburgh to london for free with no cancellations or delays a week before christmas. now that really is magic.

got a bumper author's note this week (and some metas to follow), plus a sneak peek of chapter nine (oh the cameos we've got coming! i've got flashback fever). i am also accepting any and all guesses for who the gang will go as for the grimmauld muggle-themed NYE party. we know anthony's going as tony blair, terry boot's deciding between a terry's chocolate orange or the golden boot, but what will the rest of the DA go as? answers on a postcard/in the askbox pls. ok let's discuss this wet and wintery chapter that i wrote at the beach during a heatwave in august, for some reason

✨ spoilers for this chapter below the cut�� ✨

writing things and headcanons:

the hogwarts inquiry and graves on the ministry: the chapter opens with graves (himself an ex ministry employee, though we don’t know the circumstances of his exit yet) poking holes in the wizengamot’s approach to justice thus far in the post-war period, suggesting holding individuals accountable - especially someone like thicknesse who was imperiused - misses how the entire wizarding state is implicated in wartime crimes against muggleborns and other persecuted groups. also disillusioned by the way post-war trials are going, kingsley wants to take a different course of action to get to the bottom of what happened at hogwarts during the war. a lot of post-war fics do an amazing job doing post-war justice through criminal trials, and i wanted to do something a bit different for this fic that is explicitly interested in places and institutions and the cultures they foster (hogwarts and the ministry itself, but grimmauld place and, soon, the burrow, home to different kinds of institutions, including families). like a lot of people who grew up in the uk in the early 00s public inquiries - like the leveson inquiry into media culture and phone hacking, or the chilcott inquiry into the iraq war - really left a big impression on me (though i’m sure this is also true in lots of political cultures, not least in the US in things like senate hearings etc). i also really love seeing inquiries and hearings rendered in fiction (in tv, jesse armstrong shows like the thick of it and succession), so knew i wanted to have a go writing these into this fic. there are actually quite a few inquiries of varying scale that happen in the canon series (though none are public), so we know this is a mechanism the ministry has previously used to investigate various breaches of law or accepted norms (in CoS, arthur faces one over the car; over buckbeak in PoA; into percy over crouch; dumbledore asks for one after the dementor attack on harry, which fudge rejects; into bode’s murder at st mungo’s, and into the miscarriage of justice that saw sirius jailed for the potters’ murders). i’m literally just going to quote from taylor_fannon074’s gorgeous comment on this because it’s so well put: 

‘The Wizarding World knows that their children have been forcibly put at the center of a war they didn’t know existed for most of it. Children are the first line of attack when it comes to implementing fascist ideologies. People  areso sensitive about children and it’s a perfect weapon to utilize against anything that you want. It’s why Dumbledore became headmaster when he could’ve been Minister of Magic. It’s why the Malfoys are Voldemort’s greatest allies. If it were just about the Carrows they’d carry all the blame, now the defendants are the Ministry. Kingsley is using this tactic to direct the people’s anger towards the Ministry’s systemic oppression. He’s giving the kids a platform to talk about how a werewolf was the greatest teacher they ever had and several ministry officials tortured them. It calls the ministry’s competency into question, planting the seeds of doubt. I don’t think Kingsley aiming for a full scale revolution but trying to open the curtains and get wizards more active in their community.  He’s going after that statute of secrecy next, I can feel it in my bones!!!!’

kingsley: there are so many really great reads on kingsley as minister after the war, particularly kingsley taking on the ruthless (and manipulative) instincts of a politician, and speculation about that might clash with harry’s worldview and longstanding resentment of ministers carrying about things like public image and making moral compromises to get things done. i don’t disagree with those reads at all, and think they have a ton of basis in canon. what i knew i wanted in beasts, though, was to see if you could write a different kingsley, someone who hasn’t abandoned his principles but instead is trying to centre them. i wanted to play with the idea that all politicians are the same’, asking how kingsley’s contradictions - an avowed progressive, a lifelong ministry insider with more links to the muggle world than most, a resistance fighter turned a minister of magic trusted and admired by the children of the order - would shape his approach to try to capture post-war momentum for rebuilding and make real change, whatever that might look like. i also wanted this dynamic of kingsley and ginny having some familiarity with each other that we don’t see from the canon series that might hint at some wartime interactions we haven’t seen yet. anyway i wrote this scene with kingsley and ginny ages ago and then i read the unfinished but excellent fic about ginny and post-war justice cited below and was crushed to see someone had already written a version of the same scene much better. what a blow! (read that fic)

ginny’s card-making: ginny weasley loves to decorate and she loves christmas. canon could not be clearer about this. if you think she wouldn’t spitefully refuse to wish minerva mcgonagall seasons’ greetings then i’m sorry i think you are wrong with a capital W. graves didn’t get a card but he did get an essay because she’s warming up to him a bit but cards are only for those who aren’t on ginny approval probation 

writing on the wall: actually this is just me apologising to the anon who sent me this ask ages ago and i didn’t reply because i knew i had this scene in the bank and didn’t want to spoil it but yeah basically anon i could not agree with you more!!! i think it’s really a squandered opportunity in canon not to make more of this - in those old ootp planning notes jkr was going to have ginny write on the wall about umbridge in temper, but then removed it, so clearly was thinking of the DA wall daubing as a parallel with CoS but then… gave the line to neville lol. fuming. anyway! had to be done! thank u so much anon and so sorry again!

beasts, beings and patronuses: my favourite part of this chapter to write! (obviously that’s a lie it was the bit where harry and ginny shagged but second favourite for sure). graves goes all enlightenment subjectivity theory again smh, and then suggests what’s happened with the stag antlers might be something to do with a great disturbance to harry’s soul. @saintsenara think this is me steathily building up a tomarry endgame - other theories are circulating, all theories have me salivating

slughorn: hardcore hinny shipper, we have to stan. what’s he up to? also rina girl get back to school you're making ginny look conscientious

hermione: thank you to the extremely patient romione folks in my inbox - the trouble with this plot is that i have to keep all the romione bits off stage for now (and i have written some hermione and ron pov missing moment scenes that i might drop when this plot is fully developed and the mystery has ended) but for now i’m just sorry that so far in the published chapters the hermione plot is all unhealthy coping mechanisms and no answers!

muggle london: did i go rummaging on the freedom of information requests sent to transport for london to find out adult and child fares for central london weekend travel in 1998? yes i did. you never know when the transport pedants are going to flood your mentions !!! ‘are you a child’ ‘sort of’ could be summary of the entire fic really couldn’t it

the exes: i knew i wanted an unlikely character to speak a bit of truth to ginny, someone she wouldn’t be expecting to call her on her shit. the idea of using one of her exes to do it seemed satisfying for a couple of different reasons. i liked the idea of using a character who knows ginny well and who sees through her a bit, but also has nothing to lose throwing out some tough love to her face because they don’t really have any investment in being in her good books anymore. i also liked the idea of not taking ginny’s canonical descriptions of her relationships with her exes for granted, and using those relationships as an example of previous incidences where this character has kidded themselves, or at least come up with a retroactive narrative of something that has happened to them as a coping mechanism that actually masks a bigger, more complicated truth. (i have a longer meta on ginny and her exes i’ll post this week that isn’t expressly beasts-related where i’ll bang on about my read on what these relationships were to her, but for now suffice to say it seemed important in a fic that is at heart a coming of age ginny character study to draw in characters who were likely formative for her in her teenage years in some way). dean seemed a complicated choice, though (more about him below), so… michael corner it was. 

michael corner (or: characterisation when the character has about five whole lines in the whole of canon): 

this is michael corner this whole chapter:

i had a ball trying to figure out how to write michael corner, as the discord girlies can attest. michael is a very minor character in the series, with only a handful of scenes/appearances, and he spends most of them being a little dickhead lmao. the man never stops interrupting people to call them out/correct them. in his first scene in canon in ootp, at the hog’s head, michael sasses hermione on her motivations to set up the DA (‘“You want to pass your DADA O.W.L. too though, I bet?”’ - that earns him a snippy clapback) and then interrupts harry when harry’s being modest to both praise him but also correct him lol (‘“Not with the dragon, you didn’t,” said Michael Corner at once. “That was a seriously cool bit of flying...”’.) in DH, he yells at harry for planning to nip in and nip out of hogwarts when all the DA are living in hiding (‘“You’re going to leave us in this mess?” demanded Michael Corner’), and then gets annoyed at luna for being dumb about the diadem (‘“Yeah, but the lost diadem,” said Michael Corner, rolling his eyes, “is lost, Luna. That’s sort of the point.”’) when it comes to ginny, she calls him a ‘fool’ when he almost gives the game away about the DA in the hall, and when they’re paired up at the DA and she’s killin it hexing him he’s “either very bad or unwilling to jinx her”. given his interest in his academics - and that he’s a ravenclaw - i think we can suspect it’s the latter, a display of chivalric concern that was never going to go down well with gin. they then break up after ginny decides he’s too ‘sulky’ about ravenclaw’s loss at quidditch, after which michael immediately goes off to get with cho (michael and harry bonding over their shared type fic when). but. michael’s also someone ginny (someone who does not suffer fools!) went out with for an entire year, so can’t be a total dickhead, clearly knows right from wrong and has moments of real bravery - joining the DA in the first place, but also enduring torture that neville describes as particularly horrific for trying to rescue a chained up first-year during the DH, which would almost certainly make him deserving of ginny’s respect after the war. being in the DA under the carrows must have been an intense bonding experience for all involved, and actually would have forced ginny and michael back into each other’s lives in a way that forced them to develop some kind of working relationship. all this then added up to the decisions i made to write him as he is in beasts: someone who is grouchy, sassy, contrarian, too competitive, a bit jealous of others’ abilities (the sore loser), and fond of calling people out/correcting people, but also someone who speaks his mind and whose heart is, ultimately, in the right place, a bit of an arse but not a baddie. and i think that makes sense as a character ginny weasley would be attracted to, at least initially, and who she can get behind as someone whose opinion she will listen to, with a pinch of salt.

bonus michael headcanons: other characterisation bits that are more headcanons than anything else: michael, terry and anthony’s band. ginny is canonically a fan of the weird sisters, with a poster up in her room. the weird sisters play at the yule ball.  michael and ginny meet at the yule ball. like literally nine billion other teenage relationships, wouldn’t be fun if michael and ginny first met/got to chatting because they both liked the same band? then that became: well, dean was artistic - what if ginny’s into creatives? wouldn’t it be a laugh if michael, terry and anthony, this three piece gang of boy besties, were in a band? so that became me imagining them all in a promising but bit-too-clever-for-their-own-good indie band, alt-j or vampire weekend of the 90s, very into the smiths. (the album cover ginny recognises in their flat ‘of a white turreted castle, lush woodland by a sunlit lake’ is blur’s country house - partly because the castle in that album art looks a bit like hogwarts, but also because country house was the single that, as british readers might remember, was in a very famous race for number 1 with oasis in the battle of britpop in august 1995, which became about the middle-class southern band (blur) vs the northern working class equivalent (oasis). in my mind the ravenclaw boys would have been team blur and the gryffindor boys are team oasis lol. 90s lore!) the ravenclaw boys being low key into hallucinogenic potions is literally because michael has a throwaway line in hbp where he asks slughorn about felix felicis lol (‘“Have you ever taken it, sir?” asked Michael Corner with great interest.”). so yeah that was enough to get me imagining michael and the boys as low key stoners but also into experimenting with different psychedelic substances and writing bangin’ tunes. they’re boarding school teenage boys, after all!

dean: ah dean 🥺 one day i’ll finish that damn dean fic. the dean we see here is who i imagine dean would be after the war - more lost and alone than literally any of the other main characters, properly unhappy. unlike the golden trio, or the silver trio, dean spends his deeply traumatic war alone, and i think that would fuck him up. he has to go on the run and leave his muggle family behind, a family he’s lied to about the severity of the war (“My parents are Muggles, mate,” said Dean, shrugging. “They don’t know nothing about no deaths at Hogwarts, because I’m not stupid enough to tell them.”’). he must have struggled, as the trio did, with accessing food and finding places of safety, but also had far fewer protections than the trio (no perkins tent, no invisibility cloak, none of hermione’s abilities). he’d also have had to deal with the fact that he’s a young black boy on the run in majority white racist nineties britain, where he would be hyper visible and vulnerable to the suspicions of muggles as well as the wizarding ministry and snatchers (the police/suspicious members of the public are never going to have treated a black teenage boy who seems homeless well). he briefly has the company of ted tonks, surrogate dad figure, dirk cresswell and the goblins, but then watches all but griphook get murdered. then he’s snatched, rescued, and goes to live at shell cottage with his ex’s brother lol. he would have none of the wartime bonding and sense of group solidarity that the wartime DA seem to have built, and while it seems likely he too would join the aurors if invited to punish the people who persecuted him, i think he would feel intensely isolated and lonely as well as challenged by the demands of that job, one he never really seems to crave in canon. got our first few deamus hints here but yeah basically if michael’s going thru one kind of trauma, dean’s going through another, one that he’s never going to open up to the ex who hurt him about. he doesn’t hate ginny - in DH, when he hears about the sword theft, he shows clearly still wants her to be safe and well - but he’s had none of michael’s time to build a post-relationship working friendship with her, and the emotional trust isn’t there anymore. wow bummed myself out writing that out jesus. he could have offered her a cup of tea, though. that’s just basic brit etiquette

baby’s first almost smut: look. what was i supposed to do. these two haven't shared a bed since august. if you think they’re not fucking immediately on sight i simply do not know what to tell you

(gif courtesy of @uncontainedhybrid)

reading list: 

postwar justice (and kingsley as MoM): 

The Weight of the After by PaperyInk  Castles by @pebblysand

the ravenclaw boys: 

these three brilliant fics by chaserzachsmith (crikey)  Notes from the Ravenclaw Bulletin Board by lost_robin

grimmauld place:

haunted house by @bronzeagepizzeria Grimmauld Place: Azkaban by a Different Name by @artemisia-black

beasts and beings:

this meta by @myrskytuuli on harry potter as colonial fantasy 

on the politics of childhood in 20c european politics, especially post-war (not hp fanfiction but historical non-fiction lmao): 

the lost children and kidnapped souls, both by tara zahra 

songs from the playlist for this chapter:

la jeune fille en feu by para one and arthur simonini | i horó 's na hug òro eile by duncan chisholm | blue ridge mountains by fleet foxes | lull by vraell and rosie h sullivan | if we make it through december by phoebe bridgers | please, please, please let me get what i want by the smiths | wading in waist-high water (solstice version) by fleet foxes | feels like a dream by alice boman and perfume genius

and a sneak peek of chapter 9 because now we're at grimmauld and you know what that means... 🐕‍🦺🐾

‘Wow. What a shithole.’ ‘Fred!’ ‘Don’t lie, Mum, you think it’s a shithole, too, I can see it on your face.’  ‘Well, yes, but don’t be rude, this is someone’s house.' ‘Be as rude as you like,’ says a bored voice. They all jump, turn to see a man standing at the foot of the stairs: tall, gaunt, long hair like curtains framing a ten-thousand galleon face. ‘I assure you,’ says Sirius Black, ‘this house is an insult to shitholes everywhere.’

#beasts #author's note #AN #yes the author's note is as long as the chapter #did someone say... padfoot #hinny #ginny weasley #sirius black #michael corner #meta #ministry of magic #wizarding politics #post-DH #dean thomas #deamus

[dreamingsnowflake2013]

Susu really said “if my man went on a killing spree he would tell me and wouldn’t leave anyone alive.” You’ve got to love the confidence she has in his murderous excellence and his inability to keep secrets from her, especially after he’s shared his deepest, darkest and ugliest secrets with her and bared his heart in front of her.

She has really learned her lesson after being the one who always jumped to conclusions and never have Tantai Jin the benefit of doubt 500 years ago. She knows he is a magnet who attracts miscarriage of justice and judicial error like no one else, a walking glutton for punishment. It means so much that no matter how much people smear him, she never doubts him and refuses to hate him but instead doubts everyone else.

#till the end of the moon #bai lu #cdrama

[girljeremystrong]

do u have a book rec that will ruin me emotionally? i want to be upset. but in a nice way. sort of like how la vita è bella makes me upset or a thousand splendid suns makes me upset. i need a bittersweet ending i will think about forever. or something. sorry for the random question shshsjsjs <3 all g if you can’t think of anything i just thought i’d ask you first

of course i do!! ❤️

so here are some book that are upsetting and heartbreaking and made me upset and made me cry:

the great believers by rebecca makkai

i cried and cried and didn't recover for days. a dazzling new novel of friendship and redemption in the face of tragedy and loss set in 1980s chicago and contemporary paris.

the fortune men by nadifa mohamed

how frustrating and sad this was, made me cry and made me mad! the story of a murder, a miscarriage of justice, and a man too innocent for his times.

tin man by sarah winman

why is love so miserable? ellis and michael are twelve when they first become friends, and then one day this closest of friendships grows into something more. but then we fast forward a decade or so, to find that ellis is married to annie, and michael is nowhere in sight, what happened in the years between?

the summer that melted everything by tiffany mcdaniel

this writer is outstanding! when a local prosecutor publishes an invitation to the devil to come to the country town of breathed, ohio, nobody quite expected that he would turn up. they especially didn't expect him to turn up a tattered and bruised thirteen-year-old boy.

betty by tiffany mcdaniel

i cried through entire chapters of this. a stunning, lyrical novel set in the rolling foothills of the appalachians in which a young girl discovers stark truths that will haunt her for the rest of her life. "a girl comes of age against the knife."

swimming in the dark by tomasz jedrowski

so sad and infuriating!!! set in early 1980s poland against the violent decline of communism, a tender and passionate story of first love between two young men who eventually find themselves on opposite sides of the political divide

crying in h mart by michelle zauner

just hundreds of pages about a death so sad and inevitable. a memoir about growing up korean american, losing her mother, and forging her own identity.

the prophets by robert jones jr.

everything about this is upsetting and maddening. a novel about the forbidden union between two enslaved young men on a deep south plantation, the refuge they find in each other, and a betrayal that threatens their existence.

yolk by mary h.k. choi

to me all stories about siblings are intrinsically tragic. a funny and emotional story about two estranged sisters switching places and committing insurance fraud to save one of their lives.

mayflies by andrew o'hagan

so sad but also a glorious celebration of life. a memorial to youth's euphorias and to everyday tragedy. a tender goodbye to an old union, it discovers the joy and the costs of love.

salvage the bones by jesmyn ward

an absolute masterpiece!!! hurricane katrina is threatening the coastal town of bois sauvage. esch and her three brothers are stocking food. she's fourteen and pregnant. as the twelve days that comprise the novel's framework yield to the final day, the unforgettable family pulls itself up to struggle for another day.

tell the wolves i'm home by carol rifka brunt

sad and sweet and also nothing is more heartbreaking than how people with aids were treated in the 80s. a moving story of love, grief, and renewal as two lonely people become the unlikeliest of friends and find that sometimes you don't know you've lost someone until you've found them. in 1987 after her uncle dies of hiv a fourteen year old girl gets to know his uncle's partner.

an american marriage by tayari jones

this woman is an incredible writer! this book is so absolutely frustrating. newlyweds celestial and roy are the embodiment of both the american dream and the new south. but as they settle into the routine of their life together, they are ripped apart. roy is arrested and sentenced to twelve years for a crime celestial knows he didn’t commit.

flowers for algernon by daniel keyes

heart-wrenching!!!! it's the story of a mentally disabled man whose experimental quest for intelligence mirrors that of algernon, an extraordinary lab mouse.

and among the classics:

if this is a man by primo levi

the account of the author's experience from when he was captured to his transfer as part of 650 italian jews from to auschwitz in poland and his experiences until the end.

all quiet on the western front by erich maria remarque

with the fire and patriotism of youth a group of german schoolboys sign up to go to war. what follows is the moving story of a young ‘unknown soldier’ experiencing the horror and disillusionment of life in the trenches.

giovanni's room by james baldwin

an american expatriate living in the south of france, reminisces about his life, while his ex-lover, an Italian immigrant named giovanni, is set to be executed in the morning.

if beale street could talk by james baldwin

a moving story of love in the face of injustice. tishis a nineteen-year-old girl, in love with fonny, a young sculptor who is the father of her child. they have pledged to get married, but tonny is falsely accused of a terrible crime and imprisoned. their families set out to clear his name.

#i hope at leat one of these will work!!!!! #thank you for asking!!! ❤️ #book recs #books #ask #reasoncourt

[ordinorultor-if]

Tarot pt.2

Okay I got distracted playing Mount & Blade yesterday, but here's part 2 of the tarot associations.

B/Bertie is XV - The Devil. The Devil is a card of ambition, sensation and temptation, oppression, and corrupting figures. I think of all the characters, B plays into the dualism between the Reversed and Upright meanings the most. B is jealous of MC, and I wouldn't put it past them to stage a coup if they feel MC is dealing with the Liege poorly, hence the ambition and temptation readings. However, they're probably the member of the Council most against the Liege, and the Reversed meaning of The Devil is all about freeing oneself from oppression and divorcing oneself from corrupting figures. And if MC gets a high enough relation with B, then B is able to (mostly) let go of their jealousy, letting go of their own internal temptations.

A/Alb is XVIII - The Moon. The Moon is a card of trickery, illusion, imagination, and the messages that can be found in one's dreams. Alb is MC's chancellor and diplomatic advisor, responsible for hosting other rulers and communicating with them, hence the association with dream messages. However, they're almost a second spymaster - extremely underhanded and willing to go behind everyone's backs if it furthers their family's goals and/or the deposition of the Liege.

M/Mel is XII - The Hanged Man. The Hanged man is a card of sacrifice, martyrdom, and knowledge. Mel, due to their issues, works themselves to the bone as MC's spymaster, dealing with a spy network that feeds them information from as far away as the capital of the empire or the northern border of Sayland. However, The Hanged Man in its Reversed position is specifically a card of pointless sacrifice, leading back to how the rest of the family would prefer if Mel chilled out.

E is a mix of V - The Hierophant and XVII - The Star. The Hierophant is a card of spiritual authority, conformity, and occasionally mercy, compassion, and education. The Star, meanwhile, is a card of 'the light at the end of the tunnel', joy and hope during a dark time. E, as MC's religious and legal advisor, has a link to the church, especially through their mentor, Bishop Rosalie. Personally, they are a source of great comfort to their family, and a good source of interpersonal advice.

P/P'enfant is XI - Justice. Justice is a card of... well, I don't think you need me to tell you. Once MC decides how to depose the Liege, P begins to become one of the Liege's most vicious opponents, constantly demanding justice for all of their crimes, representing the Upright meanings of karma and justice; additionally, P, as Akize's highest tax official, is the one dealing with the brunt of the Liege's pettiness and abuse of authority (aside from MC), and they also were there to find out when the Liege attacked one of MC's siblings, both of which represent well the Reversed meanings of abuse and miscarriage of justice. Admittedly, this is one of the shakier associations.

The Liege is IV - The Emperor. The Emperor is a card of temporal authority (contrasting with V - The Hierophant, which is similar but more spiritual), leadership, and control. However, the Liege is more associated with the card's Reversed meaning than its Upright meaning: they're a tyrant, they're petty and immature, they're domineering, they're stubborn - all things associated with The Reversed Emperor. There's also minor associations with XVI - The Tower in that by destroying them and upending the old order, MC paves the way for something better... probably.

#interactive fiction #ordinor ultor if #tarot #sibling b #sibling a #sibling m #sibling e #sibling p

[tea-and-charcoal]

I knew that the denial of reproductive knowledge to people who can get pregnant is bad, but I didn't realize quite *how* bad it was until I started having complications with my own pregnancy and started asking questions. You are denied knowledge at every turn as soon as you try to get beyond the surface "here's what most people experience." I had several times where I was given contradictory advice from the same people in regards to "Expect X." / "But y happened." / "Oh that happens all the time. It's perfectly normal."

"Don't worry about it." "Well, no way to know." "Everyone is different, don't mind why." "[Repeats information you explicitly told them you know to sidestep the pointed question you asked]" It happens at every turn. They won't give odds in their prognoses, won't explain why guidelines are the way they are, just a lot of what boils down to "You don't get to know. Go back to being an incurious vessel and do what I say like a good little girl."

I've had this from multiple doctors, forums, I even had to pull out all the search engine tricks to find out what average non-pregnant hcg levels are (<1, by the way until you get near menopause. Still no luck finding out why the cutoff in labs is 4, though, or why once you get <10 the half-life falls off a cliff. Just a lot of "very helpful" people telling me anything less than 4 is not pregnant so I shouldn't worry about it.) All that information is only for the initiated to know, not for the people it affects.

I have no idea how we fix this. The repression reproductive knowledge based on the mistrust of women and anyone authorities are happy to pretend are women is dire. I'm in reproductive justice circles. I have a science education and can read medical articles fluently. *I* can't even find the answers to these questions, and this enforced ignorance has a real tangible harm for anyone with a uterus, especially those of us that can get pregnant. I'm sure part of it also stems from the brand of sexism within the medical community that is more than happy to label something "a women's problem" and refuse to study it further.

(Among the other things I couldn't find: how likely hydrophic damage to villi in tissue after a surgical abortion is to point to a molar pregnancy, so I just had to sit with "well, your miscarriage might have given you cancer, so don't have sex in case we have to give you chemo" for two weeks until the lab results came back and I was told "whoopsie you're fine. Why were you worried? I explicitly told you not to worry." That's the kind of thing we're talking about).

Access to knowlege is a reproductive justice issue, and it's worse than almost anyone knows. As much as I support grassroots efforts (which is why I'm talking about my own complications), I don't think it's going to change until doctors get beyond thinking "Sit down, shut up, be a good little girl." Whenever a pregnant person walks into their office.

(Also, terfs, fuck off. Im a nonbinary trans man and don't you dare touch this post)

#reproductive justice #pregnancy cw #miscarriage cw #sexism #misgendering #i mean i imagine this won't go anywhere at all #but in case it does transphobes can fuck off bc its even worse for ys #nothing like combing my doctors notes for answers only to find he called me she throughout #long post

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Sanity prevails!  ::  April 22, 2023

ROBERT B. HUBBELL

APR 22, 2023

         In a 7-2 ruling, the Supreme Court stayed Judge Kacsmaryk’s ruling revoking the FDA’s approval of mifepristone. As a result, mifepristone will remain available until the Fifth Circuit and Supreme Court consider Judge Kacsmaryk’s ruling on the merits. That process will likely take two years.

         The Supreme Court’s order and Alito’s dissent are here: Danco Laboratories LLC v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine.

         In granting the stay, the Supreme Court pulled back from the precipice of chaos that would have been created by a nationwide ban on mifepristone. There was a palpable sigh of relief among court watchers and reproductive rights advocates that the Court did not accept the invitation to depart the realm of sanity. As Ian Millhiser tweeted,

The Supreme Court did not do the most hackish, credibility-destroying thing it could possibly do.

         Millhiser offers a more sober analysis in his article in Vox, The Supreme Court’s new abortion pill ruling, explained. Per Millhiser,

The plaintiffs’ arguments in this case are laughably weak. They ask the Court to defy longstanding legal principles establishing that judges may not second-guess the FDA’s scientific judgments about which drugs are safe enough to be prescribed in the United States. Moreover, no federal court has jurisdiction to even hear this case in the first place.

[¶]

That said, the Court’s decision to temporarily keep mifepristone legal is a hopeful sign that the justices will ultimately decide not to ban mifepristone. And there are other reasons to believe that a majority of the Court might reject this entirely meritless attack on abortion rights.

         Justice Alito continued his descent into terminal crankiness with a three-page diatribe that belittles the medical necessity of mifepristone and women’s rights to healthcare. Alito would have denied the stay because he believes that a several-month period of restrictions on mifepristone would not “likely [impose] irreparable harm.” Tell that to a woman suffering through a protracted and dangerous miscarriage.

         It is tough to make predictions—especially about the future. But the fact that seven justices refused to allow Kacsmaryk’s ruling to remain in effect bodes well for the ultimate decision on the merits in favor of reproductive liberty.

         That is a good place to come to rest before the weekend. Sanity prevailed (for once), perhaps because the Court realized Dobbs inflicted irremediable damage to its legitimacy.

#Dobbs #SCOTUS #Robert B. Hubbel Newsletter #Robert B. Hubbell #women's rights #reproductive rights

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

What was the licensing system for?

"Although the repatriation of the licensing system following the end of transportation seems to have been, at least in part, an unthinking policy reflex, as the system persisted through the nineteenth century, it appears to have offered three distinct advantages to the authorities.

First, it reduced costs to the extent that it made the convict prison system more affordable. At between £32 and £42 a year, the average cost per convict was remarkably stable between 1856 and 1914. This cost approximately doubled in the wake of World War I, but it was only in the 1930s – a time when the convict population was much smaller – that it rose significantly. After the prison closures of the inter-war period, the cost was, on average, £140 per convict. The total cost of the system was, of course, affected by the number of people consigned to convict prisons. Although there were fluctuations in numbers and therefore costs, the system as a whole was expensive. Between 1856 and 1940, the average cost of the convict prison system was £218,000 per year. By the start of World War II, the cost of the overall system was still £240,000 per year, not far off from the £226,000 it had cost to run in 1856. In the post-World War II period, the cost rose steeply once more. The prison system has always been (and continues to be) very expensive. However, its costs were considerably lightened by the licensing system. Without a licensing system, the average daily prison population would have increased by one-quarter to one-third, as would the financial costs of running the convict prisons.

The licensing system operated like a pressure valve that made the convict prison system manageable and able to operate at a much-reduced cost. Between 1870 and 1885, when the long stretches handed to people sentenced under habitual offender legislation inflated the convict population, the licensing system saved the authorities close to one million pounds. After 1882, convict establishments largely became net exporters of prisoners, and the licensing system continued to save a considerable annual sum for the prison estate. The proportion of a penal servitude sentence that needed to be served before release on licence was formalized in 1853, long before the prison crises of the next three decades, but the impact of reducing the number of licences granted between 1856 and 1859, and the concomitant rise in the prison population, must have been a lesson for the authorities. The system could be viewed as an elegant mechanism for the authorities, allowing them to reduce costs whenever the system became bloated with convicts by releasing more and more men and women on licence. The system had not been conceived as a cost-saving device, but it was quite evidently operated in that way, making the convict prison system as a whole financially viable.

Second, the promise of a licence being dangled over prisoners’ heads helped to keep order inside the prisons. In Walls Have Mouths, former convict McCartney wrote that ‘a good prison record means that the convict is at the beck and call of every jailer in the prison, that he has to suffer every indignity and injustice in silence, that he cannot associate himself with any complaints, and that he has to do whatever is convenient to the warders, otherwise he gets a bad report, and that report may militate against him to the extent of an extra five years in prison’. The explicit and implicit threat of the loss of remission was one way of keeping discipline in a prison, especially as it would have inculcated self-government among convicts.

Lastly, the licensing system allowed the prison authorities to put right obvious errors that might have undermined the legitimacy of the criminal justice system. This was especially important – or, indeed, may have only been important – when glaring miscarriages of justice attracted attention from the media or from politicians. For example, George Whitehood and Charles Holden were charged with the arson of three haystacks at Hayes on 25 October 1869. In court, Holden stated that ‘he would rather be in prison than not, walking about with nothing to eat’, and he received a ten-year sentence at the Old Bailey on 22 November 1869. Whitehood, however, who may well have been in the same state of poverty, desperation, and disillusionment as Holden, had difficulty proving that he had been anywhere near the crime scene. He had only been liberated from Wandsworth Prison at 9.30 a.m. on the day of the fire and could not possibly have walked to Hayes (a five-hour journey) by the time the fire was started (just after midday). The judge at the Central Criminal Court believed Whitehood had confessed to the crime in order to be transported – if Western Australia was no longer an option, perhaps he was thinking of Gibraltar (where penal servitude continued until 1875), although the judge seems to have been unclear about the options. Whitehood’s case was taken up by the governor of Brixton Prison and the Home Office, who were on firmer footing in correcting the error through the licensing system. Whitehood, having served less than a year of his ten-year sentence, was given a licence in 1870. ‘If he commits another offence it will subject him to imprisonment in, and not removal from this country,’ stated the governor. Whitehood never reoffended, but without the intervention of the prison authorities he would have served another six years in prison before becoming eligible for release on licence. It should be noted that Whitehood’s case had been taken up by MPs in the House of Commons, no doubt putting pressure on the Home Office to act. The number of highly visible cases were few, and therefore one assumes that the number of ‘corrections by licence’ were similarly few.

For most people on licence, it served one very real and valuable purpose: it got them out. As the outpouring of emotion at the beginning of this chapter from people about to be released from prison attests, this purpose should not be underestimated. However, there was not much support with regard to rehabilitation while on licence, and, indeed, there were many barriers to reformation that the system itself put in the way of anyone attempting to ‘go straight’. The authorities were more than aware of the stigma attached to those who had been in prison. The Penal Servitude Acts Commission of 1863 reported that it was ‘far from confident that persons in this condition would find it easy to obtain an honest livelihood. Men with characters branded by their having been convicts are exposed to insuperable disadvantage, in the strong competition for employment.’ This issue was also a topic of considerable discussion by the Kimberley Commission fifteen years later. Several ex-convict witnesses who gave evidence objected to police supervision on the grounds that police officers informed their employers of their status as ex-prisoners and this resulted in the termination of their contracts. Representatives of the Royal Discharged Prisoners Aid Society also put forward a few examples in which this had been the case. A number of male and female convicts in our study also claimed to have experienced this problem. The commission recommended improving the system of supervision in this regard, arguing in line with the 1863 commission that

no time should be lost … in improving the present system. We fear that supervision, if left in the hands of ordinary police constables ... will tend more and more to become a mere matter of mere routine, harassing to the men who are subjected to it, and affording no real security to society against the criminal classes.

However, the licensing system did reduce the period in custody and thereby gave people more time to do the ordinary things that other Victorians and Edwardians did: form relationships, marry, settle down, and have children; find work and build a career or at least have a steady form of income; build relationships and put down roots in a neighbourhood after establishing a secure and stable residence; and take responsibility for one’s own actions, rather than being told what to do and when to do it. All of this helped to build maturity and foster self-reliance and responsibility. These structural factors operating at the individual level encouraged rehabilitation and desistence from offending, but they took time – time that was given back to convicts through the granting of a licence. Although it offered significant financial and operational benefits to the convict prison system, the licensing system was of no intrinsic value to individual convicts, except as a temporal window that allowed more supportive processes to get to work beyond the prison gates."

- Helen Johnston, Barry Godfrey and David J. Cox, Penal Servitude: Convicts and Long-Term Imprisonment, 1853–1948. Kingston and Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2022. p. 147-151

#convict prison #uk prisons #parole #parole system #prisoner release #convict license #penal reform #sentenced to the penitentiary #prison discipline #penal servitude #academic quote #history of crime and punishment #reading 2023 #prison administration

[rampanttheories]

On the Order of the Phoenix

At some point in time between the third task in GoF and Harry getting picked up during the summer the Order of the Phoenix was called back into existence and subsequently moved into Grimmauld Place.

Presumably, Dumbledore vouched for Sirius' innocence around that time as otherwise I doubt Molly Weasley would allow her children in that place and Sirius would probably get attacked by three competent aurors at varying stages of their careers.

Speaking of which:

Three competent aurors with a drive to do good (as evident in their joining a militia against Riddle) learned of Sirius' innocence and wrongful incarceration. And not one of them did anything about the gross miscarriage of justice under their noses. Which sounds off to me.

We have a very young auror at the beginning of her career and a blood relation to Sirius, so overall with very limited influence on the topic in Tonks. A retired auror known to be close with Dumbledore, who is subject to a smear campaign at that point, and a known paranoid bastard in Mad-Eye Moody. And an auror established in his career in Kingsley Shaklebolt. In my eyes the most likely candidate to attempt something.

From what we see of Kingsley he is well respected in the Ministry and regarded by the Minister himself. Fudge brings him along to try and arrest Dumbledore later in the year which speaks to a certain level of social and political aptitute. Additional evidence in this direction are Kingsley being appointed magical bodyguard to the muggle PM during Scrimgeour's term and Kingsley's own election to Minister of Magic following the Battle of Hogwarts. So we can assume him to be well-connected and able to raise topics at opportune moments in a way accessible to his audience.

The Ministry at this point in time is having an awful time and has been for pretty exactly two years. Starting with Sirius' escape, which rattled faith in Azkaban, the dementors and the aurors specifically who failed to re-apprehend him. Continuing with the repeated issues with the dementors at Hogwarts. Continuing on further with the embarassment of the Quidditch World Cup being overrun by deatheaters. And finally, most recently, the desaster the Triwizard Tournament ended up being with the UK having two champions, audience-unfriendly tasks, a judge disappearing, a champion dying and finally the claims the magical world's latest terrorist was returning from the presumed dead. And of course, the initial escapee was still on the run. The Ministry was scrambling to at least appear in control of everything, both domestically and internationally. Hence the attempts to discredit Dumbledore and Harry as the other regional public figures and seize control over Hogwarts.

Kingsley could absolutely go up to the ambitious Scrimgeour, I doubt his aspirations were unknown, and suggest building a small task force to catch Sirius Black. After all, the Ministry and especially the Aurors needed a win in the public eye and with all the other things going on Black wouldn't expect it. So if he could maybe have access to all files pertaining Black? The potential for Fudge becoming the scapegoat for all the recent troubles and Scrimgeour emerging as a new and trusted leader based on achievements remains unsaid yet is understood by all.

Potentially Scrimgeour takes the idea and runs with it himself. After all, the Ministry is adamant about aurors not being actively needed at the moment, he has the time. And he reads every single document on the case Black. Including any trial records and evidence filed. Which is astonishingly little.

Concerningly little.

Promisingly little.

Especially since Fudge was personally involved in the case and has been publicly bragging about it (see PoA in the Three Broomsticks). So it would very naturally reflect badly especially on Fudge and his administration if Black's guilt were to be re-exmined. And Scrimgeour himself would not only be a fresh face, but one righting the wrongs of his predecessors. With the support of a notorious house if the only surviving bearer of the name Black owed him a favour. It would also neatly subvert the issue called Potter. He'd probably be very busy getting acclimated to a new godfather if custody was transferred from that muggle family. Fewer claims of a second coming of that bloody bastard. All the better. Smear campaigns against children were never a good look on anyone. Now to get that innocence established, weren't there statements Fudge ignored last year...

Kingsley is very happy to stand back and watch self-interest get the right thing done. Scrimgeour would remember who gave him the idea and the Order would gain a powerful supporter and fighter. Wins across the board in his book.

TL;DR: Kingsley not doing something about Sirius' innocence is bullshit. Especially not when at that point everybody was ready to see Fudge go and establishing Sirius as innocent would be a perfect thing for him to fall over. Political intrigue accidentally fixing problems ensues

#harry potter #kingsley shacklebolt #rufus scrimgeour #ministry of magic #cornelius fudge #sirius black #harry james potter #meta talk #the wizarding world is a dumpster fire #own content #mini fic?

[cannotfly]

fogg's insane asylum for lunatic women.

disclaimer.

i am not a historian, just a girl whose had an interest in historical mental institutions for almost as long as i've loved this musical. as time has gone on, however, i've become more and more upset with the portrayal of fogg's asylum. the movie presents it as some kind of crack house filled with mad women ( all arranged by hair color? ) reaching out and grabbing at whoever comes by. the musical doesn't do much better. while what anthony said about fogg's isn't far off as to what the general public would think about them, "she's trapped in these with all those screeching, gibbering maniacs!" that's not exactly the case. i have been putting together headcanons about fogg's asylum for several months now. i've done extensive research on actual patients, i've read books, etc.

much of this is based on ten days in a madhouse by nellie bly. bly was a reporter in the later 19th century who was assigned to go undercover in a mental institution and report back with what she found. her expose can be found online as a pdf. the language isn't complicated, especially for the 19th century, and while it is a hard read at some points, i very much recommend it. bly interviews the patients and victims of abuse and learns their story. while some of the language is very much of the time, she actually understands the brutalities of a victorian mental asylum.

because of the nature of mental hospitals during the 1840s and johanna as a character, be warned that this meta goes over some very difficult topics such as: abuse of all kinds, torture, eating disorders, period sexism, mental subjects, miscarriages, menstruation, trauma, sexual abuse, illness, drugs, drug withdrawals and chronic pain. due to the length of this meta, i will put individual warnings over each section.

i will be adding onto this meta as i learn more. i don't know everything and there are some sections that likely reflect that. please bare with me as i learn. i do not condone the period attitudes towards women or those who are mentally ill during this time.

many thanks to darks for helping me figure out some details. thank you to misto and jasmine for your support and from keeping me from loosing my mind. thank you to so many of my good friends for supporting me as i wrote this.

despite my sometimes dry tone, keep in mind that this is a century different from our own. they did not have the resources and technology and research that we do know. they were doing the best they could with what we had. this does not excuse their abuse, but it does shed light on why some of treatments were the way they were. i want to give justice to a fictional mental hospital as best as i can. without further ado, fogg's insane asylum for lunatic women.

word count from this point: 6,980

introduction.

warnings for period typical sexism throughout this entire section.

ladies in their sensitivities, my lord / have a fragile sensibility / when a girl's emergent / probably it's urgent / you defer to her gentility - ladies in their sensitivities, sw.eeney t.odd: the d.emon ba.rber of f.leet street

women are often referred to as the fairer sex. the more vulnerable and emotional roughly half of humanity. it should come as no surprise that women made up most of the population of bethlem royal hospital, more often known as bedlam. it's not often you hear of a lunatic asylum made specifically for men, is it? more often there are strictly female asylums or the men and the women are separated into two different wings or even two separate buildings both managed under the same people. bedlam was meant to hold 120 patients, however, overcrowding was a frequent problem of the institution and there were many more patients on the waiting list. because of this long waiting list and the overcrowding at london's most (in)famous insane asylum, most hospitals popped up in and around the city. fogg's insane asylum for lunatic women among them.

fogg's was initially founded by dr. john fogg to compensate for the large amount of the mentally ill ( and homeless and unwanted wives and disabled people ) in london. fogg's is located a few miles west of london, just on the outskirts. this is pivotal since if there is ever an escape, it is dangerous for everyone involved if one of the patients gets into the city. this way, they won't be able to directly find their way into trouble and the police have a better chance at finding them. though this was mostly for the comfort of the citizens of london, who weren't exactly keen on the idea of a madperson running about their neighborhoods.

dr. fogg's son, alfred was the superintendent of the asylum. he was a businessman, not a doctor and introduced ideas to make a profit. this includes selling the inmate's hair. he left most of the dirty work to the doctors, nurses and other staff. doctors weren't willing to put up with the harsh conditions of the asylum and slowly slipped away, which alfred hardly noticed. he died a rich man.

jonas fogg was the nephew of mr. albert fogg. seeing the problems within the madhouse, he began visiting other asylums. this gave him brighter ideas to institutionalize fogg's. the patients would follow a schedule. the patients would be in uniforms. the patients would be divided into different wards accordingly. despite all these changes, jonas fogg is still a mortal man. he doesn't mind the sound of coins jiggling in his pocket. he kept the practice of selling hair, seeing to it himself to make sure that money went straight into the palm of his hand.

judge phillip turpin and jonas fogg met briefly at a pub. mr. fogg not being a stupid man made an agreement with the judge: if judge turpin is to sentence any insane woman, let him send her to fogg's insane asylum for lunatic women. into fogg's humble and loving care. judge turpin agreed and so began their arrangement.

entering.

warnings for period-typical sexism and medical topics.

"i found her! i found johanna! that monster of a judge has locked her away in fogg's asylum. oh, mr. todd she's in there with those gibbering, screeching maniacs!" -anthony h.ope, s.weeney to.dd: the dem.on b.arber of fl.eet s.treet

it is not uncommon to come across some wide-eyed, mysterious woman who seems to be distant from this reality and it is not uncommon for such a woman to find her way into an insane asylum such as fogg's. these poor, mad women need help. ( and they need to get off of society's perfectly straight cobblestone streets. )

reasons for being admitted included, but were not limited to:

learning disabilities

menopause

"domestic trouble"

women doing into debt and unable to recover from the trauma of that

asthma

blindness

deafness

postpartum depression

mental breakdowns

down syndrome

they were sexually abused

they were trying to go to a workhouse, but ended up here

being suicidal

violence

self-harm

grief

sex/sexual dysfunction

fancied other men than her husband

if you come across a woman that fits the description above, please contact the police immediately. they understand what to do in this situation. a judge may see to them and they will have the poor, mad soul seen before a doctor who will ask a series of questions. a standard questionnaire may include questions such as:

"what drugs are you taking?"

"are you married?"

"have you participated in any sex work?" ( although, in a much more dignified manner )

"where are you from?"

"is this your first fit?" ( meaning: is this the first time you've made everyone think you're a lunatic? )

"how old are you?"

"what do you do for a living?"

"how much money do you have?"

the doctor will examine the throat and tongue at this point. once the doctor deems her insane, the police will wait with the woman until an ambulance can arrive for her to take her away. one of the police officers will accompany her as well as a doctor who arrived with the vehicle. the doctor will do his best to soothe and ask any more necessary questions.

once arrived at fogg's, two men will be there to assist the patient inside where she will sit through another examination preformed by a doctor. he will ask similar questions to the ones above. he will examine her lungs and heart. the patient will be lead to a long hallway to be seated next to her fellow patients. thus begins her long stay at fogg's.

johanna experienced a slightly different experience getting inside. after turpin confronted her about her plans to slope with anthony, bamford had to drag her out of the house kicking and screaming as she frantically tried to get away. she was supposed to marry anthony on monday. instead, she was shoved and locked into a carriage as she frantically tried to find a way out of it. inside was bamford as her police escort and a doctor inside that she did not learn the name of. she was dragged inside by bamford and another member of fogg's security. after a brief examination which she tried frantically to escape from and had it not been for bamford's hand on her knee, she thinks she would've been able to get away, she was put into solitary confinement for the night.

solitary confinement is a common punishment in prisons and has been since what may as well be the dawn of time. humans are naturally social creatures and don't do well on their own. to be separated from any human connection can have devastating psychological effects on the human mind. this was also a common punishment at insane asylums. johanna was put into a white, windowless, padded room with a stiff board for a bed and no one around to hear her frantic pleas for help. she was allowed out in the morning. that long, sleepless night was only the beginning of her stay.

daily schedule.

"for i know the plans i have for you, declares the lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope." - jeremiah 29:11

this old testament verse was written by jeremiah. in this chapter, jeremiah tells the jews in babylon to prepare for seventy years of captivity, but is a verse known for its hope and comfort; to realize that suffering has an end. this verse was inscribed to the front of fogg's asylum as a way to bring an idea that the suffering would end.

johanna thought it was ironic.

she wasn't far off: most women who were sent to fogg's didn't make it out alive.

however, she wouldn't see it until after she was let out of solitary. at about 5:30am, two nurses stomped into the cell. before johanna could realize what was happening, they stripped all of her clothes off, threw a uniform at her feet and left with the demand that she get dressed. johanna could only stand there in silence for a few months, unable to grasp what had happened. this was a different kind of vulnerability. with the judge, there was a hole in the wall. she had seen his eye peering through it. but these were women who fought against her weak protests and left her cold and naked. slowly, she began to pull on each of the layers:

a pair of holey stockings

an underskirt of coarse, dark cotton that fell about six feet longer than the actual dress

a cheap, stained, white calico cotton dress that tied with strings around the waist and fell into a straight skirt

asylums tried to be as self-sufficient as possible which meant the patients themselves sewed the uniforms. it is difficult to imagine allowing people who might be at risk of self-harm or have suicidal tendencies to be allowed with scissors and sewing needles. this was greatly overlooked or ignored.

once johanna dressed, the nurses returned to bring her to join a long line of the other patients. they stood two-by-two. each woman wiped her arms and face down with a wet rag before passing it to the next one --- even ones with skin rashes shared their rags with women with perfectly healthy skin. johanna got lucky and got her rag after a healthy woman, but watched in horror as others were not as lucky.

benches were brought in by the nurses. once the patient was done with their rag, they sat down when a nurse would begin to yank through their hair with a rough comb. johanna again tried to run away from the scene, but joined her fellow unlucky women to be met with the comb. however, one of the other nurses stopped the one with the raised comb at her hair. johanna's hair was obviously much healthier than the other's and could catch a hefty price for it --- and perhaps, if they were the ones to tell mr. fogg about this, he might allow them to get some of the cut when the wigmaker came in next. before the nurse could continue combing ( albeit, much more gentle ), johanna politely requested for them just to braid it instead, which was a rare instance of a wish being granted during her stay.

johanna was then rushed to another bench where she waited next to the other patients in complete silence. talking would get their ears smacked, as she quickly learned. they got back into lines of two-by-two before gathering into the breakfast hall.

breakfast consisted of:

a bowl of cold tea

slice of buttered bread, though buttered bread would be given upon request

saucer of gruel

food was almost entirely uneatable. the bread was black and hard. the butter made one's stomach upset. the tea was more of pink color. the gruel was the closest thing to actual food provided, but was mushy and didn't sit well.

despite how terrible the food was, the patients devoured it. they learned to be desperate as this could be taken away from them as a form of punishment. johanna looked away from her food for a second, needing a moment to close her eyes, but when she looked back her bowl and saucer were empty.

once breakfast was over, the nurses struggled to gather the appropriate wards back together and trudge back to their rooms. again, it is important to remember that the asylums tried to be as self-sufficient as possible. this meant the patients also preformed the daily chores. they were given assignments by nurses which included:

sweeping

dusting

making beds

at times, closing the windows

johanna was not raised to be this self-sufficient. she knew how to clean her room at home and the birdcage, but she swept in a confused haze and at a much slower pace than the other patients, something the nurses scolded her for.

once chores were done, they were served a weak and foul cup of tea. this was the most nourishment johanna had that morning. this was around 10am. new patients, such as johanna, were lead to yet another appointment with a doctor. she pleaded her case. she was not insane. she was not her mother. but to no avail. the doctor listened to her heart and to her lungs. he asked a few questions in between flirting with the nurse. the nurse measured her ( 155.58cm or 5'1" and a quarter ) then the nurse told her to get on a scale. this caused johanna to panic and make another attempt at the door. the doctor called for some assistance from the nurses in the hall, who eventually got her on the scale. the doctor said her weight loud and clear for her. after a few more questions and another look at her tongue and throat, she was escorted back to the room.

once tea was over, nurses passed out moth-eaten shawls and white straw hats. arranged into their typical two-by-two pattern, they set out on their daily walk around the premises.

this was one of the best ways to peak at the other patients in other wards at the hospital, but one stood out in particular: a group of patients tied at the waist with a nurse leading them up front. this was hall nine. that ward was located in a separate building than the rest of the asylum, having been built during alfred fogg's reign to be used as a better infirmary. instead alfred made the decision to house the most dangerous and most suicidal patients there. more on them later.

at noon, everyone was gathered back into the cafeteria. dinner's food included fish boiled in water and soup that was more broth than vegetables or meat.

after dinner, the patients gathered into a sitting room with long benches that had no backs. johanna was confused at first when nothing happened other than sitting, but when a patient dared to whisper about how uncomfortable the benches were, a nurse was quick to smack her ear.

from one to three pm, these mentally unstable, stable, or somewhere in between patients were forced to sit on hard, backless benches, doing nothing. as nellie bly said, it would make any sane person go mad. or any insane person go further insane.

the head cook for the staff would bring the nurses fresh fruits and dried delicacies for the nurses to snack on while all the patients could do were try to ignore their grumbling stomachs as they looked on, knowing there was good food, but they wouldn't serve it to them.

by 3:30 pm, patients were once again gathered into the dining hall for a brief snack of gruel. after this, it was back to their rooms where the nurses would put to work on sewing projects. johanna was rather good at this as she'd been sewing all of her life and masted how to make her own undergarments, nightgowns and could make a basic dress. it was mindless, quiet work, though johanna was used to it. the nurses, however, did not like it when she hummed to herself.

5:30 pm meant it was time for supper. dinner was usually a main course of some sort of meat such as mutton or beef and potatoes served with a side of limp vegetables or sour fruit like prunes and buttered bread, though unbuttered bread would be given upon request. just like with any of the meals, any food was fought for. sick patients couldn't stomach the food. healthy patients became sick from it.

evenings could be the most pleasant time of the day if the nurses were in a good mood. there was a piano in one of the rooms which the patients would gather around and request that other patients play it for them. once her fellow patients learned she could sing, johanna was frequently requested, which she obliged to. lullabies were usually what the patients wanted to hear. in some wards, there might even be little dances which the male doctors would join them for. the evenings were a time to feel like normal people again, enjoying the little entertainments that they used to before they had stepped foot inside fogg's.

at eight pm one bath nights which were once a week , patients were filed into bathroom, which was quite literally a bathroom. a large room filled with tubs for the patients. they were ordered to strip their clothes off.

johanna refused to. her body had been seen by too many people already, something she should have the ability of only giving that to whoever she trusted. the judge, the nurses, the doctors, everyone. she felt sick at the thought of all of these patients seeing her so exposed as well.

the nurses did not put up with this. they forcefully stripped her down as they had that morning. johanna quietly wiped away her tears of shock.

the water was ice-cold and murky from the dirt of the patients who used it before her. baths were only allowed once a week. the water was not changed between patients. the nurses would cruelly scrub away at the skin with a small piece of soap that somehow felt dirty. this soap was used on the face and the hair, as well. her skin went from turning blue from the temperature of the water to bright red as the nurse scrubbed. another nurse poured a bucket of freezing water over her head to get her hair. johanna was yanked out of the tub and another nurse shoved a thin shift over her while she was still dripping wet.

it was necessary to settle in for the night as soon as possible. however, it was nearly impossible to catch a wink of rest. night nurses would come in every half and hour, they would loudly gossip to their co-workers, their heels clacked against the floor. johanna could hear a group of night nurses talking about her one night. but it wasn't only the nurses who kept her up.

the other patients, for the most part, weren't mentally well in some capacity. they were deemed insane by victorian standards, though by today they suffered from depression, anxiety, another mental illness, some sort of trauma, etc. there was one old woman who shouted about murder and getting the police all night. another begged for god to let her die. one claimed to dream of her mother taking her away and said that meant her mother would be there today to take her home. her mother never came.

the windows were open. the beds were hard. the patients laid on oilcloth. the sheet they were given didn't full cover patients of average height. and then they were awoken at 5:30 am to repeat all of this.

johanna sang. while the other patients yelled or cried themselves to sleep, she knew the only way for anthony to find her was for her to sing. he knew her voice. that's how he found her the first time. she sang lullabies and the song the beggar woman used to sing below her window. she sang about birds and of the freedom she was so close to having. she sang about love and she thought of anthony when she mumbled those pretty lyrics of everlasting devotion.

he would come for her one day. she would marry anthony on sunday.

sickness.

warnings for sickness, medical malpractice, drugs ( opium skip the section on morphine and laudanum ), drug withdrawals ( skip the sections on morphine and laudanum and the paragraph under that ), blood ( skip the section on bloodletting ).

"she told me that she had just gotten up from a sick bed. her appearance confirmed her story. she looked like one who had had a severe attack of fever. 'i am now suffering from nervous debility,' she said, "and my friends have sent me here to be treated for it.'" - nellie bly speaking of mrs. louise schanz, patient at blackwell's lunatic asylum

sickness was rampant in such institutions. during nellie bly's stay at the woman's lunatic asylum at blackwell island for her expose, she befriended a young woman named tillie mayard who had suffered from a fever to the point where her friends believed she went insane from the illness. they sent her to the asylum. miss mayard was still ill when she was brought to the island. she felt worse and worse as time went on. another young woman got sick because of the poor food. the nurses tried to feed her more of this food, which she refused because she couldn't stomach it especially when she was ill.

even if a patient sought them out, it was rare that a doctor would actually listen to a sick patient pleading for help. the nurses would tell such a patient to stop and the doctor would seek them out later. they never did.

when a patient was actually treated for their ailments, they were given similar treatments to what anyone else during this era would have been given, although usually at a much larger ( and unhealthier dose ) to get the patient to be quiet. these included:

bloodletting: doctors would make a small incision in the arm ( at the elbows was common or sometimes in the wrists ). patients were given a pole to squeeze until a sufficient amount of blood spilled out. the pole allowed the veins to pop more. it was collected in a bowl, under the incision. this practice came from the belief that the ailment was kept in the blood. bloodletting allowed the toxic blood to be separated from the body, thus healing the sick person. the body would be ready to make new, clean blood to fight whatever sickness remained. barbers tended to preform this procedure, but as fogg's was low on staff, they entrusted nurses to do it instead of having to hire a barber.

morphine: this is a strong opiate found in opium. morphine could be injected to treat pain such as menstrual cramps, morning sickness, asthma, headaches and shortness of breath. because it's an opiate, it is also highly addictive. one study conducted by the lancet named it the most addictive substance followed by cocaine and nicotine. withdrawal symptoms are intense and go through several stages. a large overdose can lead to death, however under the circumstances in fogg's, there wasn't proper treatment for overdoses and the nurses would rarely do anything about it if they accidentally gave a patient too much. the first reported case of morphine being used as a poison happened in 1822 when edme castaing was convicted of murdering a patient with a morphine overdose. it isn't known how many patients at fogg's met the same fate either on accident or on purpose.

laudanum: this was the ibuprofen of the 19th century. ten percent opium with up to fifty percent alcohol, it was often mixed with honey or other spices to make it more bearable on the tastebuds and used to treat all sorts of ailments: menstrual cramps, headaches, toothaches, diarrhea and slowing down breathing. it would make the user feel drowsy and euphoric, as these are side effects of opium. the more a person takes opiates, the more that person will need the next time as tolerance will quickly build up. it is highly addictive and causes intense mental impairments where the user will seem to be in a daze and be disconnected from real life. laudanum had two main uses in fogg's: sedate patients and treat pain.

withdrawals would be brutal if a patient's body and mind began to rely on these opiates. they can be intense enough to cause death. it should not be understated how brutal these drugs can be, but it's also important to remember that they didn't have better medicines. victorians did the best with what technology they did have. in fogg's, nurses tended to take advantage of these to deal with the patients.

nurses were not properly trained. these were typically unmarried women who were in need of a job. they couldn't take temperatures properly and rarely provided the help their patients needed.

treatments.

warnings for abuse and torture throughout this whole section, hyperthermia ( skip the section on ice baths ), forced drugging ( skip the section on forced drugging ), forced feeding and eating disorders ( skip the section on forced feeding and the paragraph below it ).

"i would like the expert physicians who are condemning me for my action, which has proven their ability, to take a perfectly sane and healthy woman, shut her up and make her sit from 6 am until 8 pm. on straight-back benches, do not allow her to talk or move during these hours, give her no reading and let her know nothing of the world or its doings, give her bad food and harsh treatment, and see how long it will take to make her insane. two months would make her a mental and physical wreck." - nellie bly, ten days in a madhouse

this is often the most infamous widely-spoken about parts of 19th century mental institutions. the lobotomy ( a surgery used to severe connections in the brain's frontal cortex, which could leave the patient needing to be institutionalized for the rest of their life ) is a common example in the brutality of these hospitals. however, that procedure wasn't performed until 1936. nonconsensual electric shock therapy wasn't adopted until the late 1930s. fogg's, like other victorian mental hospitals, used treatments such as:

restrictions/isolation: this included solitary confinement as discussed earlier and the use of straight jackets. straight jackets were usually made of canvas and when worn, a patients arms would be wrapped around their front and the back would be closed so it was impossible to get out without insistence. straight jackets weren't given out to any patient, though. these were used in cases where nurses became afraid a patient might hurt themselves or others. or, in some cases, if the patient tried to escape.

ice baths: hydrotherapy peaked in the 1850s. several different "types" of baths were invented during this period. it was already becoming popular beforehand. there were certain ways of bathing for lower back pain, for head colds, for period pains, for labor in childbirth, etc. certain kinds of baths were believed to help the mentally ill or disabled as well. however, this was done without the patient's consent. later in the century, turkish baths were used to help patients. however, this did lead to an incident in 1889 when several patients were killed due to poisonous gas. warm baths were also used to calm down the patients or for melancholic ones, but this was less frequent to the ice baths. these were used for those were who "aggressive" or "excitable." a patient would be shoved into the bath, sometimes with restraints over the tub so they wouldn't be able to get out. the nurses would pour more of the ice water on them. they would be left there for hours. this caused some patients to pass out or even die from hyperthermia. there were other methods of ice baths developed, but this was the most common at fogg's.

forced drugging: see above under treatments in the sickness section. patients were frequently sedated to calm them down or if they refused to sleep. typically, morphine was used in fogg's. johanna was unable or refused to sleep most nights. eventually, the nurses interfered by having a doctor inject morphine into her veins. she became reliant on that to be able to sleep.

forced feeding: this was the last resort for patients who refused to eat. in fogg's, most patients who refused to eat were ignored by the nurses and wouldn't get any treatment until a doctor caught on. loss of appetite was common among patients suffering from melancholia and grief as well as some paranoid patients who because of delusions believed the food was poisoned. tube feeding hadn't been invented yet so force-feeding patients would be used with a wooden spoon. a doctor would place a wooden spoon in the mouth and gently rotate to a right angle to keep the mouth open, taking care not to break any teeth. another spoon would place liquid or semi-solid food into the mouth. beef tea, raw eggs ground meat, custards, milk, ale, brandy and sherry would be used to feed the patients. some patients who were refusing to eat would be shown the force feeding process which usually prompted them to start eating.

johanna was not given a chance to be shown this. since she felt like she had little control over her life anymore, this triggered her eating disorder. out of the blue one afternoon while they were sitting, johanna was taken into a doctor's office and force-fed. this was one of the most traumatic parts of her visit. it happened a few times over the next week which made her sick. she made a deal with the doctor that she would start eating again if that meant she wouldn't have to be force-fed. she began taking as little food in as possible without dying. she was afraid of the threat of being force-fed again, but couldn't stomach the food was that served.

abuse.

obvious warning for abuse, mainly physical. skip this section entirely if you are sensitive to that topic.

"there isn't much fear of hurting you. shut up, or you'll get it worse."  -miss grupe, nurse at blackwell's lunatic asylum during nellie bly's investigation

it cannot be understated how abusive fogg's asylum was. these places live on in infamy today because of the abuse that happened within their walls. medical malpractice and nurses who weren't properly trained led to many premature deaths. ignorance played a huge part in why the mentally ill were treated like prisoners and like criminals. the causes of mental illnesses like depression and anxiety weren't known nor were proper ways of treating them.

on johanna's second day, an old woman in her hall suddenly collapsed during their sitting hours. when she was unable to get back up, the nurses verbally abused her and hit the poor old woman. eventually, they grew tired of her "antics" ( her crying and begging ) and threw her into the closest in the room. all of the other patients could only sit in horror as they listened to the old woman sobbing and screaming to be let out.

a few months in, one patient eventually got frustrated with mindlessly sewing and asked if she could go for another walk. at that, a nurse pushed her to the ground. another stepped on her fragile ribs until two of them cracked. when the doctor heard, they told him it was because that patient had rammed into the wall over and over again while the nurses tried to get her to stop it.

but the worse of the abuse happened in hall nine.

hall nine.

warnings for physical abuse throughout this entire section, warnings for mentions of chronic pain, spinal injuries, drowning and choking. this section if you need to skip it can be summarized with: johanna was physically abused by the nurses to the point it left her with chronic back pain.

"...to be corrected when they're naughty and rewarded with a sweetie when they're good." -jonas fogg

as described before, hall nine was another building of the hospital. johanna was brought to hall nine after accidentally slicing her arm open with a pair of sewing scissors. she hadn't slept at all the night before since the nurses hadn't injected her with any morphine. she hadn't even realized what happened. a nurse went over, grabbed her arm and showed another nurse. they began to vaguely question her which johanna didn't understand since she delirious. the next day during sitting time, a doctor approached johanna with further questions and had her come to his office again. after a brief examination, the doctors told the nurses to bring her to hall nine. this was when she perked up. she knew what hall nine meant.

she argued with the doctor. the scissors were an accident. she didn't mean to cut herself. she wasn't suicidal.

the doctor ignored her. the nurses checked her into hall nine.

the evenings were spent sitting. they were not allowed to sew. she was not allowed to sing. the nurses were much more cruel.

there were several times, the nurses would choose a patient they hated for little to no reason ( they were loud, they attempted to hurt someone else or themselves, they talked to their neighbor, etc. ) since johanna was quiet, they had her watch the windows and warn them if a doctor was coming. she didn't know if she should let the doctor come save the patient or if she should warn the nurses. another patient allowed the doctor to come. when the nurses were caught, they quickly fibbed. that patient was beaten so brutally, if it weren't for another patient whose late husband was a doctor, she would have died.

two and a half weeks into her stay at hall nine, she suddenly broke down. the weight of everything she experienced so far came crashing down. johanna wasn't able to keep as clean as she tried to be. she was afraid of them cutting off her hair since she could easily strangle herself in it if she tried. she was hurting. she wasn't allowed to sing. she wanted anthony to find her.

the nurses pushed her to the floor and beat her with a broom handle. they jumped on her lower back, injuring her internally. they tied her arms and feet. they threw a sheet over her head, twisting it so she could not breathe. they threw her into a bathtub and held her under the water until she passed out.

johanna woke in the infirmary. the nurses nor the doctors told her what was wrong with her. all she knew is that the pain in her back was so unbearable that she could not move. she wasn't able to swallow well to the point where another doctor had to come in and force feed until he discovered that it physically pained her to swallow. she was given some helpings of broth.

the injury in her back is what we would call a compression fracture in her spine today. this is a type of broken bone that can cause your vertebrae to collapse, making them shorter. because of johanna's eating disorder, her bone density is much less than the average human, making them more suspectable to breaking. she was lucky that her lower back didn't break altogether. she was kept in the infirmary for a few weeks until she had a slightly easier time swallowing solid foods and her back started to get better. she wasn't exactly aware of this time since she was on laudanum for most of it to ease her back pain.

she has a very faint memory of catching a fever from the patient next to her ( since beds were kept close together due to overcrowding in the infirmary ). for this, the doctors gave her a bloodletting while they thought she was asleep. johanna was not. this made her panic, but was unable to protect or fend for herself due to side effects of the drugs.

this compression fracture causes her to have lower back pain for at least another year since victorian medicine didn't have proper back braces. wearing a corset once she was out both helped and did not help. it kept her spine straight which eased the tension on her lower back, but caused pressure at different points of her back.

once she was well enough to go back to typical asylum living, she was bathed and brought to hall four. away from her two and a half hellish experience in hall nine.

johanna.

warnings for mentions of anorexia ( skip the paragraph that begins with "refusal to eat" ), self harm mentions ( this is accidental self harm, but skip the paragraph that begins with "harming oneself" ), sexual assault ( skip the paragraph that begins with "mr fogg was contacted beforehand." ) and a discussion on weight and bmi ( skip the paragraph that begins with "johanna was ninety pounds when she came to fogg's." ).

"poor child. she needs so much correction. she sings all day and all night and leaves all the other inmates sleepless." -jonas fogg

turpin picked out fogg's as a punishment for her disobedience not only because of his agreement with the owner, but also because this hospital was designed specifically for women. with a lack of men, there was less of a chance she would disobey him again. fogg's would "teach her a lesson" but, as he assumed, wouldn't leave her so unattractive that he would no longer desire her.

bamford came four times. the first under turpin's orders. this was about a month into her stay. it was long enough that turpin hoped she would be begging and pleading to return home to marry him. johanna refused bamford's offer. despite her having been bathed an hour prior to their meeting and given a new dress ( as was customary --- they didn't want any of the visitors to believe their patients were being mistreated behind closed doors ), he could see the horror of her brief stay in her eyes. he left, shaken to the core. the next was two weeks later. johanna refused him again. the next was another month later. despite how skinny she'd become ( for a girl who was already barely ninety pounds ), she refused. the last was another month later when bamford pleaded with johanna to let him bring her back. turpin was upet, but most of all, bamford couldn't get the image of his little annie in johanna's shoes. he felt horrible about the abuse she'd suffered. johanna refused.

in 1863, a superintendent at the royal edinburgh asylum, dr. david skae developed a system of diagnosis of the mental kind. these included: congenital insanity, epilpetic insanity, insanity of adolescence, climateric insanity ( menopausal ), insanity of pregnancy, insanity of lactation, hysterical insanity, traumatic insanity, general paralysis and insanity of unknown cause, among others. the medico-psychological association made their own list: mania, melancholia, general paralysis of the insane, epileptic mania, congenital defect with epilepsy, congenital defect without epilepsy and dementia. since this wasn't about fifteen years after johanna was diagnosed her official diagnosis included:

female hysteria: a common diagnosis for this time. it could be sued for a wide variety of mental ailments such as postpartum depression, pre-menstrual syndrome, or if a relative wanted to get rid of a female relative.

refusal to eat: anorexia would not be officially made a diagnosis until later in the century when queen victoria's personal physician did a case study. her refusal to eat would be a sign of "insanity" and the doctors and nurses could use it against her. during meals if a nurse wasn't too preoccupied, sometimes she would come around to where johanna was sitting and mock her for her skinny disposition and about how little she ate.

harming oneself: this would be added to her diagnosis after the sewing scissors incident that lead her to be kept at hall nine.

mr. fogg was contacted beforehand. he was prepared to meet johanna the second day she was at fogg's. he introduced himself. later on, johanna would learn that he had a habit of being unable to keep his hands to himself. that was a fact she quickly learned. he took every opportunity to touch her, to proof his dominance and control over her. it was humiliating. later on, johanna would whisper to anthony that her frequent meetings with mr. fogg made her felt like she hadn't left turpin's house at all. his excuse for meeting with her at least every two weeks came from the fact that they were low on doctors. fogg knew he needed to keep johanna alive for turpin to keep with their agreement.

johanna was ninety pounds when she came to fogg's. when she was in her infirmary, she was at her lowest at sixty-seven pounds. by the time anthony found her, she was seventy-one pounds. her bmi at her lowest was 12.7. a healthy bmi for her height is 17. she was severely underweight. her bmi by the time she escaped was 13.4, still severely underweight. she lost twenty-three pounds during her stay and barely survived.

in the end of march, anthony was finally able to find johanna. bamford was right about to visit her again, but changed his mind after seeing anthony. johanna's plan worked: anthony heard her singing.

a day later, anthony disguised himself as a wigmaker. he came into the asylum and anthony directed fogg to where he saw johanna. she made no noise. anthony grabbed her. fogg threatened both of their lives. when anthony hesitated, johanna didn't: she shot fogg.

her nine-month stay in fogg's shook johanna to her core. it would be another long few months of getting settled into plymouth, trying to recover from such trauma and trying to live a normal life. because of her nightmares and her reliance on opium, johanna would struggle to fall asleep at night. she had an increased fear of doctors and refused to see any for the pain in her back. the next few months and years would be difficult despite her newfound happiness, but she would thank god every night for the rest of her life that she escaped. even if it meant she had to shoot fogg.

johanna would never take a bath or a good night's sleep for granted again. she is safe, but some nights, her mind brings her back to fogg's. she's beyond grateful for the support she has and her slow, but steady healing process.

#WHEW #i am so sorry #uhhhhh i hope anthony knows that he's gonna be johanna's caretaker for the next year :'( #because it is so much worse than i initially thought #anyway if there's something you think i missed or should be part of the warning im me #this is historical fogg's! modern fogg's will probably never get it's own meta but feel free to ask me again it! #*❈ ‣ whence comes this melody constantly flowing? — ( meta. )