#Judicial Review Hearing

[lexlawuk]

Comprehensive Guide on Judicial Review

A judicial review is a vital legal recourse available to challenge decisions made in asylum, immigration, or human rights applications, often involving decisions by the Home Office or other relevant authorities. Unlike typical appeals, judicial review focuses on assessing whether the law has been correctly applied and if the proper procedures have been followed. When to Consider Bringing a…

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#DJF Solicitors #Home Office #Home Office Updates #Immigration Judicial Review #Immigration Judicial Review Application #Immigration Lawyers London #Immigration Policy #Judicial Proceedings #Judicial Review #Judicial Review Application #Judicial Review Hearing #lexlaw solicitors & advocates #Lexvisa #London Immigration Solicitors #Permission for Judicial Review #Pre Action Protocol #Pre-Action #Qualified Immigration Lawyers #Substantive Hearing #UK Immigration Advice #UK Immigration Policy #UK Immigration Solicitors/ Lawyers

[hedgehog-moss]

Update on the French protests: we've had a well-known expert in contemporary political history call the situation we're in "the worst democracy crisis France has known since [the end of the 4th Republic]" and meanwhile the government is trying its hardest to maintain a façade of normal functioning by a) hiding from protesters, b) hiding protesters from view, and c) banning saucepans and other means of drawing attention to the protests that are being swept under the rug.

I mean casserolades are an old tradition in this country but they wouldn't have been needed if Macron &co hadn't started almost systematically banning protests in entire districts of the towns they visit and setting up police roadblocks to prevent peaceful protesters from going anywhere near them. (Too bad because these are the kinds of images the media get (these 2 are from Le Monde) when protesters get to talk to Macron <3) :

Protesters corralled away where they can be easily ignored started banging pots and pans so the protest could at least be heard in the background of TV footage, and then pans started being confiscated.

French courts have repeatedly struck down the bans as illegal but police prefects keep churning new bans out every time Macron goes somewhere anyway, trying to publish them at the last minute so there's no time for a judicial review. (I saw a sign at a protest last week that went "Stop with all the bans we no longer have time to disobey all of them")

After boldly banning saucepans by calling them "portable sonorous devices" last week, today a police prefecture banned "festive gatherings of a musical nature" in a town Macron will be visiting tomorrow. They're (ab)using counter-terrorist legislation for all this, so these days we get to read unheard-of court rulings that go like "We are suspending this prefectural decree as we do not consider festive gatherings of a musical nature to pose a significant terrorist threat to the President."

If Macron had people showing up in support I don't think we would see so many pissy protest bans because then the media could show backers vs. opponents and things would look normal (and not like 70% of the country is very pissed off with Macron). But there's not much for them to show if they don't show the angry people banging pans and it clearly rankles Macron—we learnt yesterday that he sent a letter to 200,000 political supporters of his essentially ordering them to start making appearances all over the country, to show they are "proud of what you are and of what our country has become [since I got elected]." That seems a bit desperate.

For months Macron &co have been predicting that people would get tired of taking to the streets in large numbers, and now that people are going like—right, let's try a new strategy, small local protests greeting gov members everywhere they go!—we're hearing a clear "no not like that, that's not what we meant :l " reaction from the government.

They've also been trying the strategy of announcing stuff at the last minute, like on Monday the Minister of Education announced at noon that he would visit a higher learning institution in Lyon 2 hours later, and a hundred of protesters still showed up and tried to force their way into the building. They were held off by cops using tear gas and trying to block entrances (there's a pic that made me smile, showing cops trying to barricade university gates with garbage bins—how the tables have turned...!) and the Minister ended up not showing up and moving on to the next step of his schedule (protesters tried to follow him there but police vans were blocking the street.)

The first half of the video is at the uni in Lyon; the second half is in Paris later that day. When he returned to Paris the Minister was greeted by protesters with saucepans at the train station, it's like a national relay race of protesting at times. He had to go back through the train to leave via the other end of the platform under police escort so as not to meet any protesters (god forbid).

Macron commented that this was "uncivic" behaviour and I agree, civic behaviour on the part of gov members would be to at least face the people they choose to fuck over, instead of hiding behind cops and fleeing. Obviously Macron was condemning the 'uncivic' protesters though, and the Minister said he felt "physically threatened" by the "violence of [the protesters'] speech" which is a shit thing to say considering on the same day that he was mildly inconvenienced by having to take a different exit and felt physically endangered by words, yet another protester was mutilated after being shot at by police with a rubber bullet. Not a peep about this incident (or previous ones) from the government. The Minister of Education never even condemned that time high schoolers trying to protest got tear gassed and threatened with riot guns by cops in front of their school earlier this month.

But while people continue protesting despite the actual violence from cops, our ministers are looking pretty scared of citizens banging pots and pans. Here's a list of official visits that got cancelled "for safety reasons" (saucepan terrorism) in the past week:

1. Minister P. NDiaye cancelled a visit in Lyon 2. Minister F. Braun cancelled a visit to Evrard Hospital 3. Minister Delegate O. Klein cancelled a visit in Bobigny 4. Minister Delegate O. Grégoire cancelled a visit in La Baule 5. Minister S. Guerini cancelled a visit in Castelnau 6. Secretary of State B. Couillard cancelled a visit in Rochefort 7. Minister S. Retailleau cancelled a visit to the Paris Saclay University (electricity trade unionists cut the power in the building she was supposed to inaugurate, so) 8. Minister C. Grandjean cancelled a visit in Toulouse (this article says it was probably because the visit was quite near a big highway protest where protesters among other things were building a concrete wall on a national road)

In the same bullshitting vein as "portable sonorous devices", gov spokespeople have been insisting that visits aren't being cancelled, ministers are just "adjusting the course of their trips" which is funny to me. I guess we never beheaded any royalty we just adjusted the course of their necks. I also read a newspaper article that made me laugh, that went like "Minister cancels visit; trade unions disappointed" and I thought it was because the cancelled visit was a meeting with the unions which they wouldn't get to have, but the article said it was actually because they had a good protest planned and wouldn't get to hold it...

Watching protesters mess with the government in small ways on a daily basis has been good for morale—on Twitter the hashtags #IntervillesMacron and #IntervillesduZbeul popped up (zbeul = chaos, mess, and Intervilles was a TV game show that aired for over 50 years, where French cities competed against one another in goofy challenges). I only mentioned cancellations above, but fun things also happen on non-cancelled government visits, like a Minister having to leave a building via the emergency exit because of protesters blocking the building entrance (which some people argued is worth more points than a cancellation as it's more entertaining):

Various websites were created to keep track of all these smaller protests and to officialise the point system that ranks cities on their efforts to fuck with the government:

(the first symbol means a protest, the second means a casserolade, the last one means protesters managed to get inside a building where a visit was taking place)

(Translation: Ruckus (saucepans, heckling...) 1pt Protest: 1pt Creative action (chasing minister in the woods, etc): 2pts Measures of energy conservation (= power cuts by unions) 3pts Action that leads to a political figure fleeing: 4pts Cancellation of a visit: 5pts — then there's a weighting system where the score is multiplied by 3 if it's a Minister, by 5 if it's the Prime Minister, by 6 if it's Macron.) (I also saw an interesting debate on Twitter this week—since our leaders often embarrass themselves, how should the government's own goals fit into the point system?)

Right now the Hérault department is winning because on top of protests, power cuts and casserolades, protesters greeted Macron with a giant "MACRON FUCK OFF" sign hung from a cliff (!) and took over a highway display so it'd say "Welcome to [region] Butthole Ist"

These past few days I've been discovering unknown French cities (and Ministers) thanks to them showing up in the hashtag after a good protest. I discovered a mediaeval castle I'd never heard of when unions hung banners featuring our most famous revolutionary dates from the castle's battlements. (Two days later, another protest with eloquent banners in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris:)

People are very creative—last week we heard that protesters got prosecuted for giving Macron the finger and insulting him during one of his official visits (< we are a healthy democracy), so protesters in another region tried a more sarcastic approach, and greeted a deputy from Macron's party at a strawberry fair this week with clapping and confetti and "Thank you for making us work 2 more years, thank you for police repression, thank you!" The deputy beat a hasty retreat. Then said he would file a complaint against the harassment and intimidation he had been subjected to. (The tear gas and riot guns and arrests and protest bans are not intimidation of protesters on the other hand. Or the fact that another deputy from his party recently said on TV that they were "ready for war"... They're ready to wage war, but run and hide when people clang saucepans and throw confetti.)

Anyway. I'm enjoying the fact that they can't even attend a small strawberry fair without getting heckled right now. In one of my first posts about the political crisis in March I wrote something like "How will Macron and his gov have any legitimacy to speak about any issues after this?" and it cheers me up to see a lot of people across the country agree that they have no legitimacy to talk about anything, not even the strawberry harvest.

The next nationwide protest is of course for May 1st, but in the meantime it's been really fun following the smaller protest actions all over the place. Members of government & Macron's party keep making whiny statements along the lines of this is terrorist behaviour, we can't go anywhere, why are people not getting tired of fucking with us and the answer is, because it's really entertaining!

This was the last sentence of a recent Le Monde article about Macron's situation and it has such a sinister, end-of-reign tone:

"I'm moving forward," Macron concluded, on April 20th in the Herault department, while behind his back echoed the sound of saucepans.

#frpol #well this is another very long post and it features maybe 40% of all the shit from the past week #like there was another popular hashtag last week that went ''no retraction [of the reform] no olympic games'' #and the police prefect of Paris said ''the closer we get to the Olympics the more we will saturate public space with police'' #okay! good atmosphere so far

[feminismisstillahatemovement]

In 2017 I interviewed Bernadette Wren, then head of psychology at the Tavistock Gids clinic, and asked what effect puberty blocking drugs have on the adolescent brain. Looking highly uncomfortable, she replied that the evidence so far was only anecdotal but that the clinic would study its patients “well into their adult lives so that we can see”.

Even back then, before whistleblowers had exposed the rush to medically transition children, it was alarming to hear that heavy-duty GnRH agonists such as triptorelin — used to treat advanced prostate cancer and “chemically castrate” sex offenders — were being prescribed to arrest puberty in hundreds of children as young as 11.

Moreover, they were being used “off-label” before any clinical trials. And the long-term study Wren promised never materialised: Gids (the Gender Identity Development Service) routinely lost touch with patients, and the 44 it did follow reported little long-term mental health improvement.

This shocking chapter in medical history, where the ideological objectives of trans rights campaigners trumped the welfare of disturbed children, is coming to an end worldwide. The decision by NHS England effectively to ban the prescription of puberty blockers comes after the Cass review noted these drugs could “permanently disrupt” brain development, reduce bone density and lock children into a regime of cross-sex hormones requiring life-long patienthood.

NHS England unites with other national health services including those in Finland, France, Sweden and, most notably, the Netherlands — where the “Dutch protocol”, a regime of early blockers then hormones, was devised in 1998 — in pulling back from prescribing them.

Even in the United States, where a toxic combination of extreme activism and medical capitalism has pushed child gender medicine to grotesque extremes, with double mastectomies performed on 14-year-old girls, there is some retrenchment.

Leaks from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, the body which formulates guidance on “trans healthcare”, reveal doctors perplexed at how they should explain to an 11-year-old child that drugs will render them infertile. Crucially, liberal media such as The New York Times are now reporting grave medical misgivings about child transition, once dismissed as a culture-war issue for the Republican right.

Yet the question remains: how was this ever allowed to happen? For years, puberty blockers were cheerily billed as a mere “pause button”. In 2014, Dr Polly Carmichael, the last head of Gids before the Cass review ordered its closure, went on CBBC in a show called I Am Leo, saying of blockers: “The good thing is, if you stop the injections, it’s like pressing ‘start’ and the body carries on developing as it would if you hadn’t started.”

The BBC permitted her to make this unevidenced claim to an impressionable audience of six to 12-year-olds. Imagine hearing this as a developing girl, freaked out by your new breasts and periods. No wonder Gids referrals subsequently rocketed.

Carmichael failed to mention that she did not know if pressing “restart” on puberty is always medically possible — it is not — and in fact, almost every child Gids put on blockers went on to irreversible cross-sex hormones.

After years in a Peter Pan state while their peers developed, they understandably felt there was no way back and forged on with treatment. Yet if allowed to experience natural puberty, almost 85 per cent of gender dysphoria cases resolve themselves.

Nor did Carmichael tell CBBC kids that the blockers-hormones combination, if taken early enough, not only results in sterility but kills the libido so that a young person will never experience an orgasm.

At the 2020 judicial review brought by a former Tavistock clinician and Keira Bell, the brave young detransitioner rushed onto hormones by Gids, judges expressed astonishment at Gids’s lack of an evidence base.

Reporting on this issue for seven years, I too have been struck by a complete clinical incuriosity. Not only was data not collected, but those who queried treatments or pressed for evidence faced angry condemnation. Perhaps activists knew what research might find because one long-term Finnish study, recently reported in the BMJ, destroyed the myth used to justify blockers: that a child will commit suicide if denied them.

The Finns found that “gender-affirming care” does not make a dysphoric child less suicidal. Rather, such children had the same suicide risk as others with severe psychiatric issues. In other words, changing bodies does not fix troubled minds.

Yet even after NHS England’s announcement, activists refuse to heed the now-overwhelming evidence. In its response, Stonewall persists with the myth that puberty blockers “give a young person extra time to evaluate their next steps”.

Many questions remain unanswered: will private clinics still be permitted to prescribe puberty blockers; and is Scotland’s Sandyford child gender clinic still determined to close its ears to all evidence? Plus, we have few details on how the NHS’s new “holistic” treatment for gender-questioning children will operate when it opens next month.

This repellent experiment — in which girls who like trucks or little boys who dress as princesses, and who invariably grow up to be gay, are corralled inexorably down a road towards life-changing treatments — belongs in the book of medical disgraces. As do the cheerleaders who raised money for Mermaids and those who persecuted whistleblowers or damned journalists asking questions as transphobic.

In 50 years, chemically freezing the puberty of healthy children with troubled minds will be regarded with the same horrified fascination as lobotomies — which, never forget, won the Portuguese neurologist Antonio Egas Moniz the 1949 Nobel prize.

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

{Article source (behind paywall)}

#i think it's going to be a lot sooner than 50 years tbh

[sayruq]

FOREIGN Secretary David Cameron approved continuing arms exports to Israel just two days after the country’s military killed three British aid workers, court documents have revealed. The news comes after the High Court reversed a previous dismissal of a case against the exports brought by the UK-based Global Legal Action Network (GLAN) and the Al-Haq human rights organisation, which is based in the Palestinian West Bank. At an appeal hearing on Tuesday, the two groups were granted a full judicial review hearing challenging the UK Government's failure to halt weapons exports to Israel, which is set for October. The groups say exported weapons and parts risk being used in violations of international humanitarian law in Gaza.According to the UK Government’s export licencing criteria, Tory ministers must block arms sales if there is “a clear risk” that weapons might be used to commit or facilitate “internal repression” or “a serious violation of international humanitarian law”. At the High Court hearing on Tuesday, the Tory government’s lawyers did not argue that the case against arms exports is inarguable, instead saying that the court hasn’t seen all the relevant documents and that they can only be shared in closed, secret proceedings due to national security.

#yemen #jerusalem #tel aviv #current events #palestine #free palestine #gaza #free gaza #news on gaza #palestine news #news update #war news #war on gaza #world central kitchen #david cameron #rishi sunak #great britain #gaza genocide #genocide

[qqueenofhades]

I'm having a bit of a rough mood from seeing that the judge in the Georgia case dismissed some of the orange motherfucker's charges.

Can I get some your ever-insightful perspective on this, and if there's still hope for prison time for something? Anything at all?

I can offer a few pieces of context on this, yes. First, the judge did dismiss a few of the less-substantiated and secondary charges against Trump in the Georgia election interference case. However, these charges were primarily related to "soliciting others to make false statements," i.e. how he enlisted others in the purpose of overturning the GA election results, and do not contest or impact upon the actual fact of election subversion (which is at the core of the prosecution). The judge also openly invited the prosecutorial team to re-submit the dismissed charges with more substantiated evidence and clearer testimony, so this wasn't a from-the-bench hack job like the ones Aileen Cannon keeps running in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case (seriously, when can we appeal to the 11th Circuit to get her taken off? WHEN???) Which, considering that this is a Republican judge appointed by a Republican governor (Brian Kemp) is a good sign.

In short, this wasn't the judge saying "all these charges are bogus and inadmissible," it was the judge saying "I'll dismiss a few of these for not being as well substantiated as the others, but please resubmit with revisions/improvements and I will be happy to consider them again." And while I am not a lawyer, it is my understanding that prosecutors typically bring a multiplicity of charges, including some that might not ultimately stick, in case of this exact circumstance where some of them get dismissed/required to undergo judicial review/are otherwise ancillary to the central indictment. Which, in this case, is still intact. So no, Trump is 100% not "getting entirely off the hook" or "no longer under investigation in Georgia" or whatever else. I'm sure the GOP will try to spin it as such, but ignore them. The Trump "find me 11,780 votes" phone call to Raffensperger and the rest of his Georgia election interference has not been dismissed, and the RICO case still largely exists as first filed.

This is also a good sign that the judge won't order Fani Willis dismissed and the case completely shut down, as the Georgia Republicans have been trying to do with their hit-job inquiry into her personal life. If the judge was leaning toward dismissing Willis/the case entirely, this could have been a lot more sweeping intervention, but it doesn't look like he's going to do that, and in fact offered them an invitation to re-submit and make the case stronger. So that actually bodes better for the chances of eventually securing a conviction in the Georgia case, if the prosecutors have to go back to the drawing board and make sure everything is airtight. It's probably helpful to see all this in the above light and to understand that all legal cases drag on for years, with forward progress and setbacks. Especially this one, which is unprecedented in all ways.

However, I need to warn people again about thinking that Trump will be tried, convicted, and imprisoned before the election, and that this will spare us from having to vote against him or otherwise electorally dispose of him. SCOTUS, to nobody's surprise but still our disappointment, agreed to hear the Trump immunity case in late April (instead of just accepting the DC Circuit's opinion), and while they're likely to rule against him, that still creates another months-long delay. Importantly, though, the Department of Justice has announced that the "no legal proceedings 60 days before the election" rule does NOT apply to Trump, as he has already been indicted and the cases are currently being litigated. If they had decided that the 60-day rule applied, all trial proceedings would have to be frozen in the first week of September, but since not, they can continue into October and November. If the 60-day rule had been upheld, it would have drastically increased the odds of Trump avoiding trial entirely before the election, as few prosecutors would have wanted to proceed when they knew that there was an automatic kill switch built in. But if the DOJ holds to this, Trump could literally be on trial on Election Day itself. Which is good, obviously, but still: it will not be the magic solution. We still have to vote for Biden.

As I have said before, the stakes in 2024 are simple. The criminal trials will not get rid of Trump before the election. There will be another election that is Trump vs. Biden and therefore one of them will win the presidency. If Biden wins and Trump loses, Trump will be out of delay options and will go to prison almost 100% as all his criminal chickens come home to roost. If he wins, we will be fucked for generations to come. Vote accordingly.

#anonymous #ask #politics for ts #the giant orange monster

[cowgurrrl]

Angel of Small Death

Pairing: Matt Murdock x lawyer!reader

Author’s note: this may or may not turn into a series plan accordingly

Summary: Nothing seems to go your way around your college rival, Matt Murdock [3.8k]

Warnings: June didn't go to law school so take all legal talk with a grain of salt, discussions of custody cases/child abuse charges, A shitty father, mentions of the Red Room/Widows, canonical type violence, Matt Murdock being a menace to society, set in season one of Daredevil (~2014)

You're fuming when you walk into court. The familiar smug smile at the opposing table doesn't do anything to deter your anger. You slam your briefcase down on the table and stand before Judge Harlow. 

"Good morning, Miss-"

"Your Honor, I find it highly inappropriate I was not informed of Mr. Parsons hiring new counsel. Not only that, but he hired new counsel three hours before our hearing today. There is no possible way for this proceeding to be fair without his counsel being adequately brought up to speed. For this reason, I am petitioning for another court date to be held so Mr. Murdock can be properly briefed about the case." Your words are cutting and exact, as you were trained to make them. In law school, your classmates rarely wanted to go against you in mock trial. Moments like this, when your frustration rises to the surface, make you realize why. The dark-haired man with red glasses clears his throat from the opposite table as he stands. It takes everything in you to remain professional. 

"With all due respect, your Honor, I believe opposing counsel is just stalling. I have reviewed all the necessary documentation, and it is my fault that Mr. Parsons was pressed for time in finding new representation," Matt says. "Mr. Parsons just wants to resolve this issue as soon as possible so his daughter can be brought home safely after such a… harrowing experience with her sister."

"Ms. Parsons is currently being held without bond at Riker's on an unsubstantiated charge that has no bearing on her ability to raise Bea. This judicial hurdle is a hardship I would think Mr. Murdock would be sensitive to considering his status as a defense attorney and not a family lawyer." You retort, and Matt scoffs. You whip around to face him and find him shaking his head as his fingers flex around his cane.

"Do you consider robbery an unsubstantiated charge when it's caught on video and has multiple witnesses willing to testify to what they saw?" 

"Mr. Murdock, if your father kicked you and your thirteen-year-old sister out of the house in the middle of a New York winter, how would you, at eighteen years old, handle it?"

"Order!" Judge Harlow bangs her gavel several times to get everyone's attention, and you take a deep breath. "All of your concerns have been made abundantly clear, counselors, but if Mr. Murdock says he feels prepared, I will have to believe him. However, I do apologize on behalf of Mr. Murdock's office for not properly warning you of this matter, and I trust that he and his office will not make the same mistake again. Now, can we please get on with today's matter without another outburst?"

"Yes, Your Honor," Matt says, that stupid charm dripping from his voice. You bite the inside of your cheek and summon whatever willpower you have left.

"Yes, Your Honor." You say before returning to your table and gathering the relevant documents for the day's hearing. 

Robert Parsons is not the first shitty father you've had to deal with in all your years of family law. However, he might be one of the worst. Bea and Morgan's mother, Diana, died in the 2012 attack on New York. Since then, Robert, an NYPD officer, has been able to keep his emotional and physical abuse of his daughters under the radar until this winter when he kicked the girls out after he found out Bea snuck out of the house. He said he was "teaching them a lesson about discipline." Morgan, a kid herself, panicked when Bea spiked a fever and tried to steal Tylenol and some food from a local bodega. A fight broke out between Morgan and the cashier, and the police (her dad) were called. You've been trying to help them since Megan came to you at sixteen, but the system has been working against you at every turn. It doesn't help that the NYPD doesn't protect anyone as well as they protect their own. 

So, the fact that the asshole changed counsel three hours before one of the most important custody hearings of your entire year was enough to make your blood boil. The fact that the person representing him is none other than your law school rival, Matt Murdock, made you want to scream. Matt Murdock: Columbia's golden boy, a childhood hero who sacrificed his vision to save an old man's life, Battlin' Jack's son (RE: orphan), the guy who made all the girls in your classes swoon, the guy who told you that family law was a waste of your time. "You just wanna deal with whiny kids all day?" He asked you when you got your internship at one of the top family law firms in the city. For a kid who grew up in an orphanage, you would think he'd have a little more compassion for people who deal with "whiny kids." 

It doesn't matter because that was years ago, and you've since worked your way up the ladder to become one of the state's best, most aggressive family lawyers. People come from all over just to get you to represent them against abusive ex-husbands or piss-poor foster parents. You do good work. You know you do. You also know that Matt does, too. You've kept up with him since he graduated, mainly to compare career tracks and see if the days of winning smiles and perfect dark hair would ever end, but of course, it hasn't. Being on his own time in his own law firm suits him, and you hate that it does. 

Maybe that's why you show him absolutely no mercy in the court proceedings. You pull every piece of evidence you have that shows neglect, abuse, or even just a smidgen of the mental anguish he's put those girls through. Matt quickly and impressively pivots and challenges that this is not a criminal court and you're going above and beyond what's necessary. You argue about where Bea should go for about fifteen minutes while the custody arrangement is still in the air. You contest that Bea should go upstate with her maternal grandmother, Susan, while Matt says she should go back with her father after the emotional distress of Morgan's arrest. 

"Do you honestly believe the best thing for a child undergoing such stress is to move her miles away from the only home she's ever known?" Matt asks incredulously, cocking his head in your direction. You narrow your eyes at him even though you know he can't see you and square your shoulders.

"No, but being away from the man with child abuse charges pending might."

"Mr. Parsons is ready and willing to testify in a court of law that Morgan ran off with her sister in the middle of the night, and he was deploying his squadron to help locate the missing children. However, we aren't here to talk about that. We're here to talk about the safest place for Bea, which could later unfold into where she lives permanently until she becomes a legal adult. Do you really feel comfortable enlisting an elderly woman in the care of a rowdy teenager?"

"Thank you, Mr. Murdock, for the reminder of what today's hearing is actually about. I would've worried you were too ready to treat Mr. Parsons as a defendant." You snap, and Judge Harlow calls to order again. You exhale long through your nose and turn to face her. 

"While I appreciate your passion for this case, I encourage you two to find it within yourselves to keep these proceedings as professional as possible," she says. You recognize the tone. It's legalese for "shut the fuck up before you give me a reason to kick you out of my courtroom." "Beatrice Parsons will stay in her current foster home with supervised visits from her grandmother, Susan Kelsey. Given the emotional state of the child, I will not be releasing visitation time to the father until we see an improvement." 

"And Ms. Parsons, Your Honor? Will she be allowed to visit Bea upon her release?" You ask. 

"That is a matter we can revisit upon Ms. Parsons' release from Riker's. Until then, the only allowed contact with the child is her grandmother and the legal teams. We'll reconvene next Monday morning. Court is adjourned." With that, she bangs her gavel, and you're left reeling. Matt and Robert whisper to each other as you gather your paperwork and pack it away again. Your phone buzzes in your jacket, reminding you that you have to meet with another family regarding another custody agreement in two hours. You sigh and quickly make for the door when Matt and Robert start standing from their table. 

You're halfway to the elevator when you hear your name and reluctantly turn around. "Shit," you mumble as Matt taps his cane down the hallway. Thank God Robert is nowhere in sight, and you plaster on a fake smile for potential onlookers. "Mr. Murdock, how can I help you?"

"Well, I was hoping you could hold the elevator for me," he says. "And maybe we could strike a deal on our way down." You chuckle at his confidence and white knuckle the handles of your briefcase. 

"I don't think we could agree on anything within a thirty-second elevator ride, but I appreciate your enthusiasm."

"Really? Not even where I can buy you a coffee?" He asks as the elevator dings down the hallway. 

"Unfortunately not. I have another client meeting soon. I would've expected a man with his own practice to have similar meetings today, but I guess I was mistaken?" You say as you walk to the elevator. Matt follows suit, laughing at the dig. You press the button for the lobby, and the doors shut, and for a second, it's silent in the elevator. Years of competition and hate linger in the air.

"I've gotta say, I'm impressed with you." He says in a low voice like it's a secret, and you turn to look at him. "Yeah. It's really hard in this line of work to make quite as many enemies as you have." 

"It's not that hard to piss people off when you say they shouldn't have custody of their kids. Just like I'm sure people get pissed at you when you defend murderers."

"I don't defend murderers."

"Oh, Karen Page wasn't a murderer?" The name makes him still next to you as the doors finally open. "See you next Monday, Murdock." You say as you step out of the elevator, leaving Matt in the dust.

For the next week, you bounce between client meetings, hearings, mediations, visits to Morgan in Riker's, and late nights in the office, trying to find a way to take down Parsons and get Morgan out of jail. You would think being the daughter of a cop would be better in this kind of situation. You try to pull every string you can find, milk every connection, and almost beg any defense attorney you can corner for long enough. Still, Morgan remains in Riker's the night before the next hearing, and you're exhausted. 

Your phone rings that night, and you try not to make a habit of answering work calls outside of your normal hours, but the unrecognized number is too tempting to not pick up. "Let's make a deal," Matt says before you can even get out a proper greeting. You scoff and tuck your phone between your ear and shoulder as you close your curtains. 

"Make it worth my time, Murdock. I answered your call on a Sunday night before court." 

"I'm willing to defend Morgan in court and get her out of Riker's by the end of the week," he says. You're about to argue that it's a conflict of interest, that if he'd paid attention in the first semester classes of law school, he would've known that, but he beats you to it. "If you agree to drop this case and get Bea home."

"You're asking me to drop charges of child abuse and reckless endangerment of a minor."

"No, I'm asking you to drop the custody portion for now. The child abuse and endangerment charges will move onto criminal court, but that trial will be a waste of time if you don't have a witness like Morgan." He says. It's true. Even though Morgan is beyond the statute of limitations, Bea isn't. Jurors will be sympathetic to a victim but not a criminal. "No one else is gonna help her, and I'd much rather defend her than her father." 

"So, what happens if Bea goes back and he beats the shit out of her?" You ask as your phone beeps with another notification. Matt starts a long ramble, but you're not fully listening. "Matt, I have another call coming in. Can we talk about this later?" You don't wait for a response. You just end the call and quickly press the red notification, a crackly voice coming in on the other end. 

"And you're sure that's the right amount?" Parsons asks, oblivious to your listening, and someone chuckles in response. 

"That is typically the starting payment," you recognize the accent and glance around your apartment, trying to come up with a plan. "Now, if you keep up the flow, we can discuss upping the payment."

"That shouldn't be a problem. It'll be smooth sailing once I get my kids out of the way. You can tell Mr. Dreykov that."

It's cold. Even under all your layers and your gear, it's cold. The city moves like a living beast all around you, its inhabitants oblivious to you hiding on a rooftop with a gun. It's been two hours since that phone call, and Parsons still isn't home. The call ended within a minute of the notification buzzing on your phone, but they didn't make any plans to meet up anywhere. And why would they if their business together is riding on the results of this custody case? You sigh, your mask pushing the air right back at you, as you sit back on your heels and glance at the night sky.

It's rare that you can ever see stars in New York, but sometimes, if you squint, you can catch little glimpses. You struggle to focus on constellations with the screeching of subway brakes and loud horns penetrating the otherwise peaceful night. You've been doing this for a long enough time that you no longer stress yourself out about things like this. It's work. It's what you're supposed to do, and you get away with it. With all the other masked idiots running around the city— not limited to The Masked Idiots that moved upstate after Stark Tower was destroyed— and the gangs, police are never able to track where bullets are coming from. If they happen to, it's just another job to finish. Not a big deal.

You look to Parson's apartment again and find it still dark and empty. It isn't until you go to adjust the scope that something shuffles behind you, and by that point, it's too late to stop the arms from wrapping around your shoulders and pulling you backward. You throw your head back until you hit something hard, and the grip on you falters enough for you to slip out. There's a mess of punches, kicks, and elbows thrown as you try to get away from your attacker, but with every movement, they seem to anticipate it before you do. It isn't long before you're pinned to a brick wall, too far from your gun, with a gloved hand wrapped around your throat.

"Why are you targeting him?" A deep voice asks above you, and you kick your feet under you, trying to get the upper hand, but he's too strong. His grip on your throat tightens, and you gasp for air. "Last chance." He threatens, and your head swims with no oxygen. 

"The recording," you croak. His hand loosens around your windpipe just enough for you to get more information out. "Listen to the recording. On the phone." He drops you as fast as he grabbed you, and you collapse to the ground in a heap of heavy breaths and gasps. You can hear an old, familiar voice in your head calling you pathetic and weak, but you ignore it to focus on getting breath in your lungs. 

"This is your phone?" The voice asks as he holds up your burner flip phone from 2007, and you scoff.

"Didn't realize I'd be interrogated for my choices in cellphones," you manage, and you imagine the eye roll rather than see it through the red of his mask. You've seen pictures of him before. You've read the articles calling him a vigilante, a wanna-be Avenger, a menace to society. You know him. He stares at you (through you?) carefully as he puts the phone to his ear and listens to the most recent recording from Parson's phone call. You wait for the muscle in his jaw to clench and unclench before pulling yourself to your feet and walking over to him. You take it as a good sign that he doesn't try to throw you off the building for moving and get close enough to him to make out the faint stubble on his square jaw.

"Parson's trafficking girls?" He asks, more to himself than anything, and you nod. "How'd you know about this?" 

"Parson's been receiving huge payouts from off-shore accounts for a few years. All it took was tapping the big mouth's phone to figure out who he was talking to and about what," you explain as you open your hand to ask for your phone back. He obliges, but not without a dramatic sigh. "Y'know, I thought you would've had a better idea of what goes on in the city, Devil Boy." 

"How has this not been flagged by anyone else?" He ignores your jab, much to your dismay.

"The Red Room has informants and Widows in almost every functional part of society. If they want something to stay quiet, they'll find a way."

"I thought Romanoff exposed them."

"Deykov made it impossible to cut ties with the Red Room and other Widows for years. Somehow, Romanoff got out. Barely, but she made it out. There's no way she'd do anything to piss them off now. Not when she's gotten this far," you say. "As far as the public knows, Black Widow is an Avenger and nothing more."

"You got out." 

"I'm not a Widow."

"No?" He asks, and you shake your head. "So, you just had a military-grade weapon and tactical gear lying around?"

"Can't a girl take herself on a shopping spree?" You ask, not willing to justify him with a real answer. The rooftop goes quiet as you think about what the next step is. 

"You don't have to kill him." He says softly, like he's anticipating your reaction. You bite the inside of your cheek and turn to him, annoyance building in your stomach.

"What did you just say to me?"

"I know you want him to suffer, and trust me, he will, but if you want things to change, you need to get information from him. To get information from him, he needs to stay alive."

"What are you? A fucking altar boy?"

"Those girls don't get justice if you kill him."

"Justice," you laugh. "He gets to kidnap, torture, and brainwash little girls, and I'm supposed to just let him rot in prison? Is that justice to you, Red?" He's silent, and you shake your head. "Yeah, I didn't think so." You're about to turn back to your gun and find a way to make him leave you alone when three police cars go speeding down the street behind an FDNY truck. They're speeding and more urgent in their driving than you've seen in a long time. A rogue thought pricks at the corner of your brain, and you mumble a curse. 

Quickly, you open your phone and jam a few buttons until the sound of a police scanner comes through the shitty speakers. "Explosion reported at the corner of Ninth Ave and West 42nd. Multiple casualties have already been reported by people at the scene," a voice reports on the other line, and you hold your breath. "Officer Robert Parsons was reportedly inside the bar when the gas line blew, and he is assumed dead." 

The first thing you do when you get to the office in the morning is file an emergency petition to assign temporary custody of Bea to her grandmother. You're almost positive it'll get approved, considering how there's no one else involved in this custody case. Now free from his obligation to Robert, Matt sent you an email early this morning saying he would defend Morgan in court. You didn't respond. There are too many moving parts to focus on to care about responding to a pity representation in court.

Robert was talking to somebody from the Red Room not even four hours before he died in a fiery explosion. FDNY ruled it as an accident, but you know better. Did he blabber to someone on the force about the off-shore accounts? Did Dreykov's men just finally decide he wasn't worth all the trouble anymore? Did they find out you tapped his phone? If they did, it's only a matter of time before someone finds you. All the hairs on the back of your neck stand up as you stare at the blinking cursor on your computer screen. Your secretary, Margaret, saying your name makes you jump harder than it should've.

"Oh! Sorry, I didn't mean to scare you." She says in all her midwestern politeness, and you shake your head.

"I'm just a little jumpy this morning. Didn't get a lot of sleep last night." You wave her off, and she raises her eyebrows at you sympathetically.

"D'you want me to go get you a coffee?"

"No, thank you. I probably need to lay off coffee for a few hours," you sigh. "Did you need something from me?"

"Oh, yes. Someone called and left you a message... A Matt Murdock?" She says like she's hoping you'll recognize the name, and you nod.

"What'd he say?"

"He wanted to meet with you for lunch to discuss something. He didn't say what." Fucking Matt Murdock, you think. Finding a way to wiggle back into your life just because of one stupid case. "I can tell him no if you want me to."

"No, it's okay. I'll meet with him. We have some unfinished business together." You say, and she leaves to confirm lunch plans with Matt's office. You take a sip of your water, and your throat screams in pain from Devil Boy nearly choking you to death. The reminder that he knew about Parson's involvement with the Red Room before disappearing into the night makes your skin crawl. Another loose end to tie up at another time. Still, your head pounds with all the swirling information and the knowledge that there's no way you'll be getting rid of Matt Murdock anytime soon. "Shit."

#matt murdock x fem!reader #matt murdock x reader #daredevil x reader #daredevil fic #matt murdock fic #matt murdock #mcu fic #i wrote this for me but you can read it too i guess

[khaleesiofalicante]

India's Supreme Court has declined an appeal to legalize same-sex marriages.

The top court announced the ruling on Tuesday (17/10/2023) after hearing arguments in April and May, with three of five justices finding that the issue should be decided by parliament.

“The court, in the exercise of the power of judicial review, must steer clear of matters, particularly those impinging on policy, which fall in the legislative domain,” Chief Justice Dhananjaya Yeshwant Chandrachud said.

The court instead endorsed a government proposal to establish a panel to consider bestowing certain rights and benefits to same-sex couples.

Chandrachud said the state should provide some legal protections to same-sex unions, arguing that denying them “benefits and services” granted to heterosexual couples violates their fundamental rights.

TL;DR: The Supreme Court declared that queer couples have the right to enter into civil unions, though they do not have the right to marry under existing laws.

#didn't see anyone talking about this but this is a big deal #genuinely disappointed because i thought they had a chance but we keep fighting 🏳️‍🌈 #sending love to all the queer friends and folks from India #lgbt #lgbtq #queer #desi queer

[allthecanadianpolitics]

Between July 2018 and July 2021, Ontario Crown lawyers dedicated 1,672 taxpayer-funded hours to the province's case to keep Premier Doug Ford's now-leaked mandate letters secret.

That figure adds up to 209 eight-hour work days, or about 10 months of 40-hour work weeks, within three years.

Mandate letters traditionally lay out the marching orders a premier has for his or her ministers after taking office — and are routinely released by governments across the country. 

But the Ford government has gone to great lengths to keep the premier's 2018 letters secret by appealing court orders to disclose the records all the way up to Canada's top court. Despite those efforts, Global News reported Monday that one of its reporters was leaked a copy of all 23 of Ford's 2018 mandate letters. 

Until recently, the Ford government has also been refusing to say how many hours Crown counsel spent working on the case. Less than a week before a June 20 judicial review hearing, the government dropped its appeal of a decision from Ontario's Information and Privacy Commissioner (IPC) ordering it to disclose the number of hours to CBC Toronto, and it provided the figure by email. [...]

Continue Reading.

Tagging: @politicsofcanada

#cdnpoli #corruption #Doug Ford #Conservatives #Progressive Conservatives #Ontario #neoliberalism #housing crisis

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Barely a day after former President Donald Trump was indicted for the third time, some Senate Republicans are already trying to undermine the credibility of the federal judge who was randomly assigned to preside over his trial.

Here’s a detail they’re hoping you won’t notice: They unanimously voted to confirm her.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), speaking on his podcast on Wednesday, accused U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan of being “relentlessly hostile” to Trump and claimed that she has “a reputation for being far-left, even by D.C. District Court standards.”

But Cruz voted to put Chutkan into her seat on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in June 2014. So did every other Senate Republican when she was unanimously confirmed, 95-0.

That includes Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who nonsensically claimed Wednesday that “any conviction in D.C. against Donald Trump is not legitimate.”

“The judge in this case hates Trump,” Graham said in a Fox News interview. “You can convict Trump of kidnapping Lindbergh’s baby in D.C. You need to have a change of venue. We need a new judge. And we need to win in 2024 to stop this crazy crap.”

Aides to Cruz and Graham did not respond to requests for comment on how the senators square their votes to confirm Chutkan with their criticisms of her ability to be a fair judge.

Tuesday’s federal indictment of Trump accuses him of serious crimes related to the 2020 presidential election and the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection: conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights.

Chutkan, a Jamaica-born former assistant public defender and an appointee of former President Barack Obama, has already been overseeing cases related to the Jan. 6 attack. She’s handed out some of the most aggressive sentences yet to rioters who took part in the violence that day. Of the 11 cases that have come before her, she imposed tougher sentences than those sought by the Justice Department seven times and matched what the Justice Department was seeking four times, according to an Associated Press review.

In all 11 cases, Chutkan sentenced the defendants to prison time.

This is what is likely driving the GOP attacks on Chutkan: They know she’s not likely to go easy on Trump now.

Beyond trying to discredit the judge, some Republicans, like Graham, are parroting Trump’s absurd demand for a change of venue. The former president has called for moving his case to the “more diverse” and “politically unbiased nearby State of West Virginia!” (Virginia and Maryland are much closer to D.C., for what it’s worth.)

Not a single Republican raised concerns about Chutkan during her nomination hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee in February 2014. In fact, only one GOP member of the committee even showed up to the hearing: Sen. John Cornyn (Texas), who was only there to rave about a separate Texas judicial nominee on the schedule. He left before Chutkan was up.

Cruz and Graham were both members of the committee at the time.

Neither attended Chutkan’s hearing.

#us politics #news #huffington post #republicans #conservatives #donald trump #2023 #capitol protests #capitol riot #capitol riot investigation #jan 6 investigation #jan 6 insurrection #sen. ted cruz #Judge Tanya Chutkan #U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia #us senate #sen. lindsey graham #conspiracy to defraud the United States #conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding #obstruction of congress #attempt to obstruct an official proceeding #conspiracy against rights #the associated press #West Virginia #Senate Judiciary Committee #Sen. John Cornyn

[tangjiali-purpleyaohua]

Qiu Qingzhi and Li Bing back in the days : You look at me who loves looking at you.

ISTG the way Li Bing looked at Qiu Qingzhi who was looking at him was more like a shy junior who looked at his senior he had a crush on. A part of him secretly hoped that Qiu Qingzhi wouldn't know his feelings towards him, yet another part of him also hoped that his secret crush would share the same feelings as him and then would make the first move on him. He plastered a shy smile as if he tried to pretend that he didn't have any butterflies flying in his stomach.

The drama wasn't about bromance, but really they just skipped the B and jumped into romance. LOL. Qiu Qingzhi x Li Bing boldly crossed the line of mere brothership. There's no way in Hell you would treat your brother as an adult like that. Not a million times.

Note : They didn't cut the scene where Wang Qi jumped on Cui Bei's back, but they cut the cute scene where Qiu Qingzhi called Li Bing to come over and Li Bing ran to him happily. He jumped on Qiu Qingzhi's back. Qiu Qingzhi was more than happy to give him a piggyback ride for free. He carried him like the most precious thing he wished he could have.

Qiu Qingzhi and Li Bing now : I'm just a little too not over you. Just a little! You hear me? But how are you so fine without me? I've been crying for you since the day you went away! Am I that unimportant? Am I so insignificant to you? Fine! I'm going to show to the whole world that I'm also fine without you!

But of course, who could stop our Vice Minister Li from the Court of Judicial Review to act cute towards General Qiu from Jinwu Guard? Li Bing could do whatever he wished since it's Qiu Qingzhi. 撒娇 full mode was activated!

I'd never be a fan of hetero romance drama. I admit that I even always tried to avoid it like a plague because I had a great issue with the FL's half baked 撒娇 (acted like a spoiled child or coquettishly). It never failed to annoy me to the moon and back to the point that killed my mood and gave me a headache. It's the main reason why such a talented actor like Ding Yuxi managed to escape from my radar (my BL-dar, LOL).

White Cat Legend was his first drama that I watched. To be honest, at first, I didn't expect him to be that good, but just a pretty face to help selling the drama. I heard that antis said that his face was just too ordinary. Excuse you, but I had to disagree! I really had no idea which beauty standard that they used to judge Ding Yuxi's exquisite appearance. This guy surely had a pretty face and a pair of equally beautiful expressive doe eyes. His laughs were so addictive. He has fair skin and a pair of cute elf ears that made his face look smaller and innocent.

He's indeed one of the most beautiful men I've ever seen, but his acting skill was on par with his pretty face. He was so detailed in micro expression, voice, quirks, and body language. He used his real voice! I was so glad for that since I could tell his changing mood faster based on his voice. In White Cat Legend, I wonder if he merely relied on what's written on the script or more on his personal interpretation to portray Li Bing. Most of the time when Li Bing gazed at Qiu Qingzhi, it wasn't for a bestie, but a lover. It was understandable if it was a BL or B-romance drama, but it wasn't. I jumped on the QiuBing ship and then sailed, sailed, sailed, to the BL sea.

When they met again after the 3 years of separation & a bitter 'breakup', Li Bing looked at General Qiu with glassy eyes as he was so ready to burst into tears at any moment. His voice tinted with emotional; anger, sorrow, desperation, and unbearable longing. But sometimes his voice became more childish just like when he was younger. He did it only to Qiu Qingzhi, especially when he felt like testing Qiu Qingzhi's patience in every chance that he got. I wonder how Qiu Qingzhi could suppress the urge not to jump on that naughty cat and attack him. By 'attack', I meant wringing Li Bing's delicate neck, not that typical +18 'attack' deflowering him in bed.

Gotta admit that Ding Yuxi's 撒娇 skill is really a top-notch 撒娇! He's not exaggerating. It was just so natural. Damn, he's so cute! When I said cute, it was purely boyish cute. I wouldn't dare to describe him as unmanly. He's a versatile actor that could act as a male character with a feminine traits, just like his role as Dongfang Bubai back then. FYI, Dongfang Bubai was a male character who castrated himself in order to master a martial art in the Sunflower Manual. I didn't watch the drama, but I watched some short videos of his version of Dongfang Bubai. IMHO, he's the best Dongfang Bubai that I've ever seen. They mostly used an actress to play the role of Dongfang Bubai. Ding Yuxi managed to balance masculinity and femininity for Dongfang Bubai. Dear a bunch of half baked 撒娇 skilled actress, you guys better learn that skill from this xiao-Dingding, so your acting can be less annoying.

Ding Yuxi as Dongfang Bubai

Tbh, I wouldn't mind if the MUA (makeup artist) dolled him up like Dongfang Bubai as Li Bing. Li Bing in his big white cat mode got red eyeshadow under his eyes! Why couldn't he get it in his human form? It would be so epic and undoubtedly look so good on him.

Was the GCI version of the big white cat actually modeled after Ding Yuxi? They really looked alike! Da lizi was just like a mirror image of Ding Yuxi. Look at their eyes and lips!

I wonder if he used a certain method as an actor; shaping himself into the character or blend the character into himself. Whichever he used, it was the best way to understand the character, but also a dangerous way since it's possible that he couldn't get rid off the character even after the drama was over. It was so tricky. However, as an adult, I believe that he was over the fragile stage to find his identity. He was already on the safe side.

As for Wei Zheming, his acting really surprised me. The first time I knew him, he acted as Jing Beiyuan or Qi-ye (Lord Seventh) in Word of Honor. In White Cat Legend, he really surpassed my expectations on him. He nailed the role as Qiu Qingzhi; the left General of Imperial Guard, the General from Jinwu Guard. Most of the time he kept his face stoic and expressionless, but if you paid more attention to it, he clearly had a lot of emotions, especially for Li Bing. I was so glad that they didn't dub his original voice. Unlike when Li Bing addressed Qiu Qingzhi by his title so coldly; damn that was so cold, when Qiu Qingzhi addressed Li Bing by his title, it was full of respect. But when he addressed Li Bing by his name, you could notice the fondness in his voice. You could also sense the air of arrogance and authority whenever he used '本将' (this General) to address himself. Somehow he managed to sound so arrogant even when he used '邱莫' (this humble-self Qiu). Dude, you're not humble at all! However on the contrary, you would notice his modesty when he used '我' (I, me). He's a real two-face guy. He was so different in his monstrous mode and his Saint mode.

After learning how selfless and sincere Qiu Qingzhi was, my first reaction was; I insulted him so much behind his back. I shouldn't have done that. Oh, same, Wang Qi, same!

It was so sad that they killed Qiu Qingzhi in the drama. But it couldn't be helped since that character was too good. Qiu Qingzhi >>>>>>>>>>> Chen Shi + Wang Qi + Cui Bei + Sun Bao + Alibaba. Once he was back to Li Bing's side, the Mingjing Hall people were basically useless compared to Qiu Qingzhi. Looking back at Qiu Qingzhi x Li Bing in their past, I thought that he was actually the '妖' (demon) in duo '妖饼' (demon Bing). Oh, come on. Li Bing was a frail Young Master back then due his incurable illness. Basically he was like a beauty lamp that even a faint cold air could extinguish it in seconds. Qiu Qingzhi, on the contrary, was a strong and reliable man with wisdom. We know how capable and effective Qiu Qingzhi was in a battle. Capturing a small fry like thieves or bandits was like just a piece of cake for him. He also could make sure that Li Bing was safe and unharmed when he played detective with him.

Maybe it's because he was a slave (servant), even if Li Bing would never treat him like one, no one really would bother to pay attention on him. He was like the shadow of Li Bing who was born with silver in his mouth and so much privilege as the Young Master of an aristocratic family.

Back to the topic. If Qiu Qingzhi was still alive or managed to escape from death, he would single handedly outshine Mingjing Hall people so easily to the point Li Bing no longer needed anyone, but him. I meant it. Wanna bet? Whenever Li Bing needs someone to pamper him, just go get Qiu Qingzhi. Sorry, Chen Shi. Whenever Li Bing needs someone who's highly intelligent and is a sly fox with so many tricks in his sleeves, just go get Qiu Qingzhi. Sorry, Wang Qi. Whenever Li Bing needs someone who's so dedicated to a case and can memorize the detail of each case by heart, just go get Qiu Qingzhi. Sorry, Cui Bei. Whenever Li Bing needs a protection, just go get Qiu Qingzhi. Heck, Qiu Qingzhi could catch and tame the original Demon Cat; Yi Zhihua by himself. He can be a real monster once he puts his heart in it. Sorry, Sun Bao. Whenever Li Bing needs a translator or someone who has a lot of connection in the city, just go get Qiu Qingzhi. He's the left General of the Imperial Guard, he will be a big help with his influence. Sorry, Alibaba.

In short : It absolutely will be the supremacy of the Qiu Qingzhi era!

See? He was so good that they 'better' killed Qiu Qingzhi.

After Qiu Qingzhi's tragic death, I felt like it's Li Bing who's drapped in moonlight, lonely, and sad since no one can replace Qiu Qingzhi. It's definitely a losing game to compete with a dead man. Therefore, it's only Li Bing who remains in the tragedy. Even though in the end, he has Mingjing Hall people who stay on his side, things will never be the same.

Now what? Even though the drama was over, I couldn't move on! Help! 😭😭😭

#white cat legend #大理寺少卿游 #ding yuxi #wei zheming #丁禹兮 #魏哲鸣

[lexlawuk]

Home Office Yields in Latest Challenge to 'No Recourse to Public Funds' Rule

The Home Office has recently yielded to another in a series of ongoing challenges to the no recourse to public funds policy. This particular challenge involved the removal of the no recourse condition for an individual with section 3C leave as a student dependent. The case in question is PA & Anor, R (on the application of) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2023] EWHC 2476…

View On WordPress

#ukimmigration #3C Leave #Child #Child dependent #Child Visa #David J Foster &amp; Co #dependants #Dependent Visa #DJF Solicitors #Home Office #Immigration #Immigration Judicial Review #Judicial Proceedings #Judicial Review #Judicial Review Claim #Judicial Review Hearing #Lexvisa #Marriage #no recourse to public funds #Section 3C #Section 3C Leave #Student #student dependant #welfare #Without Recourse to Public Funds

[canary3d-obsessed]

Restless Rewatch: The Untamed, Episode 37 part two

(Masterpost) (Pinboard)  (whole thing on AO3)

Warning! Spoilers for All 50 Episodes!

Inquiring Minds

Wei Wuxian asks the kids if any of them can perform inquiry so he can ask Song Lan who fucked him up like this. Sizhui does a good job, but he has to whisper to himself while he plays, because he is not a mensch like Lan Wangji (yet).

Song Lan says that Xiao Xingchen is the culprit, and the kids immediately ignore apparently-murderer Xiao Xingchen who's sitting next to them, and instead have a seminar on how inquiry works and the niceties of guqin-language translation. 

During the whole conversation, they talk about Song Lan being killed, not just mostly-killed, incidentally. And that's not a translation error; I'm actually able to recognize the phrase "shale ta." (My small collection of Chinese-words-I-can-recognize-when-I-hear-them is entirely Wuxia-based, including useful words and phrases like wo shale ni (I'm going to kill you), dianxia (prince/lord), and dalisi (the court of judicial review).

They all continue to ignore Xiao Xingchen while Sizhui asks Wei Wuxian's third question, which is "who controls you." Song Lan's answer this time is "that dude behind you." That dude, who we are perhaps beginning to suspect is not really Xiao Xingchen, smirks and snaps his fingers.

Song Lan responds by breaking out of the rope and summoning his sword and fuchen (horsetail whisk) to his hands.  

He brings his sword to Wei Wuxian's neck and Wei Wuxian tells the kids to back off, saying that all of them put together are not a match for Song Lan. Which is true, judging by the juniors' sword moves, which consist entirely of standing still and pointing.

Not-Xiao-Xingchen says that the adults are going to talk so the kids should go outside. Wei Wuxian tells the juniors to scram, and reminds them not to breathe in a lot of poison while they're out there. Gee, thanks, Laoshi. 

(More behind the cut!)

Sizhui lingers, and Wei Wuxian tells him he's the most sensible and that he should take charge of the others. He tells Sizhui not to be afraid, and Sizhui says he isn't. 

He also says that Mo-qianbei and Hanguang-Jun are alike. Wei Wuxian denies this, saying they're opposites. Almost like yin and yang, in fact, needing each other to create a balance. 

Sizhui thinks in a voiceover that he doesn't know why, but he thinks they're alike; that if either one of them is there, he doesn't need to be afraid. They are mostly not alike, I think, but they are both devoted parents to Sizhui, so he's right about that. 

His recognition of Wei Wuxian is growing, and I like that he's able to ponder this stuff in the midst of all these life threatening situations. It's actually fairly accurate to life as a teenager, in which the big work of figuring yourself out is always going on in your head, no matter the circumstances.

Dear Slim, I wrote you

Once the kids are gone, both of the adults can drop their aliases, and speak demonic-cultivator to demonic-cultivator. 

They stand around while not-Xiao-Xingchen, who is obviously Xue Yang, delivers a heap of exposition about making zombies and his new Yin Tiger Seal and...*yawn.* 

Anyway, he lured Wei Wuxian here so he could resurrect someone for him. Wei Wuxian says nope, listening briefly to the spirit-trapping bag that Xue Yang hands him and saying that this person is super duper dead, and wants to stay that way. 

Xue Yang insists, reminding Wei Wuxian that the kids are hostages.

During this whole conversation, Song Jiyang, who plays Xiao Xingchen, does a great job playing Xue Yang - possibly helped along by using the same voice actor for overdubbing? - including by embodying many of Xue Yang's annoying mannerisms. 

On my first watching, I found Xue Yang very very annoying, right up until the point that the show flips the script and manages to make him sympathetic and tragic, which is quite a trick, considering that he's a psycho and also a dick. On subsequent viewings I still find him annoying but I like his fighting style a lot, and what he brings to the story generally.

When Xue Yang starts cackling, Wei Wuxian greets him by name and tells him he should stop pretending to be someone he isn't. Xue Yang responds by taking off his eye cover and then by taking off his face, which is a mask that's way more convincing than poor Mo Xuanyu's craft-store paper-mache thingy. 

Xue Yang picked up some good disguise tricks during that summer he spent in Changsha interning for Zhang Rishan.

The mountain of exposition continues, covering a wide range of topics

Skull nails

how Wen Ning is hard to control

Yin Tiger Seal 1.0

Yin Tiger Seal 2.0

other pieces of Yin metal

Xue Yang's mysterious friend who is good at acting, i.e. Jin Guangyao.

Wei Wuxian being the founder of demonic cultivation

Xue Yang murdering the Chang clan

Xue Yang murdering Song Lan's sect

Murder Turtle

The Yin metal sword

The conversation does clear up some confusion about the Yin metal pieces from back in the day. Everyone thought there were only four, but Xue Yang is a Wuxia fan and knows that whenever something from a previous generation is hidden away for the good of the world and then is found by a later generation, there are always five of it. (See: Legend of Fei, Word of Honor)

During this conversation, Xue Yang shows a sincere admiration of Wei Wuxian, saying that he himself only figured out some things about Yin metal, but Wei Wuxian was able to learn without a teacher and create the Yin Tiger seal. It's...kinda sweet. He follows it up by explaining his "murder everybody" philosophy, which makes it a little less sweet.

Fight Club

Mercifully, this near-endless conversation is interrupted by Song Lan crashing through the wall like the Kool-Aid guy, followed by Wen Ning in full multi-punch-man mode. 

Wei Wuxian tells the boys to take it outside, and then he and Xue Yang go out to watch the fight. Xue Yang was never able to control Wen Ning, he says, because "some things recognize their masters too well." Wei Wuxian says that Wen Ning is not a thing. He doesn't deny that he is Wen Ning's master, however. As if he could.

Xue Yang responds with some linguistic subtlety that is lost in translation and then draws his  Xiao Xingchen's sword and takes a swipe at Wei Wuxian, who easily ducks the blow. 

Xue Yang explains that he doesn't want to kill him, just capture and enslave him. Then the fight is on, with Wei Wuxian dodging, blocking, and spinning, while whining about having low spiritual energy in his new body. 

Wei Wuxian calls for a substitute to do his fighting for him. Xue Yang says that Hanguang-Jun is busy fighting his little friend. (I find it hilarious that Xue Yang consistently refers to Su She as his little friend.) He's barely finished saying this when Lan Wangji comes sailing in, deflecting his blow and striking a pose for Wei Wuxian.

Sometimes you succeed in recoloring a super foggy, blue-tinted gif, and sometimes you just give up.

Lan Wangji immediately yoinks Xiao Xingchen's sword off of Xue Yang, and tells him he doesn't deserve this sword. Boy howdy, Hanguang-Jun, you don't know the half of it. 

Xue Yang summons his own sword out of thin air and Sword Superfan Lan Wangji says "Calamity Befalls" because he knows the names of ALL the swords. The guys in his Discord are going to be so excited that he got to cross blades with two famous swords in one day.

Before the fighting starts, Lan Wangji tells Wei Wuxian to hit the bricks, saying "you are not needed here." I love that grown-up, mellower, affectionate Lan Wangji is still a salty bitch. 

Wei Wuxian bails while Lan Wangji and Xue Yang bust out a bunch of their best moves, with the actors doing a lot of the stunt work themselves.

This sword move by Wang Haoxuan is pretty great. Useless, like Wei Wuxian's spinning, but hawt.

And Wang Yibo is grace personified when he’s on wires.

While the sword fight is going on, Wen Ning and Song Lan are having a frowning contest.

They are also beating the crap out of each other.  

The juniors watch the punch-up with keen interest; Jingyi is particularly happy about it. Jin Ling isn't smiling but he seems pretty entertained for a guy who's dad was killed by one of those same punches.

Wei Wuxian sees the fight and reflects that he's not needed there either. But that the juniors do need him, and he gets a happy little smile, finding a context in which he can be useful. 

The juniors all flock to him like ducklings and he teases them about his terrible congee.

When they see Lan Wangji fighting, the little Lans all preen. Jingyi announces that Hanguang-Jun is the best, and asks Wei Wuxian to confirm it. Wei Wuxian is surprised to be asked, given that he's just a random guy who is obviously fucking their favorite teacher. 

Jingy is offended when Wei Wuxian doesn't immediately agree, but Wei Wuxian contemplates for a bit, thinking about all the ways that Lan Wangji is the best, particularly his dick, and chuckles to himself while agreeing with Jingyi.

Lan Wangji backs up these assertions by pausing for a moment in his fight to knock out a whole group of zombies with one strum of his invisible guqin...zombies who dared to menace Wei Wuxian. 

Grave Disturbance

Wei Wuxian collects the kids and goes to find A-Qing, saying she has something important to communicate, and that she's not on Xue Yang's side. He also tells the kids that the dude fighting Lan Wangji is Xue Yang. He doesn’t explain why or how, though. 

They all go into the coffin house/morgue, where Wei Wuxian says they're safe because they haven’t seen any zombies since, like, four minutes ago. Seems logical.

A-Qing pops up from behind a coffin and starts tapping it. She makes it super incredibly obvious, through hand signals, that she wants someone to open the coffin, and most of them, including Wei Wuxian, are too dumb to understand this.

Fortunately Jin Ling is paying attention, and explains what she wants. Wei Wuxian tells everyone to back up, in case the coffin is trapped, and then opens it by leaning directly over it.

Xiao Xingchen is in the coffin, and this time we know it's the real Xiao Xingchen because Wei Wuxian has a flashback about him. 

A-Qing somehow knows it's him in the coffin, despite being blind and not reaching in to touch him. She cries tears of blood because that is exactly how human tear ducts and eyeballs work.

Since she's mute, Sizhui suggests using inquiry to talk to her. She's...alive? Does inquiry work on alive people? Whatever. Wei Wuxian says that Inquiry won’t help, and that he's going to use Empathy instead, because what this show needs right now is a two-episode-long flashback. Jin Ling objects, saying it's too dangerous, but Wei Wuxian says to STFU and let's get cracking.

Then he tells us about his favorite mango drink. At least, if you are watching on Viki, where some of the original ads are included with the episodes. The combination of an abrupt, somber episode ending, followed immediately by a cheerful in-character advertisement, is never not hilarious.

Soundtrack: Stan by Eminem

#the untamed #restless rewatch the untamed #canary3d-original #wei wuxian's favorite mango drink

[theivorybilledwoodpecker]

The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday agreed to review a decision that revived a long-running lawsuit by the Navajo Nation, which claims that the U.S. Interior Department has a duty to develop plans to provide the reservation with an adequate water supply. The high court granted two petitions for certiorari – one by the federal government, one by Arizona and other states -- challenging last year’s decision by a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The 9th Circuit said “an irreversible and dramatically important trust duty” was implied by 175 years’ worth of treaties and court decisions. The challengers, however, say implied rights are unenforceable. “The federal treaties with the Navajo Nation…do not address water at all,” and the doctrine of implied water rights “cannot justify imposing such a fiduciary duty,” lead counsel Rita Pearson Maguire argued in the states’ cert petition. The Interior Department, represented by Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, added that the 9th Circuit’s approach would replace national policy decisions with “a regime of general judicial oversight of the United States’ relationship with Indian tribes.” The Navajo Nation, represented by Shay Dvoretzky of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, defended the 9th Circuit’s decision and urged the high court to deny certiorari. The Interior Department declined to comment on Friday. Maguire and Dvoretzky did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The Navajo Nation filed suit in 2003. It wants the Interior Department to determine whether the Little Colorado River, which runs through the reservation, is sufficient “to fulfill the Reservation’s purpose of establishing a permanent homeland for the Nation” – a standard known as Winters rights, from a 1908 U.S. Supreme Court decision. If not, the Nation says the government must develop a plan to supply water from other sources. A federal judge in Prescott, Arizona,

ICWA is not the only case affecting Native American and Alaska Native rights. Keep an eye on this case.

#Navajo #native americans #alaska natives #ICWA #indian child welfare act

[outofgloom]

THERE ARE NO STARS IN THE PIT

With a shock, I struck against cold stone, and before I had even the chance to inhale, to blink, to raise my head or process what had happened, there was a blow to the center of my back, and I was sprawling flat.

Hands gripped my arms and legs, and I was hauled upright with a rasp of chains. Chains...heavy on my wrists. When had they appeared? My feet left the floor for a moment as I was lifted bodily and slammed into a seat of some kind. The metal bars dug into my back.

At last, my vision cleared, and some sense returned to the world. I was in a small chamber made of smooth rock; walls on all sides, rising into the distance above. Ahead, there was a faint light; a gap, a window.

I groaned and leaned forward, raising shackled hands to my bruised face. There was movement in the corner of my vision, and I saw that I was flanked by no less than three guards. Hulking brutes, nearly twice my size. Not a word had been spoken yet.

I tried to focus, looking toward the window. There was a patch of sky there, and I strained my eyes toward it, to get a sense of my bearings. A pale color, no clouds, and shot with stars...but they were foreign stars to me. Still, perhaps there was hope--

"--there is no hope," a voice said, noting, I suppose, how I stared through the window, "for they are not stars."

"What..." I gasped, finally finding my voice, "Where is this place? I was somewhere...else...just now."

"You were, and now you are here. And here you'll remain."

"What have I done to deserve--"

"--You know what you've done. No sense in denying it. I’ve looked into it myself."

At last I registered that the voice belonged to a dark figure, off to the right. My eyes widened, mouth fell agape.

"There must be a mistake," I said, raising my hands submissively, "A mistake! Please, oh please, let me just explain. Look here, I--"

The silhouette twitched its head, and an armored hand clamped down on my jaw, silencing me. Another gripped me painfully by the temples and forced my gaze to the floor. Two more hands fell heavily on my shoulders, and there was a terrible threat in their movements.

"Your explanations are usually quite convincing, aren’t they?" the figure said. "But I’ve met your type before--a better hypnotist than you, in fact. You’re a poor imitation."

 Ah, so the jig is up. Well, patience is the next best approach. 

I relaxed, reassuring my captors that I did not intend to struggle. After a moment, the grip on my jaw and head released. A start.

"You fancy yourself a star-diviner as well, I hear," the figure continued. "Better than the seers of the City of Legends, even. Well, I doubt you divined such an end for yourself."

What a fool.

"And...and what end is that, if I may ask?" I replied in as humble a voice as I could muster.

"This is a prison, and I am its warden," the figure said. "You have been committed into my...care...by the decree of the Great Spirit."

A pompous fool too? All the easier.

"I am honored," I said, "even to occupy the merest fragment of the thoughts of Mata Nui. What are the charges against me, and when is the trial? The judges of Ananga are fairly efficient in--"

"No trial," the jailer interrupted. "Not how this works. We're beyond the scope of the petty judicial systems that have sprung up amongst the peoples of the world..."

So the usual legal avenues are out, then.

"...And anyways, your crime is not against them, but against the Great Spirit himself."

Perhaps a moral appeal...

"I have committed no crime," I said contritely. "Surely if Mata Nui is just, then he--"

My mouth was shut again. The jailer now held a tablet in one hand. He stepped closer, and I could see dull eyes shining in a skull-like face.

"Moving on. Just a few points to review for the official record, and then we'll be done here."

He scanned the tablet for a moment.

"Let's see...You've had a number of aliases over the past century. We have record of a 'Sage Akedox' in the east quarter of Metru Aui. This was your earliest designation, was it not?"

The guard's grip loosened to let me speak.

"I have no idea who that is. I am from the Eastern Archipelago. A humble scholar!"

The jailer nodded agreeably.

"Other aliases are known on the Lesser Continent and in the star-cults of...hm...Stelt and its islets. Have you visited Metru Nui recently?"

"Why no, I never have. It would be a great honor even to set foot within the City of Legends."

Look at me, right here.

"Of course, of course. Now, I think we can skip ahead...Here, yes...Now let me see...Sublevel 10 of the Great Coliseum in Metru Nui, and again on sublevel 36. The wards there picked up traces of you, even after you managed to hypnotize half of the Matoran in the complex. Did you command them to actually attack and kill the other half, or was that just poor wording on your part?"

"What a horrible thought! I can't believe such accusations."

Yes, keep looking here. Don't glance down.

"That alone would be crime enough--the killing of Mata Nui’s chosen--but I thought I'd give you an opportunity to set the record straight..."

Must be subtle about it.

"Well anyways, you went much further than that. It seems you have tread upon holy ground, my friend. You found out the way. Deeper than the deepest places of earth and stone..."

Just a twitch of the head and hands. These cursed shackles clink too much...

"...That place, you must know, was made by the Great Beings themselves. I know because I saw it done, in the Before Time, and no living thing may now trespass there. To your credit, your divinations were fairly inspired."

Almost there. No use pretending anymore. Talking will help a bit.

"Then you know, don’t you?" I replied calmly. "You have seen it too: the place far beneath, where the rock and stone give way to something else, something keener and harder, and more...more alive."

The jailer stared unblinking. A good sign.

"Alive like us," I continued, warming to my tale. "That is the shape of the world. Like us. The oracles of the East once claimed that the world is a great machine, but I know now that isn't true. I can still remember the sound of it, the thrumming, and there were lights twinkling in the blackness there. Lights like stars in the bone-deep foundations of the world--can you imagine it? I found them, and I could have deciphered them too. I could have...and then I'd--"

"--I said," the jailer interrupted again, very rudely, "that no living thing may now trespass there. You saw this in your divinations, did you not? A great sage you may be, but you are still a fool."

"Be quiet," I replied, and the jailer fell silent. Good.

"Stand still, and take no action except at my request," I continued, and the jailer complied also. Very good.

"Now, command these guards to release me."

The guards were not entirely living, I had surmised. They were automatons, much like those I had encountered in the deep place beneath the Coliseum. And with the right command...

Click. The shackles fell from my hands at a sign from the jailer. The guards moved back, and I stood up, massaging my wrists and stretching. That was some good work--some of my best, in fact.

"And what do you think of me now, jailer? Poor imitation indeed."

"You are a fool, as I said," the jailer replied.

I bristled, but kept my control. Subjects were entitled to their opinions, I suppose.

"Why don't you unbolt the door there?" I said.

The jailer complied, as I knew he would. The door opened, and I stepped out. It was brighter here. The corridor stretched off in both directions, and the walls rose upward as they had in the chamber, except for a small gap above, where the patch of sky could be seen still. I squinted at the twinkling stars there, focused my mind to divine their patterns and understand this place more fully. This was the talent that had earned me the title of Sage.

But there was nothing. Nothing at all. I had only a small fragment. That must be it. I went back to the chamber.

"What is the nearest exit to this place?" I asked the jailer, who still stood listlessly.

"There is no exit," the jailer replied.

I frowned.

"Where is it that you make contact with the outside world, then? Surely you do that. Which way should I go?"

"Go right. It's only a short way."

I turned to the door, but paused.

"In my haste, I almost forgot," I said. "As my new disciple, you should not lie to me. It is very important that you be truthful in answering my questions."

"Oh, I see..." said the jailer. "In that case, there is an exit, and it is to the left." He shrugged: "I'm sorry--it's in my nature."

"No harm done! Thank you for your help. You'll come with me to show me the way, won't you?"

"Of course."

We turned left and walked down the featureless hallway for a while. There were many doors, some closed, some open, with darkness inside. A few of the hulking automatons flanked the openings as we went, but they stood at ease in the presence of the jailer. I repeated the subtle movements of my mesmerism as we walked, to ensure that I maintained control over my new disciple. It seemed to be working well.

At regular intervals, I noticed that a gap appeared high up on the wall--the same as the one near the chamber I had been held in. And each time as we walked, I imagined that the patch of sky there was growing clearer and larger. There must be other buildings or structures in the way, and we were moving to a better angle. That would prove useful. I would be able to gather much more intel once--

"Here," said the jailer, at last, breaking my reverie. I shook myself and saw--

The hallway ended abruptly here, and the space opened up into emptiness: a deep, open shaft descending into darkness, but with open sky above. The scrape of my feet on stone echoed in the cavernous air as I stepped back hurriedly.

...but there was no room to retreat. I ran up against my disciple, the jailer. He was blocking the corridor, the clumsy oaf.

His hand was already on the back of my neck, fingers hard as iron.

"It's easier this way," he said as I struggled and gasped and writhed and realized. "Easier than dragging you kicking and screaming down the corridors. Quieter too. Keeps the other prisoners from getting too interested."

"I...you--You! No! I was...I was in control--"

"You'll learn who's in control, soon enough."

He threw me into the pit.

I fell for a while, air whistling in my ears, until the shaft narrowed like a siphon, and I struck the wall and began to slide helplessly, down into the darkness.

At last I reached the bottom; I don't know how far down. The sky that I had seen above was now a small circle, even dimmer than before. I crawled to the center of the circular room, exhausted. But I was not alone, even here. The robotic guards came forward from somewhere and picked up my bruised and battered body. The jailer was there too, somehow. He made some command with his hands.

"Are you learning, good sage?" he asked. "I said you were a fool before, but even fools can learn wisdom, in time."

"I’m not a fool," I rasped at him. "I know...I know the shape of the world, jailer, and I’ll read out your future too."

"I will be interested to hear it, when you are ready. Regardless, I have what intel I need from you now. I appreciate your candor in telling me exactly what you saw, down there in the deep."

"Just you wait. You think yourself patient? No matter...no matter how many days or nights it takes--"

"--But there are no days or nights here. There is only vigilance. Only eyes, watching you. And with what you know, we will have to watch you closely."

"The closer the better," I spat back. "I see it already--the stars foretell it. Distant they may be, but I can still see them. You’ll die accursed, jailer, with a blade in your back...and your corpse will rot. This I prophecy...And then I will know the shape of the world once more."

The jailer stepped closer.

"I told you," he said, smiling faintly, "they are not stars. No, they are the lights that flicker in the cells of those for whom death has been deemed an inappropriate fate. Instead of death, eternity under my watch. Just like you."

Hands clamped my mouth shut again, and I struggled like a dying Rahi as they held me down, screaming murder through closed lips.

Murder and death as they fixed a metal brace over my jaw and bent it permanently closed.

Dismemberment and desecration as they welded metal plates over my eyes, to seal me in. To seal away my mind and my will, and the secret knowledge I carried. Would always carry. Forever.

The last thing I saw through the opening high above was the twinkling of the lights in the dim sky.

But that was no solace...I was learning now.

For they were not stars.

There are no stars in the Pit.

#bionicle #writing #fanfiction #art #outofgloom #hydraxon #works

[okayto]

Mini-Review: Summer Time Rendering

To attend the funeral of his best friend and part of the family that took him in after his parents died, Shinpei returns to his small island home for the first time in two years. Hearing whispers that her body showed bruises around her neck inconsistent with the story of a tragic drowning while rescuing a child in the ocean, Shinpei becomes suspicious. There may be something brewing under the surface of this warm summer...

This is the perfect show as the northern hemisphere heads into summer: atmospheric, intriguing, balancing action and mystery.

STR first piqued my interested when I saw it referred to repeatedly as a show that didn't get the attention it deserved (a reviewer for Anime News Network referred to it as "among the best anime of 2022") due to being locked in "the Disney+ jail."

And having watched it, I agree: if this had been on a bigger anime-watching platform and released (in the US, at least) close to when it came out in Japan, it absolutely would've made a bigger splash. For some inscrutable reason, Disney got the rights but didn't release this in the US until months after it finished its run in Japan, without fanfare as a Hulu exclusive.

The upside to this is that you can more easily go in blind, and this is a show that benefits from knowing as little as possible ahead of time. Watching it weekly would've been an experience, but it lends itself to bingeing, as each episode advances the story--and mystery--even more, leaving the viewer hooked and hungry for answers.

That does, of course, make it difficult to talk about specific things I liked! The mystery is suspenseful, but it keeps up a good pace, balancing revealing more of what's going on with introducing even more questions. There wasn't a single episode where I got frustrated because it felt like the show was just playing up the tension; you're right there with Shinpei piecing things together, even if the thing is just "I can affect this even if I don't know what the outcome is."

Shinpei is a good main character, intelligent but not overbearing, and balanced with a cast that can variously match or surpass him in strength, intelligence, and relevant skills; if it weren't for the Plot Reason he's the protagonist, this would have just as well worked as an equal-ensemble show. Even Ushio, whose death was the catalyst for Shinpei's return, plays an active role in the story, helping prevent this from just being about a boy doing stuff in sad service to the memory of a dead girl.

As Shinpei uncovers more information about what happened, and through judicious use of flashbacks, Ushio's character develops, and she is a great character. In a show where scenes are sometimes sorting through the equivalent of two simultaneous chess games, it's nice to have at least one character who, while not stupid, uses her scenes to be refreshingly straightforward.

Verdict

English dub? Yes!

Visuals: Very nice! The story takes place equally during the day and after dark, as well as in a variety of locations, and it does a good job setting the stage, as well as balancing darkness and the need for the viewers to actually see things.

Worth watching? Absolutely. It's 25 episodes and uses all of them, neither feeling like it's dragging things out nor moving too fast. And despite its length, you don't have to wait until the final episodes to get any answers--Shinpei starts working things out quickly, and so the viewer does too. It's a solid suspenseful action show, and it was quickly obvious to me why I'd seen so many people say Disney did it dirty with its bizarre release.

Where to watch (USA, May 2024): Hulu (sub and dub)

Click my “reviews” tag below or search “mini review” on my blog to find more!

#hey guys did you miss these? #reviews #recommendation #anime #Summer Time Rendering #Summertime Render

[sarahivi]

@oakzap425 @cutelatinagirl @soledadmiranda @luzsp9-1981 @talokanda-forever @cantstayawaycani @too-many-atoms @love-too-believe @observers-journal

So Elena won this battle cause all the media attention she got this past weeks

Statement from Vera Carrizal side

to public opinion

The legal team of the defentof mr Juan Antonio Vera Carrizal, we mention ; that differs from what sustains the legal advisor of the victim of initials M.E.R.O , the superior court of justice of the state of Oaxaca, I confirm the preventive detention against my represented, in attention of the following arguments

The magistrate, member of the unitary room of the superior court of justice of the state of oaxaca, incorrectly, considers that to enforce the rights of my defendant, is to dilate the process, with which, there is an erroneous interpretation of the rights that every person accused has.

Likewise, we reiterate that, in the hearing to review the precautionary measures, neither the public ministry nor the legal adviser had the capacity to demonstrate the aforementioned circumstance.

Not less important to mention, that this defense obtained the protection and protection of federal justice in favor of our defendant, due to the previously mentioned circumstance, a resolution that neither the legal advisor nor the victim appealed, for which reason it cannot be discussed of a legal victory, if not a media achievement.

Finally, the magistrate was the one who determined said circumstance, which was never proven in court, and with which our right of contradiction was limited.

Therefore, one should not speak of a victory in an emblematic case, but rather an in-depth study of how media cases can impact judicial decisions.

Sincerely the legal defense of Mr. Juan Antonio Vera Carrizal

#tenoch huerta #namor