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anhed-nia · 2 years

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BLOGTOBER 10/20/2022: SMILEY FACE KILLERS

I'm doing this project on movies that claim to be "based on a true story", and SMILEY FACE KILLERS is a really interesting example for multiple reasons. The first is that, while its opening on-screen text declares that it is "inspired by true events", it is actually based very loosely on a rather fantastical theory that attempts to weave mundane, unrelated tragedies into a vast conspiracy. Many movies make the "true story" claim vaguely or spuriously: THE STRANGERS comes to mind as something that leveraged the notion of factuality in order to amplify the terror of its home invasion scenario, but its marketing materials provided no further details that could leave the claim vulnerable to closer analysis. (It seems likely that the writers were thinking of the Keddie murders, but I remember coming up empty when I tried to find out what "true story" was being referenced when the movie was being advertised) But when SMILEY FACE KILLERS talks about "true events", it's really talking about something people think, and not something that concretely happened.

The other point of interest in this "true story" here is that the smiley face murder theory offers an explanation where none is required. When we hear about something like the Dyatlov Pass incident, in which a group of people met bizarre and horrific fates through no obvious means and for no obvious reason, it's completely understandable that conspiracy theories form in order to help us grasp at the comfort of an explanation. If we think we know what happened, then maybe we don't have to worry that it will happen to us. The smiley face murder theory seems to just do the opposite, creating dread and fear where logical explanations already exist. The opening text continues:

"Since 1997, more than 150 young men across US college campuses have drowned under suspicious circumstances. Symbols spray-painted at the scenes have led some to propose these accidents are in fact serial murders. Though many dispute this as nothing more than urban myth, there are many who do not."

The film completes the masquerade of authenticity by dating its events to March 14, 2017 in Santa Clarita, and using a mosaic of yearbook-like headshots to make up its title card. The smiley face murder theory is actually the concoction of authorities who you'd like to be able to trust: retired NYPD detectives Kevin Gannon and Anthony Duarte, and gang expert Dr. Lee Gilbertson. Their concept takes the sadly ordinary drowning deaths of intoxicated, careless, self-destructive, or simply unlucky male college students, and uses their proximity to graffiti of smiley faces to suggest that their deaths were deliberately orchestrated, despite the extreme generality of this "pattern". Last year, WHO identified drowning as the third-leading cause of accidental death worldwide, "accounting for 7% of all injury-related deaths." and it's fair to say that the smiley face, which has been in commercial use since at least the early 1960s, is probably one of the most ubiquitous images in American vandalism, if not across the globe. There is no special need to form a relationship between these two items; you have to really insist. One might further ask why the smiley face murder theory focuses on young men specifically, but the CDC may provide an explanation there, as its website notes: "Nearly 80% of people who die from drowning are male. Many factors might contribute to higher rates of drowning among males, including increased exposure to water, risk-taking behaviors, and alcohol use." The smiley face murder theory faces a further challenge beyond the commonness of its key elements, which is the national dispersal of the deceased. In order to resolve the geographic disparity between the alleged dump sites, the smiley face murder theory proposes a nationwide network of perpetrators. To my knowledge, the theory does not include a motivation for such a thing to exist.

With the movie SMILEY FACE KILLERS, Bret Easton Ellis offers a motivation that, considering the state of this conspiracy theory, is as reasonable as anything else one might think of. It describes the final days of (fictional) college student Jake Graham (Ronen Rubenstein), whose personal life is imploding as his tragic fate closes in on him. The film is directed by Tim Hunter who, perhaps ironically, is most famous for the cult drama RIVER'S EDGE, whose title refers to the watery scene of a murder that transpires within a circle of teenage friends. Where that film describes the need for young people to responsibly accept their harsh reality, the reality of SMILEY FACE KILLERS is elusive, haunted, and unpredictable. When its hero experiences a lapse of responsibility, he is done in not by the direct consequences of his actions, but by a more fantastical form of doom whose true nature is unknowable.

Jake is a haunted young man, alone among friends, and missing a full understanding of his own behavior and circumstances. We, the audience, understand immediately that foul play will become a part of his story, but Jake is already on the verge of a personal apocalypse. Like Mary Henry in CARNIVAL OF SOULS, he fails to connect to the world of the living, and seems to sense that the walls are closing in on him. To some degree, his friends are aware of the spiral he's in, including his girlfriend Keren (Mia Serafino), who discovers that he has stopped taking his mood stabilizers. He acts depressed and paranoid, experiences memory loss, loses track of time, and fails to perform in bed. Meanwhile, he begins to receive threatening text messages from an unknown sender, including graphic images of slaughtered animals and the cryptic phrase "THE WATER WANTS YOU". This feeds right into Jake's existing unease, encouraging him to accuse Keren's lingering ex-boyfriend Rob (Cody Simpson) of messing with his head. As Jake continues to spiral, a worse fate than youthful alienation draws near in the form of a sadistic murder cult that is already responsible for a string of local disappearances.

The other disappearances are never acknowledged by the cast of SMILEY FACE KILLERS, which is consistent with the social disconnect found in Bret Easton Ellis' stories. To my mind, this movie is the single best representation of what Ellis offers as a writer, succeeding with the one element that is missing from most adaptations of his work: a sense of irresolvable mystery, an entrapment in one's flawed subjectivity, and an inability to know the details of your own life. Contrarily, Mary Harron's endlessly lauded AMERICAN PSYCHO is flatly literal; Patrick Bateman's murder spree escapes notice because of the blind narcissism rampant in his time and place. In Ellis' novels, AMERICAN PSYCHO included, things are rarely so simple or consistent, as characters are prone to delusions and hallucinations that are not comfortably identifiable as such, creating an unshakable feeling of isolation and mistrust. The ambitious (and unpleasant, but underrated) RULES OF ATTRACTION makes the mistake of literalizing characters and plot elements that the book leaves as uncomfortable question marks—things that are possibly imagined or dreamed by the main characters, that add up to the sensation that reality is never quite graspable, that one can be pushed to the margins of one's own life, haunting it like a ghost instead of fully living it. These adaptations, along with LESS THAN ZERO, tend to be satisfied with the pat conclusion that their characters are self-centered and shallow, and there is little more to do with them than demonstrate their character flaws repetitively. SMILEY FACE KILLERS succeeds at evoking Ellis' sense of cognitive dissonance and the loneliness that ensues when a person can't fully participate in consensus reality.

The people in Jake's life all seem to be hiding something, and even his best efforts to face situations head on only result in greater ambiguity. He finds evidence that Rob is still pursuing Keren, but no evidence that Keren is responsive; however, when Jake confronts her about Rob's persistence, she refuses to address Jake's material causes for concern, instead reminding him of a frightening blackout during which he wrote her a four-page email that he can't remember. Worse still, when Jake shows Keren the disturbing text messages that he believes Rob has sent him, she accuses him of sending them to himself, urging him to go back on his meds. His only other source of comfort is his best friend Adam (Garrett Coffey), who also has a frustrating reaction to the harassment Jake experiences; he suggests that Jake has a secret admirer, and jokes uneasily that maybe it's Adam himself. "Maybe it's me… Do you ever think about my feelings? How I feel about you?" he teases, awkwardly groping Jake who wants no part of it. It seems highly likely that Adam is in love with Jake, but this is never acknowledged, leaving Jake with the nagging feeling that, like Keren and Rob, Adam has undesirable intentions toward him. We also understand that Jake's mother has been calling Keren behind his back to try to get information on what is happening to him. Despite his mother's concern, her sneaky behavior contributes to a sense of conspiracy surrounding Jake, who suffers from the suspicions and accusations of all of the people who are supposed to care for him.

The astute reader may have guessed by now that most of the movie is made up of this interpersonal intrigue. However, it remains tense and unsettling, not only because of its atmosphere of uncertainty and discord, but because only the audience perceives the very real and mortal threat stalking the edges of Jake's life. The film begins with a shocking act of animal mutilation that is well outside the bounds of what an audience expects from an essentially mainstream movie. These explicit images of what one can assume are real animal remains let you know that you are never quite safe with this movie, even though the disfigured, hammer-wielding cult leader (RIVER'S EDGE alum Crispin Glover) doesn't really make his debut until almost an hour into the 96-minute running time. However limited it is in duration, the violence in SMILEY FACE KILLERS is profoundly shocking by any standards, leaving the viewer with a feeling of despair as much as revulsion.

Because of its somewhat fractured narrative structure—Jake's life implodes while, on a completely separate and unrelated track, a gang of vicious psychopaths have marked him for death—SMILEY FACE KILLERS tends to represent a worldview rather than a traditional story. Jake's fate is not the result of his actions, yet what happens to him makes sense in a world where parents do not relate directly with children, lovers are stubbornly ambiguous in their commitments, and friends plot to get more than what they have offered one another. A feeling of abandonment and unfairness dogs this film as it uses the smiley face murder theory not to make sense of life, but to hyperbolize its senselessness.

This twisting of the logic of conspiracy theories is especially cruel, as people seem to turn to such theorizing to create order out of chaos, which is comforting even if the order in question is a daunting one. With conspiracy theories, urban legends, and other forms of folklore that challenge our normal understanding of how life works, there must be some personal motivation to invest faith in them; some emotional or spiritual reward for the perilous rejection of conventional thinking. In the case of the smiley face theory, we see a painful need on the part of the bereaved to find meaning in the shatteringly meaningless fate that has befallen their loved ones. The aforementioned architects of this theory—Kevin Gannon, Anthony Duarte, and Dr. Lee Gilbertson—participated in a true crime series on the Oxygen Network that I'm a little ashamed to admit I watched. It's hard to tell if these men truly believe in what they are proposing, or if this has all been a greedy grab for attention and/or cash, but it is abundantly clear that the bereaved parents who appear on the show are grateful for any explanation for the deaths of their children that does not impugn their children's upbringing or good character. The drowning victims that the investigators have chosen to focus on tend to be white, athletic, popular, and academically promising; that is, people who their communities think can do no wrong. It is simply too difficult for the parents of these young men to accept that their deaths, which often involved alcohol, were their own faults, or that they were simply random. Which is worse: not being able to trust your loved ones, or not being able to trust the basic structure of reality? Sometimes it appears that any orderly explanation, however outrageous, is easier than accepting that your concept of how the world works is incomplete, or that you yourself have been irresponsible somehow. When the locus of blame for your loss runs contrary to your personal beliefs, you can simply blame another party. Blame video games. Blame horror movies. Blame heavy metal music. Blame the smiley face killers.

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steelbluehome · 22 days

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"Sebastian Stan, the Marvel star who is becoming increasingly diverse in his output of late, plays Trump. He avoids acting out a caricature, even if the script sometimes can’t resist an attack on Trump's vanity"

The National

Cannes review: The Apprentice avoids Trump caricature, but only scratches the surface (click for article)

Iranian-Danish director Ali Abbasi's follow-up to Holy Spider is a compelling but underwhelming take on the divisive US president's early years

James Mottram

May 20, 2024

Premiering at the Cannes Film Festival, The Apprentice is arguably one of the most intriguing films in the official competition. A biopic of Donald Trump, it covers his real estate years before he turned to politics and entered the White House as one of the most controversial presidents in living memory.

Sebastian Stan, the Marvel star who is becoming increasingly diverse in his output of late, plays Trump. He avoids acting out a caricature, even if the script sometimes can’t resist an attack on Trump's vanity (“your face looks like an orange”, cries his wife Ivana, played by Maria Bakalova, the Oscar-nominated star of the Borat sequel).

Directed by the Iranian-Danish filmmaker Ali Abbasi, who has already brought us the unusual fable Border (2018) and the Iranian serial killer drama Holy Spider (2022), this marks a considerable step-up in scale and ambition. Spanning the 70s and 80s, Abbasi and his team capture the ugliness of New York, “the greatest city in the world”, back in the day.

Early on, a passer-by on the street tries to offer his wife to Trump, as the film briefly feels like one of those scenes in Taxi Driver where Travis Bickle surveys the human flotsam and jetsam passing him by.

An ambitious real estate developer, when the story picks up, Trump feels he can do more to modernise the Big Apple than anyone else, scattering the landscape with places like the Grand Hyatt and the famed Trump Tower.

But, as suggested by the title (a nod to the entrepreneurial reality TV show Trump would later front), he needs help. Enter Roy Cohn (Succession’s Jeremy Strong), an impossibly well-connected attorney who has famous clients and seemingly can help Trump’s family company, with a potentially damaging legal issue with the NAACP.

Shaping Trump, as he tells him the three main rules of business (maxims like “admit nothing, deny everything”), Cohn is a persuasive figure, superbly performed by Strong in a role that’ll likely get compared to his Succession character Kendall Roy. But inevitably Trump outgrows his mentorship, as fame and success swells.

At one point he meets Andy Warhol, blithely unaware of who the pop culture icon is. “Making money is art,” he tells the artist, and it’s this that seems to characterise Gabriel Sherman’s script, showing how Trump likes nothing more than striking deals and being a winner.

As such, his resentment for weak individuals around him festers, including his substance-abusing brother Freddy, Cohn and the ex-model-turned-interior-designer Ivana, who he spends most of the time disparaging for her cosmetic surgery (which he encouraged).

There is one shocking scene where he forces himself upon her, an alleged assault that was first reported in Harry Hurt III’s book Lost Tycoon: The Many Lives of Donald Trump. The only thing he cares about is courting America, “a country that has tremendous potential”, and building an ever-expanding empire.

Of course the film nods to Trump’s White House years, as he fondles a pin badge from Ronald Reagan’s campaign promising to “make America great again”. But while it’s an exciting watch, boasting an energetic feel and a soundtrack that includes Pet Shop Boys, New Order and Baccara, it arguably only surface skims Trump.

Perhaps we can never really get inside a man who plays so fast and loose with the truth, but the film gradually runs out of steam in the second half, despite showing what a ruthless and venal character he can be. In the end, it’s a story about the manifestation of horrifying ambition, and for that, it’s to be applauded.

Updated: May 20, 2024, 2:46 PM

THE APPRENTICE

Starring: Sebastian Stan, Maria Bakalova, Jeremy Strong

Director: Ali Abbasi

Rating: 3/5

#the apprentice #sebastian stan #donald trump #jeremy strong #roy cohn #ali abbas #the apprentice review #maria bakalova #ivana trump

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kuramirocket · 2 years

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Edward J. "Eddie" Adams (1887-November 22, 1921) was a notorious American criminal and murderer in the Midwest.

Early life

Edward J. "Eddie" Adams was born in 1887 on a farm in Hutchinson, Kansas as W .J. Wallace. His father died when he was young, and his mother remarried, setting the stage for a lifetime of psychological problems. Eddie had a strong disdain for his stepfather, as well as for physical labor.

He moved to Wichita, Kansas in the early 1900s. There he quickly became involved in bootlegging, petty robberies, and car theft.

Adams was a charismatic fellow who attracted a long line of criminal hangers-on and loose ladies. His wife left him after growing weary of his illegal activities and infidelities.

He soon formed his own gang and began committing bank and train robberies throughout Kansas, Missouri and Iowa, eventually earning the reputation as the premier bandit in the Midwest by the early days of Prohibition.

Murder & Kansas City

In 1920, Adams attempted a daylight robbery against a notorious Kansas City gambling den on Grand Avenue.

However, a shootout between the bandits and tough employees of the illegal casino would result in the death of gambler.

Identified as the gunman, Adams was sentenced to life imprisonment in February 1921.

Midwest crime spree

While being transported to the Missouri State Prison in Jefferson City, Missouri, Adams escaped custody after jumping off the train and within several days he was involved in the robbery of a bank and general store in Cullison, Kansas on February 11, 1921.

He was captured near Garden Plain by a posse six days later after wrecking a stolen car under a bridge. Convicted of bank robbery, Adams was sentenced to serve 10 to 30 years at the Kansas State Prison in Lansing, in addition to his life sentence in Missouri for murder.

On August 13, Adams once again successfully escaped imprisonment after sabotaging the prison power plant and scaling the Lansing's prison walls during the night.

The fugitive and other escapees would elude capture from state authorities and eventually formed a gang.

By September of that year, the gang robbed around $10,000 from banks in Rose Hill and Haysville, Kansas. During the Haysville robbery, Adams pistol-whipped an 82-year-old for no apparent reason, who later died of a fractured skull.

On October 8, police attempted to trap the gang near Anoly, Kansas, however the gang managed to escape after a gunfight. The gang was spotted eleven days later after stealing $500 in silver from a bank in Osceola, Iowa and, following another attempt by a posse to apprehend the gang near Murrey, killed C.J. Jones before escaping in a stolen car.

Heading for Wichita, the gang's crime spree continued robbing 11 stores in Muscotah, Kansas and abducting and later robbing two motorcycle officers outside Wichita, where their motorcycles were set on fire.

Back in Wichita, on November 5, 1921, Adams shot and killed a Patrolman in cold blood. The motive behind the killing was said to be a mutual love interest who had chosen the company of the officer over the outlaw.

The gang then committed their most successful robbery with the theft of $35,000 after robbing a Santa Fe express train near Ottawa, Kansas.

Downfall

On the evening of November 20, Adams, along with others and two alleged prostitutes, were joyriding around Wichita.

Two motorcycle policeman pulled over the vehicle carrying Adams when a shot came from the vehicle - it is unknown whether the shot was fired by Adams or someone else in the vehicle - killing a patrolman. The outlaws sped away and fled south into Cowley County.

Later that night the trio ran out of gas and stopped at a farm, where Adams attempted to steal a vehicle from a farmer. When the farmer resisted, Adams shot and killed him. Adams took the car and returned to Wichita in the stolen car.

The next day, Adams went to the house of a local thug only to find two officers waiting. Adams shot one officer non-fatally while the other policeman hid under a bed. Adams once again escaped.

He hid out until the funeral of a fallen officer on November 22, where he assumed the bulk of the police force would be present. He had planned to rent a car to leave town for good, but the proprietor of the garage recognized him and contacted police.

Three officers arrived on the scene. Adams shot at them, fatally wounding a detective. One officer hiding behind a pillar, shot Adams three times and killed him.

Eddie Adams' body was publicly displayed in the City Undertaking Parlor in a grisly celebration of the end of a reign of terror. More than 9,000 people viewed the slain outlaw.

In the end, 18 people were arrested as accomplices and hangers-on of Adams. Four were sent to the Kansas Penitentiary.

Adams, dead at age 34, was attributed with seven murders, including three Wichita policemen, in just a little over 14 month's time. He wounded at least a dozen others.

#true crime #Edward J. Adams #usa #united states #serial killer

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theparanormalperiodical · 3 years

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

At the beating heart of horror is offence.

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

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

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

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

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

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

#10 - The Blair Witch Project (1999)*

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

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

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

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

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

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

Time for another not-too-disturbing film.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

#7 - I Spit On Your Grave (1978)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

#5 - Psycho (1960)*

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

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

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

*gasp*

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

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

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

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

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

*retches*

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

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

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

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

Good riddance, I guess?

#3 - Faces Of Death (1978)

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

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

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

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

#2 - Cannibal Holocaust (1980)

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

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

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

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

#1 - A Serbian Film (2010)

No.

Nope.

Don’t do it. Don’t watch this film.

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

Just don’t watch it.

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

*shakes head*

Off to have a 3 hour shower, brb.

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

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

#horror #Horror Movies #horror films #best horror movies #scary movies #banned films #video nasty #a serbian film #human centipede #the blair witch project #cannibal holocaust #faces of death #banned movies #censorship #night of the living dea #controversy #controversial films

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ultrasnowden · 4 years

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I was told this a few weeks ago from someone working on the show. They were right about Robert Englund joining the cast. A couple of plot & production tidbits from scenes they have filmed and yet to film (spoiler alert).

9 episodes in total, the ones after “the hellfire club” will be revealed once filming is over;

-chapter 1: the hellfire club

-chapter 2: happy birthday

-chapter 3: the suicide of 61’

-chapter 4: the army of darkness

-chapter 5: welcome to hell

-chapter 6: the seeds

-chapter 7: the underdark

-chapter 8: operation exodus

-chapter 9: the resurrection��

“IN THE SPRING OF 1986, THE ADVENTURE CONTINUES... STRANGER THINGS 4”

Hopper starts off brainwashed by the Soviets but slowly gets his memory back during the course of the season, including flashbacks of how he survived and ended up there. Joyce and her kids moved to California, where Jonathan becomes a weed addict and both Will and Eleven get bullied in school. Hawkins has a serial killer on the loose and is struck by fears of satanism and conspiracies. “Eddie,” a senior that is the president of the hellfire club at Hawkins high, sells edibles to its members while fighting allegations from others that they worship satan; he gets a lot of focus. Dustin and Mike are in the club, Lucas is in the track and field team, Max is a depressed loner; they’re all freshman with Will and Eleven while Jonathan, Nancy, and Robin are seniors

Will’s birthday is on spring break and he invites everyone; the only ones that come are Mike and his mom; Nancy cancels out last minute. Jonathan/Nancy and Lucas/Max break up, Will comes out as asexual, no girlfriend for Robin, Mike and Eleven have an implied sex scene. Lucas’ subplot involves struggling between his old friends and new ones, and his sister Erica is accused of satanic rituals for playing D&D

Eddie is blamed for killing the school’s popular girl and cheerleader captain “Molly,” whose body is discovered at the locker room during the championship basketball game . Steve goes out with a new character “Vickie,” who is also killed in a very similar matter after a date with him. More Steve/Dustin scenes, Erica teams up with Mr. Clarke and tells him everything that has happened so far in the series.

Other details:

A lot of “Game of Thrones” and “Avengers Infinity War” vibes with the party completely split and no reunions; several characters don’t see each other since Stranger Things 3

Hopper’s arc also has many cues from “the Shawshank Redemption”

Charli D’Amelio makes a cameo as one of the cheerleaders

The original release date was March 2021 to match the setting; now it’s on track for Halloween if it finishes on time

#stranger things #stranger things 4 #stranger things season 4 #finn wolfhard #millie bobby brown #noah schnapp #netflix #byler is real #mileven #byler is canon #byler #eleven #will byers #mike wheeler #lucas sinclair #max mayfield #el hopper #joyce x hopper #joyce byers

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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Resident Evil Village: Lady Dimitrescu and the Real Serial Killer Who Inspired Her

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Resident Evil Village, Capcom’s newest vision of horror, unleashed its villain, Lady Alcina Dimitrescu, onto the world in January, and the internet has hardly been the same since. Before we’d even seen anything substantial from the new game, the nine-foot “Tall Vampire Lady” was already the sequel’s most popular character, the subject of countless memes and even a few…salacious mods and videos.

With the release of the game this month, Dimitrescu’s star is shining even brighter. We just can’t stop talking about our Lady. And when you hear who the developers at Capcom turned to for inspiration when creating this character, you get the sense that she was always destined for infamy, designed specifically to go viral.

One major influence, according art director Tomonori Takano, was the Japanese internet urban legend Hasshaku-sama (or “hachishakusama”), an eight-foot-tall evil spirit in a wide-brimmed hat who lures her young male victims to her by imitating the voices of their loved ones. Impossibly tall, pale as a corpse, and wearing a wide-brimmed hat, the resemblance is uncanny.

But it’s Dimitrescu’s more gruesome, real-life inspiration that will likely keep you up at night. To create a bloodthirsty lady of a castle with a taste for torturing and mutilating her victims, Capcom needed only to look to Hungarian noblewoman and convicted serial killer Countess Elizabeth Bathory. One of the most wicked figures of 16th-century Europe, Bathory is said to have tortured and killed up to 650 girls and women between 1590 and 1610, although the final tally of victims is disputed to this day.

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Even centuries after her heinous crimes, there’s still much we don’t truly know for sure about Bathory and her long-rumored vampiric tendencies. It’s impossible at times to tell what is a true account and what is tall tale. The story we know today is likely a mix of both. Did she bathe in the blood of young virgin girls to retain her youth? Did her cruelty stem from the supposed Satanic rituals and witchcraft she witnessed from a young age in her family home in Transylvania? Was she really in the middle of torturing her latest victim, drenched in blood, when she was finally detained by the King of Hungary’s lead investigator, Gyorgy Thurzo?

By the time she was arrested and sentenced to life in house arrest inside Csejte Castle, her house of horrors in Upper Hungary (now modern Slovakia), Thurzo is said to have collected 300 statements from witnesses who attested to the brutal killings of young peasant girls abducted by the Countess, as well as confessions from servants (although they were being tortured by the authorities at the time). Few witnesses could actually give first-hand accounts of Bathory’s crimes, and many of the testimonies amounted to little more than hearsay, but Thurzo’s investigation and the eyewitness accounts of two court officials who claimed to have watched the Countess kill several girls were enough to lock her inside a room in her castle until her death in 1614.

The crimes recounted at the trial, in the history books, and in the folktales grow more and more gruesome the deeper you dig, like descending down to the darkest depths of Lady Dimitrescu’s castle.

“Bathory’s torture included jamming pins and needles under the fingernails of her servant girls, and tying them down, smearing them with honey, and leaving them to be attacked by bees and ants,” writes History.com. “She often bit chunks of flesh from her victims, and one unfortunate girl was even forced to cook and eat her own flesh.”

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While some historians and scholars claim that Bathory was actually the innocent victim of a conspiracy propagated by the Catholic Church and a rival family trying to rob her of her extensive wealth and land, the Countess’ dark legacy as an alleged bloodthirsty cannibal is what has solidified her place in history and turned her into an influential figure in horror fiction. In fact, debates have persisted over the years regarding whether the “Blood Countess” helped inspire Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Although fellow Transylvanian Vlad the Impaler is largely accepted as the foremost historical source for the seminal vampire novel, Bathory is sometimes referred to as “Countess Dracula.”

In 1971, Hammer Films loosely adapted Bathory’s story in Countess Dracula, which follows noblewoman Elisabeth Nádasdy who, yes, bathes in blood in order to retain her youth. The 2008 historial drama Bathory casts a more sympathetic eye, portraying the Countess as the victim of manipulation.

According to Takano, while Bathory provided the foundation for Lady Dimitrescu’s story, the character evolved from other ideas floating around Capcom.

“The concept started out as a castle with a hundred witches inside, but that was hard to implement into a video game format, which is why we ended up making it like this,” Takano told IGN. “But actually, when you play the game you might notice that the setting is still pretty close to that idea. All the enemy types inside the castle are female. With Lady Dimitrescu as the cult’s guru, we have created this hierarchy of women. Men have their blood drained by these women, so you could say it’s the opposite of Dracula.”

Indeed, Lady Dimitrescu isn’t a 1:1 recreation of Bathory, but the similarities are there in gruesome detail. Like the Countess, Dimitrescu is the matriarch of a castle, complete with a dungeon where she murders and bleeds her victims (it is said Bathory also had her husband build her a torture chamber as a gift before his death). Due to her unique mutation, Dimitrescu must drink the blood of her victims in order to retain her youth and her powers. She also has three “daughters” who help her hunt down her prey, not unlike the four servants (including a local witch) who were charged as Bathory’s accomplices and executed.

Much more will be said about Resident Evil‘s newest villain in the days to come. Does Lady Dimitrescu live up to the month’s of social media hype? That’s up to each player to decide. But when it comes to the woman who inspired her and what’s fact or fiction about her life, the truth is likely somewhere in the middle.

The post Resident Evil Village: Lady Dimitrescu and the Real Serial Killer Who Inspired Her appeared first on Den of Geek.

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beatnicksellar · 3 years

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Marda Loophole: TPB: Issues #7-12

Issue #7 – The Exodus Then: Mada opened her eyes to the inhuman sights and sounds of war Half-men strewn about Bramshott the RCAMC tent soaked in red gore Through the horror she saw her scarecrow the one she treated before Minus a leg he was alive and that was enough to lift her off of the floor Now: Mada opens her eyes to the fuzzy sight of 4 purple children overhead Siphoning energy from a radiant boulder their chant stirs her from the dead A tingle in her toes and sour taste in her mouth the Hole is as Dennis said He labours nearby as the kids stitch Mada together with amethyst thread With the dulling drone done the rock bathes everyone in its immortal hue The old wendigo’s cell unlocks in the uproar allowing her to slip through Before Mada’s blurry eyes the frailest child’s torn from the circuit and slew She can hear the rapacious wendigo sob as she reluctantly continues to chew The plaster walls of the outbuilding begin to buckle from the stone’s potency Suddenly Pope enters the Hole and descends the staircase with much urgency The doctor’s met mid-way by the limping wendigo who embraces him completely Mesmerising him with her wildfire eyes she gladly detaches his loins from his body Dennis returns to find the Hole in shambles with Dot eaten and Dr. Pope screaming He disconnects the kids and requests that Mada give the boys’ lives a new meaning One of the boys grabs a ledger while the other two grip Mada and they begin fleeing Dennis and the wendigo clash by the emitting mound soon buried under the ceiling South Calgary is silent for the first time since the 33 soldiers were secretly dosed But without the hum to calm them they thrashed 33 Avenue like a whipping post Possessed troops overturned the streetcar and chard the theater like it was toast Stiff pedestrians and sate scavengers guide Mada back to her husband Marc’s ghost She mourns over his blood-spattered prosthesis as one boy reads a shard of glass His brothers study the ledger as he peers into the sliver to see what’ll comes to pass ‘We’ll return when the streetcar does’ the scrying boy points to the upturned mass With crazed GIs loose Mada and her boys depart while a curious crow tails her ass… Issue #8 – The Wild Boys ♬♪♩♬♪♩♫♪♩♫♩♬♪♩♫♬♪♩♬♩♫♪♩♫♩♬♪♬♪♩♬♪♩ A gayageum plays notes from the concerto called Dorothea The ribbon of rhythm writhes on the airstreams over Korea Baroque tones stir the ancient visage which inspired its idea Eddying over the ocean to hover above a 33rd avenue pizzeria ♬♪♩♬♪♩♫♪♩♫♩♬♪♩♫♬♪♩♬♩♫♪♩♫♩♬♪♬♪♩♬♪♩♫ The melody meanders up 20th street pausing at its composer Three long-haired boys that look 10 but are very much older Standing before Currie Barracks Condo they are of one mourner The unrelated triplets commiserate over their deceased sister ‘I cannot feel her in there’ John the empath of the family confirms ‘I cannot reach her’ Robert retorts ‘all I hear is Dennis and worms’ Scryer James perceives future events but cannot grasp their terms ‘All I see is that the stone has been scattering its ill will like germs’ Treating the condo as if a gravestone they pay respect to her spirit With unkempt heads down the trinity are subdued for a moment Each recalls Dot, the Hole, the old woman then all begin to fidget John pulls a music sheet out of his shorts and whistles a snippet ♬♪♩♬♪♩♫♪♩♫♩♬♪♩♫♬♪♩♬♩♫♪♩♫♩♬♪♬♪♩♬♪♩♫♪♬ James and Robert join him in his performance of Dorothea No. 4 When done John tosses the concerto down onto the sewer floor As they skate through the Loop Mada’s name hangs in every store Coffee shops hum with anticipation over the 70-year-old folklore Around the corner of 35th avenue is where a hungry entity stalks A hefty shadow cast from a vacant lot that limps wherever it walks The boys are too distracted to notice the relic from Pandora’s Box Because a fireball is about to knock’em out of their graphic socksIssue #9 – The Vacant LotYellow barricades protect the rich soil within the vacant lotThough ideal for growth it’s contaminated by junkyard rot Comparable to the toxin that comprises Hausis’ blood clot An

inherit gift from her father and the affects it has wrought Over a century old she has been scarred twice by the stoneAs well Hausis has been forced out of more than one homeFrom her log cabin to that school and finally the catacomb A hole she fled full of a plum, revenge and astral syndrome Dark energy leached into her, those boys and the headless one Wendigo mixed with indigo and once again she was on the run But on the Rez her spirits calmed; she even adopted a grandson It was the last time she felt love as the Sixties Scoop had begun Hungry and hateful she hid her mercy and fed on colonial fears Hitchhiking Highway 16 in the 1970s she traded entrails for tears Retribution for her surrogate sisters who had began to disappear When the stone summoned her home she returned with souvenirs She settled in South Calgary and became a landlord to tasty tenants Bones buried in the vacant lot next-door while lying to their parents A cane sword to assist her limp and cutback on the slaying minutes Serrated steel dentures to masticate and absorb her preys’ essence A century old entity at last content with her damned life up until TONIGHT When her plums return assured and still ripe enough to enjoy a quick biteWhen her bone yard is deemed aseptic and police investigation is in sightHausis lunges at the wild boys only to be repelled by a nimbus of starlight… Issue #10 – The Above People CREEEAK! The tactless teenager forcefully opens the oxidized attic door In search of a white wig for her cosplay getup she stomps across the floor Rummaging through containers she finds something unusual in a drawer A thirteen-year-old letter that when opened clarifies exactly who it is for ‘Aline: It’s with regret and sadness that I write this letter to my daughter’ ‘I had to go to a dangerous place so I left you to be raised by your father’ ‘I never stopped loving you or dreaming of the day we would be together’ ‘When you are ready to meet amass juniper twigs and a magpie feather’ Elated to see her mislaid mother Aline flees the loft in her space-opera costume She sprints across 35 Avenue towards a vacant lot shrouded by juniper in bloom Ripping off a bouquet Aline is unaware that just beyond bodies are being exhumed She spots a pudgy magpie perched on the yellow barricade and plucks at its plume Clutching the vital items the Big Dipper shaped beauty marks on her right arm glows FWOOOOM! A blinding white light descends from overhead lifting her off of her toes Aline suddenly finds herself in a melancholy landscape of stars, clouds and shadows Before her sit 2 enormous Above People who enquire as to her odd-looking clothes ‘It’s for Comic-con’ she roars removing the wig ‘who’re you and where’s my mom’ Sun God laughs as Moon Goddess speaks: ‘We see that you were raise with aplomb’ The electric entities sizzle and pop as they struggle to alleviate Aline’s many qualms ‘Your father fell in love with our granddaughter: the Morning Star he wished upon’ ‘But she had to return to Sky-Country to rid it of the evil her mother had let loose’ Mother Moon details how Feather Woman disobeyed and iniquity was introduced ‘She moved the giant turnip that which protects our portal because she was obtuse’ Mother Moon adds she encased the dummy in indigo stone and made her vamoose That is the past but the portal remains open for dark matter to infest Sky-Country The same stuff brought down with the stone when it crashed in the 19th century Aline accuses her great-grandparents of killing her kin and for spreading villainy The Gods giggle at the allegation clarifying Feather Woman merely has an injury More gen is traded and a deal is struck: if Aline fixes the portal all will be forgiven Above People will help find the Morning Star and teach Aline of her nuclear fusion KRA-KOOM! A fiery comet crashes and Aline emerges from impact like a magician Gazing at the wild boys she states ‘You dudes are my gran and we have a mission’… Issue #11 – The Penultimate Sequential squares spread over an infinitude of glittering stars Panels parted by gutters spanning

centuries between the bars A billboard advertises Marc and Mada’s forthcoming memoirs Christened Marda; Loop denotes the superannuated streetcar Inset in the ad is a shot of Magpie gnawing on a decayed thumb bone Balanced on the sign she spots a bird below who was once well known Magpie cries: ‘Ain’t seen you since you left with THAT there veiled crone’ Alit next to Magpie Crow recalls his ghastly exploits beyond the stone ‘It was Hell’ he croaks ‘The screaming, the silence, the suicide attempts’ ‘It took HER forever to bond with THOSE boys and get over her regrets’ ‘Once she did’ Crow pauses ‘she spearheaded some tantalizing events’ Led by the ledger and scryed images they tracked the fiery GIs’ contempt While 7 indigo infected ones enlisted for Korea 26 settled in Forest City An innocuous epithet for somewhere death stalked the streets regularly Enclosed by thickets it’s where butchers would conceal a mutilated body ‘The Serial Killer Capital’ Crow yelps ‘We lured them out during the 1960s’ Crow clarifies that when the GIs moved there each become a major player: Mad Slasher, Bedroom Strangler, Balcony Killer + the Chambermaid Slayer Mada the bait, Crow the lookout, and 3 wild boys unified became the healer ‘In the forest we’d draw out the purple poison leaving the mortals tamer’ Mada’s nursing background afforded them a home and a baby-grand piano She worked while under pseudonyms the boys penned novels & concertos ‘Forest City was safe and we had obtained almost all of that fugitive indigo’ ‘Almost’ Crow echoed ‘We left for Korea in ‘81 on a plane from Toronto’ Magpie squawks sceptically: ‘And then miraculously back for the 70th Anniversary’ {Had it been that long?} the crone ponders {Why did they whitewash my tragedy?} The veiled woman below the advert grimaces then utters anachronistic profanity Stalwart in stance she shudders when the #7 rolls by renewed for the pageantry… Issue #12 – Giant-Size Finale The fixed indigo stone pulsates expelling the remnants of its space toxin Pumped into the faucets of 22 occupants of the new condo atop its coffin Dragging fingers thru mauve hair they’re rapt by the stone’s dim doctrine They riot inside the structure while outside Mada and her wild boys lock in ‘Try it again’ the costumed Aline guides from inside the infinite sealed loop She has juniper and feather in hand yet something is off within their group ‘That thing’s teeing me off’ Mada breaks from the ring and sits on the stoop The rebuilt #7 streetcar gleams in the parking lot next to an effigy of troops Suddenly…a service door opens and the old wendigo limps out of the edifice ‘You’ Hausis growls at Aline ‘You’re relations with that Metis bastard Dennis’ Mada perks up at the name of the man who inadvertently made her endless ‘Are you?’ Mada asks ‘She sure is’ Hausis sniffs ‘and it’s making me ravenous’ Incensed Mada bares the jagged indigo scar spanning the length of her collar ‘Dennis did this’ she states ‘and orchestrated the 1950 South Calgary slaughter’ Aline has entirely no clue as to what occurred because of her great-grandfather And before Mada can educate her the group is spotted by a police helicopter ‘Freeze Ms. Cranmer’ a voice booms as a squad car pulls up with guns drawn Hausis has been hiding since police uncovered the bodies she had feasted on Clotheslined and cuffed the 145-year-old Cree woman is beaten with a baton Aline, Mada and wild boys watch in horror as Hausis is tenderized like carrion The wild child named Robert tugs at Aline’s skirt pointing at the departing cop car ‘Dot’ the 80-year-old kid chirps ‘The hungry lady has carried our sister’s soul so far’ Mada is not their 4th because it is the frail child Hausis mauled like a chocolate bar ‘We need that granny back’ Aline barks at Mada who turns away rubbing her scar Aline suggests they take the idle #7 and propel it with a trick she has just learned ‘Can I borrow a feather from your crow?’ she asks of Mada who still feels scorned Crow leaves Magpie atop the streetlamp landing beside Aline his feathers formed ‘I am not getting on that ’

Mada repeats just as the crazed tenants emerge armed KRA-KOOM! The refurbished #7 streetcar rockets down 20th street like a fireball Crow and Magpie try to slow the tenants’ progress to the 33rd avenue mini-mall Meanwhile the #7 zips down the parade route until it hits the cruiser then a wall Everyone on the #7 is unscathed and so too is Hausis who’s eating a cop’s eyeball Magpie and Crow flutter in to warn everyone of the approaching horde of tenants The wild boys jump into action with a hand out for Hausis who sees it as penance ‘Doesn’t make me a plum’ she gripes grasping John’s hand as if she is pregnant As the 4 siblings unite clouds appear and a powerful deluge forms within minutes The first drop hits as the vicious throng reaches Marda Loop then the sky cries The drenched tenants lose their momentum as the mauve washes over their eyes The rain relents as does the horde but Mada’s inner ire cannot be overemphasized The wild boys embrace Hausis and in turn Dot whose soul has now been reprisedOnlookers have gathered at the site sad to see there’s no anniversary to reminisce Crow and Magpie peck at the injured police officers as Aline stares into the abyss She apologizes to Mada for her relative’s actions but asks for her not to be remiss ‘We cannot change the past’ she points out ‘But if you help us now we can fix this’The wendigo, the crone, the wild boys, the star-child and the scavengers all return Loitering outside of the Currie Barracks condo building hashing out their concerns Hausis has subsisted with the stone while in exile so she knows where it’s interned In the bowels of the sub-basement they find the ancient rock fading in a slow burn John, James and Robert the perpetual 10-year-olds encircle Aline and embrace her Hausis jeers as the boys kiss their kin then whisper in Mada’s ear: Goodbye Mother The siblings start siphoning the stone’s essence back; Aline waves Magpie’s feather Hausis and the boys convert to stardust they swirl around the stone and then enter Aline and Mada escape the building as the boulder flies backwards thru the nexus Its trajectory bearing straight for Sky-Country where it will rid the land of sepsis The portal is sealed and The Above People welcome Feather Woman and Hausis Back in South Calgary Mada stands in the quiet rubble no longer feeling headless ‘Wanna meet my dad?’ Aline asks of her lithe friend who nods producing a smile Mada calls Crow but he and Magpie are stardust in a constellation of their profile Unveiled Mada and neophyte Aline walk towards a rainbow after their long trial As both fade over the hill stardust diffuses and floats to somewhere worthwhile An End

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bjd-confessions · 6 years

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Mod: There’s a few confessions in defense of particular backstories and poses of dolls, but the content of the confessions I suspect could be triggering since even me reading them makes me feel Not Good, and I have no horse in this race.

Ideally we receive no more about this topic for a while now, as it’s sensitive and potentially upsetting for people and I want to keep this blog fun and, y’know, doll-focused. But some of you put effort into submitting these so I thought it’s better to post them this way than not at all.

If you don’t want to read more about this topic, keep on scrollin’

7 confessions under the cut. TW pedophilia, abuse mentions, sensitive terms

Dear everyone still confessing about this person or that person’s teenage dolls being sexualized:STOP CALLING THEM PEDOPHILES.A pedophile is someone who is sexually attracted to children. I’m talking kids who haven’t gone through puberty yet. 11 and younger.A person who makes a doll of a character that is 16 years old and doing sex work? Not a pedophile.A person who does photostories of two dolls that are 16 year old characters having sex? Not a pedophile.I’m not taking sides on your argument. But please, for the love of g-d, stop using that damn term.I’m getting real tired of trying to look through these confessions and getting triggered because y'all love to sling that word around like it’s a casual insult, completely invalidating the poison that actually comes behind it.

~Anonymous

So… Now that Kat has been forcibly pushed outta the hobby, you guys are moving onto another person. What is up with this pedo witch hunt? These are pretty serious accusations to be flinging around so carelessly. Like dang. If you saw actual child porn on their page I’d be like okay now we can talk about this. But dolls that don’t even resemble people and look more like anime characters is a whole different ball park. They don’t even look the age these people say they are. There is a serious disconnect from reality there. I doubt that transfers into them liking actual children, which look nothing like these characters.

Can we please calm the hell down about it?

~Anonymous

Ok look can we please stop throwing around the word pedophile? As a survivor of that kind of abuse it makes me really uncomfortable that people use it so loosely and wrongly. Having a story or characters that are underage and sexual does not make the creator a pedophile. Just like writing a murder novel doesn't make someone a serial killer. They're dolls. Please stop.

~Anonymous

Mod: This next one I found to be an upsetting read so don’t read this if you think it may upset you too. TW: Multiple references of terms

Do you guys realize that having a doll that gets posed sexually and whose character is under 18 is 100% not even close to the horrors of real child porn? Can you divorce yourselves from the puritanical belief that those dolls and their owners are even a fraction as vile and harmful as people who abuse actual children? Most of you will never understand the sheer horror that is CSA. Fictional characters/media owned by hobbyists (and not child groomers) are NOT the problem.

Yeah, having child characters in sexual situations such as being a sex worker is… unsavory at best. I wouldn’t condone that kinda backstory unless the tone were darker to highlight that while it’s normal for kids to explore their sexuality it totally isn’t normal or okay for them to make a profit from distributing illegal pornography. Context.

It’s pretty obvious from what we can see that CUM and Kat aren’t actually pedophiles. Are they endangering real children? Unless you have proof that they are that is an allegation too heavy for anyone to throw out so casually. Is someone sexualizing a childlike MSD or even a YoSD? Like yeah that’s wack but don’t go dogpiling them if they’re just fictional characters. Fiction can affect reality yes, but we need to not allow it to. We give fiction that reality when we place it in the same category as Literal Abuse.

~Anonymous

First I must say that I believe that when you bring sex into the bjd hobby it becomes perverse. I am just curious though, I see people complaining about others having sexually active child dolls which I agree is wrong, but is it still looked down upon if the owner is a kid themselves? I personally think it should be. I don’t like the idea of young people sexualizing themselves.

~Anonymous

So from what I gather from this blog... if I were to write a novel and have a character in it be a 16 year old who does cam sex work for money, that'd be just dandy, but if I then shelled that character into a doll I'm a pedophile?

~Anonymous

I really think Waifuns needs to step back from their computer. Anytime someone defends that other person's 16 year old dolls they lose their shit and claim that person is a pedophile. They just throw that word around like it's 'bitch', ffs. 16 is young, yes, but there's a big difference between someone that age and 11 or less. Don't pretend this persons 16 year old cam star is on par with kids 11 and younger being sexualized. 16 year olds aren't children, they're teenagers. LARGE difference.

~Anonymous

#TW #TrueBJDConfessionz #BJD Confessions #Multipost #Pls no more on this topic

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gonedeletedrpblog345-blog · 6 years

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The first night in their new, real bed was the night they both decided something soft wasn’t going to cut it. Within the day, the comforter was removed and David pushed a firm mattress through the bedroom door.

Adjusting to life after death is a lot different than what survivor self-help books and online sessions seem to talk about. David knows and understand the work lain out - acknowledging problems, accepting the event, not letting yourself relapse to dangerous coping methods. Not obsessing over the dead body. Not consuming yourself with guilt and revenge. It’s the words he read before anything about fog and bear traps happened, but it’s all rooted in the same pain.

He likes to think he’s starving off the older fears better than the new ones. Possibly because John is dead. He made sure to find every piece of information that lingered on the Jigsaw cases - everything that sat in his apartment was gone, but the information remained elsewhere. Old newspaper articles. Obituary reports. Four dead in warehouse including alleged serial killer John Kramer.

It was a victory that felt - worth it. Not the fog. Not the trials. The cut throats and bullet wounds, that’s what was worth it. Upstate, David Tapp is dead, killed in the line of duty. Miami is a lot more simple than he thought it’d ever be, but Ace keeps the house quiet.

Too quiet, if it’s meant to be Ace Visconti talking.

The bed is the home of two men older than most of the lost souls who wandered the edge of the forest that never was. The bed is the home of David Tapp, who followed the train past the Mason-Dixon line with a couple other of the same souls when he got a phone call. The bed is the home of Ace Visconti, and he’s been sleeping in it religiously for three days.

David Tapp returns home in the afternoon, and makes sure to cross in front of the lazy smile of Ace to let him know he’s home, and - that he’s real, first and foremost. The hooks aren’t appearing at the foot of the driveway, and that’s - good. Ace once told him he dreamt they appeared at midnight, and Tapp stayed up the same night to take pictures to prove they weren’t coming back. The smile was the first genuine one of their life after death since breaking the fog’s barrier.

The sun lingers in the sky like it doesn’t want to say goodbye, dimming the streets in a good haze and making the insects sing in the trees. When David opens the door, Ace’s bare back greets him. He moves around their bed and checks how he lies, and a phone is close to Ace’s tired face.

”Did you shower?” David asks, tepid.

”I was supposed to, wasn’t I?” Ace says like it isn’t a question at all, and breaks his mouth to a lazy smirk, looking up at David removing his cap. “Don’t come crawlin’ up next to me, big guy, or else you’ll stink like rat-bitch.”

”I don’t think I was planning on to,” he replies, the laugh that finds it’s way to him the scoffed memory of old humour. David lays the uniform cap on his personal bedside dresser, atop the old clock. Digital, but ancient - they managed to find the same kind of clock he had for years in a thrift store, and its stayed with him ever since. A sense of familiarity.

David sits on the bed, nonetheless. He removes his shirt, an eggshell blue uniform belonging to a mall. He’s halfway through the fourth button when Ace whistles lowly.

”You're gorgeous, gorgeous, but I don't think I’m up for that right now.”

He rolls his eyes. “You’re a comedian.”

”Oh, I try.”

When the shirt comes off, David leans down to pick up a white, more loose shirt. The same one he slept in - don’t knock him for lack of trying. “You should get up. Did you eat what I left out for you?”

He can hear Ace roll over, on to his back. “Thought about it. I’ll just have whatever’s for dinner tonight.”

David turns around. “Alessandro.”

Ace looks at him - he lowers his phone down against his bare chest, and the lazy smile he’s been wearing all day starts to fade, like the daylight outside.

”You don’t have to go using real names here, David,” he says, remarkably soft. David turns further into the bed, and lays down on his side.

”If it makes you listen, I think I have to.” A hand drags up the shoulder closest to him, and traces to his jaw. - as light as he can make it, because it’s been years since his hand grazed over the skin of another, even when the fog took everything else and left him with a gambler and his heart. “You have to leave our room eventually.”

”Just feeling under the weather. You know how things are... how they get.” Ace, though pushing his voice to be more distant, more neutral - leans to the touch, turning his head into his hand. “Must be the heat. Haven’t felt the heat like this since - well, you know. Couple summers ago.”

David’s smile is a lot sadder than Ace’s, and lasts even shorter than his. “You can talk to me.”

Ace’s mouth remains upturned, but like the humour in his words, it disappears eventually. His eyes roam to the ceiling, watching - nothing. The plaster is swept in meandering waves, low peaks to give their bedroom as much of art depth as a Miami designer can budget. But watching the waves of paint gets away from the subject, rather than looking at David.

As much as he might want to.

”Yeah,” he says, absently, without a real answer. David lays properly on the bed, supporting himself by his arm, and roams his hand down Ace’s body to curl over the knuckles of one of his own. David runs a thumb against Ace’s skin, and he can feel Ace change how he rests, an open palm to lock their fingers together. The silence is a better answer than anything that could be said, and David understands.

Humour is a great deflection tool. Self destructive behaviour is too, but he supposes it could always be worse, if Ace felt strong enough to grab what David is making and found the casinos again. Jobs are easy for an ex-detective, not so much an ex-gambler.

Ace finally looks at David again.

”Denson called,” he says quietly, and it is then David realizes his eyes are looking past him, into the light of the outside sunset. Uneven stare. Readjusting to reality.

“She did?” David leans up a little to catch Ace’s eyes, then lowers back down when he follows with that stare. “She back in Pennsylvania?”

”Think so,” he says again, just as quiet, but with his eyes on David so focussed he might just disappear to golden ash and auric haze. “Said she’s moving back to her family. Sounds like she wanted a comeback.”

”Kate’s not the only person who can get back on her feet,” David says, and Ace’s next smile is a joke of its own.

”You’re right. Park? He’s talking to his old man again. Imagine waking up and deciding you want to be rich again, and being able to.” He laughs, and it’s uneasy, but sold like it’s perfect. “Can’t relate. I would love to, though, I swear it. If I could get back to it, darling, I’d give you everything—”

”What we have now is enough, Alessandro.” David brings Ace’s eyes back to him - this time with a hand directly, touching Ace’s cheek and holding him there. His stare looks past the shrouds of humour and the deflection - he would kiss him if he was furious with impulsive decisions, but David Tapp is nothing if not careful. “You’re still enough.”

Ace doesn’t speak. He looks like he wants to, but reaches his hand to David’s arm, first. When he does — “Man. Brute force your way to my heart.”

It’s a lot more sincere. Ace is the one who moves - the hand on David’s arm reaches up, and he guides him in, kissing him slowly, then deep, searching and - hoping. There’s a lot that he breathes against him, but David holds it in silence, leaning against Ace with a careful consideration. When he parts, he lays his head against Ace’s chest. Ace’s hand finds the back of his neck.

”Do you want to get up?” David asks, and he can feel him try to shrug.

”Yes, but...” Ace pulls his phone up, which had slipped off his chest at some point. “—Well, nothing’s out for dinner. We’ll have to order something.”

”That’s fine,” David says, pulling himself a lot closer, pinning half of Ace’s body under the covers that he’s made his home. His arm lays over Ace’s chest, and Ace’s hand finds his bicep. “For now. We’re going out tomorrow, since I’m off.”

”I’ve yet to reintroduce myself to the bakery sections of this state’s grocery chains,” Ace muses, and David looks up at him when he rolls his eyes, with an unreadable expression.

Unreadable to any man not named Ace Visconti, that is.

”The only thing that’s going to bring me back to life is a giant cookie cake, babe.”

That isn’t to say he’s vulnerable to the stern behavioural command that it gives, though.

”I’m going to lose you to your eating habits before I lose you to nightmares.” It makes Ace grin. Brute force to the heart, and brute force to whatever makes him laugh.

”That'll be quite the way to go,” Ace says, and rolls David to his back - the blankets press between them, and Ace has a hand to his chin, holding his head in place before he leans his mouth against him. “Indulging my pretty face in pasteries while my lover watches on in horror.” A kiss; stronger, on Ace’s terms. When David reaches around to hold him, his skin is warm, warmer than his own hands, all from being tucked under heavy blankets. It feels nice to kiss him from below without sunglasses knocking into his face.

Ace holds him there. The passion lingers, and it doesn’t get much farther than Ace’s legs between David’s and the revelation that he’s not wearing any clothes. But - the life that blooms back in Ace, even if for a moment, is worth every moment halfway between man and blanket. When Ace leans back up, he smiles down at David. David’s smile is warm in return.

”Get dressed,” he says, quietly.

”Of course. Can’t have my youthful body lay bare, lest I catch myself in the mirror and fall victim to vanity,” Ace replies, sitting up as best he can without crushing David too much. “—Or make you think twice about wanting to stay dressed.”

David leads the blanket after him, covering half of his body. “I’m charmed.”

#ace & tapp | what seems to be the problem officer?#verse | found dead in miami. / post-game.#ace goes to publix and is shot in the dick: a story about self discovery #writing | not much of a writer - more of a lover.

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yessadirichards · 3 years

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Crime

'Twitter killer' sentenced to death for 9 murders

TOKYO

A Japanese court on Tuesday sentenced a man dubbed Japan's "Twitter killer" to death for the 2017 murders of eight women who posted suicidal thoughts on social media, and a brother of one of the victims.

Takahiro Shiraishi, 30, was found guilty in the high-profile case by the Tachikawa branch of the Tokyo District Court of murdering, dismembering and storing the bodies of the nine in his apartment near Tokyo.

Presiding Judge Naokuni Yano ruled that the none of the eight women consented to being killed, and that Shiraishi was mentally fit to be held responsible for the murders.

The judge described the crimes as extremely vicious, adding the case had given people a cause for concern regarding how deeply rooted social media has become in society.

Whether Shiraishi killed the victims with their consent was the major point of contention in the lay judge trial.

Prosecutors had sought the death penalty for Shiraishi, who pleaded guilty to the crimes, but defense lawyers had argued that he was guilty only of the lesser charge of homicide with consent as he had his victims' tacit approval based on messages they sent him.

While prosecutors pointed out that there was no way the victims consented to being killed based on Shiraishi's testimony that they resisted when being strangled, the defense team argued that they only did so due to their "conditional reflexes."

The defense also claimed that Shiraishi was possibly either mentally incompetent or was in a state of diminished capacity at the time of the murders.

But prosecutors concluded he could be held criminally liable after he was put through five months of psychiatric testing before his indictment in September 2018.

According to the indictment, Shiraishi strangled and dismembered eight women and one man aged 15 to 26 from Tokyo and four other prefectures from August to October of 2017. He is also alleged to have sexually assaulted all his female victims. The man was the brother of one of the victims who had come looking for his sister.

Shiraishi is believed to have promised to help his victims die via Twitter, using his handle which loosely translates as "hangman," inviting them to his apartment in Zama, Kanagawa Prefecture, after they expressed suicidal thoughts.

The serial killings first came to light in October 2017 when police officers visited Shiraishi's apartment and found several coolers containing body parts during their search for a missing 23-year-old Tokyo woman, who later turned out to be one of the victims.

Shiraishi said that even if given the death penalty, he would not appeal.

The crimes stunned many in Japan, prompting the central government and social networking service businesses to boost support for young people in need of help.

#sadirichards

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for-peace-war · 7 years

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Defining the Beast

Outlook: Within our Vampire: the Masquerade lore often we are forced to play fast and loose with the Beast. While the concept is a nebulous and predatory concept, I would like to (for my games at the very least) define the nature of the Beast and exactly how it might be qualified systematically. Once more, this is not an overall ruling for the entirety of the Liberty x Undeath continuity, but it is how I will be addressing it.

The Beast

What exactly the Beast is remains something of a mystery to Cainites and hunters alike. Some allege that it is the vestiges of humanity, warped and corrupted as the creatures that once themselves were men, while others state that it is in itself the most pure and natural part of the human existence. Whatever it may be, this supernatural entity is a semi-sentient force, concerned neither with morality nor integrity, and focuses only upon one motivator: survival. It has been called the “dark passenger” by some or the “voice of the devil” by others, but just as likely as it is to see a man kill another, so too would it have one flee to safety if such proved opportune.

With this in mind, let us consider what the value of the Beast actually is.

The Beast Within

The Beast is almost certainly the manner through which kindred/Cainites are able to manipulate the world about them with their vampiric disciplines. This window into something supernatural can be opened by ghouls with great effort, but to the vampire it is a manifestation of the bloodline/heredity that the vampire’s lineage most strongly represents. This “genetic” component permits various abilities to activate.

But more importantly, the Beast is as much a symbiotic presence as it is a parasitic one, according to some. True, it demands that the host feed in a particular way, but in the interest of protecting itself it will respond aggressively or defensively to the presence of another’s “encroachment” upon its territory.

This, above all else, is why the Beast is such a difficult concept to tackle. It also provides benefits to those that are as removed from their humanity as possible -- with a dangerous caveat depending on the depth taken.

The Beast and You

On the Scale of Humanity

“Humanity,” that which has been defined as a person’s morality, is in truth a matter of scaling between “the Divine” and “the Profane” where the divine is recognized as that which exceeds the limits of human awareness and the profane is that which speaks to the basest aspects of survival. Not surprisingly, the Beast is the profane on this scale and Divinity is nigh unattainable.

Most humans exist between 7-6 on this scale. A “bad” person, divorced from serial killing, mass rape, or happenstance cannibalism will likely not fall far from this range. The reason for this is that humanity is inherently flawed and as such, flaws do not strip one of their inherent humanity.

That being said, there are those that do shift the scale. Those that fall lower on the scale unsettle those around them in the way that a dog, unchained and unknown, might awaken some visceral fear as it eyes a person unaware of its nature. Conversely, those that are above the baseline set others at ease, as though their very presence is a sort of balm against the worries of the world. This calming nature conveys benefits that will make (most) people trust them more readily.

10: +3 on social interactions.

9: +2 on social interactions.

8: +1 on social interactions.

7-6: +0 on social interactions.

5: -1 on social interactions.

4: -2 on social interactions.

3: -3 on social interactions.

2: -4 on social interactions.

1: -5 on social interactions.

0: All social interactions becomes >10, rather than >8.

Of course, the Beast is not entirely without some defense against this. Merits such as “Predatory Allure (3 dots)” permit a person to turn that feeling of unease into a disquieting sense of arousal. After all, there are multitudes of people that cannot help but find something exciting and arousing about serial killers and mass murderers. That being said, it is the exception that proves the rule, not at all a speech against the natural impulse of a person to pull away from those that frighten them.

But there is more to this conundrum than merely how a person interacts socially. The Beast has its benefits to those lower within the realm of humanity -- for those that linger just shy of accepting what they truly are.

The Benefits of the Beast

In addition to merits such as predatory allure (which will remove the penalty on any humanity score and add a >9 again with the caveat that a failure immediately imposes the penalties once more), the Beast has a visceral reaction to things that challenge it.

There are many disciplines that are almost unnoticeable: Majesty, Obfuscate, Auspex, and many Thaumaturgical Paths (such as Path of Corruption) leave practically no sign that there is a trespass being committed. With this in mind, players often react out of character to his with little explanation in-character. A person “knows to spend a will” to avoid the effects of Majesty, but why?

This is where defining the Beast comes into effect.

In VTR the Beast has gained particular traits that allow it to compete with others. In my games, this concept will be borrowed for the sake of consistency. When a vampire attempts to use Majesty, the Beast may detect that something is manipulating it and lash back out. This is where the benefits come in.

Starting at 3 humanity, a boon is granted when challenging the unseen presence of another. All vampires are able to be defended by their beast, but at that level of lowered humanity the Beast now practically whispers a growling need in the ear of its host and demands satisfaction when influenced.

The following scale indicates what occurs when “lashing out” occurs against a foe.

10-4: The vampire gains no bonus when using will, but can lash out. The Beast is aware of what is happening, but they are not.

3: +1 is gained when a will is used to break a discipline.

2: +2 is gained when a will is used to break a discipline.

1: +3 is gained when a will is used to break a discipline.

0: You are the Beast. As such, rote is gained when an attempt is made to break free of being controlled.

This means that a vampire at 1 humanity (or on a path but lowly situated) will have a much higher chance of shrugging off the mental manipulation of another. It is a definitive benefit to those that dive down the path of darkness within, though there is a heavy price to pay for this as well.

Note: At 1-3 humanity, the vampire may make a roll of occult+humanity to determine exactly what is happening to inspire their Beast to react so aggressively. A failure, however, will force a anger frenzy that will last for a number of turns equivalent to the number of dice rolled as the Beast seeks to avenge itself in whatever means it can. No one is safe in this state if they are in the way of the rampaging vampire.

The Beast’s Bane

It is the notion of frenzy that causes this gambit to be a dangerous one to attempt. As a person that is lower on the scale of humanity is closer to the thrall of the Beast, they will also be able to fall more readily into its clutches. Much as above, these penalties apply only to those that have fallen to the third step in humanity.

3: -1 against frenzy.

2: -2 against frenzy.

1: -3 against frenzy.

0: Always frenzying.

Keep this in mind: this applies to both hunger and anger frenzies. Additionally, a vampire that is at this stage of humanity will not be allowed to use a will to break their frenzy. The danger of riding this close to the Beast is that the person one was is consumed by what they are becoming.

Additionally, those that are lower on the scale will experience longer frenzies. To standardize the nature of a frenzy, two things will be taken into account:

Is the object causing the Frenzy still present.

Does the Beast have a great deal of control?

In the case of the former, a frenzy will remain active so long as there is line-of-sight on that which causes the problem. If a fear frenzy is encouraged by fire, for example, so long as the vampire can see the fire they will remain terrified. This will cause them to sprint away from the target as much as they can. Note, if something obstructs their path or attempts to manipulate them in this state, they may immediately enter an anger frenzy. This will be determined by a roll of the following:

10: 1d10>10!

9: 2d10>10!

8: 3d10>10!

7: 4d10>10!

6: 5d10>10!

5: 6d10>10!

4: 7d10>10!

3: 8d10>10!

2: 9d10>10!

1: 10d10>10!

As you can see, a person that is in the clutches of the Beast is more likely to enter an anger frenzy than someone that is not.

This control factor is what is discussed in the second part: how much control does the Beast have? Frenzy will remain for a number of turns equal to the following, if the threat has been removed:

10: 1 turn.

9: 2 turns.

8: 3 turns.

7: 4 turns.

6: 5 turns.

5: 6 turns.

4: 7 turns.

3: 8 turns.

2: 9 turns.

1: 10 turns.

This can be broken with a roll of humanity, but this will cause any following frenzy roll to be made as though on humanity lower. Additionally, the turn will be consumed in wrestling control back. A will must be expended to make this chance.

So What does this Mean in the End?

Ultimately, not a lot. The Beast has always been a figure of primordial intent, but now it is being defined as something that will have definitive responses to perceived motives. Keep in mind, those with a low humanity will be able to determine things that those with high humanity can’t, but the price is very high indeed. At 0 humanity, a player is effectively killed as they have entered their final wassail and will become a Wight.

Try to keep this in mind when playing toward the higher or lower end of the spectrum. Higher humanity will almost never consider the Beast and but feel the faintest tugs from it, while lower may constantly feel its growling demands in their ear to feed and fight. Ultimately, this falls to the player.

With a single caveat to be added.

Paths!

A path of enlightenment is a means by which vampires are able to redefine the philosophy of self to “control” the Beast. Excluding the Path of the Beast (which is more about becoming it), these all deal with an alien view of reality that permits functionality in a world that would otherwise force moral quandaries.

Paths will function as has been stated above, because a low path is still close to the Beast while a high one is not. Keep in mind, you will need to hit humanity 3 before you are divorced enough from humanity to begin embracing one of these view points.

#liberty x undeath #vampire the masquerade #vtr translation #the beast

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jonjost · 6 years

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Drawing: Stephen Lack

Following the conspiracy lead of Steve Bannon and Breitbart, Donald Trump has grumbled and tweeted often about the Deep State, the purported nefarious grouping of hidden government persons lurking in the depths of the massive Federal apparatus of myriad acronymic masks. ICE NSA FBI CIA and on through to lesser known but equally evil entities. These are alleged to be conclaves, variously, of members of the Harvard elite, Yale’s Skull and Bones, Jewish cabalists, covens of Christian Fundamentalists, or whichever cluster-fuck you wish to designate, surely there will be a website or more devoted to reading the tea-leaves of the signals emitted from these organizational black holes and their swirling galaxies. Right and Left wing chatterboxes selectively cherry-pick whatever political tid-bits they wish and construct fabulist narratives around them, from the assassination of JFK to that of MLK to 9/11 and on to the Boston Marathon bombing. The existence of the internet gives wide berth for these to spawn, however false or true they might be.

Extracted from these events come tomes from scholars, Hollywood movies, novels and the rantings of Limbaugh, Hannity, Alex Jones and a host of lesser names. There’s millions to be made from these, and those mentioned have made theirs and more. Like America’s religious hucksters, there’s a lot of money to be made preying on the gullible and fearful, with which it seems our country is plentifully supplied. Welcome to the world of QAnon. It’s American as Apple Pie.

The Lakewood Mega-church, Dallas TX

For decades – well actually far longer than that, for centuries – America has been awash with conspiracy theories, reaching back to its founding. There were always traitors loose in the land, lluminati, the anti-christ, double-agents for foreign powers, the entire gamut of customary political war-horses, broad-brushes with which to paint your enemy. Today’s landscape is nothing new, just that for brief periods we like to pretend it ain’t so.

But, myths aside, it’s all the same old same old. As is governance itself.

Two deep-state members, John Brennan and General Michael Hayden, former chiefs of the CIA

Conspiracy theories, to take root, need soil, and the United States government has been rich tilling land for as long as its been around. Within long-term living memory those range from major matters, such as the concept that FDR and the government knew Pearl Harbor was coming, and let it happen. Jump ahead half a century, and the same it true of 9/11. In both cases there is ample evidence to suggest they are true, though the makers of American mythology adamantly insist that only a tin-foil hatter would believe such malarkey. After all, who could believe that our own government would allow such events to occur when their job is to protect us? Only a true nutter could believe such a thing, regardless of the massive evidence and logical reasons for such a thing to fit properly into a narrative.

And the same goes for lesser items from the assassination of JFK requiring magic bullets, and on down to such trivial things as using members of the military as guinea pigs for “scientific” experiments, or, well, hell, using whole cities like San Francisco to experiment with some new biological dispersal weapon. Or letting St. George, Utah, knowingly be a nice down-wind recipient of nuclear bomb test radiation and then spending decades denying the cancerous downside. In fact, the more one knows about Uncle Sam the more fertile the soil one finds for tin-foil hat thoughts.

Enter Donald, the wanna-be Queen’s tough guy sporting a giant borough-wide chip on his shoulder. A self-made man, so he insists (that million buck starter kit from Dad don’t count), he broke into the hard-as-nails world of Manhattan real-estate and built a solid gold (well, at least gold-plated) reputation as a party-animal, womanizer, builder of garish towers, possessor of serial-wives and of serial bankruptcies. And despite all that he wasn’t welcomed into the fold of the Manhattan elite, and here, decades later, bearing a grudge that deforms his face and body, and weighs on him like a WWF wrestler, he’s out to let them have it. Descending his golden escalator but 3 years ago, met by his adoring rent-a-crowd, he tossed his hat in the Presidential circus ring, and to wide amazement and laughter promptly vanquished the supposedly serious Republican candidates with school-yard taunts, and thereafter sent the world into shock when Hillary Clinton lost to him as well, if not in the general vote, then in the dubious Electoral College. The world has been aghast since, as The Donald charges like a raging bull, upsetting one institutionally rooted apple-cart after another, shredding the polite decorum and language of our traditional politics, and causing serious harm to the status quo. Just like he said he would.

Well, almost.

Having promised to “drain the swamp” The Don instead stocked the beltway with more alligator sleaze than anyone thought conceivable, stacking his Cabinet with grifters ready to dismantle their respective departments, and to feed at the Federal trough as quickly and mercilessly as possible. Having reduced his GOP Congressional majorities to the quivering sycophants they always were, our gangster godfather trashed protocols, ripped up treaties and obsessively uprooted anything having to do with Barack Hussein Obama while loudly bellowing his utterly unmasked racism. Supposedly serious Republicans held their silence while the Tea Party wing cheered lustily and the Don’s racist base went bananas. Doubtless never having actually read it, the man sworn to uphold the US Constitution, did, as G W Bush had suggested, and treated it as “a goddam piece of paper.” Toilet paper in this instance.

All of this behavior has transpired with little more than murmurs from the official opposition, the Democrats, who hide behind their minority status in the House and Senate whimpering there’s nothing they can do, their hands are tied until November, the mystical season of voting when the Great American Public is allowed to choose between corporately approved specimen A or B. And besides, they are as beholden to their corporate masters as the GOP, and should they speak too loudly the full depths of both-sides-of-the-aisle corruption would be fully exposed. Until then the pages of YouTube and Facebook are awash with videos of virulent racists yelling and screaming on camera, police killing blacks for being black, ICE round-ups of alleged illegal aliens, children stored in ex-Walmart boxes converted to instant prisons, and other pleasantries of the present American mental landscape, the ugly id of the nation having been exposed by Trump’s tearing off of the band-aid of PC politeness imposed by the prior administration.

Faced with this rupture of politics-as-normal, the nation has contorted itself into the unimaginable: the liberal-left now looks upon the FBI, the CIA and NSA as potential saviors, while the right, formerly the supposed champions of fiscal and moral rectitude, law & order, balanced budgets, goody-two-shoes ethics and virulent anti-Commie/Russiaphobes morphed instantaneously into Russiaphiles, haters of the deep-state combine of the FBICIANSA, and rabid pigs at the trough of corruption and racism. And not only trickle down economics, but also trickle down ethics, in this case in the form of terminal corruption. Hence the plague of YouTube racism and cop-killer videos.

You’re Fired! Former FBI Chief Comey

Enter the deep rumblings of the Deep State. Famed for having intervened in an attempted Richard Cheney machination during a breathless hospital visit to then Attorney General Ashcroft who lay seriously ill, while Cheney-Bush henchmen sought to secure his signature for a program of dubious legality, wearing his cloak as Ashcroft’s chief assistant, James Comey, life-long Republican, became a belated liberal hero, as did fellow Republican, Robert Mueller, then head of the FBI. See this for the full story. And now, a decade and some later, these two emerge from the deep bowels of the government yet again in tandem. As FBI chief, appointed by Obama and retained by Donald Trump, Comey was pressed by his new boss to swear a certain kind of loyalty, mob-style. Declining, he was summarily fired, though in a manner in which in the arcane convolutions of government he was able to secure the naming of a special counsel to investigate Russian skullduggery during the 2016 election. The Special Counsel named was none other than Robert Mueller. And not only that, but Comey also also did so in a manner which required Trump lackey Richard Sessions, Director of the Justice Department, to recuse himself from the investigation. All this served well for Trump to loudly complain that he was being undercut and back-stabbed by the Deep State, of which Trump cohort Steven Bannon and his program Breitbart had long complained.

Drawing by Stephen Lack

The news of the day of late swirls with the constant word of criminality in high places – the current Manafort trial pealing the skin off the fancy-suited world of business and politics, with fantastical numbers, a litany of off-shore banking havens, and enough moral sleaze to last forever. Or until the next, around-the-corner, trial to reveal still deeper depravity. Or Avenatti’s latest lurid spill of The Don’s hushed-up sex-capades.

James Clapper, former head of the NSA

Legally, lying to a Congressional committee is a crime, whether under oath or not, punishable by up to five years in prison, or in some instances more. James Clapper was head of the NSA, (whom it turns out went to Annandale HS, Fairfax VA, 1956-60, same time I did, though I do not recall knowing him then, but my sister does), in testimony to Congress lied. Caught at it, he recanted in a Clintonesque manner, parsing the exact meaning of “spying” etc.

John Brennan, Ex-Director of CIA

Mr Brennan, former director of the CIA, outspoken of late regarding Donald Trump -saying his comportment in Helsinki was “treasonous” – is himself in a problematic position, having also lied to Congress, just as did Clapper. In his case regarding torture and such nice things.

And of course Mr Comey, fired director of the FBI, is also accused by some of lying, or at least fudging regarding leaks from his office. All in all, a charming cluster of characters, all deeply enmeshed in governmental agencies which traffic in secrecy as a part of their function. Naturally a good setting for conspiratorial actions. So small wonder that thoughts of a Deep State tend to focus on this area, along with the military.

That this nexus of fellows engaged in the sordid arts of secrecy and executors of the dirty deeds of the US government should all re-emerge in unison, though this time wearing super-hero cloaks for some liberals, indeed raises a peculiar stench, the smell of something rotten deep in the bowels of America’s government: Yes, Virginia, there is a secret Deep State.

And yes, it seeks to defend its institutional status and powers, just as do almost all bureaucratic institutional organizations. In this case, these institutions (and 14 other “security” organizations under the umbrella of the Unites States Government), all seek to carry out their jobs as protectors of the corporate/business powers for which and on behalf of which that government exists. And when by some quirk of circumstance, something or someone inimical to those interests occurs, it is their function to work together to challenge and defeat that intruding force. And such, in the instance of Donald John Trump, is the case.

Were the Republican Party a healthy political party in American terms, it would have never allowed Trump to emerge as its nominee for President. In a “healthy” state it would have vetted him, researched his background, and done whatever was necessary to assure he did not become their candidate. But the Republican Party, like the rest of the society it is rooted in, is, exactly as is the Democrat Party, utterly corrupt, and has been so for some decades, steadily rotting away until it became a steaming fetid swamp of oligarchism marinated in All-American racism. The Democrats were equally corrupt, utterly owned by corporate powers, and utterly out-of-touch with what neo-liberal policies – their policies – had done to broad areas of the American public.

And as were and are the political parties of the USA, so too all its institutions are corrupt: the Congress, the Courts, the Executive Branch, the 5th Estate, the corporate world, Wall Street. Every. Damn. One. Of. Them.

So it is little wonder that along with all these pillars of American society that the Deep State is likewise corrupt. Any decent working Deep State would have some time ago arranged a plausibly deniable accident, be it on the ground, Air Force One, or a berserk White House Guard, and Trump would already be fodder for further conspiracy theorists to figure out who done it. But thus far, confronted with the Keystone Kops of the inept, obvious, utterly corrupted government of the most comical Don imaginable, the hard-men of the Deep State have thus far fumbled the ball, and the Trump gang, though snookered by their own glaring stupidity, is still standing.

So yes, Don, yes there is a Deep State, and it is certainly out to get you. But it is just like you, and is inept and as flaccid as your butt is, unable to shift from the SOP of the Cold War to a world in which Tweets shift the market up and down and idiocy rules the White House, and few care if the President consorts with prostitutes and stuffs his government full with nepotism and cronyism. After all, most of them are doing exactly the same things.

Meantime America burns.

Trump supporters, Florida

Painting by Stephen Lack

California forest fires seen from above the clouds

The Deep State and the Don(ald) Drawing: Stephen Lack Following the conspiracy lead of Steve Bannon and Breitbart, Donald Trump has grumbled and tweeted often about the…

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gidblog0 · 5 years

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Twitter Stories: How Port-Harcourt Serial Killer Operates

Kidnapper

A Nigerian lady has taken to Twitter to reveal how the alleged serial killers on the loose in Port Harcourt, Rivers State capital, operate.

There have been cases of young women being strangled in hotel rooms across the capital for a while now.

Read Also: Another Lady Murdered In A Hotel In Port-Harcourt

In the last few weeks, 10 ladies have been reportedly killed and many are beginning…

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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The Little Things: True Stories That Might Have Influenced The Movie

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

This article contains The Little Things spoilers. You can read our spoiler-free review here.

Despite what those looking for clear answers after that ending might hope, The Little Things is not based on any specific true story or serial killer investigation. It was a 1993 screenplay penned by writer-director John Lee Hancock. However, there are similarities to several well known cases. The film even mentions the Night Stalker, aka Richard Ramirez, all while stopping short of naming names or committing to a specific lethal predator in its own yarn.

This is by design. In a recent interview with The Wrap, Hancock said “the whole reason I wrote the script” was to lean into the ambiguity and frustration of criminal investigations. Yet several ongoing serial killer investigations during the time of his writing raises questions about whether this intent was partially influenced by two open-ended searches for serial killers.

In the near 20 years between the script’s first draft and the film’s final edit, one of those cases has been closed; the other remains open; and both continue to fascinate, frustrate, and horrify investigators, family members of victims, and a specific type of crime buff. The kind, who, like Jared Leto’s Albert Sparma in The Little Things, can’t let the little things go.

The Zodiac Killer

The Little Things is neither a retelling nor an allegory of the Zodiac Killer investigation, but there are many similarities and seeming influences. The opening sequence of the new film shows a woman driving while singing along with the B-52’s hit “Roam.” Right down to the camera’s close-up of the driver, the moment works as a blatant tribute to the scene in The Silence of the Lambs where we follow Buffalo Bill’s next victim, Catherine Martin (Brooke Smith), and the giddy abandon she puts behind her rendition of Tom Petty’s “American Girls.”

But it also recalls the nearly disastrous incident which happened to Kathleen Johns on March 22, 1970. She was 22-years-old, seven months pregnant, and driving her 10-month-old infant daughter when a man on the highway flashed his lights, encouraging her to pull over because he claimed one of her tires appeared to be loose. After he said he’d tighten the lugnuts for her, he drove off. But as soon as Johns got back on the road, the wheel nearly fell off her car, leaving her disabled.

The man returned, offering to take her to a service station. But after 90 minutes of driving past gas stations without stopping, Johns realized it was a kidnapping and she jumped with her daughter in her arms out of the car at a stop light. She then flagged down a passing car and truck. Later she said she believed the man who abducted her matched a police sketch of the alleged Zodiac Killer.

All we see of the driver in the opening scene of The Little Things is his boots, which thus becomes a central lead in the case. Footwear similarly looms large in the Zodiac mythology. Only one witness is on record attesting that the Zodiac serial killer, who stalked Northern California in the late ‘60s, wore Wing Walker Boots, but the emphasis of this claim has grown in importance over the years thanks to Robert Graysmith’s book, Zodiac, which is the basis for the 2007 David Fincher film of the same name. That 1986 book and subsequent film also are crucial in coloring the popular imagination of “the killer who got away with it,” with both works heavily suggesting Arthur Leigh Allen was the Zodiac based on circumstantial evidence.

Allen was a loner who, after receiving an other than honorable discharge from the U.S. Navy, worked briefly as an elementary school teacher. He was eventually fired, however, after allegations of sexual misconduct with children. Afterward he worked a series of odd jobs. A friend reported in 1971 that Allen had told him about wanting to kill people and adopting the name “Zodiac” three years earlier, before the Zodiac began taunting authorities and the press with his astrological title. The police took out a warrant on his home and continued investigating him on and off over a 20-year period with multiple warrants and interviews.

At the end of David Fincher’s Zodiac movie, the last glimpse we get of Allen is at his job as a hardware store clerk. This is not unlike how The Little Things introduces Jared Leto’s Sparma as a refrigerator repairman who begins catching local law enforcement’s attention. And like Allen, a search of Sparma’s home (albeit illegally in The Little Things), as well as a police interrogation, prove inconclusive.

The biggest similarity between Zodiac and Sparma is that neither made it to trial. Allen died of a heart attack on Aug. 26, 1992. According to the film Zodiac, it happened very shortly before he was about to be brought into custody. However, recent DNA tests of saliva on letters the Zodiac Killer sent to authorities appear to suggest Allen was not actually the killer.

The BTK Killer

Early in The Little Things, Det. Jimmy Baxter (Rami Malek) and Joe “Deke” Deacon (Denzel Washington) discuss the rituals and depravities of the killer they’re chasing. It’s a busy evening for the murderer. The latest of the victims had been knifed, and their bodies had been moved, gagged, and bound.

Baxter goes on to say the killer is very organized, and there were no wasted motions. The victims underwent extreme torture. There are love bites, but no rape and no sodomy. The suspect kills for sexual pleasure. After one murder, the killer apparently returned to a victim’s house, moving the body, shaving, her legs, and then posing her. “He brings beer and milk, and throws himself a little party,” Deke adds.

In this sequence, The Little Things seems to drop elements of the MO of Dennis Rader, the “BTK killer.” The acronym stands “bind, torture, kill,” and he gave the title to himself. He also shared Sparma and Zodiac’s penchant for taunting police. Rader committed 10 murders, mostly women, between 1974 and 1991, all while maintaining an on and off correspondence with the police. Rader posed the nude body of one of his victims in bondage positions in a church, and took pictures before burying her in a ditch.

Additionally, when Hancock first wrote The Little Things in 1993, “the BTK Killer” was still at large, eluding the police for decades, even as he taunted them via correspondence. But in 2004, Rader’s crave for fame became his undoing as he began corresponding with local media and television stations after a decade of silence. Eventually, Rader sent in a floppy disk in one of his media-seeking taunts of police, unaware that authorities could search the disk’s metadata to find deleted documents. This led authorities to begin investigating Dennis Rader. He was arrested in February 2005.

Other Possible Influences

Jeffrey Dahmer also posed the bodies of his victims and took pictures. It isn’t a new thing. Jack the Ripper, who also infamously vanished into the ether after getting away with five grisly murders, and The Boston Strangler also posed victims. According to the National Center for Biotechnology Information, “leaving a victim’s body in an unusual position is a conscious criminal action by an offender to thwart an investigation, shock the finder and investigators of the crime scene, or give perverted pleasure to the killer. … posed bodies are more likely to include sexual assault, often in serial murders… when a body is left in an unusual position, binding is more likely.”

Baxter’s listing of the “love bites” could also be a nod to Ted Bundy, who was convicted, partially on the basis of bite mark evidence he left during the Chi Omega sorority house murders at Florida State University in 1978.

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