#Rest In Peace Arja

[coochiequeens]

Finland’s Center for Legal Protection of Health Care also stated that Penttilä should be classified as an extreme danger to others, and the Appellate Court intervened and extended his prison term by one additional year.“ The original sentence was only 9 and a half years and that was the THIRD woman he strangled to death.

A Finnish serial killer who targeted young girls and women has been categorized as a “female” criminal by Wikipedia, prompting criticism on social media. Michael Maria Penttilä, 57, has been described by national media as the “only Finn to meet the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) definition of a serial killer,” having sexually abused and strangled multiple female victims to death, including children. Penttilä was born Jukka Torsten Lindholm, but is also known as Michael Pentholm.

Penttilä has a lengthy criminal record, which was recently highlighted in response to the revelation that he is classified as a “female” by Wikipedia. Many women expressed their outrage using the hashtag “notourcrimes,” which indicates opposition to male violence being recorded in statistics as having been committed by a woman.

Even as an adolescent, Penttilä committed sexually motivated and violent crimes. In 1981, at the age of 16, he abducted a teen girl, locked her in a basement, and beat her. Penttilä choked the girl with scarves and threatened to rape her, but she was able to flee. As punishment for the sadistic offense and a series of petty thefts, Penttilä was held at the Kerava Youth Facility in 1984 for one year.

Penttilä’s first known murder victim was of his own mother, Laina Lahja Orvokki Lindholm, whom he strangled on August 26, 1985, just after his release from the youth detention center. However, the crime was initially considered accidental by authorities, and the verdict in Penttilä’s case was ultimately decided to be wrongful death.

The next year, Penttilä met two 12 year-old girls and convinced them to accompany him to his apartment by promising to give them money to buy alcohol. He then locked one of the victims in the bathroom before using a belt to fatally strangle the other girl. Penttilä proceeded to rape the surviving girl, who was eventually able to escape after neighbors overheard her screams for help and contacted law enforcement.

It was only upon his arrest for the rape and murder of the young girls that the truth about Laina Lindholm’s death was revealed. During interrogations, Penttilä described to police how he had waited for his mother to fall asleep before donning her blue leather gloves and one of her scarves and choking her to death. He told authorities he killed his mother because she had begun dating another man since divorcing his father, and because he blamed her for not attempting to secure an early release for him from the youth facility.

In March of 1987, the Oulu District Court ruled that Penttilä was guilty of the murders of his mother and the child, and sentenced him to 9 years and seven months’ imprisonment. Despite this, the Rovaniemi Appellate Court intervened and held that Laina Lindholm’s death was not a murder, but instead a lesser crime of negligent homicide, and reduced his sentence to seven years.

Disturbingly, Penttilä confessed that he visited his mother’s grave after the killing.

Just one year after Penttilä was granted parole in May of 1992, he again choked a woman to death in his apartment in Kempele. The victim was a 42 year-old woman identified in press as Arja, and Penttilä admitted to causing her death, but claimed the murder was accidental and a result of engaging in the sadomasochistic sexual practice of erotic asphyxiation. 

Months later and while in prison, Penttilä told law enforcement his chilling motive behind the slaying. He said that he had confessed to having a “sexual abnormality” to Arja. Before her death, he told Arja that he was only capable of sadomasochistic sex, which included bondage, whipping and strangulation.

The Oulu District Court sentenced Penttilä to 9 and a half years, and a psychiatric evaluation was conducted. The examination concluded that Lindholm was sane and aware of his actions, and was therefore guilty. Finnish media reported that “[Penttilä’s] sexual inclination towards S/M sex and desire for strangulation did not show up in the examination because he focused on being as normal as possible.”

Finland’s Center for Legal Protection of Health Care also stated that Penttilä should be classified as an extreme danger to others, and the Appellate Court intervened and extended his prison term by one additional year.

In 2000, while incarcerated in Hämeenlinna Central Prison which houses both male and female inmates in separate wards, Penttilä began to wear make-up and dress in women’s clothes. According to psychiatric reports, Penttilä had a preoccupation with a hyper-masculine and violent male ideal, despite his fetishistic crossdressing tendencies. 

However, the prison’s director soon forbade him from wearing make-up and dresses, citing concerns about security. Penttilä then filed a formal complaint to Parliament’s ombudsman and attempted to argue that he was being discriminated against because female inmates were permitted to wear “men’s clothes.”

While in Hämeenlinna, Penttilä was granted permission to marry a woman named Hannele Pentholm, who was convicted of killing her husband and serving a life sentence. The two were married a short time, only two years, and after their divorce Penttilä adopted the name Michael Maria Penttilä and began claiming to be a lesbianwoman.

After he was released on parole in November 2008, Penttilä again attacked three more women on separate occasions. In May of 2009, he attempted to strangle a healthcare worker who he had called to his home to perform chiropractic services. The woman was eventually able to escape after calming Penttilä down and convincing him to release her.

He continued his violent pattern twice more: first strangling a female housecleaner he had hired to tidy his apartment, and the second just three weeks afterwards.

On June 11 of 2010, the Oulu District Court sentenced Penttilä to six years for three aggravated assaults and attempted aggravated assault, as well as aggravated rape and deprivation of liberty. The next year, the Rovaniemi Appellate Court once again interfered with the ruling and reduced Penttilä’s sentence to just four years and five months. The final verdict was upheld in October of 2012.

Penttilä was released in December of 2016, and just two years later, he murdered a prostituted woman by strangling her with stockings in his Helsinki apartment. Additionally, he had been found to have planned to murder a 17 year-old girl in 2017.

He is now serving a life sentence for the brutal slaying. 

During deliberations to determine whether Penttilä should be charged with homicide or the lesser crime of manslaughter, the court heard how he had spent hours of each day viewing pornography depicting asphyxiationleading up to the murders he had committed.

Psychologist Jan-Henry Stenberg told the Helsinki Court of Appeal that Penttilä’s pornography consumption illustrated the premeditated nature of his crime and highlighted the tendency for pornography use to escalate towards more extreme content. It was revealed that Penttilä had mimicked the actions of one of the men in a pornographic video he had watched.

Despite repeatedly targeting women and girls for sexually motivated violence, Penttilä is now listed as a “female serial killer” on Wikipedia, where editors have argued amongst themselves over this classification in the site’s open-access backend.

The page was initially created in 2018 under Penttilä’s birth name, Jukka Lindholm. 

Few changes were made until last month when, on April 5, a trans activist Wiki editor known as Maddy from Celeste updated the serial killer’s name to Michael Maria Penttilä and cited “deadnaming” as the reason.

Editor Maddy from Celeste, a pseudonym which is a nod to a video game character and its developer, is credited with having created the page “Transgender history in Finland,” and identifies as queer, trans, and non-binary.

“A serial murderer has zero rights – stop with the pathetic gender crap, HE is not a she,” reads one comment on the article’s edit page.

Other comments can be seen in the edit history and depict a back-and-forth exchange over “misgendering”, with one anonymous editor stating, “This person was born a male. Humans cannot change sex.”

In July of 2019, the category labeled “transgender serial killers” was deleted by Wikipedia editors. However, a category does exist for “female serial killers,” and Penttilä is one of two entries in the section regarding Finnish criminals.

Penttilä’s sadistic killing spree resembles the criminal behavior of American serial killer Harvey Marcelin. Marcelin, who identifies as transgender and uses the name Marceline Harvey, murdered three women and dismembered two of his victims’ bodies. Marcelin similarly targeted women trafficked in the sex industry, and is currently being held in the women’s ward at Rikers Island in New York. 

Like with Penttilä’s entry, a dispute between various Wikipedia contributors broke out over Harvey’s pronounsin 2022.

By Genevieve Gluck

Genevieve is the Co-Founder of Reduxx, and the outlet's Chief Investigative Journalist with a focused interest in pornography, sexual predators, and fetish subcultures. She is the creator of the podcast Women's Voices, which features news commentary and interviews regarding women's rights.

[shivunin]

Hello there! ✨

New prompts? Here we go.

I was talking of Moby Dick yesterday with a friend, so of course it must be number 7, for whomever you'd like to force in the same bed with a soon-to-be LI!

Ooooh this was a really tasty one! Thanks, Arja c: I am really happy with this, and it bridged a gap in the timeline I've been fiddling with for a while.

(But. Arja, I gotta ask: as someone who has not read the book in question, is there an 'only one bed' scene in Moby Dick???)

(Tropes Prompts)

For 7. Muses are forced to share a bed:

Back to Back

(Arianwen Tabris/Zevran | 2,015 Words | CW: Canon-typical references to darkspawn/death/the Blight, alcohol mention)

The three of them stood just inside the doorway, various packs already piled off to the side. The room was comfortably warm, did not smell of dead bodies, offered two beds, and featured a fire burning already in the hearth. By the standards of the rest of the castle, it was the height of luxury. Even so, they hesitated. 

Morrigan spoke first.

“I will not be sharing, in case either of you have fostered any such foolish notions,” she told them acerbically. “‘Tis hardly fair for the Crow to have the whole bed to himself by simple virtue of gender.”

“Did I say anything?” Arianwen asked, arms crossed. When she opened her mouth to go on, the Crow in question spoke. 

“I am not so delicate as I look. Surely I can manage one evening’s sleep on stone, yes? It will still be an improvement on packed earth.”

“No,” Wen said sharply. “You are not a dog.”

Zevran turned and stared pointedly at Wen’s mabari, who’d already slung himself over the foot of the bed in question. His tongue lolled out in canine delight and his fur was clean for once, as she’d given him a cursory bath before sneaking him into Redcliffe’s castle. Wen was probably the only one who could make the hound move, and she had no intention of doing so. The poor fellow deserved a soft bed for once. He worked as hard as any of them.

Morrigan, plainly assured that she need not participate in this conversation, turned and walked away. In Wen’s periphery, she could see the witch beginning to draw some sort of sigil over the stone before the door. Good. These people were dodgy as any she’d seen.

“I will keep my hands and knives to myself if you will,” Tabris told Zevran coolly. “It is no closer quarters than we share in camp, Crow.” 

One of his eyebrows arched, but he inclined his head slightly. 

“As you wish, my lady.”

“Don’t call me that,” she snapped, hunching her shoulders. “Ugh. Warden, if you won’t use my name. You’re not my servant.” 

She was certain she did not imagine the glint of mockery in his eyes when he swept her an elaborate bow. 

“As you wish, my dear Warden.” 

She didn’t like that either, but she suspected further objections would meet with further prodding. Wen ignored him and went to the far side of the bed, where she could at least shed her armor in peace.

“Not a dog, not a servant,” Zevran murmured to himself, unbuckling his armor on the other side of the bed. “I find my employment opportunities sadly diminished so soon.”

“I hear the Crows have an opening,” Wen told him, casting him a sharp look, and he grinned at her. 

“Let us hope, for both our sakes, that they do not know it yet.”

“Hmph,” was all she could muster in response. Her armor slapped the ground when she tossed it down, but the release of its burden was too much of a relief to stay annoyed. Wen sighed and stretched her hands behind her head, rolling her head first one way and then the other. When she glanced up, the assassin was pulling the covers back and climbing beneath them. 

“Ah—did you want this side?” he asked when he saw her looking, one leg on the mattress, the other on the floor. Wen narrowed her eyes at him. 

“No,” she said. “Just don’t take all the blankets.”

He smiled again and opened his mouth, but she held up a hand. 

“I’m not in the mood for jokes,” she told him. “I might still have to kill a child to save this place. Just let me sleep.”

Zevran shut his mouth and nodded, climbing silently beneath the covers. Wen joined him a moment later, thinking poisonous thoughts at the chamberlain who’d stuffed the four of them in this room. It made strategic sense to stay in one room, but…

But the nightmares were not going to be kind to her tonight. Perhaps it would be wise to warn him before…before. 

“Hey,” she said when Zevran rolled over. 

He glanced over his shoulder at her, his hair backlit by the hearth behind him. For a moment, he looked almost gilded with it—a foolish notion. Wen pushed the thought aside with a vague sense of irritation. It was already hard enough to find the right words; it did not help that he was so plainly assured of his own good looks. She certainly wasn’t going to add to it. 

“Yes?” he said, when she didn’t go on. Wen pressed her lips into a hard line and rolled over onto her side. This corner of the room was shadowed, blocked from the light by the broad lines of the bed and their bodies. 

“Nevermind,” she said instead, biting the end of the word off. “Goodnight.”

A pause, sheets rustling behind her, a quiet breath. Morrigan still sat before the door, her legs crossed, her hands palm-up on either knee. Arianwen did not know if she was meditating or taking first watch and she didn’t intend to ask. Morrigan wasn’t going to kill them while Wen slept; that was all she really needed to know right now. 

“Goodnight, Warden.” 

|

Tabris stood in a wide field, surrounded by heaving bodies on either side. They tossed around her like a river of putrid flesh, horrible syllables clawing their way from ruined throats, sick weapons waving in the air. None of them took notice of her, but they did not leave her space to breathe, either. 

If she stayed here for too long, she would surely choke to death on the smell thick in the air. Even as she knew this, she knew, too, that leaving was impossible. 

There was no way out. She was trapped on all sides. She would die here and be carried onward, like a rotting tree branch in a blood-filled stream, until all the bits that made her distinct from anyone else were worn away by the tide. She knew this with a surety she could not question or define, and the knowledge of her own death bound her hands from fighting back. 

In the distance, a beautiful song rose, as cloying and thick in the air as the smell of unwashed bodies and burning flesh. She was drawn to it even as it repulsed her, caught in the inevitability of the sound and everything that it meant. The archdemon was calling her. She had no choice but to follow, hands bound and feet heavy with the sound. She had no choice. She had—

Wen sat up, gasping for air. 

One hand dragged at the neck of her tunic, loosening the ties even as she clawed her own skin. Something shifted beside her and she flinched away, knocking her head against the carving on the headboard. 

“It is only me,” Zevran said in the darkness beside her. Tabris relaxed slightly, though she still panted for air. 

The fire had died sometime in the night, leaving darkness and a chill in its wake. She could not see him, but she could hear him, could feel the shift in the bed when he moved again. After a moment, something soft brushed her hand. 

“Wine,” he told her. “It will help.” 

Wen abruptly remembered something Morrigan had said to her when Wen had brought him back to camp. She’d said something about him poisoning them all one day and killing them in their sleep, or words to that effect. Tabris unstoppered the wineskin anyway and took a sip, letting it clear some of the thickness from her throat. She took a longer pull a moment later, then passed it back to the left. Zevran took it from her silently, his hand never once brushing hers, and she could hear him drinking, too. 

“Nightmares?” he asked. 

Wen, whose breath had finally begun to slow again, nodded before remembering he couldn’t see her. 

“Yes.”

“Hmm,” he said. “I thought that might have been you several evenings ago.”

“Yes,” she said again. Her screaming had woken the whole camp. She was not proud of it and did not appreciate him mentioning it again now. But—he had given her his wine. That allowed him some leeway, she supposed. 

“All Wardens have them,” she added, touching the marks she’d made at her neck. Some of them stung, but she didn’t feel blood. That was good, she supposed. “Alistair is used to them, he said. They are still new to me.”

Zevran made a noise of acknowledgement, then swallowed again. 

“More?” he asked. 

Wen hesitated. She could feel the wine burning in her stomach, too much on an empty stomach. She hadn’t been interested in the castle’s offer of food, but she regretted it now. 

“Yes,” she said, and took the wineskin from him when it brushed against her hand.

“Every night?” he asked. 

“Most nights.”

The wine was red, sharp, faintly bitter at the end. Wen rolled it over her tongue before swallowing, tasting each note as intensely as she could. They chased the last of the nightmares from her mind, to her relief. The wineskin was mostly empty when she passed it back. 

“I’ll buy more wine on the way out of town,” she told him, the closest she would come to an apology. Zevran moved—perhaps he shrugged—but he, too, must have remembered that she could not see him. 

“There is no need,” he said. 

Wen snorted and slid back under the sheets, flicking her braid out of her way as she went. No need, he said, but she knew how this worked. She would buy him wine and she would not owe him for this. She was no fool. 

“Sometimes, in Antiva, I would…feel for a bedmate or a weapon,” he said carefully, “when I woke and I did not know where I was. It helped, I think.”

Wen said nothing and she did not move. Zevran drank again, then moved on his side of the bed. His foot brushed against her calf when he rolled over, but neither of them acknowledged it. 

“Goodnight, Warden.”

“Goodnight,” she hesitated. “Zevran. And—thank you.”

“It was my pleasure.”

Wen grimaced at that. She rolled onto her side and held herself still for a moment, thinking. At last, she sighed and shifted backward until her back brushed against his. 

“Warden?” 

His voice was wary. Wen frowned, ready to move again. 

“You were awake, too,” she said sharply. “So—here. If you have another nightmare.”

His back was tense against hers. She wasn’t sure how to interpret that. 

“Nevermind—” she began, but he was already speaking. 

“I—thank you, I did not mean—”

“I’ll move if you—”

“No, there is no need; I was not asking you for—”

“Fine, then, shut up and go to sleep. It doesn’t have to be a whole—a whole—thing.”

Ser Grr snored loudly at the foot of the bed, startling them both. When she finally recognized the sound, Tabris snorted and tucked an arm under her head. If this was the caliber of pillow the people in castles used, she supposed she was happy enough with the rolled-up blanket she’d left in the camp. How glad she would be when they saw the last of this place. 

“This makes us even,” she said after a moment. “For the wine.” 

At last, Zevran relaxed back against her. The next breath he took pressed his spine to hers. It was an odd sensation, and not one she was entirely sure she enjoyed. Wen waited. 

“I said there was no need.”

“You did.” 

“But—very well. We are even. Save the life debt, of course.”

“Of course,” she said, though the idea of him owing her a life debt still made her deeply uncomfortable. She wedged the pillow between her arm and head and tried to make herself comfortable again. 

The last thing she remembered before she fell asleep was the sound of his breathing, quiet and even behind her, and the soft pressure of his back against hers. She did not wake again until morning.