#also the Agent X that murdered the pilot is revealed to be a woman

[daydreamerdrew]

Contact Comics (1944) #2

[dragonrajafanfiction]

The Island

Fingel Von Frings took a deep drag of his cigar and exhaled smoke against the glass that allowed him to see into the cryo chamber while the people inside couldn’t see out.

Cassell medical personnel wrapped in thick cloth hazmat suits with protective helmets and visors worked quickly to secure Tom Allman for transport. His thick claws were wrapped in cut proof mittens. HIs arms were twisted tight in a straight jacket. On top of that, thick straps reinforced with kevlar tied his arms together. Finally, a helmet faced with a titanium alloy cage  was fitted over his head.

There was no point in wasting any more serum on this young man. He had passed the point of no return. 

As the Vice Chancellor, he’d only had the responsibility to sign off on his expulsion from Cassell. He didn’t have to be here. But he always made it a point to see off every student who left academy without an official ceremony.

A wheeled metal coffin was rolled in. On the count of three, the medics lifted his body and placed him inside, closing the lid. A pneumatic pump, sealed it with the push of the button and the glass that showed his sleeping face inside was frosted over as liquid nitrogen filled the tubing in the metal casket dropping the temperature inside. At this point, all of his body processes would cease functioning.

Fingel took a deep breath and let it out.

Footsteps approached him. Mr. Baldwin, the head of the executive department came up to him and held out a stack of papers. He stared at it. He was starting to hate those 8 x 10 white sheets as much as he hated doing his classwork.

But after a seconds hesitation, he took it from Baldwin’s hands and started to flip through it. “Runes, in Norton Hall?”

“First I’ve heard of it. Of course, it’s not the strangest thing I’ve heard. We scanned the entire place. No sign of any runes.”

“Have it tested for Longwei.” He pulled a pen from his pocket. It gleamed golden, a diamond at its head. He signed his name and handed the papers back to him.

“Yes, sir.”

“How is she?”

“Emotional.”

Fingel turned to him and stared coldly, his hands in his pockets. “What emotions.”

“Sadness, betrayal, distrust...”

“Has she talked to anyone?”

“She refuses all visitors. She believes Tom is dead. I’m fine with that. No one ever comes back from that island.”

“Does she want to leave?” Fingel began to walk out of the medical ward, still puffing on his cigar.

“She hasn’t said that. She hasn’t called her parents either.”

The chill wind from the rotors of a helicopter tossed Fingel’s golden hair about his face. The coffin was wheeled from the high security facility and into the open cargo bay of the helicopter.

“That’s strange. She talks to them every day...”

“Yes, her father has called the main office several times asking to speak with her. No word from her mother though.” Baldwin said this casually.

Of course, Fingel and Carli - otherwise known as Meixiu - talked frequently and Baldwin knew this. She had to be informed of new patients admitted to the island. “Do you want to know her opinion on the situation?”

“I do actually!” Though he was raising his voice to shout above the roar of the helicopter engine, Fingel could still hear the anger in his voice.

The machine lifted off and gained in altitude before swinging its nose to point towards the northwest and speed out of sight.

Once it was quiet enough to speak normally. “I want to know how long she plans to continue this cruel exercise. It would have been much easier to just expel him and put a bullet in his head. Which is what I suggested from the outset! And what I suggested after he went berserk and almost killed her the first time!” “Well, you went against your own orders the first time...” Fingel was quick to correct him.

“Which... I sincerely regret.”

Fingel turned to face him directly. “Why? What gave you hope the first time that has left you now?”

“There was a theory. I’d say it’s more of a myth than a theory. It stemmed from the report of Akira and Kogure Sakurai. Those two unstable Hybrids were part of the Devil Clan and had dangerous bloodlines. Both of them were held in the black jails run by Hydra until they escaped. Kogure, however, never harmed anyone, and Akira, after running on a spree of rape and murder, suddenly stopped.”

“The common denominator of the two was personal attachments. Kogure was attached to Chimei Gen. It was only after she felt that she had lost him that she finally gave in to her blood. And Akira had given in to his blood until he met a girl on the subway, which was actually an undercover agent for Hydra. He switched from killing every woman he met, to trying to protect her.”

“Ah... the power of love and friendship!” Fingel said without any mocking tone.

“Of course, this has been impossible to study. But when I saw how attached Ru’Yi was, I hoped she could act as a restraint for him. I knew this also posed a danger, so I put her under constant surveillance. But... this only served to put her in danger. The result was the same. She’s in the hospital, and he’s her mother’s guinea pig. The results were the same for Akira and Kogure as well.”

Fingel raised his hand and put it on Baldwin’s shoulder without looking at him. “Science has progressed and will progress. Even if he is a guinea pig, it may be one on the road to a solution.”

“We have a solution... Vice Chancellor.” He shrugged off his hand. “She just doesn’t want to accept it.”

Mr. Baldwin left Fingel to make the slow and long walk back to his office in the drifting snow.

The helicopter traversed the continental United States, briefly stopped for fuel in LA and lifted off again over the endless blue ocean of the Pacific. Eventually, the sun set and the pilot only had the instruments to go by. According to the official maps, there was no island on the coordinates. The helicopter was headed for a deadzone. The pilot turned the navigation to auto and stood up, walking back to the cargo bay.

The pilot removed the heavy flight helmet, revealing falling cascade of ebony hair which she shook out and ran her hands through.

Mai Sakatoku then reached into the onflight fridge for a can of beer which she opened and took a sip. “You make for quiet company.” 

She leaned over to see into the window of the coffin. The young man’s eyes were still closed, frozen in place by tears that couldn’t be shed. She lightly tapped the glass with a delicate fingernail. “You and Miss Chu’s daughter, hm?” 

She leaned against the coffin, her mind going back to the countless so called boyfriends of the past. “I suppose it’s fitting. Her father was also a berserker, before he fell head over heels for a certain dragon. And in the end, that was what saved his life.”

“She never got to tell you the story, because she doesn’t know it. In fact, I think it’s just me, my fellow Nanny and Mingfei Lu that know the end of that story.”

“Let’s hope yours ends a bit differently.”

There was no signal out here. So Mai had to content herself with whatever she had already downloaded on her phone, bingewatching her favorite movies and K-dramas. Meanwhile, she kept a close eye on the casket, making sure the temperature was kept cold enough to keep this guy from waking up.

A sudden alarm shook her from her reverie. She stood and went to the cockpit. Another plane, flying low, almost out of radar range but nearly directly below her. “Ah... we have a curious jet?”

She tried to get a picture of it, but it appeared invisible against the dark waves of the ocean. “Cloaking technology?”

Her eyes narrowed. This was no normal inquiry from a nation-state. Few nations could approach this level of high tech on a plane. Hybrids were higher functioning physically. The technology they surrounded themselves with was likewise ahead of human technology. 

That made this jet fair game. She did not change trajectory. Instead, she reached for a large gun on the back of the the plane. She hoisted to her shoulder with a soft grunt and strapped it to herself. She then hooked herself to the interior of the helicopter and opened the door.

The ferocious wind was enough to tear her away from the helicopter and she grit her teeth and let go. She was like an out of control kite, fluttering precariously in the wind. It was like being on the worst carnival ride. Still her powerful muscles braced themselves and forced the sight to her eyes. It wouldn’t do to have any reports getting out about the island.

She aimed directly for the cockpit of the jet. A tiny target to be sure. She took her time fluttering back and forth. Eventually her mind caught the rhythm of the wind, the speed of the aircraft, and linked it to the knowledge of the speed of the missile. She aimed at a spot far ahead and after a few more seconds, she pulled the trigger.

There was a bright flash of light. She blinked and the target had disappeared. She imagined the pilot getting vaporized instantly, the instrumentation getting blown apart. She turned her head to look, there wasn’t so much as a ripple that could remain in the open ocean.

[ebaeschnbliah]

CHANGING  OF  THE  GUARD

________________________________________________________________

A metaphorical reading of Sherlock BBC, The Sign of Three (and beyond)

The beginning of Sherlock BBC, The Sign of Three, really leaves no doubt what the theme of its story is about. When the eye of the camera zooms slowly in on Speedy’s and the famous black door with the number 221 in Baker Street, it seems to take it’s path right through a literal wood of pointy, black spears. Fences built of iron spears that guard the place..

It starts with a row of spears in the forground. When those get blurry, even more spears from midfield move into focus. Finally the camera reveals spears also in the background. That makes three levels of spears, one might say.

Three levels of spears stand like guardians in front of 221b Baker Street. Could those three levels symbolize the three stabbing victims of The Sign of Three? After all, each one of the three characters is depicted as guard, as protector ... and each one of them gets stabbed. 

TBC below the cut ...

Stephen Bainbridge 

He is a Private in the Household Guard of the Queen. The Grenadier Guards is an infantry regiment of the British Army. The current regiment is known as the 1st Regiment of Foot Guards … ’Every foot soldier bears the mark’  (Soo Lin, TBB). How surprising is it that the ‘East’ zooms in on Bainbridge before he gets stabbed by Jonathan Small? 

Also … the gesture of the woman is interesting. Two Vs make a W (or a M … depends on the turning). It also lets me think of Culverton Smith’s W-gesture in TLD, in the short clip with the man disguised as cock (x).

Modern Grenadier Guardsmen wear a cap badge of a "grenade fired proper" with seventeen flames (x). Foot soldiers linked to exploding grenades … what a lovely coincidence, especially regarding the ‘passions’ grenade from TFP. :)

When the changing of the guards takes place, Bainbridge is already wounded and slowly dying. He got stabbed before the changing.

The name Stephen is of Greek origin and means ‘crown’ and ‘that which surrounds’. Saint Stephen was stoned to death and is regarded as the very first Christian martyr. 

Another little detail caught my attention as well. Just a word used twice to describe a person. 

SHERLOCK: “Elite Guard.” JOHN: Forty enlisted men and officers. SHERLOCK: Why this particular Grenadier? Curious.

And in TRF Sherlock sais:

SHERLOCK: This little boy; this particular little boy ... who reads all of those spy books. What would he do? JOHN: He’d leave a sign?

Max Bruhl left a sign. Stephen Bainbridge wrote a note. Not much of a difference, I think.

Guardsmen   Max and Claudette

 James Sholto

He is a retired Major of the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers and Captain John Watson’s old commanding officer. A decorated war hero but not to everyone. Something went wrong when he led a team of new recruits into battle. ‘They all died’ (just like AGRA). Major Sholto, badly wounded, was the only survivor. Press and families gave him hell. Deaththreats and hate almost turned him into a recluse, into a most unsociable man, who spends his retirement way out in the middle of nowhere.

I’m quite sure this has been mentioned before, the 5th Northumberland Regiment on Foot (’foot soldiers’ too) still uses their ancient badge … St George killing the dragon (x)   Every quiver of his beating heart

‘He destroyed us all’  …  somehow these words sound very similar to the one Sherlock uses in TFP, in a situation where he considers himself to be a soldier: ‘Five minutes. It took her just five minutes to do all of this to us. Well, not on my watch.’ 

As mentioned above, Mary’s dialogue in TST matches the description about the incident with Sholto’s recruits almost identically …  ‘something went wrong’/’but it went wrong’ … ‘I was the only one who made it our’/’they all died; he was the only survivor’. And Mary considered AGRA to be her family ... ‘we were family’. 

Major John Sholto is an original character from ACDs novel The Sign of Four. His sons are called Thaddeus and Bartholomew. The renaming of the Major’s first name - from John to James - must have been a deliberate choice. A choice which is reflected in the skip code of TEH ‘John or James Watson … saint or sinner ... James or John’, as well as in John Watson’s middle name … Hamish (Scottish for James).

Major Sholto’s room number is ‘two oh seven’. This reminds me of the ‘double oh seven’ codeword for the ‘flight of the dead’ in ASIB. Two and double …. both means 2. Sure, the number on the door reads 207 but then, it happens several times in this story, that things told and things shown are sometimes not quite the same or vis versa. 

When the wedding guests leave the church and the reception takes place, Sholto is already wounded and slowly dying. He has been stabbed before.

Sherlock investigates the cases of both guardians

Bainbridge’s note reaches him sometime during the wedding preparations. John and Sherlock arrive just in time to save Private Bainbridge’s life. The case though remains unsolved.

Without knowing it at the time, Sherlock investigates Sholto’s case during John’s stag night. They call the investigation of the ghost-man the ‘Mayfly Man’ case. It remains also unsolved.

Sherlock includes both unsolved cases into his best man speech at John’s wedding and here at last, all the puzzle pieces fall into place and Sherlock is able to solve both cases, which are closely related. As a consequence Major Sholto’s life can be saved as well. 

The person responsible for the attempts to kill Private Bainbridge and Major Sholto is:

Jonathan Small

‘Brilliant, ruthless, almost certainly a monomaniac - though, in fairness, his photographs are actually quite good’ … that’s how Sherlock describes the killer. Small’s motive is revenge. He is convinced that Major Sholto is responsible for the death of Small’s brother Peter, who had been among the killed recruits. It seems that Private Bainbridge merely had the misfortune and got randomly chosen for the rehearsal of Sholto’s murder. But ... why this particular 'foot soldier’? (I’ll come back to that question later)

Jonathan Small grins like Jim Moriarty and wears a checkered shirt like John. He is a brilliant, ruthless monomaniac and obviously also a womaniizer who has no problems to woo half a dozen women, almost at the same time, into telling him well-kept secrets. Basically … a perfect blend of Jim Moriarty and traditional John ‘three continents’ Watson. 

Like Major Sholto, Jonathan Small too is an original character from ACDs novel The Sign of Four. His name has not been changed. Only together with his female and not-canon counterpart Janine, Mary’s bridesmaid, who seems to be a lovely blend of Irene and Jim, the name chosen for the antagonist of this episode, appears to gain a special significance. 

Janine - deiminutive of Jeanne, female form of John … ‘little Johnny’

Jonathan - diminutives are Jon, Jonni ... though not related to ‘John’ regarding the meaning of the name, it can still be heard as … ‘little Jonny’  (’You can talk, Johnny-boy. Go ahead.‘ Jim, TGG)

None other than ‘little Jo(h)nny’ (the H makes the difference) is responsible for the almost murder of Private Bainbridge and Major Sholto, the first two stabbing victims of this episode. 

‘Little Johnny’ also happens to be another word for penis … the ‘meat dagger’.

Who’s the third ‘victim’ then?

Mary Elizabeth Morstan

She is a character full of surprises who starts as a simple nurse who marries John Watson in TSOT. Among Sherlock’s deduction-word-cloud in TEH the term ‘guardian’ can be found and only one episode after the ‘wedding’, Sherlock outs her as facade … his very own facade, because the Empty Houses in Leinster Gardens, on whose front walls Mary’s face is projected, are Sherlock’s property. 

Mary Elizabeth Morstan isn’t her real name either. It’s the name of a stillborn child from a gravestone in Chiswick Cementry. This connects her character to the other stillborn child of this story ... Rachel Wilson, the pink lady’s daughter from ASIP. The initials A.G.R.A. stand for Mary’s true name, she tells later … but soon this turns out to be incorrect as well. A.G.R.A. was a group of four undercover agents who worked for the British Government. Prior to her ‘retirement’ Mary had been a member of that group. Sherlock describes her as ‘super-agent with a terrifying skill set’. Based on the current status, her two first names are Rosamund Mary … the family name is still unknown (if there even is one). 

Why should Mary be the third stabbing victim?

Readers of my theories will probably know that I’m playing for a long time now with a mind palace scenario which stretches from the beginning, most likely in PILOT (or even before) to the end of S4 (x). Back then I wondered ...

Is it really so farfetched to consider the possibility that Sherlock tries to deduce and solve the mysteries and problems of his own live - and his falling in love with John - at first in his mind? Before he comes out?

Over decades - since ACD - the story of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson has been told by the famous 'unreliable narrator’. Could it be that this time - with Sherlock BBC - the world will get the true story? Finally told by Sherlock himself? By looking right into his heart and mind and soul? By showing how his brilliant mind works? How his heart and soul expand and grow?

Would TPTB do such a thing? Stay in Sherlock’s mind over the span of multiple episodes? Follow his train of thought … show his evolution … in such a way? I don’t know. But it sounds thrilling to me. (Nov 2016)

Based on those early ideas I gradually came to the conclusion that Sherlock BBC tells the story of how Sherlock Holmes deduced his own persona. He does this the same way he investigates his criminal cases … by setting up scenarios in his mind and repeating those until he has found the correct solution (The Stage is set). Investigating his own case - the pink one - in such a way, would mean that all the characters which appear on Sherlock’s ‘mind stage’ represent different aspects of himself. Some of them may be based on real life persons, most of them are probably entirely created by Sherlock’s imagination. I like to compaire this process to a ‘mind journey’ or to a long (dramatic) dialogue, Sherlock holds with himself. This propably doesn’t happen during a dream or in a state of coma, as I thought back in 2016. A lot of time and thinking has gone by since then. Nowadays I presume that a conscious thinking process would fit better with the literal character Sherlock Holmes, whose deductions are always built on facts, science, reason and logic. It would be rather OOC that a man like Holmes would base an important, life changing decision on anything else than his razor sharp mind. Anyway, it’s just one of many theories.

Mary now … ever since I noticed the lot of similarities this character shares with Sherlock (x) my view on her started to change considerably. To me she isn’t the woman anymore who comes between Sherlock and John but instead the facade Sherlock Holmes created and married to his traditional, eternal friendship with John Watson for the sole purpose, to hide his romantic feelings and his sexual desire for the friend behind this protective wall. Mary is Sherlock’s facade, his guardian, his firewall … because:

John can’t ever know that I lied to him. It would break him and I would lose him forever – and I will never let that happen. Please … understand. There is nothing in this world that I would not do to stop that happening.

In my opinion, these are Sherlock’s own words and they express his fear of what might happen to the uinque friendship he shares with John, if the friend ever discovers the true nature of his feelings for him. Sherlock would do anything to stop that happening, even if this means that he has to incarcerate his emotions inside a high-security facility, behind elephant glass and chain his sexuality with iron bonds to a wall in a padded cell, like a hound from hell.  

The ‘meat dagger’ incident

Sherlock tells the wedding guests - Major Sholto sits among them - about the unsolved Bainbridge case and asks if any of them has got a theory how that guard might have been stabbed. What kind of murderer can walk through walls, which weapon can vanish? Molly’s fiancé Tom (both characters are mirrors for John and Sherlock) assumes it could be a case of ‘attempted suicice by meat dagger’ ... something that would have been self administered. 

A lot has been written since then about the ‘meat dagger’ as a metaphor for 'penis’ …. for ‘little Johnny’.  :)

Sherlock sees only one feature of interest in the whole case … while he tried to solve the mystery, the eternal friend saved the life of the guard. And just the same happens a little while later with Major Sholto, the other guardian. It turns out that both men - both guardians - have been stabbed by the same killer … Jonathan Small … little Jonny, the meat dagger ....

There’s only one other character in this episode who has been stabbed unknowingly as well. That’s Mary. And in her case it’s indeed … ‘stabbed by meat dagger’ because Sherlock deduces her pregnancy by the end of the episode. Or expressed in computer language:  the firewall has been penetrated by the virus.

The ‘father’ might be John or David, Mary’s ex. It doesn’t matter if one views the story metaphorically where all characters represent aspects of Sherlock himself. Going by his looks, David is clearly a mirror for John, while his history regarding the constant online observation of Mary, connects him to Mycroft, the brain. David seems to be a ‘blended’ mirror like Jonathan Small (John/Jim) or Janine (Irene/Jim). A mirror who represents the ongoing interest of the brain in the feelings hidden behind the facade. 

When Sherlock marries John and Mary, he puts a guardian in front of his true feelings for the friend. He tries to ‘downgrade’ those feelings. And yet, Sherlock allows three ‘social ancounters a year’ but ‘always in John’s - the traditional friendship’s presence’. That sounds very much like the ‘calculated risk’ Mycroft takes with Eurus. Both ‘brothers’ seem to be ‘love-addicts’ in need of a fix, once in a while … when the burden of ‘holding oneself to a higher standard’, of ‘keeping oneself right’ gets too heavy … or too boring. In that case it could propably happen that one takes the frustration out on the wall … then the wall has it coming …  :)

The moment of revelation

When Sherlock is blinded by the flashlight of ‘little Jo(h)nni’s’ camera, he suddenly realizes that the cases of Bainbridge and Sholto are connected. That the stabber has to be the same person. It’s the moment when the first domino piece falls and knocks over the next, and the next, and the next …. leading to a chain reaction of revelations at the end of which Sherlock knows without any doubt that his new facade had been penetrated again … this time though by a ‘kill shot’. He’d been hit by AMO (the perfect ammonition), fired by the crack shot that is his eternal friend. The seed of love has been laid without Sherlock noticing the ‘chink in his armour’ through which Cupid’s arrow hit home. Now love has taken root behind his facade and is growing. 

The name chosen for that love is Rosamund - Rose of the world, as the dialogue in TST confirms. There’s a real rose of that name - Rosa Mundi - an old rose depicted in a work of Sandro Botticelli “Virgin Adoring the Sleeping Christ Child”. This rose is also known by the synonym ‘rosa versicolor’ - which means ‘rose of many or changing colours ... iridiscent’.

The word iridescence is derived in part from the Greek word ἶρις îris , meaning rainbow, It is the phenomenon of certain surfaces that appear to gradually change color as the angle of view or the angle of illumination changes. (X)

Sherlock - the ‘virgin’ he is called in ASIB by Jim and Irene - announces the pregnancy of Mary (I still wonder if this means that he is the 'Gabriel’ of A.G.R.A. - the angel who announces virgin Mary’s pregnancy). And during the stag night, John is labeled with ‘Madonna’. Another name for Virgin Mary. This turns the eternal friend also into the ‘virgin’, just like Sherlock and Mary. Another ‘sign of three’ one could say. 

Three virgins - three novices - who will now start a new journey on a way they have never travelled before. Sherlock will finally encounter romantic love and accept it ‘it is what it is’, the facade will ‘get retired in a pretty permanent sort of way’ as the brain blatantly puts it in TST and the traditional ‘eternal’ friendship will have to change into a romantic-sexuell relationship. A morphing together of friendship and sex - John and James - would be a quite logical consequence, I guess.

In TST the little baby is christened with the name Rosamund, a name that can be traced back to ‘rainbow’ … Rosie for short.  And rosy=pink!

‘Oh, what a night! ... I was never gonna be the same … I felt a rush like a rollin' ball of thunder spinnin' my head around n' takin' my body under’ 

No wonder this song has been chosen by the creators to accompany this scene. Overwhelmed by emotions - surprise, confusion, amazement, shock, joy, panic, uncertainty, concern, fear - Sherlock isn’t able anymore to carry on with this ‘wedding’ .... with this renewed ‘changing of the guard’. He walks away alone into the night. The case is solved. Sherlock is aware of what happened. Now he has to deal with the consequences. Should he really replace his guardian again or should he finally stop pretending, stop lying, drop the facade and confess his deepest secret?

Because if you tell them and they decide they’d rather not know, you can’t take it back. You can’t unsay it. Once you’ve opened your heart, you can’t close it again.

This confrontation, Sherlock fights with himself, becomes the centrepiece of the following episode (HLV) where Sherlock is completely torn into. One half of his being, still protected by the facade, is at war with the ... ‘other one’, the slowly increasing emotional side of him. But somewhere deep inside his mind he probably knows already that this is a war ‘he must lose’. And so Sherlock has to go deeper ...

TAB doesn’t only take Sherlock back to his literal roots. In this episode Sherlock investigates again two of the main threads of the story and ties them together through the ‘bride’ … FALL and HOUND. Mary, the facade, feels already ‘left behind’ and John, who represents Sherlock’s now fully acknowledged, tender feelings, directed at his friend ... ‘does grow up so fast’. The episode ends with Sherlock, who throws himself into a torrent of water=emotions and follows Jim Moriarty, Mr Sex, down the Reichenbach Fall … right into the emotional rollercoaster that is Series Four. 

Like the investigation in TAB, this series runs backwards as well. TST repeats the events of S2 and S3 while TLD zooms in on S1. I persume this happens because Sherlock applies an ability he describes to Dr. Watson as ... ‘reasoning backwards’:

“In solving a problem of this sort, the grand thing is to be able to reason backwards. That is a very useful accomplishment, and a very easy one, but people do not practise it much. In the every-day affairs of life it is more useful to reason forwards, and so the other comes to be neglected. There are fifty who can reason synthetically for one who can reason analytically…Let me see if I can make it clearer. Most people, if you describe a train of events to them, will tell you what the result would be. They can put those events together in their minds, and argue from them that something will come to pass. There are few people, however, who, if you told them a result, would be able to evolve from their own inner consciousness what the steps were which led up to that result. This power is what I mean when I talk of reasoning backwards, or analytically.”  (ACD  A Study in Scarlet, Conclusion) 

There’s one important change though, which will alter everything. Sherlock now adds baby Rosie, the pink seed of love, the AMO-factor, to his equation. As a consequence his mask, his facade - that what ‘thatched’ and guarded him - crumbles and falls. And Sherlock accepts the change … It is what it is. 

Then, in TFP, the third episode of S4, Sherlock puts the results of his deductions under the sharp lens of his emotional core, for the ultimate experiment … the final distillation … to produce at last a clear solution. Still missing is the chemical reaction that should follow the application of that solution, one might say. :)

Back to the three ‘guardians’

My husband is three people

During the wedding preparations, John tries to interst Sherlock for this curious case. John says the sentence ‘my husband is three people’ twice, interupted only by this short dialogue:

SHERLOCK: Major James Sholto. Who he? MARY: Oh, John’s old commanding officer. 

Taking John’s words ‘my husband is three people’ literally, then he is talking about his own husband … which will soon be Mary. Husband, not wife, because Mary represents an aspect of Sherlock, his facade, his cover ... his ‘thatch’. As mentioned above, when Sherlock marries John to Mary, he puts a guardian in front of his true feelings for the friend … one could also say …. he places a commander at their/his side. And this is exactly what Mary does in later episodes. She decides who mowes the lawn, chooses the name of the baby and that it is her to take John home and not vis versa. 

Husbands can be equated with facades, with commanders, with guards. All of them serve as protectors and defenders of Sherlock’s true feelings for the friend. 

Who could have been the first ‘husband’ … the first facade, the first guardian?

Neither of us were the first

This is what Mary tells Sherlock, while John welcomes his ‘privious’ commander. Is she really talking about sexuell experiences of her brand-new husband with another man, just to taunt Sherlock? Viewing the Mary-character as an aspect of Sherlock himself and not as a real wife that comes between two men, I heavily doubt this. Applying a metaphorical reading to the story, wouldn’t it be much more likely that this conversation is about their - Mary’s and Sholto’s - assigned profession. Neither of us were the first … guardian.

Mary is the husband to be, the most recently chosen facade, John’s new commanding officer, an undercover agent of the government.

Major James Sholto is John’s old commanding officer, Sherlock’s previous facade, which turned out to be not strong enough. 

The only other guard in this story is Stephen Bainbridge, Private in the Household Guard of the Queen. The foot soldier named after Saint Stephen, the first martyrer. 

And isn’t there somthing strikingly similar regarding those three guards as well as a noticeable increase in drama and strength, which so often happens when sequences are repeated on Sherlock’s mind stage?

Private Bainbridge guards the Queens Palace. The ‘East’ zoomes in on him, then he get’s stabbed by ‘little Jonny’ - the meat dagger - without noticing it. A changing of the guard takes place. Bainbridge almost dies beneath a shower of water.

Major Sholto guards the Queens country. He fights on a battlefield in the East beneath a burning hot sun. Something goes wrong and all the recruits under his command die. Badly wounded himself, Sholto has to leave the service and change into retirement. He gets stabbed by ‘little Jonny’ - the meat dagger - and almost dies.

Mary secretly works for Mycroft, the government, the ‘queen’ -  as an undercover ‘super-agent with a terrifying skill set’. Her last operation took place in the East. Something went wrong and a lot of people died. It first looked as if Mary had been the only surviver (like Sholto). She marries ‘Johnny-boy’ Watson, gets stabbed by his meat dagger, becomes pregnant and …. dies not long after ‘PINK-RAINBOW-ROSIES’ birth.

The Sign of Three is about the ‘changing of the guard’. It takes place inside Sherlock’s head. But the marriage of John and Mary, that Sherlock arranges so heartbreakingly beautiful (and so strikingly yellow), turns out to be utterly pointless. Because the bride, the husband, the new commander, the facade is already pregnant ... had been stabbed before the wedding ... before the changing of the guard. 

The Yellow Face connection

This isn’t new. It has been discussed before in this interesting meta  About Yellow Face  by @darlingtonsubstitution  (sadly the part below the cut is gone) from 2017. As mentioned in the comments there, the creators of Sherlock BBC once refered to their favourite ACD stories. Yellow Face was among them but ... they wouldn’t be able to adapt it, because of the sensitive content, they said. This isn’t quite true though, it seems. On the contrary, the colour yellow features most prominently in Sherlock BBC … and not just the colour itself. 

It starts with Sherlock’s and John’s first date at Angelo’s. The whole scene is drenched in yellow. PILOT even more than ASIP.

A secret code of ancient cyphers, sprayed in yellow paint, leads to the Yellow Dragon Circus. 

Golden cats and big ‘yellow’ felines - lions - roam the story. 

Yellow is the colour of the smiley face on the wall of the 221b living room. 

There’s an assassin who carries a yellow ladder and a yellow tool case with a gun in it. 

A bright yellow mask has been placed inside a box, alongside a train, a phone, nicotin patches and a note. 

The main colour of the wedding ... bright yellow. It’s the wedding that leads Sherlock to the revelation ... to his love deduction. 

A canary trainer, a trainer of yellow birds, turns out to be the killer. 

Norbury, the case of the Yellow Face from canon, plays a vital role in TST 

The finish of a race is marked with a bright yellow band that floats slowly to the ground while a ‘confessing’ serial killer, who is a mirror for John, passes as winner, signaling a W with his fingers, while the fingers from the ‘East’,, next to Private Bainbridge, signal a double V.

Yellow is the colour of the sun, of fire, flames and explosions.

Yellowbeard ….

But one of the most important links to Yellow Face is the following one:

JOHN: Mary, I may not be a very good man, but I think I’m a bit better than you give me credit for, most of the time. (Sherlock BBC, TST) 'I am not a very good man, Effie, but I think that I am a better one than you have given me credit for being.'  (Grant Munro, The Adventure of the Yellow Face)

This piece of dialogue connects John to Grant Munro, the husband of Effie, the woman who hides her secret child from a previous marriage behind a yellow mask. She doesn’t do it out of some dark or sinister motive as Sherlock Holmes is convinced at first. Her former marriage had been legal and she'd loved her late husband dearly. Lucy, her little girl, can truly be called a child of love. But Effie fears to reveal Lucy, because the girl is ‘different' and the mother is anxious to lose the man she loves now, because of this. She is torn into between the love for her child and the love for her husband.

She (Effie) drew a large silver locket from her bosom. 'You have never seen this open.'

'I understood that it did not open.'

She touched a spring, and the front hinged back. There was a portrait within of a man, strikingly handsome and intelligent, but bearing unmistakable signs upon his features of his African descent.  (ACD, The Yellow Face)

ACDs Yellow Face is a case without crime, without any devious betrayal. Instead, it’s about love and the fear to lose  love, because at that time in ACDs story, it’s about a love not accepted by many. 

'That is John Hebron, of Atlanta,' said the Lady (Effie), 'and a nobler man never walked the earth. I cut myself off from my race in order to wed him; but never once while he lived did I for one instant regret it. It was our misfortune that our only child took after his people rather than mine.   (ACD, The Yellow Face)

In ACDs Yellow Face, the ‘first husband’ is of ‘African descent’ … just like Private Bainbridge, who is the ‘first guardian’ - the first of the three ‘identical husbands’ - in Sherlock BBC, The Sign of Three. He is the one who represents Sherlock’s earliest facade … the guardian of the Queen’s Palace.

Just like @darlingtonsubstitution presumed more than two years ago, I’m now more convinced than ever, that Moffat and Gatiss did adapt ACDs Yellow Face and they not only included it in Sherlock BBC, they made it into the main theme of their story (beside ‘hound’, ‘fall’ and ‘scarlet/pink’). In their version though, the focus shifts from ‘unacceptable’ skin-colour to ‘unacceptable’ sexuality. 

Sherlock BBCs baby ... Rosie ... Sherlock’s baby ... represents love. And this love is pink and has been given a name that can be traced back to ‘Rainbow’. The Sign of Three tells the story of the ‘changing of the guards’ and how Sherlock finally discovers the AMO-factor that will alter his life completely.

When I discoverd Sherlock BBC for the first time (back in 2011) I was thrilled by that fascinating crime drama and its two charismatic leads. Now, after 13 episodes, it has grown into so much more than just an excellent crime drama among others. The way I read it, Sherlock BBC is a wonderful and stunning story about equality. Inside Sherlock’s mind, the great detective doesn’t only solve the greatest secret of his life. No, the actors Sherlock chooses to represent the different aspects of his persona, are as diverse as the colours of the rainbow. They are old and young, male and female, beautiful and ugly, strong and weak, rich and poor. Neither gender, sexuality nor the shade of skin colour or from which corner on this planet someone comes, is of any importance. Anyone can be a part of this Sherlock Holmes. That’s what makes this adaptation so absolutely unique to me. Sherlock himself becomes the rainbow of his own story. 

Thanks for reading to anyone who is still there. :))))  I leave you to your own deductions. And thanks @callie-ariane​ for your invaluable scripts.

December, 2019

________________________________________________________________

Episode spanning metaphorical reading of Sherlock BBC: 

From PILOT to TGG  ….      About the meaning of S1 

From ASIB to TEH  ….  The big question - what is the meaning of Reichenbach

[aion-rsa]

Best Horror TV Shows on Hulu

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You thought movies were the only place to get your daily dose of horror? Oh you fool! You absolute FOOL! There are plenty of bingeworthy and scary horror TV shows out there and Hulu just happens to be a great place to find them. 

Hulu is home to recent hits like The Terror and Castle Rock but there are still more scares to be found for the horror enthusiast willing to dig deep. Gathered here are some of the best and scariest horror TV shows that Hulu has to offer.

Editor’s Note: This post is updated monthly. Bookmark this page and come back every month to see the additions to the best horror TV shows on Hulu.

Updated for October 2020

The Terror

Based on a 2007 book of the same name by Dan Simmons, The Terror season 1 tells a fictionalized account of Captain Sir John Franklin’s expedition to the arctic in 1845. In real life, the doomed men likely got lost and succumbed to the cold but the show asks “what if there was something more sinister than low temperatures lurking about?”

The Terror features a cast impressively full of “hey it’s that guy” guys like Jared Harris, Ciarán Hindis, and Tobias Menzes. It deftly turned itself into an anthology with the second season The Terror: Infamy that tells a ghost story within the setting of a Japanese interment camp in World War II.

American Horror Story

Ryan Murphy’s American Horror Story is revolutionary in quite a few ways. Not only did it help usher in a renewed era of anthology storytelling on television, it also was arguably the first successful network television horror show since The X-Files.

Like all anthologies, American Horror Story has its better seasons (season 1 a.k.a. Murder House, season 2 a.k.a. Asylum, season 6 a.k.a. Roanoke) and its worse (season 3 a.k.a. Coven and season 8 a.k.a. Apocalypse). Still, for nine years and counting, American Horror Story has been one of the go-to options for TV horror fans.

Castle Rock

Stephen King properties have made their way to television before. There have been miniseries for classic King texts like The Stand and ‘Salem’s Lot and even full series for works like Rose Red and Under the Dome. Still, none of those series has had the audacity to adapt multiple aspects of the Stephen King universe itself…until Castle Rock.

Castle Rock takes multiple characters, storylines, and concepts from the vast works of Stephen King and puts them all in King’s own Castle Rock, Maine. The first season featured inmates from Shawshank prison, extended family of Jack Torrance, and maybe even a touch of the shine. The show opened itself up for more storytelling possibilities in season 2, adopting an anthology format and bringing Annie Wilkes into the fold.

The Twilight Zone

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The Strain

The most novel thing about FX’s vampire horror thriller The Strain is how it equates the ancient fear of vampirism with the more modern, global fear of pandemic. The Strain, produced by Guillermo del Toro Chuck Hogan and based on their novel series opens with a flight landing with all of its passengers mysteriously dead.

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As CDC director Ephraim Goodweather (Corey Stoll) steps in to investigate, he discovers that there might be something more sinister…and ancient afoot than a simple virus. The Strain lasted for four mostly decent seasons on FX and if nothing else helped re-embrace the vampire as a monster and not some sort of noble antihero.

Stan Against Evil

To parody horror, one needs to love horror. And Stan Against Evil creator Dana Gould really, really, really loves horror. The longtime standup comedian and comedy writer brings his unique humor sensibilities and lifelong appreciation of horror to tell the story of a quaint New Hampshire town that just happens to be built on the cursed site of a massive witch burning.

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John C. McGinley stars as the titular Stan, a disgraced former sheriff who opts to pick up the battle against evil after a close call. He teams up with new sheriff Evie Barret (Janet Varney) to defend the town (and sometimes world) from supernatural threats.

The X-Files

The X-Files is quite simply the gold standard for horror on television. Chris Carter’s conspiracy-tinged supernatural masterpiece not only inspired every horror TV show that came after it, but just about every other TV show in general.

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By Alejandro Rojas

The X-Files follows FBI special agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) as they investigate the unusual cases that traditional law enforcement won’t touch. For 11 seasons (and a handful of movies), the show expertly balanced a massive series-long story along with what came to be called “monster of the week” self-contained tales.

Buzzfeed Unsolved: Supernatural

When it first premiered on YouTube back in 2016, Buzzfeed Unsolved became a huge hit by appealing to one of the Internet’s favorite subjects: true crime. Still Buzzfeed saw all of that success and realzied there was still another audience to serve. Thus Buzzfeed Unsolved: Supernatural was born.

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By Rosie Knight

In this spinoff hosts Ryan Bergara and Shane Madej examine some of the supernatural world’s biggest mysteries. With the right balance of skepticism and belief, Buzzfeed Unsolved: Supernatural is a welcome entry into the paranormal investigation TV canon.

The Outer Limits

When The Twilight Zone premiered in 1959, it set off a brief little renaissance of anthology horror storytelling on television. The best of these contenders to the Zone‘s throne was probably the sci-fi centric The Outer Limits.

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Outer Limits aired from 1963 to 1965 on ABC. In that span it generated 49 spooky episodes, several of which made an impact on pop culture. Alan Moore infamously borrowed the plot of the episode “The Architects of Fear” for the ending of Watchmen. The Outer Limits received a Sci-Fi Channel revival in the ’90s and is currently poised for another bite at the apple.

Freakish

Freakish stars several high profile (at the time at least) social media stars as students at Kent High School. The kids are gathered together at school on Saturday for detention, Breakfast Club-style, when a nearby chemical plant explodes, turning the local population into mutated zombies. The group must band together to survive.

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Debuting in 2016, Freakish ran for two seasons on Hulu. The show embraces its teenage soapiness and isn’t necessarily the most heavyweight horror option. But it’s a quick, fun watch for any zombie horror fan nonetheless.

The Exorcist

The Exorcist is one of the greatest horror films ever made. The Fox series that bears its name and premise isn’t quite as good (few things could ever be) but it’s still an excellent horror story in its own right.

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The Exorcist is a two-season long anthology series that follows two different cases of demonic possession. In the first installment, two Catholic priests assist a woman with a possession in her home. In the second, two new priests help a young girl battle evil.

Ghost Adventures

Since the turn of the millennium, television has not been lacking for shows involving paranormal investigations. But even within the crowded spooky market, Travel Channel’s Ghost Adventures stands out.

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First premiering in 2008, Ghost Adventures follows paranormal researchers Zak Bagans, Nick Groff, Aaron Goodwin, Billy Tolley, and Jay Wasley as they travel the world looking for ghoulish occurrences to investigate. Over its 200-some episodes (not including specials), Ghost Adventures has proven itself to be the gold standard for people who just want to watch some dudes stumble around old properties in night vision.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

Monsterland

Since Netflix acquired the rights to Black Mirror back in 2015, the streaming world has been a veritable arms race of sci-fi and horror anthology series. Hulu has already tried its hand at horror anthology with the Blumhouse-produced Into the Dark, and Monsterland represents the latest effort.

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How Scorn Turned the Art of H.R. Giger into a Nightmarish Horror Game World

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Monsterland is based on the short story collection North American Lake Monsters: Stories by Nathan Ballingrud. It consists of eight spooky, unconnected tales and features the acting talents of Kaitlyn Dever, Bill Camp, Kelly Marie Tran, and more. The twist here is that each episode focuses on an urban legend from a different city within the United States. And given how weird this country is, the series won’t be running out of of stories anytime soon.

The post Best Horror TV Shows on Hulu appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[comic-movieheroesranked]

Cinematic Comic Characters Ranked! (Year 2009) Part Three

It’s rough coming right after a fantastic year of movies (2008) but 2009 did pretty well for itself. Terminator Salvation is our only sequel and we also get an X-Men spinoff with X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Kids favorite shows come out with Astro Boy, Dragonball: Evolution, and G.I. Joe: Rise of the Cobra, and we got a couple of thrillers with Whiteout and Surrogates. We also get the debut of the controversial Watchmen! Let’s get started with numbers #40-21!

*SPOILERS AHEAD FOR ALL HIGHLIGHTED MOVIES ABOVE*

40. President Stone/Peacekeeper (Astro Boy)

"Declare war! This is gonna get me re-elected."

How did this guy even get elected in the first place? He's an idiot who thought the only way to stay in power was through violent technology. It's his arrogance that gets Toby killed and it's his arrogance that puts the whole city in danger when he still decides to use the red core energy. He ends up getting absorbed by the Peacekeeper and starts a city-wide battle with Astro that only ends when Astro sacrifices himself and connects the two cores. Stone is then arrested by his own men and taken away.

39. Delfy (Whiteout)

"They don't make them like that anymore."

Delfy was just a regular pilot who just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. He's the one who first discovers Weiss's body out on the ice and contacts Carrie. Afterwards, she makes him her personal pilot as she sets up an investigation. This new job ends up nearly killing him twice: Once when he gets buried under fifty feet of snow with the others inside the Russian plane, and another when Haden breaks out and stabs him. He recovers and ends up bonding with Pryce and Carrie for six months until the winter is over.

38. Abel Shaz/Breaker (G.I. Joe: Rise of the Cobra)

"Is that Double Bubble?"

Although he isn't the only brains on the team, if anyone needs advice on technology, Breaker is your guy. I will always enjoy the member of the squad who understand gadgets like no one else can yet doesn't truly understand most jokes that said. With the nanobite warheads being the most dangerous pieces of technology known to man, Breaker comes in handy in helping the team stop Cobra from bringing whole cities down.

37. Agent Zero (X-Men Origins: The Wolverine)

"It's funny how innocent people tend to die around you!"

For some reason Wolverine and Agent Zero DID NOT get along with each other. Everyone would be joking along with everyone else then all of a sudden they're both threatening to kill each other. The years after Logan leaves Stryker's team doesn't cool off the tension because those two are ready to pop off again when they reunite. It's a pointless rivalry though because we all knew Logan would come out on top, and it's not because he's the main character either. I mean, yeah, Zero is really good when it comes to shooting bullets and jumping over high fences but bullets don't do anything to Wolverine especially once he gets the adamantium in his skeleton. So when the two clash, Agent Zero ends up exploding in a helicopter and Logan...remains unharmed.

36. Sally Jupiter/Silk Spectre (Watchmen)

"I don't hate him because he gave me you."

The original Silk Spectre and one of the few remaining heroes alive from the Minutemen. Sally Jupiter is retired now and totally missing the game, so much that she trains her daughter to be the next Silk Spectre. She reminds me so much of those pageant moms that now live through their daughter's lives to fill young again. Although I'd really like to know why, it's never really explained, only assumed, why Sally goes back to sleep with The Comedian, who tried to rape her previously. The result of their one night stand is Laurie, who ends up coming to terms with it by the time she finds out and confronts Sally about it.

35. Chi-Chi (Dragonball: Evolution)

"Just because my name is Chi-Chi doesn't mean I'm an idiot."

I liked Chi-Chi and I'm pretty sure the only reason why they didn't have her in the movie more was because they knew I'd rank her higher than Goku if they did. I mean if I were in the group hunting Dragon Balls I would have totally added her in once I saw her fighting skills but it never happens. Instead we just see her every time we need someone to flirt with Goku.

34. Maggie Greer (Surrogates)

"It's better this way."

Maggie is Greer's wife and together they lost a son before surrogates became globally used. This causes her to mourn in a unique way where she locks herself in her own room and just lives her life through her surrogate. Even though she cares for Greer, she ignores the distance between them instead for the new fun life she has as a surrogate. When the surrogates are destroyed, she almost kills herself but ends up connecting with her husband again in their child's old room.

33. Dr. Bill Tenma (Astro Boy)

"You're still my son."

It took me a very long time to like Tenma, and I was starting to believe that he was a lost caused until he pulled through in the end. First he completely ignores Toby when he was alive, treating him like a unbothered teacher would a student instead of a father, then goes into a huge depression after he dies. Because of this, he creates Astro, a robot version of Toby but then completely abandons him shortly after and then aids President Stone in capturing him and shutting him down. It isn't until after he removes the core from Astro that he finally accepts him as his son, returning the core and bringing him back to life.

32. Goku (Dragonball: Evolution) 

"Kamehameha!"

With Dragon Ball being a Japanese anime I was glad that there was a lot of Japanese influence in the movie. The setting, the background actors, even some of the core cast but you know who wasn't? GOKU! Like I don't understand the reasoning as to why they thought casting a white guy as Goku would be a great idea when Grandpa Gohan was clearly Asian! But besides that, Goku was lame! He wasn't exciting to watch, which is a huge shame because I loved the watching the show with my older brother when I was little.

31. Bulma (Dragonball: Evolution)

"Everybody has a price."

Bulma was my favorite in the movie. I loved the guns, loved how she handled herself with the boys, and loved all her cool technology that basically was the reason they got around (her compact motorcycle) and found the Dragon Balls (Her D.P.E.). Her interest with Yamcha was fun and flirty and when it came down to business she was ready to help any way she can. She definitely should have been Asian, but at least her character wasn't as bad as Goku's.

30. William Stryker (X-Men Origins: Wolverine)

"Welcome to the war."

Our mutant-hating government official is back and now we get to see how his connection with Logan came to be. On a mission to create the strongest mutant weapon for the government, Stryker creates a team of mutants, including Logan and Victor, to hunt down adamantium. When this costs the lives of innocents, Logan's out, which is bad business for Stryker since Logan's he key to his secret weapon. He creates an elaborate plan, staging the death of Logan's girlfriend, Kayla, and pinning him against Victor to bring him back so he can put the adamantium inside him and successfully create, Weapon X. Of course, everyone that's a mutant figures out he's playing them all and his plans go down the drain with the death of Weapon XI. His adamantium bullets are what cause Logan to lose his memories and they're eventually what kill Kayla, but not before she can control his mind and send him away for good...at least until he turns up again.

29. Cora (Astro Boy)

"Didn't your nanny-bots teach you not to sneak up on people?"

Cora accidentally ran away from Metro City to the surface world where she becomes a sort of leader to the orphan kids Hamegg takes care of. She's the first one to discover Astro and quickly befriends him and he proves he's a kind person. She's the only one who feels betrayed when it's revealed he's actually a robot, but she quickly gets over it and helps him save Metro City from President Stone. After everything is done, she's even able to reunite with her parents.

28. Edward Blake/The Comedian (Watchmen)

"This is a joke. This is all a joke."

The biggest asshole in this movie BY FAR. Like even though everyone had their faults and definitely weren't saints, The Comedian was straight up a bully working for the government. In his worst moments, he beats the shit out of citizens protesting, attempts to rape the original Silk Spectre, and ends up murdering a Vietnamese woman carrying his child! For some reason he suddenly cares about being a father when he wants to get to know his other daughter, Laurie, but ends up just drinking his life away until Adrian shows up to murder him. Even though he dies in the beginning of the movie, his bad punchline of a life haunts everyone throughout the film.

27. Wade Wilson/Deadpool/Weapon XI (X-Men Origins: Wolverine)

"You whip out a couple of swords at your ex-girlfriend's wedding, they will never, ever forget it."

Wade Wilson is very conflicting because even though he's missing his signature costume, he was absolutely spot on when he worked on Stryker's team. He's deadly with the sword, has the same healing abilities as Logan, and will never shut his mouth. Then things got weird. Somehow Stryker is able to gain control over Deadpool and turn him into everything he's not by giving him powers of previous mutants Victor has either killed or kidnapped. Mouth sewn shut, Deadpool becomes Weapon XI and is such a threat it takes both Wolverine and Sabretooth to take him down.

26. Kate Connor (Terminator Salvation)

"I'm a doctor, not an engineer."

I don't know why, but I kind of expected Kate to have a bigger role? Not that being one of the only doctors in the resistance isn't important, because it is, but I always thought she would be like what Barnes was, a second in command. Still, she was fiercely loyal to her husband and was his support when he needed her. He especially needed her towards the end of the film, as it was her hands that operated on him to save his life.

25. Dr. Lionel Carter (Surrogates)

"My son's death will not have been in vain. Not if it heals mankind."

Lionel Carter created surrogates because he wanted people with disabilities, like himself, to live a better life then his partners and company took it to a global scale and by 2017, ninety-eight percent of the world population used a surrogate for basic every day activities. After his son dies for being mistaken for him, Lionle decides enough is enough. Using all his resources he gets a hold of the weapon that killed his son to return the favor to the man responsible. He also creates the ultimate virus that will destroy all the surrogates and kill everyone attached to them. Thinking his plan will never fail, Lionel takes a cyanide pill before seeing his plan come to life.

24. Dr. John Fury (Whiteout)

"I never meant for anyone to get hurt, but Haden got greedy."

I'm not gonna lie, I felt some type of way when it was revealed Doc was working with Haden to smuggle the diamonds. He probably had the closest relationship with Carrie and their personal conversations were some of my favorite scenes in the movie so when it turns out he was working with Haden, the guy who cause Carrie to lose two of her fingers, I was shocked. I guess the silver lining is that once he was caught he didn't fight it. He explained why he did it then walked outside to the deadly snow storm, killing himself.

23. Ana Lewis/The Baroness (G.I. Joe: Rise of the Cobra)

"Do it. You already killed me once."

I'm so glad it was revealed that Ana was being brainwashed to act as The Baroness the whole time because I just could not accept her willingly participating in the death of millions all because Duke disappeared after her brother's death. No one is that dramatic. Still, as The Baroness she was a force to be reckoned with. She killed all of the men in Duke and Ripcord's old unit, gave Scarlett her first fight, and she helped nearly destroy Paris. Good thing for the Joe's that Duke's gorgeous puppy-dog face broke her out of her mind control and she was able to free him and help stop her evil brother once and for all.

22. Dr. Elefun (Astro Boy)

"Everybody has their destiny, Toby."

Out of all the older males in the film, I truly believe that Dr. Elefun cared the most about Astro. He never saw him as just a robot that can be used for his own personal gain (President Stone, Hamegg) and he definitely didn't think he was a mistake that needed to be destroyed (Dr. Tenma). He really took his time to get to know and bond with Astro, who was still trying to come to terms with himself. I think in the future Elefun will morph into a huge father figure to Astro.

21. Remy Lebeau/Gambit (X-Men Origins: Wolverine)

"You miss me?"

Gambit has been the mutant everyone wanted to see on the big screen ever since the first X-Men came out. He's always nearly made it in the previous films but was cut out at the last minute. Well now he's here and he was a little bit of a let down. He wasn't horrible but he had such a minor role. He's a mutant that escapes Stryker's island before going back to his thief lifestyle in New Orleans. His fight with Logan was cool because we saw his signature staff and kinetically charged deck of cards, but after that he just remains in the background. He takes Logan to the island then is the first one to talk to him after he loses his memory, going his own way shortly after.

[theaeneidnyuad-blog]

Character Descriptions

The Human Characters

Character List and Descriptions Sourced from CliffsNotes

Acestës (uh-sehs-teez) The king of Drepanum, in western Sicily, he gives refuge to Aeneas and his people in Books III and V after storms drive them off course.

Achaemenidës (a-kuh-mihn-ih-deez) A Greek crewman of Ulysses, he is accidentally abandoned on Sicily, home of the Cyclopes, when his companions flee from the angry one-eyed giants. The Trojans rescue him in Book III.

Achatës (uh-kay-teez) Known as "the faithful Achatës," he is Aeneas's armor-bearer and a devoted follower of the Trojan hero throughout the epic poem.

Aeneas (uh-nee-us) Romans regarded Aeneas as the ancestor of Augustus — the emperor for whom Virgil wrote the Aeneid — and of the entire Roman state, since Romulus and Remus, Rome's legendary cofounders, were believed to be descended from the race of kings established by Silvius, Aeneas's son by his second wife, Lavinia. Aeneas became the object of exceptional veneration by the Romans, the embodiment of all of the virtues that they prized most: steadfastness, courage, patience, obedience to the will of the gods, and reverence for ancestors. As such, he was not only the ancestor of Rome's first emperor but also Augustus's moral prototype, or model, exemplifying in his heroic person all the qualities that loyal Romans attributed to their first emperor.

As a result of this patriotic role assigned to him, Aeneas sometimes appears too good to be true. He possesses a superhuman excellence that makes it hard for us to believe he is a man and not a symbol or a god. Still, Virgil endows him with his share of human qualities: He is subject to discouragement in Book I when his fleet is struck by Aeolus's storm; in Book II, he is uncertain as to what course of action to take on the night that Troy is invaded by the Greeks; and in Book IV, he is torn between his love for Dido and his need to fulfill his mission. Only gradually does he obtain heroic stature, but he is all the more believable because of his initial weaknesses.

Amata (uh-mah-tuh) The wife and queen of Latinus, her name — Latin for "beloved" — ironically contradicts the actual nature of this highly disagreeable character. From the moment of her first appearance in Book VII, she is an obstacle to the harmony that Latinus and Aeneas seek. Her influence is always negative: Favoring Turnus rather than Aeneas as the husband for her daughter, Lavinia, she is easily swayed by the fury Allecto, sent by Juno, and becomes a human agent of that goddess's campaign against the Trojans.

Anchises (an-ky-seez) As the father of Aeneas by the goddess Venus, Anchises is a venerable figure of wise counsel and instruction, above all in Book VI, when he reveals Rome's future to Aeneas. Aeneas's respect for Anchises exemplifies an important aspect of the Roman virtue pietas, the appropriate deference one shows to parents, gods, and country. Virgil strongly implies that the respect paid by Aeneas to Anchises, especially in Book V in the form of funeral games, foreshadows the pietas shown by Augustus to his father by adoption, Julius Caesar.

Andromachë (an-drah-muh-kee) The widow of the Trojan prince Hector, and later the wife of his brother, the prophet Helenus. She and her husband are visited by Aeneas in Buthrotum in Book III.

Anna (ahn-nuh) The warmhearted and impulsive sister of Carthage's Queen Dido, Anna has little importance as a character in her own right, but with her unwise counsel she initiates a series of actions and events that have overwhelmingly important consequences. Good-intentioned, she disastrously encourages Dido to give in to her love for Aeneas and forget her vow to remain chaste and faithful to the memory of her dead husband. Anna's only wish is to see her widowed sister find happiness; ironically, she puts Dido in jeopardy and prepares her to become the victim of two overpowering goddesses, Juno and Venus.

Ascanius (as-kay-nee-us) Also known as Iulus; the son of Aeneas and his first wife, Creusa.

Camilla (kuh-mihl-uh) A female warrior of the Volscians and Turnus's ally in his battle against Aeneas's forces. In Book XI, she leads a courageous but doomed cavalry attack against the Trojans and their allies. Slain by the Etruscan Arruns, she is avenged by the goddess Diana, who sends the nymph Opis to slay Arruns in turn.

Creusa (kray-ooh-suh) Aeneas's first wife, Creusa is a one-dimensional, colorless character, whose sole function is to appear as a sacrificial victim to the great cause of the future Roman Empire by exhorting Aeneas to escape Troy without her.

Dido (dy-doh) Unlike most female characters in the Aeneid, Dido is a strong woman who possesses heroic dimensions and a will of her own. Leading her people from Tyre after her brother murders her husband, she founds the new city of Carthage, whose construction she is directing when Aeneas arrives there.

Virgil portrays Dido as Aeneas's equal and his feminine counterpart. Her hopeless passion for him is not a flaw in her splendid character: She is forced by Juno and Venus to become his lover, a role that she cannot play for long because fate wills otherwise. Her decision to commit suicide gives her a tragic stature.

Diomedes (dy-oh-mee-deez) A Greek hero of the Trojan War. In Book XI, he refuses, via a messenger, Turnus's request to fight against the Trojans and their allies.

Drancës (dran-seez) A Latin nobleman, in Book XI he acts as an ambassador between Latinus and Aeneas, decrying Turnus's aggressive stance and calling for a peaceful settlement with the Trojans.

Euryalus (yu-ry-uh-lus) A young Trojan warrior and the inseparable companion of Nisus, in Book IX, he is slain by the Rutulians while attempting to inform Aeneas of Turnus's attack on the Trojan camp.

Evander (ee-van-duhr) Pallanteum's king and Pallas's father, he allies himself with Aeneas, who visits him in his city, built on the site of the future Rome. Related to Aeneas through their common descent from Atlas, Evander is depicted as a benevolent ruler who favors the Trojans's mission.

Hector (hehk-tuhr) A son of Troy's King Priam and Queen Hecuba, and the first husband of Andromachë. Hector's ghost appears to Aeneas in Book II on the night Troy is invaded by the Greeks and warns the Trojan prince to flee the stricken city.

Hecuba (heh-kyoo-buh) Priam's wife and Troy's queen.

Helenus (heh-lay-nus) The ruler of a group of Trojan exiles living in the city of Buthrotum, and Andromachë's second husband. In Book III, he warns Aeneas of the dangers along the sea route to Italy and advises him to consult the sibyl of Cumae.

Laocoön (lay-ah-koh-uhn) In Book II, suspecting trickery on the part of the departing Greeks, Laocoön warns his fellow Trojans against bringing an immense wooden horse, left behind by the Trojans's enemy, inside Troy's walls. He and his two sons are slain by two giant sea serpents sent by the goddess Minerva.

Latinus (luh-tee-nus) Because the civilization of Rome was supposed to have arisen from the cooperation of the Latin natives with the Trojan newcomers, Virgil found it appropriate to depict the Latin king, Latinus, as a man of moderation and goodwill, ready from the very start to marry his daughter, Lavinia, to Aeneas.

Although Latinus is an admirable character, he is rather ineffectual. He has little place in the action after Book VII, in which he makes his futile bid for peace after having experienced supernatural portents that dispose him in favor of the Trojans. In Book XI, when it appears certain that the Trojans will win, he is again eager to make peace with them, and his terms are generous.

Lausus (law-sus) Mezentius's son, killed by Aeneas in Book X.

Lavinia (luh-vihn-ee-uh) This sole surviving child of Latinus and Amata is probably the most passive and one-dimensional character in the Aeneid, even more so than Creusa, Aeneas's first wife. Destined to become Aeneas's second wife, Lavinia has no will of her own, no personal expression. In Book XI, she is designated as the prize that will be awarded either to Aeneas or to Turnus, depending on who wins their personal battle.

Mezentius (muh-zihn-tee-us) The former king of the Etruscans, he was deposed by his own subjects because of his cruelty toward them and becomes Turnus's ally. Virgil portrays him as a complex character: Villain though he is, he is devoted to his son, Lausus, who is slain by Aeneas while defending his father. Mezentius's attempt to avenge his son's death by killing Aeneas endows him with a tragic nobility.

Nisus (ny-sus) A Trojan warrior and Euryalus's inseparable companion. In Book IX, he is slain while trying to rescue his friend from Rutulian troops, who waylay the two young Trojans as they are crossing enemy territory with a message for Aeneas.

Palinurus (pa-lih-noo-rus) Aeneas's steadfast and loyal ship's pilot, whose life Neptune exacts as the price of the Trojans's safe crossing from Sicily to Italy in Book V. Murdered by savages as he swims ashore after Somnus, the god of sleep, induces him to fall overboard, Palinurus, more than any other character in the epic poem, dies as the result of a god's mere caprice.

Pallas (pal-luhs) The son of Evander, Pallas resembles Lausus, Mezentius's son, in his youth, bravery, beauty, and pietas. Pallas's death at the hands of Turnus in Book X is avenged when Aeneas kills Turnus, who brazenly wears Pallas's swordbelt slung unceremoniously over his shoulder.

Pandarus (pan-duh-rus) A courageous Trojan warrior slain by Turnus in Book IX while defending the Trojan encampment.

Priam (pry-am) Troy's aged king, who is cut down in his palace by Pyrrhus in Book II during the Greeks's siege of the city.

Pyrrhus (pihr-rus) One of the warriors who hide in the wooden horse, he slays Priam's son Politës and then the king himself.

Sinon (see-non) The Greek warrior who cleverly persuades the Trojans to bring the wooden horse inside Troy's protective walls.

Sychaeus (sy-kee-us) Prince of Tyre and husband of Dido, he is already dead at the time of the Aeneid's action. His spirit is united with Dido's in the underworld, where Aeneas sees them together in Book VI.

Tarchon (tahr-kahn) The leader of Aeneas's Etruscan allies.

Turnus (toor-nus) A prince of the Rutulian tribe and the leader of the Latin forces who oppose the settlement of the Trojans in Latium, Turnus is the only male human character in the Aeneid whose stature is comparable to Aeneas's. However, unlike the Trojan hero, who always tries to act for the good of his people, Turnus is motivated by intense pride and a desire for personal fame. His doomed future, sealed by fate, signifies the triumph of the ideal of civic virtue embodied by Aeneas.

[diarrheaworldstarhiphop]

A British Islamic State fighter who carried out a suicide bombing in Iraq this week is a former Guantanamo Bay detainee who was paid £1 million compensation by the government.

Jamal al-Harith, a Muslim convert born Ronald Fiddler who detonated a car bomb at an Iraqi army base near Mosul, was released from the US detention camp in 2004 and successfully claimed compensation after saying British agents knew or were complicit in his mistreatment.

He was freed following intense lobbying by Tony Blair’s Labour government.

Al-Harith, who used the nom de guerre Abu-Zakariya al-Britani, entered Syria via Turkey in 2014 to join Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, leading to questions at the time about the monitoring of terrorist suspects.

It also raised the possibility that compensation money paid by British taxpayers had been handed on by him to Isil.

Earlier this week Isil released an image of him sitting inside the bomb car grinning broadly, with wires and what may be a detonation button in the background.

A statement released by the terrorist group said: “The martyrdom-seeking brother Abu Zakariya al-Britani - may Allah accept him - detonated his explosives-laden vehicle on a headquarters of the Rafidhi army and its militias in Tal Kisum village, southwest of Mosul.”

“Rafidha” is a derogatory term for Shiite Muslims, who Isil considers to be heretics.

His brother, Leon Jameson, told The Times Al-Harith had “wasted his life”.

He added: "I didn’t think he’d ever do anything wrong but, if he’s joining extremists, then, you know ... I’m not ashamed of him, I never will be. But it’s his own decision. I can only just give him advice if he needs any.”

The 53-year-old said his brother had been a keen sportsman in his youth, playing football, basketball and table-tennis and winning a trophy for karate when he was a teenager.

He later converted to Islam after meeting Muslim friends at a sixth form college.

“All I know is one day he brought a Quran home,” Mr Jameson told the newspaper.

“We were supportive of it, yeah,we didn’t see anything wrong with it at the time and the trouble only started later, seems like he’s been dragged into it."

The 50-year-old, originally from Manchester, was arrested by US forces in Pakistan in 2001 as a suspected Taliban sympathiser, before being sent to Guantanamo Bay in Cuba in 2002.

At the time of his release, the then home secretary David Blunkett said: “No-one who is returned...will actually be a threat to the security of the British people.”

Earlier this week Isil named him as the man who had blown himself up in the car bombing at the Iraqi army base, and released a picture of him.

Al-Harith’s wife Shukee Begum travelled to Syria with their five children to try to persuade her husband to return to the UK, but failed and was taken hostage before eventually managing to escape.

Al-Harith, the son of Jamaican immigrants, converted to Islam in the 1990s and worked as a web designer before he travelled to the Pakistani city of Quetta in 2001 for what he claimed was a religious holiday.

He has insisted he tried to enter Iran when the US invaded neighbouring Afghanistan, but was captured and imprisoned by the Taliban on suspicion of being a UK spy.

When US special forces found him in a Taliban jail, they assessed him as a “high threat to the US” who was “probably involved in a former terrorist attack against the US”.

Al-Harith’s prisoner file from Guantanamo Bay, published online by WikiLeaks, refers to him travelling to Sudan in 1992 with “Abu Bakr, a well-known al-Qaeda operative”.

After his return to the UK - where he was released without charge - he joined three other former prisoners known as the Tipton Three in a failed attempt to sue Donald Rumsfeld, the then US Defense Secretary.

His legal action against the British government was more successful, resulting in a payment of up to £1 million in return for which he agreed not to talk about his ordeal.

Cage, the controversial human rights group, still features a profile of al-Harith on a part of its old website, Cageprisoners. It reads:

Born Ronald Fiddler on November 20, 1966, to devout, churchgoing Jamaican parents, al Harith converted to Islam in his 20s after reading Malcom X's biography. He has two sisters, Maxine and Sharon.

His family say he is a gentle, quiet man who rarely spoke of his faith unless asked, and after four years learning Arabic and teaching English at Khartoum University in Sudan, he seemed happy enough to return home where he started to study nursing. At this time, he also established a computer business. He later moved back to Manchester, where he worked as an administrator in a Muslim school.

He travelled from the UK to Pakistan at the end of September 2001, retracing a journey he had made to Iran in 1993. He paid a lorry driver to take him from northern Pakistan to Iran as part of a backpacking trip, but they were stopped near the Afghan border by Taliban soldiers who saw his British passport and jailed him, in October, fearing he was a spy. He had been away from home only three weeks when he was captured.

As the operation to mop up al Qaida forces went on into the spring of 2001, he was captured by US forces while being held in Kandahar Jail. He was interrogated by the CIA in Afghanistan before being taken to Guantanamo.

He was released from Guantanamo and returned to the UK on 9th March 2004. After a few hours of questioning he was released without charge and reunited with his family. Jamal was the first of the British detainees to speak publicly about his ordeal. He married in late 2004 and has three children (aged 3,5, and 8) from a previous marriage.

Tim Loughton, a Conservative MP reportedly said: "This is a scandalous situation. So much for Tony Blair’s assurances that this extremist did not pose a security threat.

"He clearly was a risk to Britain and our security all along. It adds insult to injury that he was given £1million in compensation because of Blair’s flawed judgement that he was an innocent."

John Pugh, a Lib Dem MP, said: "This raises serious questions about the reassurances Labour gave us that this man posed no danger.

"It is a kick in the teeth that he was given a fortune in taxpayers’ money after claiming he was innocent only to flee to Islamic State and pose a risk to the UK.

"The Home Office needs to explain how he was able to leave the country so easily despite his background mixing with those at the very top of Islamic terrorism."

As many as 850 people regarded as a national security concern have travelled to fight with jihadis in the Middle East.

Just under half are thought to have returned to Britain while 15 per cent are believed to have been killed.

The Foreign Office states:

The UK has advised for some time against all travel to Syria, and against all travel to large parts of Iraq.

As all UK consular services are suspended in Syria and greatly limited in Iraq, it is extremely difficult to confirm the whereabouts and status of British nationals in these areas.

1. Mohammed Emwazi / Jihadi John

Emwazi was reported killed in a November 2015 air strike, with US forces saying they were "reasonably certain" he was dead.

Isil later released what appeared to be an obituary to the fighter, who it called Abu Muharib al-Muhajir.

It featured a smiling picture of the militant, who appeared unmasked looking towards the ground.

Emwazi shocked the world when he appeared in a video in August 2014 in which he condemned the West and appeared to behead US journalist James Foley. He emerged again in a number of other videos released by Isil, including those in which American reporter Steven Sotloff and British aid workers David Haines and Alan Henning were murdered. Kuwait-born Emwazi attended Quintin Kynaston Community Academy in north London and was described by his former head teacher as a "hard-working aspirational young man". He went on to gain a degree in information systems with business management from the University of Westminster. 2. Reyaad Khan Khan was 20 when he appeared in an Isil propaganda video titled, There Is No Life Without Jihad, in June last year together with two other Britons urging Westerners to join the war. The man, from Cardiff, is thought to have travelled to fight in Syria late in 2013. His Facebook page revealed that he was a Chelsea FC fan who enjoyed playing computer games FIFA 12 and Call Of Duty. After appearing in the video with a Kalashnikov assault rifle against his shoulder his mother said she believed he had been "brainwashed" into joining Isil.

In a direct appeal to her son, the woman, who asked to remain unnamed, sobbed as she said: "Reyaad, please come back home. I'm dying for you. You're my only son." Before leaving for Syria, Khan attended Cardiff's Al-Manar Centre (ACT) together with Nasser Muthana, who was also filmed for the Isil recruitment video. The mosque denied the pair had been taught extremist views there and blamed the internet as an "alarming source for radicalisation". David Cameron, the then Prime Minister, said Khan had been killed on August 21 2015 when he was targeted by an RAF remotely piloted aircraft while travelling in a vehicle in Raqqah, Syria. 3. Ruhul Amin Amin, 26, featured alongside Khan and Muthana in the 13-minute Isil recruitment video under the name Brother Abu Bara al Hindi. Wearing sunglasses and a white headscarf, he could be heard saying: "Are you willing to sacrifice the fat job you've got, the big car, the family you have? "Are you willing to sacrifice this, for the sake of Allah? If you do Allah will give you back 700 times more." Also known as Abdul Raqib Amin, he was born in Bangladesh and grew up in Aberdeen before reportedly moving with his family to Leicester.

In July 2014 he boasted on ITV's Good Morning Britain that he had been "involved in a few combats" in Syria. Explaining the moment he left Britain, he said: "I left the house with the intention of not to go back. I'm going to stay and fight until the (caliphate) is established, or I die." A leading member of Aberdeen's Muslim community, who did not want to be identified, said he was not someone who "stood out in any particular way". He was killed in the same airstrike as Khan. 4. Junaid Hussain Computer hacker Hussain was described as a key Isil operative before he was killed by a US drone strike on August 24 2016. The 21-year-old, from Birmingham, was said to have been number three on the Pentagon's "kill list" of Isil targets. It is believed that he fled Britain to travel to Syria in 2013, and in June last year he was linked to a plot to attack an Armed Forces Day parade in south London.

The plan to explode a pressure cooker bomb - killing soldiers and bystanders on the route - was reportedly foiled after Hussain unwittingly recruited an undercover investigator from The Sun to carry it out.In June 2012, aged 18, Hussain was jailed for six months after he admitted making prank calls to a counter-terror hotline and publishing former prime minister Tony Blair's address book.He was a member of TeaMpOisoN (TeamPoison), a group which claimed responsibility for more than 1,400 offences where personal and private information has been illegally extracted from victims in the UK and around the world.Hussain was reportedly married to a Muslim convert named as Sally Jones, a mother-of-two from Kent who once was a member of an all-girl punk rock group.

[gyrlversion]

Actress in sex-for-roles scandal wants to be judged on her merits

The actress whose secret sex with the married CEO of Warner Brothers ended his career when his promises to reward her with movie roles were revealed today breaks her silence to tell DailyMailTV today: ‘I am not a victim.’

Charlotte Kirk was just 21 when she had sex with Kevin Tsujihara, 28 years her senior, with the Hollywood executive promising to help her acting career after their rendezvous in a motel in 2013.

But last month her texts to Tsujihara, his friend Australian billionaire James Packer, who was also her lover, and film director Brett Ratner leaked – and Tsujihara stepped down from his position as one of the movie world’s most powerful men.

It was widely seen as a moment of vindication for the MeToo movement that a CEO’s casting couch sex with an actress decades his junior had cost him his job and millions of dollars in pay and bonuses.

But British actress Kirk tells DailyMailTV in her first television interview that she does not see what happened as part of MeToo and says: ‘I don’t consider myself a victim then because it was my choice.

‘I wasn’t forced into anything and I did what I wanted to do – good or bad. I would make completely different choices now and I regret doing that.’

Charlotte Kirk was 21 years old when she had sex with Kevin Tsujihara, with the Hollywood executive promising to help her acting career after their rendezvous in 2013. Kirk, now 26, had her texts to Tsujihara, his friend Australian billionaire James Packer, who was also her lover, and film director Brett Ratner leaked, leading to Tsujijhara’s exit from Warner Bros 

But British actress Kirk tells DailyMailTV in her first television interview that she does not see what happened with Tsujihara (right) as part of MeToo and says: ‘I don’t consider myself a victim then because it was my choice’ 

New role: Charlotte Kirk is to play Nicole Brown Simpson, O.J. Simpson’s murdered wife, in the forthcoming Nicole & O.J. It is slated for release in 2019 and directed by Kirk’s rumored former boyfriend, Joshua Newton, 49. She says she was cast on her own merits, not because of Kevin Tsujihara

Now she says she wants to be judged on her own merits as an actress – saying that her latest roles were gained entirely without the help of any powerful Hollywood sponsors.

‘I have been thrust into the limelight and no one had heard of me before this. My intention was to make a big bang in the world but not for this, for my work,’ she said.

‘It’s terrible but I’m trying to reverse that by showing people my abilities.’

Sensational texts with a film backer 

After meeting Kevin Tsujihara in early 2014, Charlotte Kirk texts James Packer: ‘His [sic] not very nice. He just wants to ****, nothing else, does not even want to say anything!’

March 2014, Tsujihara to Kirk: ‘I’ve got a dinner in santa monica next Thursday night – u want to meet up after?? We’re also beginning to cast some cable tv pilots.’

September 2014, Kirk to Tsujihara: ‘So your going to speak with Richard [Hollywood producer Richard Brener]?’

October 2014, Kirk to Packer: ‘Putting me in one of your many movies shouldn’t be a big deal… I did help u out with Kevin which was hard for me but I did it for you.’

When Kirk then threatened legal action, Packer replied: ‘Can’t wait tough girl… Get back in your box or let’s fight.’

March 2015, Kirk to Tsujihara: ‘When we were in that motel having sex u said u would help me and when u just ignore me – it makes me feel used.’ 

She also said that far from being the source of the texts which cost the Warner Bros CEO his job, she had ‘begged’ for them not to published and felt sorry for what had happened to the former movie mogul.

Until his fall, Tsujihara had been the architect of successes including Wonder Woman and Aquaman, and was forced out on March 18 just two weeks after being given an expanded role in the company. He has denied he influenced casting decisions but said his leadership was a ‘distraction’ when he stepped down. 

Kirk’s road to becoming a public example of the casting couch began when she was 19 and moved from her childhood home in Bexleyheath, south-east London, to Los Angeles in the hope of breaking into Hollywood.

Living alone in a rented studio apartment, she embarked on a revolving door of auditions and acting classes to build on her time at stage school at the Italia Conti School of Acting in London.

‘It was really scary and lonely. It was tough because I had no family or friends there,’ she said.

Within months, however, she had met Brett Ratner, the director of movies including the Rush Hour series of movies and X-Men: The Last Stand, who introduced her to Packer, 25 years her senior and married with a two-month-old daughter. 

Packer is Australia’s ninth-richest man, with a net worth of $3.4 billion, according to Forbes. His marriage collapsed and he later had a broken engagement with Mariah Carey.

Kirk and Packer began a months-long affair in November 2012 and in September the next year, Packer introduced Kirk, by then 21, to Tsujihara, texting her at midnight: ‘I have the opportunity of a lifetime for u.

‘Come to [the Hotel] Bel air now. U will never be able to pay me.’

Packer said she would be meeting ‘the most important man u can meet’. Kirk made her way to the hotel – and met with Tsujihara.

Later, Kirk wrote to Packer: ‘His [sic] not very nice! Very pushy!! He just wants to f*** nothing else does not even want to say anything!’

Packer responded, asking if she was okay and told her: ‘Be cool.’

At the time, Tsujihara was negotiating a Warner Bros. deal with Packer and Ratner’s RatPac-Dune Entertainment for $450million in movie financing. The Hollywood Reporter said the deal closed three days later. 

Within months of moving to Los Angeles, Kirk met Brett Ratner, the director the Rush Hour series of movies and X-Men: The Last Stand, who introduced her to Australian billionaire James Packer. The two began a months-long affair in November 2012 and in September the next year, Packer introduced Kirk, to Tsujihara, texting her: ‘I have the opportunity of a lifetime for u’. Pictured l-r: Packer, Ratner and Tsujihara in 2015

The messages between Kirk and Tsujihara, who remains married to his wife Sandy (pictured together), suggest a sexual relationship between the actress and the studio head in which he made promises that he would introduce her to influential executives and she would be considered for roles in movies and television

Tsujihara and Kirk had clandestine hook-ups at hotels around LA. In one message Tsujihara wrote: ‘Wish I was doing something else.’

Kirk replied: ‘Mmmm such as? …. I remember how good you were at Mmmm. Your a giver ;)’

She then texted him about potential auditions. Tsujihara said that he would talk to a colleague and then asked her to meet up with him the following week after a dinner he was attending.

‘We’re also beginning to cast some cable tv pilots that I’ll look into as well,’ he texted.

Around a year after the first meeting, the relationship appeared to have cooled but Kirk continued to send texts to Tsujihara, Packer and Ratner. 

Kirk was later cast in small roles in 2016’s How To Be Single and 2018’s Ocean’s 8, both made by Warner Brothers. Tsujihara has denied influencing her casting.

 You know what u need to do. U haven’t even come close to doing it. If you thought I would be so easily manipulated you’re wrong.

Kirk to Ratner in July of 2015 

She told DailyMailTV: ‘Ocean’s 8 was awesome. I was shooting alongside Sandra Bullock.

‘I had some scenes with Sandra Bullock and there’s downtime as well, so it was great talking to her. She was just a normal, humble, lovely person. How To Be Single, same thing, great cast.’

She added: ‘I was still working my way up at that point and I hadn’t done so much then.

‘The lead roles were already taken so I auditioned for those two roles. My agent got me the audition. I walked in the room and got those roles on merit.’

In March 2015, Kirk texted Tsujihara and appeared to be unhappy about her role in How To Be Single, which starred Dakota Johnson and Rebel Wilson.

‘Kevin? A two liner?? U have got to be kidding me!!’ she texted, according to THR.

In July 2015, Kirk then texted Ratner: ‘You know what u need to do. U haven’t even come close to doing it. If you thought I would be so easily manipulated you’re wrong.’

He replied: ‘What are u talking about? I told u i would get Richard to talk to u…. And he did. He is the key to getting work…. I don’t work for u. Why are u so unappreciative?’ 

Tsujihara and Kirk had clandestine hook-ups at hotels around LA. In one message Tsujihara wrote: ‘Wish I was doing something else.’ Around a year after the first meeting, the relationship appeared to have cooled but Kirk continued to send texts to Tsujihara, Packer and Ratner

Kirk told Tsujihara that she felt used when movie roles she said he’d promised never materialized in a series of leaked text message between the former lovers. He has denied influencing casting decisions

In May 2016, a settlement for Kirk was being discussed between Kirk’s lawyer, Raymond Markovich, and Ratner’s attorney, Hollywood legal heavyweight, Marty Singer. It even had what appears to be a vehicle to pay Kirk – a project called From Autism to A-List, a reference to Kirk’s diagnosis with Asperger’s Syndrome. But the deal was never signed – and last month, Kirk, Packer, Ratner, and most of all Tsujihara were hit by a bombshell: the leak of the texts

By the end of August 2015, relationships were strained and Ratner accused Kirk of extortion.

‘You can’t take back the extortion u have committed because u have sent text and emails asking for these auditions and jobs,’ he reportedly texted, adding that she had landed a role in How To Be Single.

She replied: ‘Brett you’re an idiot I’m not extorting anyone.’

In May 2016, a settlement for Kirk was being discussed between Kirk’s lawyer, Raymond Markovich, and Ratner’s attorney, Hollywood legal heavyweight, Marty Singer.

It even had what appears to be a vehicle to pay Kirk – a project called From Autism to A-List, a reference to Kirk’s diagnosis with Asperger’s Syndrome, which puts her on the autism spectrum.

But the deal was never signed – and last month, Kirk, Packer, Ratner, and most of all Tsujihara were hit by a bombshell: the leak of the texts.  

Kirk strongly denies leaking the hundreds of texts that were exchanged by herself and the three men.

Kirk told DailyMailTV: ‘The Hollywood Reporter said they were going to leak [sic] the story and I begged them not to. They went ahead and done it. It’s frustrating.

‘There’s really two main points – this happened a long time ago, first of all.

‘Second of all, it wasn’t me that released the [texts]. I didn’t and I tried to stop it.’

The actress is baffled as to why the text messages had been made public now but her representative said the actress was barred from saying who she suspected of revealing them for ‘legal reasons.’

The reaction to the texts was explosive – and bitterly felt by Kirk.

Tsujihara stepped down as Warner Bros CEO after the bombshell report. 

‘I’m very sad that it’s happened. We hadn’t spoken for a long time. Hopefully he goes on to other things. I wish him success,’ Kirk said.

Packer and Ratner – who has faced other accusations of sexual misconduct – have not contacted Kirk since the scandal emerged. Nor has she reached out to them. 

‘I don’t see the point,’ Kirk said. ‘None of us have spoken in a very long time.’ 

Kirk herself faced a backlash but said she would not be ‘scared off’ social media. Although she was being bombarded by messages, about half were supportive.

 It’s a disaster that it came out but if you look for a positive, it’s happened now and I can’t go back. But people know who I am.

‘Some of them assume that I released the texts and this happened yesterday. They don’t actually read my statements so that’s frustrating,’ she said’I read them and then I block them because they don’t deserve to be on my Facebook or Instagram accounts. They are trolls.

‘If I had a horrible review or comment on my work that would hurt me.

‘There’s been really nice people who say positive things. ”Hang on in there, we’ve seen you in stuff, you’re great, it’s a bad patch.”

She added: ‘My mum is very upset by the whole thing. She suffers from anxiety anyway, so it’s not helping her nerves that’s for sure. I’m just trying to block it out really and focus on my work as best as I can.’

She is now determined that she is seen as an actress in her own right –  and says that the fall of Tsujihara should let people see her in that light.

‘I think it’s going to help the movies that I’m doing,’ she told DailyMailTV.

‘It’s a disaster that it came out but if you look for a positive, it’s happened now and I can’t go back. But people know who I am.’

Kirk has completed work on a new film, Nicole & O.J., based on the true crime story of the murder of the football star’s wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, in 1994, of which O.J. was tried and later acquitted. 

It is slated for release in 2019 and directed by Kirk’s rumored former boyfriend, Joshua Newton, 49. 

Charlotte Kirk tells DailyMailTV how the scandal has affected her mother Angie: ‘My mum is very upset by the whole thing. She suffers from anxiety anyway, so it’s not helping her nerves that’s for sure. I’m just trying to block it out really and focus on my work as best as I can.’ 

Kirk has completed work on a new film, Nicole & O.J., based on the true crime story of the murder of the football star’s wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, in 1994, of which O.J. was tried and later acquitted. It is slated for release in 2019 and directed by Kirk’s rumored former boyfriend, Joshua Newton, 49 (right)

Other new role: Kirk is also due to star in horror movie, The Reckoning, bout witch hunts during the Great Plague in 17th century England. It is directed by her boyfriend, Neil Marshall, 48, an Emmy nominee

Kirk is also due to star in horror movie, The Reckoning, directed by her boyfriend, Neil Marshall, 48, an Emmy nominee.

The Reckoning, which Kirk co-wrote, is about witch hunts during the Great Plague in 17th century England, the last outbreak of the disease which devastated the medieval world.

Kirk said: ‘We’re going to Hungary in five to six weeks. Because it’s medieval, they have all the sets built there. We’re currently casting.

‘With Nicole Brown Simpson and The Reckoning, I have leading roles. I’m carrying the movie, so the preparation is very thorough.’ 

She said both movies were proof of her own acting skills and proof that her entanglement with Hollywood scandal would not damage her.

‘It’s all about the work, it’s all about the craft,’ she told DailyMailTV.

‘Look at my work, look what’s on the screen. Judge me on that, not on anything else.  

‘If I didn’t believe in myself as an actor and if I knew that I wouldn’t be putting good work out there, then I think yes [my career would be damaged],’ she said.

‘Right now, it’s affected my career but I think when people see my work on screen they hopefully will say, “We judged her wrong.”‘

Kirk makes clear she does not consider herself a victim of sexual assault or misconduct but does believe that she was ‘naïve’ and ‘gullible’ when she arrived in Hollywood as a teenager, a trait that she says she struggles with due to a diagnosis of Asperger’s, which puts her on the autism spectrum.

She said: ‘I trusted everyone. I took everyone on their word. And part of that was because I was 19, a baby, part of that was Asperger’s believing everything you’re told.

‘I’ve come across lots of good and lots of bad people and sometimes it’s hard to sift through because everyone’s very nice to you [in Hollywood]. It’s hard to believe or trust what people say.

‘I was insecure and naive and trusted everyone. That was a big mistake. I shouldn’t have trusted everyone. I’ve come a long way and I totally don’t trust anyone now.

‘In a way, it has made me stronger. I’m not quite where I want to be yet. I’m only just getting started really.’

Kirk said she believed she could benefit from the scandal because people knew that she did not have help to get her latest roles.

‘Kevin unfortunately has lost his job but he stood down. Hire me on my merit and what they see. Even more so now, they can say, ‘Okay well there’s nothing to hide. Kevin’s not there anymore,”‘ she said,

‘It’s not going to hurt my career because I’m not going to allow it to hurt my career. I think I still have a hell of a long way to go.

‘From 19 to 26, I’ve spent that time nurturing my craft. I think the more you’ve gone through, the more life experience you’ve had – good and bad – makes you a better person and it makes you a fantastic actor.

‘Once you’ve had a lot of s*** happen to you, it makes you a bloody good actor.’

The post Actress in sex-for-roles scandal wants to be judged on her merits appeared first on Gyrlversion.

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5 Crazy Recent News Stories That Didn’t Get Enough Attention

Most people read the headlines of a couple of political stories shared by their most untrustworthy friend on Facebook and feel like they’re pretty well-informed. But the daily large-scale dramas of the Trump administration, mass shootings, Russian agents being assassinated, and the world generally seeming like a montage of newscasts from a ’50s sci-fi movie have overshadowed some utterly insane news that, in a different era, would have dominated headlines for weeks.

So here are five stories that have yet to receive the proper “Wait, what the fuck?!” reaction that they deserve.

5

The Government Said It Has Mysterious Alloys Recovered From UFOs

Two Pulitzer-Prize-winning reporters made public some fascinating footage captured by military pilots of an unidentified flying object zipping across the skies, making sharp turns and occasionally hovering like a helicopter, and all with no visible signs of propulsion. With the internet as it is, we should’ve been drowned in stories about how “Independence Day PREDICTED THE FUTURE” or whatever.

The footage is odd, for sure. But it only makes up like 0.5 percent of the craziness within the New York Times article it came from.

Read Next

Get Your Head In The Game With This Xbox Live Gold Offer

The article says that between 2007 and 2012, there was something called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program running out of the Pentagon, where at least one employee had the X-Files theme as their ringtone and their co-workers hated them for it. Their task was to investigate mysterious aerial phenomena. While there’s a good chance they had a rubber stamp that read “It’s just another damn drone from Walmart” so they wouldn’t have to write it out all the time, the AATIP’s creator, former Senator Harry Reid, fought to secure the program’s findings, fearing that the United States would be helpless to defend itself from the technologies it discovered. That’s the kind of shit you say to justify keeping Magneto in a plastic cell underground.

Luis Elizondo, the former head of the AATIP, referenced “the many accounts from the Navy and other services of unusual aerial systems interfering with military weapon platforms and displaying beyond-next-generation capabilities.” And most of the program’s $22 million budget over five years went to an aerospace technology company owned by a billionaire named Robert Bigelow, who 100 percent believes aliens have visited earth. And that brings us to the pant-shitting part:

“Under Mr. Bigelow’s direction, the company modified buildings in Las Vegas for the storage of metal alloys and other materials that Mr. Elizondo and program contractors said had been recovered from unidentified aerial phenomena. Researchers also studied people who said they had experienced physical effects from encounters with the objects and examined them for any physiological changes.”

Ah, OK. So. WHAT THE FUCK. Is it just a rash, or a headache, or are these people District 9-ing and morphing into a new species that should be shot in the head?

Live Science tried debunking some of the article’s claims by asking scientists and professors what they thought about it. Their grand conclusion is that there is no way an alloy could be unidentified. Thanks, guys. Excellent observation. There’s no way there are things out there that we don’t know! is some shit-ass expertise. They didn’t even try explaining the claim that the alloys are physically affecting people who interact with them. And it’s hard to blame them. If I think about it for a second, my brain goes to scary places that make me want to hide under a bed and cry.

The whole article makes it seem like there are a lot of high-ranking government officials who are certain aliens are real, that they have visited us, and we should probably fear what they might try to do to us. So on a day-to-day basis, you should feel a tinge of anxiety about your career, the well-being of your children, whether democracy will hold in America, and maybe also aliens with their poisonous ship junk.

4

A Man Spent Years Building His Own Submarine, Then Allegedly Used It To Brutally Murder A Journalist

Every once in a while, a sensational murder case — usually involving an attractive female victim — will take over the country for months. This case is weirder than every one of those combined, and nobody cared.

Peter Madsen had been building his own 55-foot submarine for years. We even wrote about his efforts back in 2010. Kim Wall was a freelance journalist who was just another in a long line to document Peter’s impressively productive waste of time. This sounds like the start of a quirky indie film.

But it’s fuckin’ not.

She set up an interview and two-hour test ride for August 10th, 2017. After the two hours were up, Wall’s boyfriend got suspicious that he hadn’t heard from her, so he called the police. Madsen was later rescued from his sinking submarine off the southern coast of Copenhagen — without Wall. Unless your passenger reveals their true kraken form, it’s weird to return to shore with fewer people than when you left. Madsen claimed that he dropped her off onshore hours earlier, which doesn’t quite align with the fact that her torso was found at sea days later.

At a pretrial hearing a couple of weeks later, Madsen testified that he buried Wall at sea after she was killed by a blow to the head from a 155-pound submarine hatch. Ah, the classic “She was murdered by the submarine, not me” defense. This did not hold up, as forensics found that her skull had no fractures and her throat had been either cut or strangled when she died. More of her body parts started washing up, and they concluded that her limbs had been forcibly removed with a saw and stuffed into plastic bags that were weighed down with metal pipes. She had also been stabbed 15 times.

Madsen’s trial is underway, and maybe it’s not getting any attention because everybody thinks they already know who did it? If so, doesn’t the fact that a man allegedly spent years building a murder submarine specifically so he could do this seem worthy of notice? What in the hell does it take to capture the national imagination these days?

3

There Is Now Software That Can Put Any Real Person Into Porn Videos, Including You Or Your Mom, Or Both

The future is NOW. Sadly, it’s only for creeps who want to jerk off to fake Scarlett Johansson porn. The technology that’s making it possible is called Deepfake. It’s an AI-driven software that can swap out a person’s face in video footage with someone else’s. Sometimes it’s convincing, other times it looks like their heads are painfully phasing in and out of reality.

That’s how you get Raiders Of The Lost Ark starring Nicolas Cage:

It’s also how you ruin the joke of an SNL sketch starring Nicolas Cage:

But it’s mostly for porn. And like all pursuits popular among sad lonely men, it was very popular on Reddit. Luckily, Reddit banned the Deepfakes subreddit not long after it was created — a bold moral stance for a site that lures you in with memes and then knocks you out with a one-two punch of white supremacy and misogyny. Bans on other big platforms like Discord, Twitter, and even PornHub soon followed, even though the underlying technology still exists for free on the internet.

What’s odd is that once it was banned across multiple sites, we reverted back to a pre-Deepfakes mindset, as if we don’t all live in the prologue of a new world where Donald Trump’s rumored pee tape might surface and the mere existence of Deepfakes would be enough for his supporters to call bullshit. We might one day look back at people on a subreddit putting Taylor Swift’s face on a porn star as innocent compared to a future in which a murderer whose face was clearly captured by security footage gets off scot-free because of the plausible deniability of Deepfakes. It’s a scary future where documented proof could be brushed away with a simple “That’s not me, that’s a fake — a deep fake” *winks at camera*.

Also, it means literally every woman who posts her face to the internet will wind up in a fake porn video / sex tape at some point. So there’s that, too.

2

A “Swatting” Prank Finally Got Someone Killed

You know what’s a real gut-busting joke that always leaves audiences rolling in the aisles? When SWAT teams charge into innocent people’s homes with shotguns and semiautomatic rifles drawn, intent on killing someone if it means stopping a hostage situation, all based on a tip obtained from a prank phone call. My sides! The sheer terror everyone involved must feel is making me pee a little!

If you don’t think it’s funny, then you’re not one of the many teenagers who’ve performed this “prank” because they’ve yet to develop a tangible fear of how utterly screwed their lives will be if the 9-1-1 call is traced back to them. The targets tend to be Twitch streamers, since a SWAT team’s entrance can turn an Overwatch stream into the drug raid scene from Goodfellas. Dozens of celebrities have also been swatted, like Miley Cyrus, Tom Cruise, and Clint Eastwood. Many of these people were lucky to not have been killed. SWAT teams have a long, horrific history of killing innocent people and/or their dogs during raids, in case you needed a cartoonishly ghoulish detail to further turn your stomach.

In an era when the media will drum up a moral panic over everything from violent video games to eating Tide Pods, you’d think this swatting thing would have been the subject of several congressional hearings by now. Especially since in December 2017, a swatting prank ended with someone dead, like every human who’d heard of swatting knew would eventually happen. Some random guys had placed a bet on the outcome of a Call Of Duty: WWII multiplayer match. An argument broke out, and one of the participants decided to get his just desserts by having a SWAT team sent to another person’s house. You know, as one does. The target of the swatting gave a false address. It was the home of a guy named Andrew Finch.

The person who initiated the swatting hired an intermediary to do it for them, Tyler Barriss. He was essentially a swatting hitman with a reputation for calling in swats on behalf of people who don’t want to get caught doing it themselves. And his Twitter handle was “SWauTistic,” because he’s a professional who believes in discretion. Barriss called the Wichita police and reported that someone at Finch’s house had shot their own father in the head and was holding their mother hostage. When Finch answered the knock at his door, a Wichita SWAT officer immediately pulled the trigger. Finch was unarmed and nonviolent. His friends say he didn’t even play video games.

Barriss has been charged with involuntary manslaughter, giving false alarm, and interference with a law enforcement officer. Finch’s mother is suing the Wichita Police Department. And even with a cop’s itchy trigger finger, there’s no denying that if Barriss had instead called and asked if Fincher’s refrigerator was running, he would still be alive today.

Swatting has become a dangerous trend which, unlike the aforementioned Tide Pod eating, is actually happening and is actually harming people. California State Senator Ted Lieu, New Jersey State Assemblyman Paul Moriarty, and Massachusetts Congresswoman Katherine Clark have all proposed anti-swatting legislation — all three have been swatted in response.

1

A Scandal Involving Cops Forcing Nude Photos From A Teenage Boy Ended In Suicide

Before I get into it, just know this story deals with the sexual molestation of a minor. So it’s not going to be as rip-roaringly funny as swatting.

17-year-old Trey Sims sent a video of his penis to his 15-year-old girlfriend. In the state of Virginia, this paradoxically made him the creator and victim of child pornography. The detective assigned to the case, David E. Abbott, obtained a warrant to take pictures of Sims’ penis to match it with the penis in the video, as if the police have a dick pic database that analyzes head-to-balls distance and pubic hair density to find a perfect match. Of course, all of this is necessary, since it’s so difficult to identify a dick when it doesn’t have a tattoo or a peg leg. Why that warrant wasn’t contested from the start is a mystery.

Another mystery is why, at one point, Abbott decided to start taking pictures of Sims’ penis with his personal cellphone.

Detective Abbot deemed the pictures insufficient, because somehow Sims couldn’t get erect with cops recording him masturbating. Which they had asked him to do, you know, so the pics would match the ones he was accused of sending. Wait, who is this law supposed to protect, again? Anyway, Abbot asked for a second state-sponsored permission slip to photograph a teenager’s erect penis. Abbott also threatened to force feed Sims erectile dysfunction pills, because he was determined to get a picture of a kid’s erect penis come hell or high water, goddamn it.

It was granted, but then halted after Sims’ lawyers made a big deal about the first dick pic photo shoot in the media, claiming the police had infringed upon Sims’ Fourth Amendment rights. That’s the one that prevents the government from conducting unreasonable searches and seizures, in essence calling James Madison an idiot for not foreseeing the need to include a line about the sovereignty of teenage dicks in the Constitution.

Charges against Sims were eventually dropped after he served probation. And with that out of the way, it was time to sue Abbott. But the focal point of the lawsuit shifted from Abbott to Claiborne T. Richardson II, the guy who approved both warrants. This shift happened after Abbott shot himself in his goddamned front yard right before county police officers were going to arrest him on suspicion of molesting boys when he was a youth hockey coach. I just want to reiterate here that this story was barely a blip on the national media’s radar.

Sims’ lawsuit was thrown out when a judge said that Richardson and Abbott were immune, since the Fourth Amendment surprisingly makes no mention of cops taking pictures of a teen’s penis. Everyone up and down the chain kept coming up with creative interpretations of the law to protect a dead detective who killed himself to avoid charges of molesting a minor. The common argument was that Abbott was just following orders. But he was the one who asked for the warrant. Has your head exploded yet?

After four years of this shit, the Fourth Circuit Court sided with Sims, finally deciding that teenage penises are in fact covered by the Fourth Amendment. See? Everything is fine. Nothing to see here.

Luis’ brain feels funny after he played with unknown alloys. In the meantime, you can find him on Twitter, Tumblr, and Facebook.

A previous version of the column stated that Andrew Finch was playing Call of Duty and had been directly involved in the online argument before he was swatted. That was incorrect. The text has been changed to reflect that.

Uhhh … have a stress ball or several.

Support Cracked’s journalism with a visit to our Contribution Page. Please and thank you.

For more stories you should have heard about but probably didn’t, check out 29 Pieces Of Good News That Got Choked Out By Trump Stories and 7 Pieces Of Good News About Huge Stories (No One Told You).

Has anyone told you we’re on Facebook?

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5 Crazy Recent News Stories That Didn’t Get Enough Attention

Most people read the headlines of a couple of political stories shared by their most untrustworthy friend on Facebook and feel like they’re pretty well-informed. But the daily large-scale dramas of the Trump administration, mass shootings, Russian agents being assassinated, and the world generally seeming like a montage of newscasts from a ’50s sci-fi movie have overshadowed some utterly insane news that, in a different era, would have dominated headlines for weeks.

So here are five stories that have yet to receive the proper “Wait, what the fuck?!” reaction that they deserve.

5

The Government Said It Has Mysterious Alloys Recovered From UFOs

Two Pulitzer-Prize-winning reporters made public some fascinating footage captured by military pilots of an unidentified flying object zipping across the skies, making sharp turns and occasionally hovering like a helicopter, and all with no visible signs of propulsion. With the internet as it is, we should’ve been drowned in stories about how “Independence Day PREDICTED THE FUTURE” or whatever.

The footage is odd, for sure. But it only makes up like 0.5 percent of the craziness within the New York Times article it came from.

Read Next

Get Your Head In The Game With This Xbox Live Gold Offer

The article says that between 2007 and 2012, there was something called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program running out of the Pentagon, where at least one employee had the X-Files theme as their ringtone and their co-workers hated them for it. Their task was to investigate mysterious aerial phenomena. While there’s a good chance they had a rubber stamp that read “It’s just another damn drone from Walmart” so they wouldn’t have to write it out all the time, the AATIP’s creator, former Senator Harry Reid, fought to secure the program’s findings, fearing that the United States would be helpless to defend itself from the technologies it discovered. That’s the kind of shit you say to justify keeping Magneto in a plastic cell underground.

Luis Elizondo, the former head of the AATIP, referenced “the many accounts from the Navy and other services of unusual aerial systems interfering with military weapon platforms and displaying beyond-next-generation capabilities.” And most of the program’s $22 million budget over five years went to an aerospace technology company owned by a billionaire named Robert Bigelow, who 100 percent believes aliens have visited earth. And that brings us to the pant-shitting part:

“Under Mr. Bigelow’s direction, the company modified buildings in Las Vegas for the storage of metal alloys and other materials that Mr. Elizondo and program contractors said had been recovered from unidentified aerial phenomena. Researchers also studied people who said they had experienced physical effects from encounters with the objects and examined them for any physiological changes.”

Ah, OK. So. WHAT THE FUCK. Is it just a rash, or a headache, or are these people District 9-ing and morphing into a new species that should be shot in the head?

Live Science tried debunking some of the article’s claims by asking scientists and professors what they thought about it. Their grand conclusion is that there is no way an alloy could be unidentified. Thanks, guys. Excellent observation. There’s no way there are things out there that we don’t know! is some shit-ass expertise. They didn’t even try explaining the claim that the alloys are physically affecting people who interact with them. And it’s hard to blame them. If I think about it for a second, my brain goes to scary places that make me want to hide under a bed and cry.

The whole article makes it seem like there are a lot of high-ranking government officials who are certain aliens are real, that they have visited us, and we should probably fear what they might try to do to us. So on a day-to-day basis, you should feel a tinge of anxiety about your career, the well-being of your children, whether democracy will hold in America, and maybe also aliens with their poisonous ship junk.

4

A Man Spent Years Building His Own Submarine, Then Allegedly Used It To Brutally Murder A Journalist

Every once in a while, a sensational murder case — usually involving an attractive female victim — will take over the country for months. This case is weirder than every one of those combined, and nobody cared.

Peter Madsen had been building his own 55-foot submarine for years. We even wrote about his efforts back in 2010. Kim Wall was a freelance journalist who was just another in a long line to document Peter’s impressively productive waste of time. This sounds like the start of a quirky indie film.

But it’s fuckin’ not.

She set up an interview and two-hour test ride for August 10th, 2017. After the two hours were up, Wall’s boyfriend got suspicious that he hadn’t heard from her, so he called the police. Madsen was later rescued from his sinking submarine off the southern coast of Copenhagen — without Wall. Unless your passenger reveals their true kraken form, it’s weird to return to shore with fewer people than when you left. Madsen claimed that he dropped her off onshore hours earlier, which doesn’t quite align with the fact that her torso was found at sea days later.

At a pretrial hearing a couple of weeks later, Madsen testified that he buried Wall at sea after she was killed by a blow to the head from a 155-pound submarine hatch. Ah, the classic “She was murdered by the submarine, not me” defense. This did not hold up, as forensics found that her skull had no fractures and her throat had been either cut or strangled when she died. More of her body parts started washing up, and they concluded that her limbs had been forcibly removed with a saw and stuffed into plastic bags that were weighed down with metal pipes. She had also been stabbed 15 times.

Madsen’s trial is underway, and maybe it’s not getting any attention because everybody thinks they already know who did it? If so, doesn’t the fact that a man allegedly spent years building a murder submarine specifically so he could do this seem worthy of notice? What in the hell does it take to capture the national imagination these days?

3

There Is Now Software That Can Put Any Real Person Into Porn Videos, Including You Or Your Mom, Or Both

The future is NOW. Sadly, it’s only for creeps who want to jerk off to fake Scarlett Johansson porn. The technology that’s making it possible is called Deepfake. It’s an AI-driven software that can swap out a person’s face in video footage with someone else’s. Sometimes it’s convincing, other times it looks like their heads are painfully phasing in and out of reality.

That’s how you get Raiders Of The Lost Ark starring Nicolas Cage:

It’s also how you ruin the joke of an SNL sketch starring Nicolas Cage:

But it’s mostly for porn. And like all pursuits popular among sad lonely men, it was very popular on Reddit. Luckily, Reddit banned the Deepfakes subreddit not long after it was created — a bold moral stance for a site that lures you in with memes and then knocks you out with a one-two punch of white supremacy and misogyny. Bans on other big platforms like Discord, Twitter, and even PornHub soon followed, even though the underlying technology still exists for free on the internet.

What’s odd is that once it was banned across multiple sites, we reverted back to a pre-Deepfakes mindset, as if we don’t all live in the prologue of a new world where Donald Trump’s rumored pee tape might surface and the mere existence of Deepfakes would be enough for his supporters to call bullshit. We might one day look back at people on a subreddit putting Taylor Swift’s face on a porn star as innocent compared to a future in which a murderer whose face was clearly captured by security footage gets off scot-free because of the plausible deniability of Deepfakes. It’s a scary future where documented proof could be brushed away with a simple “That’s not me, that’s a fake — a deep fake” *winks at camera*.

Also, it means literally every woman who posts her face to the internet will wind up in a fake porn video / sex tape at some point. So there’s that, too.

2

A “Swatting” Prank Finally Got Someone Killed

You know what’s a real gut-busting joke that always leaves audiences rolling in the aisles? When SWAT teams charge into innocent people’s homes with shotguns and semiautomatic rifles drawn, intent on killing someone if it means stopping a hostage situation, all based on a tip obtained from a prank phone call. My sides! The sheer terror everyone involved must feel is making me pee a little!

If you don’t think it’s funny, then you’re not one of the many teenagers who’ve performed this “prank” because they’ve yet to develop a tangible fear of how utterly screwed their lives will be if the 9-1-1 call is traced back to them. The targets tend to be Twitch streamers, since a SWAT team’s entrance can turn an Overwatch stream into the drug raid scene from Goodfellas. Dozens of celebrities have also been swatted, like Miley Cyrus, Tom Cruise, and Clint Eastwood. Many of these people were lucky to not have been killed. SWAT teams have a long, horrific history of killing innocent people and/or their dogs during raids, in case you needed a cartoonishly ghoulish detail to further turn your stomach.

In an era when the media will drum up a moral panic over everything from violent video games to eating Tide Pods, you’d think this swatting thing would have been the subject of several congressional hearings by now. Especially since in December 2017, a swatting prank ended with someone dead, like every human who’d heard of swatting knew would eventually happen. Some random guys had placed a bet on the outcome of a Call Of Duty: WWII multiplayer match. An argument broke out, and one of the participants decided to get his just desserts by having a SWAT team sent to another person’s house. You know, as one does. The target of the swatting gave a false address. It was the home of a guy named Andrew Finch.

The person who initiated the swatting hired an intermediary to do it for them, Tyler Barriss. He was essentially a swatting hitman with a reputation for calling in swats on behalf of people who don’t want to get caught doing it themselves. And his Twitter handle was “SWauTistic,” because he’s a professional who believes in discretion. Barriss called the Wichita police and reported that someone at Finch’s house had shot their own father in the head and was holding their mother hostage. When Finch answered the knock at his door, a Wichita SWAT officer immediately pulled the trigger. Finch was unarmed and nonviolent. His friends say he didn’t even play video games.

Barriss has been charged with involuntary manslaughter, giving false alarm, and interference with a law enforcement officer. Finch’s mother is suing the Wichita Police Department. And even with a cop’s itchy trigger finger, there’s no denying that if Barriss had instead called and asked if Fincher’s refrigerator was running, he would still be alive today.

Swatting has become a dangerous trend which, unlike the aforementioned Tide Pod eating, is actually happening and is actually harming people. California State Senator Ted Lieu, New Jersey State Assemblyman Paul Moriarty, and Massachusetts Congresswoman Katherine Clark have all proposed anti-swatting legislation — all three have been swatted in response.

1

A Scandal Involving Cops Forcing Nude Photos From A Teenage Boy Ended In Suicide

Before I get into it, just know this story deals with the sexual molestation of a minor. So it’s not going to be as rip-roaringly funny as swatting.

17-year-old Trey Sims sent a video of his penis to his 15-year-old girlfriend. In the state of Virginia, this paradoxically made him the creator and victim of child pornography. The detective assigned to the case, David E. Abbott, obtained a warrant to take pictures of Sims’ penis to match it with the penis in the video, as if the police have a dick pic database that analyzes head-to-balls distance and pubic hair density to find a perfect match. Of course, all of this is necessary, since it’s so difficult to identify a dick when it doesn’t have a tattoo or a peg leg. Why that warrant wasn’t contested from the start is a mystery.

Another mystery is why, at one point, Abbott decided to start taking pictures of Sims’ penis with his personal cellphone.

Detective Abbot deemed the pictures insufficient, because somehow Sims couldn’t get erect with cops recording him masturbating. Which they had asked him to do, you know, so the pics would match the ones he was accused of sending. Wait, who is this law supposed to protect, again? Anyway, Abbot asked for a second state-sponsored permission slip to photograph a teenager’s erect penis. Abbott also threatened to force feed Sims erectile dysfunction pills, because he was determined to get a picture of a kid’s erect penis come hell or high water, goddamn it.

It was granted, but then halted after Sims’ lawyers made a big deal about the first dick pic photo shoot in the media, claiming the police had infringed upon Sims’ Fourth Amendment rights. That’s the one that prevents the government from conducting unreasonable searches and seizures, in essence calling James Madison an idiot for not foreseeing the need to include a line about the sovereignty of teenage dicks in the Constitution.

Charges against Sims were eventually dropped after he served probation. And with that out of the way, it was time to sue Abbott. But the focal point of the lawsuit shifted from Abbott to Claiborne T. Richardson II, the guy who approved both warrants. This shift happened after Abbott shot himself in his goddamned front yard right before county police officers were going to arrest him on suspicion of molesting boys when he was a youth hockey coach. I just want to reiterate here that this story was barely a blip on the national media’s radar.

Sims’ lawsuit was thrown out when a judge said that Richardson and Abbott were immune, since the Fourth Amendment surprisingly makes no mention of cops taking pictures of a teen’s penis. Everyone up and down the chain kept coming up with creative interpretations of the law to protect a dead detective who killed himself to avoid charges of molesting a minor. The common argument was that Abbott was just following orders. But he was the one who asked for the warrant. Has your head exploded yet?

After four years of this shit, the Fourth Circuit Court sided with Sims, finally deciding that teenage penises are in fact covered by the Fourth Amendment. See? Everything is fine. Nothing to see here.

Luis’ brain feels funny after he played with unknown alloys. In the meantime, you can find him on Twitter, Tumblr, and Facebook.

A previous version of the column stated that Andrew Finch was playing Call of Duty and had been directly involved in the online argument before he was swatted. That was incorrect. The text has been changed to reflect that.

Uhhh … have a stress ball or several.

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