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atopearth · 6 years

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Higurashi When They Cry Part 3: Ch 3 Tatarigoroshi-hen

I guess this one will focus on Satoko and her past relationship with her brother Satoshi that is missing. I’ve always been curious about that so I’m hyped. But Satoko really is kind and sweet despite her expected trap making skills lmao. Lucky she saved Keiichi from burning his house down omg, I was so scared for him lol. Btw, Chie-sensei the curry maniac is so pretty and cuteee omgg!! She doesn’t look scary but danggg lol!

As someone with two brothers, seeing how much Satoko misses her brother and sees her brother in Keiichi really makes me teary. My brothers are really important to me as well so the thought of them disappearing would probably make me feel really lonely as well. Even if Keiichi is like a replacement brother, he’s a good and sweet one. 💯 approved!

Their club games are literally the best, that baseball game was so funny and cool, especially the way Satoko called him out making him misunderstand that they were in a physical fight and needed help lmaoo. So hilarious that Kameda’s weakness was that he has a secret guilty pleasure in eating desserts because he’s into sullying pretty things with his sportsman exterior HAHAHA. What kind of fetish is this?!😂😂 Coach Irie is such a good guy though, only if you take his random inappropriate jokes as jokes though haha. I thought it was really kind of him to want to give the best to Satoko and even have the intention to adopt her but be unable to since he’s not married.

Think I read somewhere that Shion was Satoshi’s girlfriend so I wasn’t very surprised but I guess this is another reason for her dislike of Hinamizawa and not living there or going there often? Rena and her obsession with Oyashiro-sama’s curse is as scary as ever. With a bit more context this time, it seems like Satoshi may have thought about escaping Hinamizawa and that’s what angered Oyashiro-sama and Rena seems to have experienced this firsthand… She said she begged for forgiveness and that’s why she was saved or spared or something… I wonder what happened to Rena… Did she try to run away once upon a time? Satoshi doesn’t seem like the type to abandon Satoko so he’s probably dead I guess… But whaat, is Satoko’s dad actually still alive and he even had a lover?? As the leaders of the faction that was all for the dam project, he was actually spared? Doesn’t seem like Mion and them to allow him to live though…

Why does Ooishi seem so evil or malicious or something in this one…? He literally grabbed Keiichi and hurt him.. but Ooishi being Oyashiro-sama’s servant and that he decides that the sacrifices for the curse every year? That’s a new theory.. Oh my mistake, the one with a lover is the uncle?? And he’s back… And preventing Satoko from going to school… Keiichi is such an asshole and so mean to Mion. He’s not the only one that cares about Satoko but he pushes the responsibility of saving her on to her as if it’s her fault that Satoko is in pain. He’s so naive and ridiculous to think that he can just say all this to Mion and make her cry when he’s not even doing anything to help Satoko either! I’m glad Rena shouted at him, he totally deserved it😡😡

I guess you can understand why Satoko blames herself for Satoshi’s disappearance. He’s always been a good brother protecting her after all, and she was the one who reported the child abuse and in turn made her aunt and uncle abuse them even more due to the report. There was nothing wrong with her relying on her older brother but I guess since she’s older now, she also knows that it must have been painful for him to take everything on himself. So her hope that if she becomes more mature and deals with this problem herself, her brother will come back is logical.. tbh Keiichi this time around is very infuriating because he keeps on thinking that just because people aren’t reacting as badly as him towards Satoko’s situation that they don’t care as much or aren’t as desperate. It’s like who does he think he is, what puts him on that high horse, seriously. Everyone cares and worries in their own different ways and he’s constantly judging and thinking of them as lesser than him in terms of this mentality and it just makes me want to hit him, because they’re trying to think of ways to make the situation more positive for Satoko but he just rains on their parade because they’re being “happy”.

Seriously, how would Satoko feel if they always looked at her with sad eyes of pity and concern all the time, she’d feel so inadequate, embarrassed and even more sad! Gahhhh! He’s so emotional and not helping the problem at all! If it helped I’d be all for it but it really doesn’t and just makes it harder for everyone that’s trying to help the situation so it really makes me angry! If I was Mion, I would have snapped at him already because the way he treats her just makes me so protective of her especially since she always apologises to him when it’s not even her fault! So what if she’s got housekeepers dude, Satoko’s guardian is her uncle because he’s a blood relative and so it’s not a money problem at all. He really needs to keep his emotions in check omg. It was so cruel of Keiichi to tell Mion to choose Satoko’s uncle to be the sacrifice for Oyashiro-sama’s curse just because he heard that she’s the head of the Sonozaki family. I’m aware of how desperate he is towards trying to save Satoko but, he was literally accusing her of being a murderer, a serial killer and the mastermind of everything with no evidence or anything, just ignorance I guess. He really didn’t consider Mion’s feelings at all and that angers me. He’s always hurting her when she’s so kind. He doesn’t think about anyone else’s feelings!

But wow, I never thought that Satoko’s actually had many “dads” since her mother remarried once and had many de facto partners, and that Satoko played malicious pranks on them to the point that they couldn’t stand Satoko. I guess she wanted attention from her mother and she thought the existence of this father was stopping that so she never really accepted any of them and kept up this behaviour… She’s an emotionally hurt child but I can’t help but sympathise with some of them to an extent since Satoko’s pranks can go quite far tbh… It seems that there was the theory that Satoko purposely hurt herself so she could chase her stepfather out with the child welfare people… And she really did lie about it so this theory was actually true… Which is why the second time they were called, they were wary of it and wanted to wait and see how the situation goes..

To see Satoko break down so badly and hurt Keiichi so badly (physically and emotionally) was daunting. Kinda glad Rena shouted at him when he kept talking when it was obvious that he was scaring Satoko with his existence as a guy probably. But I guess what I feared seems to have begun to happen. Keiichi is losing it and thinking of how to kill Satoko��s uncle. I wonder if Oyashiro-sama’s curse is actually some supernatural being taking in the vulnerable emotions of those who are really mad etc and exacerbating that and thus leading to the death of those they hate? And then they get eaten by the supernatural being themselves and that’s why they disappear?

So, in a sense, the reason Keiichi’s family moved was because of him. He was a special kid that was “smart” in that he was quick to pick up things and go beyond the expectations of his teachers, but that kinda made him get a big head I guess and he slowly lost his normal social life with others. And as others do, the parents decided to move somewhere to help change the environment and hopefully he can start anew happily somewhere else. But I honestly didn’t think Keiichi would really go through with the murder of Satoko’s uncle. I really enjoyed the entire deliberation he had over the whole thing though and his previous annoying actions made it easier to believe that he was capable of doing this. It felt very real because of how detailed his thought process was and how understandable his thoughts were, which is also what made it so uncomfortable as well. Because really, it showed how easy it could be to kill another person as long as you plan it, have the intention and go through with it. This time, Keiichi didn’t go to the festival so I’m curious about what happens in this game. I’ve read manga and books where the closest person to the victim ends up killing the perpetrator, and it always makes me feel so sad to see it happen, because they’re all ordinary people who wanted to protect the victim so much…so much that to an extent, they went insane from the trauma. It’s just so devastating…

The possiblity of Takano killing Tomitake…never occurred to me. I guess it was because they always seemed like they were dating so I never thought she’d ever kill him, I mean.. What could be the reason? And who kills Takano every time if she is the one who supposedly killed Tomitake? Unless Keiichi actually has another personality or something and so even though he was exhausted, he ended up killing Takano as well~ although I could imagine Mion or someone killing Takano to protect Keiichi. But what? Keiichi was at the festival, just like he was in the other games? Does that mean the worlds are connected?? One disappears and one dies… Did Takano disappear or die? If one Keiichi disappeared and we’re left with this one that killed Satoko’s uncle.. Is he actually a demon and not Keiichi? As expected, the uncle is actually not dead though. Does that mean, somehow Keiichi has gone into a different timeline after killing the uncle? Different world?

I feel sorry for Keiichi that Irie thinks he’s crazy after he told him how he shouldn’t have been at the festival but everyone else said he was, and that he killed the uncle. But you really can’t blame Irie, considering Keiichi’s past actions with how emotional he was over Satoko and everything, tbh I’m not even sure that just because I’m reading this from his perspective that he really did kill the uncle or whether his hatred was just so magnified to such an extent with his helplessness towards Satoko that he thought he killed the uncle when he really didn’t. The missing baseball bat etc could have been moved by him when he’s in a dazed state or whatever as well, just like in the first game when he killed Mion and Rena after he turned crazy. Keiichi has always been the scariest when pushed to the limits after all… Maybe Satoshi really did the same thing as Keiichi, maybe he did beat the aunt to death to protect Satoko, maybe Satoshi and him are as similar as they keep saying in this game and the previous ones.. Maybe he’s just Satoshi with brown hair hahahaha.

Is it true that whoever Keiichi wishes for to die, they’ll die? Irie didn’t believe his story and was cursed, so he died? Ooishi kept hitting him with mud when Keiichi tried to dig up that hole where the body should have been and was cursed by Keiichi, so he died? I’m glad Satoko’s okay though, she was literally bathing in boiling hot water for one whole night, I’m surprised she’s still alive and conscious tbh. But, I can’t believe Rika is dead and killed in the way the Hinamizawa torture would go, with her stomach cut open and her bowels and organs taken out. Poor Rika, how cruel… So, Satoko snuck in that ritual storehouse when she was a kid and broke one of those cages making it hit into an image of Oyashiro-sama as she ran away and Rika got blamed for it.. so Satoko thinks that everything crazy that has happened, her parents dying, her brother disappearing, her aunt beaten to death, Rika dying, Keiichi killing her uncle, everything is all because of Oyashiro-sama’s curse of killing the people closest to you first and then you last. Is the curse real, or is the curse as real as they believe it to be, I wonder? Satoko really can’t help but think that Keiichi has been possessed huh?

But to think that his wish that this cursed version of Hinamizawa would disappear would actually make everyone besides him disappear from this world through toxic volcanic gas… I guess this was an ending where Keiichi survived huh? Not that living is any better though. He lived long enough to torment him until his eventual death. Yeah, that’s not nice at all.

Btw, the all cast review session is always so great, I’d recommend watching them for every game, this one was especially great and funny hahaha! I mean it’s so true that Tomitake is like a newscaster, his death is always the announcement that Higurashi will be going into the second half which is darker hahaha! They always so calmly analyse how they died etc and stuff like that, it’s so interesting! Kinda interested that Shion will be the main character for Meakashi, I really like her just like many others do XD

Overall, I enjoyed this game as much as the others but I do admit that Keiichi frustrated me at times and it was a bit draggy about the depressing things, sigh but it was really good. I guess it just made me sad to read it every time, rather than scared lol. Gotta say the killing part was a highlight and a very interesting turn to the series. Can’t wait to play the next one~~

#higurashi when they cry

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rolandfontana · 6 years

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Is Cosby’s Prison Term a Wake-Up Call to Prosecutors?

The sight of Bill Cosby being escorted from court in handcuffs to begin serving a three-to-ten year prison sentence didn’t make me smile, but it did give me a sense of hope that justice is possible for women in America.

Cosby spent decades brutally violating women’s bodies, and ruining their careers if they dared complain about his sexual demands. Now he looked downtrodden, and dejected, though not ashamed. His feelings about going to prison probably match the feelings his victims had when they woke up from a drugged stupor, in pain from neck to knee, coming face to face with a smirking Cosby, who sent them away like yesterday’s trash.

Cosby, like Judge Brett Kavanaugh during last week’s hearings, seemed incredulous that the word of a credible woman, without corroboration, should be enough to hold a man accountable.

Here’s a newsflash: the requirement of corroboration was abolished decades ago on the grounds that it was sexist, and unjustly prevented prosecution of rape cases. Nonetheless, prosecutors retain discretion to refuse to file charges for any reason, and they often do, especially if the offender is a man of influence.

Thus, if Andrea Constand had been Cosby’s only victim, he would not be in prison because, despite abolition of the corroboration rule, prosecutors, police and, more importantly, jurors, are permitted to discriminate against women. Simply put, the culture of our legal system makes clear to victims that if the only evidence they have against a man is their word, they should stay silent.

Colleges contribute to this sick mindset by treating women as second-class campus citizens when they report sexual assault.

Most schools have policies that subject sex discrimination, including sexual assault, to arduous investigations and unfair hearings that drag on for months and favor offenders, while harms based on race and national origin are resolved in a matter of days, without protracted investigations, and without anyone complaining that the offender needs more “due process.”

Title IX and Title IV of the Civil Rights Act mandate that sex-based harms be subjected to exactly the same gold standard treatment as harms based on race and national origin, but most schools mistreat women anyway, and point to Education Secretary Betsy DeVos as giving them authority to do so. A landmark lawsuit against DeVos was filed a year ago in federal court in Boston, asking the court to rule that schools must treat sex-based harms exactly the same as race-based harms, and that DeVos has no authority to discriminate against women, or permit schools to subject women to second-class treatment.

College women don’t complain about second-class treatment because they don’t see it. Like women in the “real” world, they accept second-class treatment as normal, often because groups claiming to be “advocates” for victims and proponents of Title IX tell them, falsely, that schools and prosecutors are following the law when they treat women poorly.

Is it any wonder most women never report sexual violence, on campus or in larger society, and that only two percent of rapists spend even one day behind bars; a number that hasn’t changed in decades?

According to the majority staff report of the Senate Judiciary Committee, The Response to Rape: Detours on the Road to Equal Justice, 28 (1993), only two percent of rapists see even one day behind bars. Additional confirmation of this figure comes from Reporting Rates, produced by the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, which also points out that the majority of reported rapes are never prosecuted.

Despite the fact that schools and law enforcement officials too normalize male supremacy by refusing to take action against an offender, Stanford’s Brock Turner and Bill Cosby have been held to account, to some extent. Three months was a woefully inadequate punishment for Brock Turner, and three years (minimum) in prison is not nearly enough for Bill Cosby, but both punishments are much longer than the sentences typically handed out in similar cases against men of similar social status.

Indeed, privileged males at elite universities rarely suffer any campus-based sanctions, much less criminal charges and incarceration. Brock Turner went to jail only because he was caught in the act by two eyewitnesses who were not his buddies, and thus not willing to lie for him. And Bill Cosby went to prison because, although he is a man of significant privilege, he had so many victims.

Both men also got in trouble because their victims were drugged, a factor that helped make it politically impossible for public officials to do nothing.

Most victims don’t realize they were drugged; they think they had too much to drink because they don’t know what being drugged feels like. And they don’t call police because the drugs cause amnesia, so they often cannot recall the details of what happened. Moreover, rape laws and campus rules are vague about what constitutes an offense when a victim is incapacitated.

In Pennsylvania for example, where Cosby was prosecuted, “incapacitation” means the victim must be completely unconscious. Another law requires proof that the perpetrator secretly caused the victim to consume the drugs. In other words, in Pennsylvania, offenders have legal permission to rape incapacitated persons, so long as there’s no proof the offender secretly drugged the victim, and she isn’t totally unconscious.

Bill Cosby’s trial helped teach the public about the prevalence and effect of rape drugs, while the Brock Turner case managed to hide the fact that the victim was so heavily drugged, she remained unconscious for hours after police brought her to the hospital.

Drugging victims is a convenient tactic that often enables an offender to avoid accountability simply because the victim cannot recall what happened. By the time she realizes she was drugged, the substances have dissipated from blood and urine. Few victims are informed by school or by law enforcement officials that drugging can still be proved by behavioral evidence, and by testing the victim’s hair. Rape drugs never dissipate from hair, and the latest technology can reveal with a high degree of certainty when the drugs entered the victim’s body.

While Cosby and Turner were sentenced to incarceration, other men of influence, such as Les Moonves, Charlie Rose, and Matt Lauer, merely lost their jobs, or faced civil suits. Justice for most women in the form of criminal prosecution has been elusive, with Harvey Weinstein being a notable exception.

The pile of victims has to grow very high before a District Attorney pays attention. One victim is enough.

Weinstein has been charged, and may well face incarceration when his case goes to trial, but as with Cosby, the pile of victims had to grow very high before the District Attorney paid attention.

This is unacceptable, blatant sex discrimination. One victim is enough.

The criminal courtroom is the people’s courtroom, and when violence against women does not receive its fair share of criminal justice resources, the violence gets worse and the public is denied access to truthful information about the extent of the problem, and the suffering women endure.

Notwithstanding the insidious mistreatment of victimized women in our criminal justice system, Bill Cosby’s incarceration is a cultural turning point, and a byproduct of many factors, including the #MeToo movement. #MeToo has provided a space for women to be heard when responsible officials and school administrators aren’t listening.

Led by an organic groundswell of anger, women have come together like never before around the issue of gender-based violence, and the public is finally starting to understand that a sexual assault against one woman is a sexual assault against all women.

Women have also begun to understand the importance of becoming politically active around the election of District Attorneys. Kevin Steele, the Montgomery County (Pa.,) prosecutor who filed charges against Cosby, ran his campaign on a promise to prosecute Cosby if elected. His incumbent/opponent refused.

Women need to elect prosecutors who value their lives, voices, and autonomous authority over their bodies. Too often prosecutors refuse to file charges out of fear that jurors will find reasonable doubt based on discriminatory ideas about a victim’s behavior or credibility. District Attorney Steele boldly confronted these systemic biases, rather than indulging them, and prosecuted Cosby without fear that jurors might judge Andrea Constand unfairly.

This is how all prosecutors should conduct themselves, but women need to hold them accountable.

For example, women can demand that candidates for District Attorney agree to release annual “Violence Against Women Report Cards,” showing how many rape and domestic abuse cases were reported to police and prosecutors; how many were declined for prosecution, and what happened to the cases that were filed, in terms of charges, convictions, and punishments.

Too often prosecutors reveal only the percentage of cases they won, rather than how many cases they accepted and rejected for prosecution. So a District Attorney who says he won 90 percent of his rape cases is actually hurting women if he prosecuted only ten cases, and refused to file charges in 800 more. And what does he mean when he says he “won” a case? If a prosecutor agrees to a plea-bargain and allows a rapist to plead guilty to simple assault and battery, that is a loss, not a win. Unless all the data on violence against women is revealed in an annual Report Card, women have no way of holding prosecutors (and judges) accountable for unequal justice.

Women have been oppressed for a very — long — time, and although Bill Cosby’s conviction will inspire more women to report rape, their reports will fall on deaf ears unless they demand equal access to justice, and equal treatment under the law. Prosecutors must no longer get away with citing tired excuses about the case not being “strong enough” to prove the charges beyond a reasonable doubt.

Victims are entitled to their day in court. Let a jury determine the evidence. Among other benefits, this will help “teach” jurors, hence the public, that all violence against women matters, and all women will be heard.

With prosecutors focused on justice rather than winning, more offenders will start to worry about being held accountable. That men do not expect to be held accountable is derived from male supremacy in the U.S. Constitution, which long ago declared women second-class citizens. The resulting sense of male entitlement is correlated with high rates of sexual assault.

Simply put, the space between equality and inequality is where violence happens with impunity under the law.

When he sentenced Cosby, Judge Steven O’Neill said, “No one is above the law, and no one should be treated differently.”

He was talking about Cosby, but he should have talked about women, and the violence they suffer because they are female. Judge O’Neill should have pointed out that women endure very high rates of abuse because the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause does not equally protect them, on par with men. To the contrary, women’s constitutionally mandated inferiority allows federal and state officials to discriminate on the basis of sex when they enact laws, enforce (or not) laws, and interpret laws in the courts.

The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), which aims to repair the problem by establishing women’s equality in the Constitution, was passed by Congress in 1972, but was never ratified by the necessary 38 states. Nevada ratified ERA in 2017, and Illinois ratified earlier this year, making it the 37th state.

This means America is only one state away from full equality for women for the first time in history.

Wendy Murphy

With unprecedented energy now driving the national conversation about violence against women, all people who care about the issue should mobilize and focus on ratification of the ERA because equality, not hashtags, will stop the violence.

And, not for nothing, karma would have a whole new meaning if the ERA made its way into the Constitution before Bill Cosby made his way out of prison.

Further Reading: Amid Kavanaugh Furor, Devos Ponders College Sex Rules

Wendy Murphy is a former sex crimes prosecutor and professor of sexual violence law at New England Law|Boston, where she also directs the Women’s and Children’s Advocacy Project. Follow her at @WMurphyLaw. Readers’ comments are welcome.

Is Cosby’s Prison Term a Wake-Up Call to Prosecutors? syndicated from https://immigrationattorneyto.wordpress.com/

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rolandfontana · 6 years

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Will Cosby’s Prison Term Be a Wake-Up Call to Prosecutors?