#so it didnt recognize the marriage certificate

[bastardbvby]

do u ever meet someone and its like oh we were destined to be in each other’s lives in some form 

[flower-of-the-desert]

Thinking more weilan thoughts after finishing the second volume and also that hilarious post that was like weilan are psycho-sexually obsessed with each other on a cosmic level which YEAH TRUE LMAO but also got me thinking.

I didnt get the sense reading the first two volumes that ZYL and SW spent any significant amount of time together outside of life-threatening situations where they could like see each other as *people*, you know? For most of the first volume SW was running away and ZYL was flirting and chasing after him and then once SW finally accepted at the start of vol 2 they had a few VERY adorable moments as a couple but shit just kept happening so there wasnt a lot of time for them to really settle into their new life as a couple.

Which obviously SW doesnt need that. He already knows everything about ZYL, he doesnt need to spend time with him to know what kind of person he is, his likes/dislikes/his temperament/etc (little stalker that he is 🥰) but ZYL doesnt remember any of their past. He doesnt even know SW's real identity at the time when he's seriously considering moving in with him and buying a house for them and dreaming up this entire domestic life with pets and everything.

And this is where I think the psycho-sexually obsessed with each other on a cosmic level thing comes in. Because from the moment ZYL laid eyes on the hot professor something inside him *recognized* SW even if he didnt remember, felt that connection from long ago that was still holding strong and just didn't need anything else. And the more he remembered about his past, the more his feelings awakened again I think? until he was dropping casual I love yous and planning to write his own marriage certificate.

So yeah. Weilan in love and also obsessed with each other on a cosmic level that even the will of the heavens couldnt break. We love to see it.

[77ngiez-archive]

GWEH chihiro and maki and the hinata izuru system...

under tha cut :3

chihiro: married to maki. pioneer in the ai field due to literally creating sentient ai. because of this she does not really have issues when it comes to money. she takes other coding jobs for fun sometimes. ermmm she has transitioned, surgery hrt legal changes the works. her and her wife and their 20 kitties and bunnies. she wants to have kids someday but both her and maki are extremely nervous about fucking it up.

maki: quit the assassin life, works as a social worker. spent a few years helping shuichi bust the holy salvation society. got top surgery. still looking for her old friend from the orphanage, although she recognizes that the chance of finding her (even if it's just her death certificate) is very small. he is very happy in his marriage so while all the other v3s are bemoaning their various divorces he sips a glass of coke and says "skill issue"

hinata system: hajime went dormant for A Whilr and they didnt know they were a system yet so izuru thought shed just finally had her moment of trans self-discovery. not wrong but not quite true. she transitioned, married angie, moved to angie's hometown, got a good job in web/app development for a really big company. her and angies system eggs cracked at roughly the same time LMAO. hajime had undormant'd like a year prior to the sysegg cracking but he thought he was just izuru but depressed. anyway he realized he was nonbinary. he ruins izurus sleep schedule by fronting at night (time zones, wanting to talk to his friends in japan that izuru moved away from + he doesnt know how to code so he cant front while izurus at work). when he does front during the day he binds. izuru and angies kids call him uncle hajime.

[todaviia]

Why does it take hours to write the appeal? What's in the appeal? What's the "asylum agency", are they lawyers as well?

The "asylum agency" are the Bundesamt für Migration und Flüchtlinge (BAMF for short), it's the German Federal department for (among other things) vetting asylum claims. There are a lot of lawyers (as in, Juristen = people with a law degree) working there, but it's a normal administration job.

Basically in the German asylum system you first fill out an "Asylantrag" (asylum claim). In this you say where you come from and why you think you should be entitled to protection in Germany (both actual asylum - which refers to people who are personally persecuted - as well as subsidiary protection, which applies to people fleeing from general humanitarian disasters such as war).

Then the BAMF checks your asylum claim. Here is a very good English-language longform article by the Atlantic detailing how the BAMF works and what methods they use. Then they make a decision (Bescheid), which either accepts or rejects the claim (appealing it means you refuse to accept their ruling and try to overturn it).

There's TONS of problems with this. Even legitimate refugees often don't tell the truth or do so in a way that is contradictory bc we're talking about usually super traumatized ppl getting like half an hour to tell the absolute worst and often most intimate parts of their lives to a total stranger and THEN these total strangers judge whether they believe that or not.

And they can be super and I mean SUPER unfair about this. For example for the guy whose appeal I wrote today (let's call him F.), he was asked to describe his situation and he said he knew three other gay guys in his city, that they were the only people who knew about his sexuality and that they all were still closeted and still in Iraq. He gives detailed descriptions their meet-ups, their conversations, generally how they lived (it's literally all in the hearing transcript). The interviewer asked for their names. F. said their first names. The interviewer asked for their full names. F. said he doesn't know them.

In the Bescheid, it says among other things "F. was unable to give details including basic information such as names about the people who supposedly were members of the social group of people who shared his oppression. True accounts of persecution are often characterised by the fact that they are very detailed. His claim is therefore not substantiated."

We're talking about an 18-year old gay kid who just fled a country where he legitimately feared for his life because of his sexuality and who basically had to keep this part of himself secret his whole life, in a conversation with a complete stranger in a position of authority. Of course the fact that he didn't give the full names of his closest friends who still lived in that country in that situation must mean he's lying.

It also says it's contradictory and therefore unbelievable that the father would inform another family member about his son's sexuality because the fact that this would bring dishonor to the family means the father would have kept it a secret. (The "conversation" was the father convincing other male family members to join in and kill him - something which happens regularly in the country if you read up on literally any source dealing with LGBT Iraqis - often even clerics get involved to issue fatwas against them).

All in all, even if he was gay, he should have considered living anonymously in a different part of Iraq rather than come to Germany.

And what takes hours is to dig up reputable and up-to-date sources detailing the status of gay men in Iraq (Here is a heartbreaking report by Human Rights Watch btw), especially concerning the different regions of Iraq (Iraqi Kurdistan for example is considered more liberal when it comes to religion, so religious minorities from Iraq just get told to move to Iraqi Kurdistan instead. However, this does NOT apply to sexuality).

Then you try to pad that with other German court decisions abt gay men in Iraq (unfortunately it's mostly lower administrative court decisions, which don't hold much weight - but the VAST majority of them accept gay men from Iraq as legitimate refugees. There's also an ECJ ruling that says gay refugees can not be expected to hide their sexuality in their country of origin, as that would not be expected of straight refugees either and therefore would be discrimination, that's why his chances are quite good bc the Bescheid literally expected that of him) The LSVD has a REALLY great compilation for all sort of different countries of origin.

And then you have to take apart the whole bullshit Bescheid, point out the logical flaws, add other stuff the refugee told you and try to come with proofs for that etc.

It takes A LOT of work.

[morepopcornplease]

about what the fandom is arguing that Lena and Kara are married can you give me more details? Can Lena not use the fifth amendment alone? I'm confused

sort’ve already answered here, but i’ll take a stab again.

first, a primary: i DO NOT CARE whether or not the writers have a full understanding of legal process. anyone who looks to TV as their guide to legal procedure is an idiot. writers are here to construct an emotionally satisfying narrative. 

if strangers insist on telling me that this is not how REAL legal proceedings go, then i’d also remind them that:

the line of questioning “what’s Supergirl’s identity?” is objectionable: irrelevant to the case.

the reason for the line of questioning “people deserve to know who’s arresting them” is objectionable: Supergirl did not arrest Lillian Luthor, the police (that Lena called) arrested her. 

Lena would surely have been counseled by her lawyer to plead ignorance as to Supergirl’s identity, which actually affords Lena more protection than the 5th Amendment here.

Lena could have just said “her name’s Zor-El,” a completely accurate statement, without actually revealing Kara’s secret identity at all.

but this is fiction. the emotional and narrative point to this scene was for Lena to reveal:

she knew Supergirl’s identity, 

she was not going to give it up, even under oath, 

the public has to know that Lena knows, in order for 

Lockwood/Liberty to have good foundational reason to kidnap Lena.

but if we wanna look at this scene legally, well, alright:

in the USA, witnesses can invoke 5th Amendment privilege, specifically to avoid self-incrimination. the 5th Amendment protects: “No person...shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself.”

what i think some objectioners forget is that invoking the 5th is NOT a bullet-proof defense in court. let us assume that none of my above legal objections were raised in court, and the question was admissable. would her invocation stand in court? i don’t think so.

“The Fifth Amendment does not provide a blanket right to refuse to answer questions [in civil court]. It is up to the judge to determine whether the privilege is properly invoked and that means that some investigative questioning must be allowed.”

“In civil actions . . . the issue then shifts to whether the claimant is confronted by substantial and real, and not merely trifling or imaginary, hazards of incrimination.”

“If after careful inquiry and consideration of all the circumstances of the case, the judge is perfectly clear that the witness is mistaken and that the answer cannot possibly have a tendency to incriminate, then the judge can compel the witness to answer the question.”

“Failure to answer at that point will subject the witness to possible contempt of court, which, ironically enough, may involve assessment of jail time.”

source for all quotes

if we assume that the judge (somehow) determined that the lawyer’s question was completely relevant to the case of Lillian Luthor, then Lena’s invocation of the Fifth would not, should not stand. Lena would be in contempt of court, or would at least simply be pressured to answer the question directly.

now, why did my brain jump from “i plead the fifth” to “spousal privilege”?

well, because in established legal fiction (here “legal fiction” does not mean “fiction vs reality” but rather a rule that courts have agreed upon as established in order to achieve justice.) your spouse is legally recognized as part of the definition of “yourself” and so, if unwilling, your spouse cannot be legally forced to testify against you:

"[Marital privilege] sprang from two canons of medieval jurisprudence: first, the rule that an accused was not permitted to testify in his own behalf because of his interest in the proceeding; second, the concept that husband and wife were one, and that since the woman had no recognized separate legal existence, the husband was that one. From those two now long-abandoned doctrines, it followed that what was inadmissible from the lips of the defendant-husband was also inadmissible from his wife."� (Trammel v. United States (1980) 445 U.S. 40, 44; see also People v. Sinohui (2002) 28 Cal.4th 205.)

See: Davis v. Dinwoody, 100 Eng. Rep. 1241 (1792); Winham v. Chetwynd, 1 Burrows 414 (K.B. 1757).

See also J. WIGMORE, supra note 1, § 2228, at 215 (when the common law binds a man and his wife together as one, no individual shall part them).

the idea almost certainly originates from this Bible quote

and while the Supreme Court quote may lead you to believe that this rule is now defunct, NOPE, it still exists!!

The Supreme Court has recognized two privileges that arise from the marital relationship. The first permits a witness to refuse to testify against his or her spouse. This is the testimonial privilege. The witness spouse alone holds the privilege and may choose to waive it.

The second privilege, called the marital communications privilege, provides that “[c]ommunications between the spouses, privately made, are generally assumed to have been intended to be confidential, and hence they are privileged . . . .”

Marital Privilege Law and Legal Definition

with that said, there are logic holes to poke in my own joke too!!!!

some things i got wrong:

“I plead the Fifth” are not the legal words to directly invoke spousal privilege. the correct words are “I assert my spousal privilege” or “I assert my marital communications privilege.” words are DEEPLY important in legal procedure.

I thought that these privileges also applied to common law marriages. They do not. 

How the heck are you gonna prove your marriage when the identity of one party of that marriage is the thing in question???? (i didnt get this one wrong so much as i just dreamed up an AU where Maggie and Winn falsified a marriage certificate for them)

to sum up: i made a dumb fun joke because it was my first reaction to Lena invoking the Fifth. i simply wanted to share my dumb fun legal conspiracy theory with folks here, for the plot-bunnies that might spring forth. 

it was my first reaction, and i guffawed, and i shared my joke. that’s really all there is to it. people treating it like a writer’s conspiracy, or trying to use it as excuse to say the writers are dumb, are really missing the point: having dumb fun with a “what if???” plot bunny of mine.