#wrongful conviction and imprisonment

[tortoisesshells]

This is perhaps premature, but I've gotten through to 214 & while Barnabas has gotten some heavy-duty foreshadowing, talked up as a force of inscrutable malice and evil, haunting the narrative as a disembodied heartbeat- thusfar, he's mostly been strangely charming, flirted with people who may or may not be his direct descendants, and monologued about home construction and evil in The Old House at Vicki. I know it's coming, but.

#where else in the world can i go for plot developments like this? god. #there's something going on here where antagonists are always - hmm. not given the benefit of the doubt. but given some great wrong. #burke's got his betrayal & wrongful conviction & years of imprisonment; barnabas - however he became a vampire - now has; #his conflict with his father which he speaks of as betrayal & you know. more than a century of being buried alive. undead. whatever. #i'm not saying i'd be rabid but i'd consider biting people. #polkaknox talks #the news from collinsport

[fiercynn]

disturbed by the number of times i've seen the idea that calling gaza an open-air prison is not okay because "that implies that gazans have done something wrong", the subtext being unlike those criminals who deserve to be in prison. i'm sorry but we HAVE to understand criminalization and incarceration as an intrinsic part of settler colonialism and racial capitalism, because settler states make laws that actively are designed to suppress indigenous and racialized resistance, and then enforce those laws in even more racist and discriminatory ways so that who is considered "criminal" is indelibly tied up with who is considered a "threat" to the settler state. that's how law, policing, and incarceration function worlwide, and how they have always functioned in israel as part of the zionist project.

talking about prison abolition in this context is not a distraction from what's happening to palestinians; it's a key tool of israel's apartheid and genocide. why do you think a major hamas demand has been for israel to release the palestinians in israeli prisons? why do you think israel nearly doubled the number of palestinians incarcerated in their prison in just the first two weeks after october 7? why do they systematically racially profile palestinians (particularly afro-palestinians, since anti-blackness is baked into israel's carceral system as well, like it is in much of the world) and arrest and charge 20% of palestinians, an astonishingly high rate that goes up even higher to 40% for palestinian men? why are there two different systems of law for palestinians and israelis, where palestinians are charged and tried under military law, leading to a conviction rate of almost 100%? why do they torture children and incarcerate them for up to 20 years just for throwing rocks? why can palestinians be imprisoned by israel without even being charged or tried? why do they keep the bodies of palestinians who have died in prison (often due to torture, execution, or medical neglect) for the rest of their sentences instead of returning them to their families?

this is not to say that no palestinians imprisoned by israel have ever done harm. but incarceration worldwide has never been about accountability for those who have done harm, nor about real justice for those have experienced harm, nor about deterring future harm. incarceration is about controlling, suppressing, and exterminating oppressed people. sometimes people from privileged classes get caught up in carceral systems as well, but it is a side effect, because the settler colonialist state will happily sacrifice some of its settlers for its larger goal.

so yes, gaza is an open-air prison. that doesn't means gazans deserve to be there. it means that no one deserves to be in prison, because prisons themselves are inherently oppressive.

#free palestine #prison abolition #abolition #settler colonialism #racial capitalism #police abolition #fyi if people have seen my other post about palestinians incarcerated by israel this one doesn't have anything new i'm just upset #also while we're at it can we get rid of the term “political prisoner” #who gets imprisoned and who doesn't is always political

[fatehbaz]

The government of Australia’s northeastern state of Queensland has stunned rights experts by suspending its Human Rights Act for a second time this year to be able to lock up more children.

The ruling Labor Party last month [August 2023] pushed through a suite of legislation to allow under-18s – including children as young as 10 – to be detained indefinitely in police watch houses, because changes to youth justice laws – including jail for young people who breach bail conditions – mean there are no longer enough spaces in designated youth detention centres to house all those being put behind bars. The amended bail laws, introduced earlier this year [2023], also required the Human Rights Act to be suspended.

The moves have shocked Queensland Human Rights Commissioner Scott McDougall, who described human rights protections in Australia as “very fragile”, with no laws that apply nationwide.

“We don’t have a National Human Rights Act. Some of our states and territories have human rights protections [...]. But they’re not constitutionally entrenched so they can be overridden by the parliament,” he told Al Jazeera. The Queensland Human Rights Act – introduced in 2019 – protects children from being detained in adult prison so it had to be suspended for the government to be able to pass its legislation.

---

Earlier this year, Australia’s Productivity Commission reported that Queensland had the highest number of children in detention of any Australian state. Between 2021-2022, the so-called “Sunshine State” recorded a daily average of 287 people in youth detention, compared with 190 in Australia’s most populous state New South Wales, the second highest. [...]

[M]ore than half the jailed Queensland children are resentenced for new offences within 12 months of their release.

Another report released by the Justice Reform Initiative in November 2022 showed that Queensland’s youth detention numbers had increased by more than 27 percent in seven years.

---

The push to hold children in police watch houses is viewed by the Queensland government as a means to house these growing numbers. Attached to police stations and courts, a watch house contains small, concrete cells with no windows and is normally used only as a “last resort” for adults awaiting court appearances or required to be locked up by police overnight. [...]

However, McDougall said he has “real concerns about irreversible harm being caused to children” detained in police watch houses, which he described as a “concrete box”. “[A watch house] often has other children in it. There’ll be a toilet that is visible to pretty much anyone,” he said. “Children do not have access to fresh air or sunlight. And there’s been reported cases of a child who was held for 32 days in a watch house whose hair was falling out. [...]"

---

He also pointed out that 90 percent of imprisoned children and young people were awaiting trial.

“Queensland has extremely high rates of children in detention being held on remand. So these are children who have not been convicted of an offence,” he told Al Jazeera.

Despite Indigenous people making up only 4.6 percent of Queensland’s population, Indigenous children make up nearly 63 percent of those in detention. The rate of incarceration for Indigenous children in Queensland is 33 times the rate of non-Indigenous children. Maggie Munn, a Gunggari person and National Director of First Nations justice advocacy group Change the Record, told Al Jazeera the move to hold children as young as 10 in adult watch houses was “fundamentally cruel and wrong”. [...]

---

[Critics] also told Al Jazeera that the government needed to stop funding “cops and cages” and expressed concern over what [they] described as the “systemic racism, misogyny, and sexism” of the Queensland Police Service.

In 2019, police officers and other staff were recorded joking about beating and burying Black people and making racist comments about African and Muslim people. The recordings also captured sexist remarks [...]. The conversations were recorded in a police watch house, the same detention facilities where Indigenous children can now be held indefinitely.

Australia has repeatedly come under fire at an international level regarding its treatment of children and young people in the criminal justice system. The United Nations has called repeatedly for Australia to raise the age of criminal responsibility from 10 to the international standard of 14 years old [...].

[MR], Queensland’s minister for police and corrective services, [...] – who introduced the legislation, which is due to expire in 2026 – is unrepentant, defending his decision last month [August 2023].

“This government makes no apology for our tough stance on youth crime,” he was quoted as saying in a number of Australian media outlets.

---

Text by: Ali MC. "Australian state suspends human rights law to lock up more children". Al Jazeera. 18 September 2023. At: aljazeera.com/news/2023/9/18/australian-state-suspends-human-rights-law-to-lock-up-more-children [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me.]

[radicalurbanista]

so the supreme court just ruled that wrongful convictions can be upheld against evidence of innocence. If you’re imprisoned and sentenced to death but you didn’t do it and can prove it, it doesn’t matter. Legal counsel and evidence don’t matter. The justification is some states rights bs

like do y’all get the need to demand the complete abolition of prisons and police?? where is the veil of “public safety” when people say the criminal-legal system isn’t a function of safety, because i don’t see it. Why is there greater commitment to defending this system than building a real society of safety?

#abolition #supreme court

[yandere-daydreams]

I had a scenario in my mind about a darling begging Yandere Wriothesley to let them out of his office after being imprisoned for a long time and he finally lets her out to explore the Fortress of Meropide, but whilst the reader is out, some inmate starts harassing them. Will Wriothesley save them or let the event play through, or was it a set up? To be honest, idk what Wrio would do. I would love to see this scenario play through if possible, do whatever you want anyway or change anything if needed, your writing is amazing!

tw - kidnapping/wrongful imprisonment, unbalanced power dynamics.

wriothesley really strikes me as the type to view what he does to his darling as,,, like,,, a fact of life, if that makes sense? he lives by a handful of core tenants, and one of those tenants just happens to be that you're the thing he cares about most in the world and if anything happened to you, his heart would stop beating - no matter how often you may cry and whine and bemoan his partnership. he wouldn't intentionally put you in danger, especially if it means encouraging his inmates to act up, but if you did happen to find yourself cornered by a group of unruly convicts the first time you slip out of his line of sight, he might see fit to let you flounder for a few minutes as you try and fail to defend yourself, as you realize just how lost a soft little thing like you would be in a world as cutting and as harsh as his. just as they start to take an interest in tugging at the pretty clothes he dresses you in, he swoops in and administers some on-the-fly discipline before taking you back to his personal chambers, only offering a few comments along the lines of 'this is why you don't leave me side' under his breath by way of comfort.

he's not the kind of man who's going to put you in danger, but he's not the kind of man who can't justify letting his darling learn an important lesson, either <3

#yandere #yandere x reader #yandere x you #yandere imagines #yandere genshin impact #yandere wriothesley

[vague-humanoid]

A Georgia sheriff's deputy shot and killed a Black man who spent more than 16 years in prison on a wrongful conviction, according to a report Tuesday.

The Camden County deputy stopped Leonard Allen Cure as he drove Monday on Interstate 95 near the Georgia-Florida state line. Though he got out of his vehicle and cooperated at first, investigators said he became violent after he was told he was being arrested, reported WSB-TV.

“I can only imagine what it’s like to know your son is innocent and watch him be sentenced to life in prison, to be exonerated and ... then be told that once he’s been freed, he’s been shot dead,” said Seth Miller, executive director of the Innocence Project of Florida.

@chrisdornerfanclub

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a claims bill in June granting Cure $817,000 in compensation for his conviction and imprisonment, along with educational benefits, and he received those funds in August.

#they never let you go

[thecruellestmonth]

Does the mass-murdering criminal Jason "Red Hood" Todd canonically support the death penalty?

No, I can't find evidence that Red Hood supports the death penalty.

There is a difference between murder (illegal) and state-sanctioned killing (legal). Red Hood commits unlawful homicide. The death penalty is lawful homicide. Jason is a murderer. The death penalty is not legally considered murder. Commissioner Jim Gordon is a decorated military veteran, not a murderer.

Committing violence ≠ wanting the government to have the right to commit that violence. Batman and his allies brutalize criminals; they don't necessarily support the state brutalizing criminals. Red Hood kills some criminals; Red Hood doesn't necessarily support the state killing criminals. Catwoman doesn't necessarily support the state committing burglary. Et cetera.

The death penalty is administered by the criminal legal system. Jason does not like the criminal legal system (see some of his run-ins with the police). He grew up as an impoverished child who didn't believe in the system, he was raised by Batman to believe that vigilantes can make a difference that the system can't, and he became an adult criminal who still doesn't believe in the system. He's not interested in using the criminal legal system. He isn't interested in giving more powers and privileges to an abusive system that has wronged him and the people he cares about.

When Jason started up his villain business, the death penalty was legal in Gotham City. (See Detective Comics #644, The Joker: Devil's Advocate, Batgirl 2000 #19, Punchline #1.) The death penalty was also in place during his Robin run. Jason didn't argue in favor of the state having the right to kill prisoners, and the death penalty never addressed his complaints about the status quo.

Jason has rescued people from wrongful* imprisonment and the death penalty. Again, based on his own firsthand experiences, he has many reasons to believe that the system is broken. *Some of us would argue that locking any people in prisons tends to be wrongful and inhumane by default, but we could choose to accept the standard premises of crime fiction as without endorsing it as moral instruction.

Jason Todd is a criminal: a mass murderer, a terrorist, a villain. He does evil. He doesn't represent or support the legal system. He probably has the least political capital out of all the Batfamily-associated characters. He doesn't promote the death penalty. He commits murder—illegally, as a criminal, state-unapproved.

Some recent comics related to the topic:

Gotham Nights (2020) #11 "One Minute After Midnight", written by Marc Guggenheim

Red Hood and Nightwing team up to investigate the case of a man wrongly convicted of murder and sentenced to be executed. Both of them disapprove of how the broken criminal legal system botched this case.

Joker: The Man Who Stopped Laughing #8 (2023), written by Matthew Rosenberg

"You familiar with Hannah Arendt's concept of Schreibtischtäter? Desk murderers? It's people who use the state to kill for them, so they don't have to get their hands dirty."

#Jason Todd #Jason Todd meta #Batfam meta #Batfamily meta #Batfam #Batfamily #Robin II #Batkids #Batman Gotham Nights #DC Robin #Red Hood #Joker The Man Who Stopped Laughing #Matt Rosenberg #canon vs fanon #fanon vs canon #panels #RHATO 2011 opens with Red Hood saving somebody from being unjustly executed. Don't read it. It is bad. Just trust me. #Jason Todd is legally dead and not registered to vote. #I could make a much longer post about Jason's general contempt for authorities but let's limit it today. #thecruellestmonth #I know the 1992-2010 comics purists are going to come after me for using recent comics. #I could make a much longer post about Post-Crisis Jason Todd's attitudes about the police and the state. #But that longer post still wouldn't have much to say about the death penalty-- #--because--AGAIN--there is NO evidence that Jason supports the death penalty! But there is plenty of indirect evidence that he doesn't. #Do the words ''system''‚ ''state''‚ ''criminal''‚ and ''legal'' look like real words anymore? #ID in alt text #described #image described #ID in alt #image description

[morbidology]

On April 9, 1993, Gary Gauger, a 40-year-old resident of McHenry County, Illinois, made a harrowing discovery: the lifeless bodies of his elderly parents, Morris and Ruth Gauger, brutally murdered on their farm. Their throats had been viciously slit. Gary, in shock and disbelief, immediately alerted police, recounting that he had been asleep when the tragic attack occurred and awoke to the horrifying aftermath. Little did he know, this tragedy would thrust him into a nightmare of false accusations.

Instead of receiving support and assistance, Gary found himself ensnared in a web of deceit orchestrated by the very authorities meant to serve justice. During questioning, detectives falsely claimed to have found incriminating evidence—bloody clothes and a knife—in Gary's possession. They further deceived him by alleging he had failed a lie detector test. Exhausted and vulnerable after an 18-hour interrogation, Gary was coerced into describing a hypothetical scenario in which he murdered his parents. This fabricated narrative was twisted and used against him as a confession, despite the absence of any tangible evidence linking him to the crime.

In a travesty of justice, Gary Gauger was wrongfully convicted of his parents' double murder and sentenced to death. However, in March 1996, the Second District Illinois Appellate Court overturned his conviction, citing the illegally obtained confession. Gary was finally released from prison, vindicated but scarred by years of wrongful imprisonment.

It wasn't until 2002 that justice truly prevailed when two motorcycle gang members, James Schneider and Randall Miller, were convicted of the double murder. Their guilt was confirmed by Miller's clandestinely recorded confession, finally bringing closure to Gary Gauger's long ordeal of wrongful accusation and incarceration.

#wrongful conviction #true crime

[truth-has-a-liberal-bias]

Two Illinois cousins who have spent most of their lives locked up for crimes they never committed walked free Thursday after 42 years behind bars – the latest in a series of exonerations this week involving innocent people wrongfully imprisoned for decades.

James Soto, 62, and David Ayala, 60, will now spend the holidays with their families for the first time since 1981 – when they were convicted for the deaths of two Chicago teenagers.

The cousins each received two life sentences without the possibility of parole for the killings, plus 30 years for attempted murder and seven years for conspiracy to commit murder, to be served concurrently.

The pair ultimately served the longest wrongful conviction sentence in state history, said Lauren Myerscough-Mueller, an attorney with the Exoneration Project, which provides legal representation to the wrongfully convicted. [...]

#prison industrial complex #James Soto #David Ayala #no justice in this world

[daisy-mooon]

The most telling thing about Zionists is about how they will excuse the conditions that Palestinian prisoners are subjected to because they are allegedly "terrorists."

Because even if they were terrorists, that is not how prisons should work??? All humans deserve a fair trial, yes, even if they were supposedly a terrorist. All humans deserve a good diet, yes, even if they were supposedly a terrorist. All humans deserve a prison free from torture, yes, even if they were supposedly a terrorist. All humans deserve to be treated like a human, yes, even if they were supposedly a terrorist.

I like in the UK. If someone is sent to prison for murder, they would be allowed a fair trial, an appropriate diet, a stay completely free from torture, and are always allowed to retain their human rights. Do these things always happen? No, and the prisons are supposed to be investigated and punished when they don't. Do you know why? Because criminals, and yes, terrorists, are human beings, and human beings have human rights.

I can not fucking emphasise how much EVERYONE, and I mean EVERYONE, even the most despicable and vile people on the planet, should be allowed a fair trial. But that's not what happens to Palestinian prisoners whether they are a regular criminal, a "terrorist" or a civilian yanked off the street by the IDF.

They are systematically tried in a military court with a 90-99% conviction rate. Trials are held in Hebrew, which most Palestinians are not fluent in. Palestinians are allowed to be imprisoned for up to 6 months without trial. Compare that to the UK's 14 days. And those imprisonments can be extended every 6 months for another 6 months, leaving many Palestinians imprisoned indefinitely. Their charges are hidden to both them and their lawyers, leaving them struggling to understand how to appeal to the courts. This happens to teenagers. This happens to children.

"The teenagers that are arrested are being trained to be terrorists!" Then the teenagers should be sent to a juvenile prison, receive a support and safety network, rehabilitation, protection and a way to escape whoever is allegedly training them to be a terrorist. But that's not what happens. Racism, abuse and torture is what happens.

"But the people arrested are terrorists!" Surprisingly controversial take but no I do not think that a terrorist deserves to be held indefinitely without a trial or charge and be given a biased and unfair trial, if one even happens. And let's be honest with ourselves, shall we? Judging from the ridiculously biased trials, most of the "terrorists" in Israel's prisons for Palestinians are probably not terrorists.

TLDR: No I don't think that even someone that is actually a terrorist would deserve the treatment and conditions that Palestinians get in Israeli prisons and law systems. Yes I think that even an actual terrorist deserves a fair trial. What the fuck is wrong with you guys actually.

#palestine #fuck israel #fuck the idf #palestinian genocide #hamas #idf #israeli defence forces #politics #israel #prisons #human rights #terrorists #terrorism #israel is a terrorist state #israel is an apartheid state #israel apartheid #zionism #anti zionism #anti zionist #fuck zionists

[secretmellowblog]

I’ve read Les Mis a couple times now and I’m always blown away by just how kind Valjean is. Like every time I reread it I’m a little more impressed by the fact that he manages to be a good caring dude even while carrying around his metric ass-ton of troubles.

Yeah, it’s so good! And so complicated too? Idk the more I reread Les Mis, the more I enjoy the way it dives into “the politics of politeness,” the difference between being kind and being polite…and the way people like Jean Valjean are violently forced to behave in excessively ‘polite’ meek conciliatory ways in order to escape abuse.

And again, that’s something that really strikes me about Valjean’s story, and his complicated brand of kindness, in particular?

He’s genuinely a kind compassionate person; but, because of his status as a convict, he’s also forced to be excessively conciliatory to people like police officers who have authority over him, out of fear of punishment and torture. Especially before he earned his money, he had a social obligation to cringe and fawn before authority figures, to prevent them from hurting him. He’s gentle to people out of genuine love and sympathy, but he’s also often forced to be polite out of fear. And while he is a genuinely a sweet gentle compassionate person, you’re often forced to wonder: would Valjean behave with such excessive meekness if he wasn’t living in a state of paranoia and terror where a single ‘wrong move’ could make him suspicious, and lead to his imprisonment, torture, and death?

The lines between Valjean’s genuine kindness and the forced mask of politeness that’s been violently imposed on him can get really blurred.

And it’s telling that some of Valjean’s actually kindest moments are the times when he risks arrest and has himself branded a criminal, in order to save people- the moments where he sacrifices the approval of ‘polite society’ to do something genuinely compassionate.

#Les mis #thank you for the ask!!! #but yeah sorry I see the words Jean Valjean and words spill out #he’s just a little guy!!!!! #an unbearably sad beast #I do want to write a whole post on the whole ‘enforced conciliatory politeness’ in Les mis thing #because it’s also a huge thing with thenardier and javert #thenardier tries to play at being meek conciliatory and polite to authorities #but he is Bad at it #he’s awful at it #he’s terrible at lying and pretending to respect them #but he’s also right that it’s dehumanizing to even have to? #to cringe and fawn and lick boots in order to survive #Javert of course is very happy to lick boots #it’s genuinely his favorite thing to do #but now I’m rambling #XD

[bfscr]

By the fucking abyss.

I cannot begin to imagine what Leonard Allen Cure's family is going through.

#antiblackness #police murder #abolish the police #Leonard Allen Cure #black lives matter

[nrilliree]

The desire to read a fic in which Otto crispin and Alicent all get what they deserve early on. Like if I were Rhaenyra I would have shoved Alicent down a flight of stairs just for visiting my vulnerable grieving father ( king v was no angle and what he did to aemma was horrible and he is totally to blame for it don't get me wrong, but he was still vulnerable after her death)

Since team green love to laugh about the line in which Alicent says that she hopes Rhaenyra dies in childbirth I would love if Alicent also died in childbirth and Aegon is raised by literally anyone else but the hightowers. Oh and Otto should have ben fed to daemon's dragon

There's a fanfic I read somewhere on Ao3. During Driftmark, Aegon decides to answer honestly that it is Alicent who is questioning the birth of Rhaenyra's children. From word to word it turns out that she and Otto are planning to usurp the throne. Otto is convicted of high treason. Alicent is punished, but Viserys, for the sake of their marriage, does not sentence her to death, but to penance and imprisonment. Criston goes berserk when he hears this and is convicted of trying to murder the king. Aegon is sent to Dragonstone, where he serves as Rhaenyra's cupbearer, to show that their family can act as a united unit (and to spite Alicent). This was actually a fic where Aegon was enjoying his life.

Unfortunately, I don't remember whether it was in English or German. (Definitely not in Polish, because we have almost no fan fiction, lol)

#team black #anti team green #pro team black #anti alicent hightower #anti team green stans

[theminecraftbox]

the only reason c!dream was imprisoned was that he had the revive book, that was the sole reason he was jailed despite what everyone else says about how he was imprisoned for his crimes

there is a term for that, which is false imprisonment

strongly agree / agree / ambivalent / disagree / strongly disagree / don't care whatsoever

at the time of his arrest, people are absolutely up front about how he's being imprisoned because he has the book. Otherwise he would have been executed again. What people claim afterwards about the reasoning and circumstances of his imprisonment doesn't really matter wrt that. Terms like "false imprisonment" don't mean a ton when the whole legal system is ad hoc anyway. Which is fun to me! Does Sam have the right to imprison Dream? Well, most people on the server agreed he did, and does, which is as close to a legal justification as anything on that server even gets.

I think the looseness of legality and the perceptions of rightful claims to power in a society as teeny tiny as the dsmp are actually pretty interesting, and get less interesting when alien ideas of legality try to be applied one-to-one. Especially because the former encourages us to think about those legal structures: how they are applied, who they are applied to, whether they're right or wrong, etc; while the latter runs the risk of us classifying things as right or wrong according to like, US law or something.

Would Pandora have been any more right if Dream had been tried and convicted by a jury of his peers (something they totally could have done if they'd had the patience)? Which is more interesting: Sam locking Dream in a prison bigger than any other construct on the server, or Sam locking Dream in his basement?

#discourse asks

[2af-afterdark]

Where Rights Meet Limits

Please keep in mind that the game is still not out, so so it is based on a bunch of random headcanons sort of put together.

Content: GN!MC & Michael (whb), sfw, god mc au, yandere, imprisonment, potential murder mentioned

"Michael," they say, "I would like to go out for a walk."

It was a strange turn of phrase considering there was no 'in' from which to go 'out' of. Heaven was, after all, a vast open space. It seemed that God (the original one, at least) didn't foresee the need for privacy. In retrospect, that was likely one of the series of bad choices that led to Him absconding from heaven in the first place.

The other significantly poor choice was creating an entire species solely motivated by by their desire to adore their creator, much to His detriment.

The last was failing to give them a sense of morality.

Michael looks down at where they sit on the ground, standing over them like a warden. "You may go wherever you so please."

They were, after all, God of the heavens. This kingdom was Their domain by creation. They could do just about anything They pleased since no one would stop them.

"Alone, if you don't mind."

He, in fact, did mind. Quite a lot.

"Oh?" He stares Them down, his golden eye seeming to look right through Them and into Their soul. The doubt in his stare would be considered blasphemy if he was not the highest angel in heaven. "And why must you go alone?"

"I don't believe I answer to you."

Impressive. They had finally learned their position as the head of heaven and were trying to use it to their advantage. Michael was almost proud of Their attempt at exploitation.

"You do not."

"Then I will do what I want," They say with conviction as They lean against Their own knee to pick Themselves up.

"As You wish."

They stare at him the same as he had been Them. They take a step away, as if expecting him to follow, but he does not. They take another and, when he still stays in place, They turn away from him and hesitantly move further.

He is still merely watching when They stop and turn around to see he has not taken a single step to follow after Them. Only then do They speed up just enough that most other creatures wouldn't notice the haste in their pace.

Michael would almost dare to say that he was proud of Them, if not for the obviousness in Their skittish behavior. Still, They deserve a reward for finally acknowledging and using their status. It would be wrong for him to punish Them for finally recognizing Themselves as God.

Instead, he would much rather punish Them when they try to act as a human once again.

He follows after Them at a distance so They can still feel as though They have been given the freedom They wish for. It was about time They have the opportunity to explore Their kingdom at Their leisure. As long as They stay within the heavens, They can have all the freedom They long for.

But he knows They will be unable to stick only to heaven because They are still far too human.

As he passes by a group of angels -- the lowest ones without a rank or title who are assigned to menial work -- he gives them a message to pass along to all who may see their beloved God.

"When God tries to leave heaven, do not stop Them."

Because it is only a matter of time until They attempt to leave them, under the false impression that they are alone and no one is watching. Michael thinks it a wonderful idea to allow Them the time to think Themselves wise for finding the exit and revel in their escape. Perhaps he will even allow Them a brief moment to find another human who will feel sympathy for Their panicked state for only an instant before he lobs off their head. Surely such a scene will serve as sufficient punishment and reminder that They are no longer of the human world and are officially claimed by the heavens.

And if not, well, as many heads as necessary will roll until They finally do. Whatever it takes to teach God that They cannot leave Their devoted subjects behind a second time.

#2af writes #what in hell is bad #whb #whb michael #whb mc #god mc au #cw yandere #cw imprisonment #cw death

[keepingeahalive]

O’Hair and O’Hair

Attorneys at law. Him, finding justice for families and victims of abduction and domestic violence. Her, finding justice for wrongful convictions and imprisonments.

Parents to Holly and Poppy O’Hair.

[ID: a full hand-drawing of Rapunzel and her husband Dauntless.

Rapunzel is a white middle-aged woman with tanned beige skin; floor-length tawny blonde hair parted down the middle, pulled away from her face, and two ankle-length braids; and hazel-green eyes. She is wearing a muted mauve, baggy turtleneck shirt with a silver and pink broach on her neck; a long ironed black skirt; black heels; a holly leaf hairpin; and a poppy flower pin on her shirt.

Dauntless is a white middle-aged man with beige skin; shoulder-length, wavy greying-brown hair pulled back into a small ponytail; and blue glass eyes that are slightly askew. He is wearing a blue-gray suit with a light blue undershirt; a lilac tie with orange wavy zig-zag patterns; dark gray socks; brown leather shoes; a gold hairbrush pin on his right suit collar; and a silver scissor pin on his left suit collar. He is holding a dark leather briefcase in his left hand.

Rapunzel and Dauntless stand side by side, looking in the “viewer’s” general direction. Dauntless has his right hand on his suit collar, his left hand holding his briefcase. Rapunzel smiles, folding her hands together.

END ID]

#eah #ever after high #ever after high headcanons #eah holly #eah poppy #holly o'hair #poppy o'hair #the O’Hair twins #eah parents #rapunzel