A Dash of This, and a Dab of That ...

Well, my friends, it’s about time for me to vent a bit of the snark that’s been building this week … and you’ll be surprised that I don’t mention the “t-word” one single time! What price tag on 48 years of a life? You think you’ve had a rough life?  Think of 70-year-old Glynn Simmons who was just exonerated after spending 48 years, one month and 18 days in a prison in Oklahoma for a crime he did…

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Parkland reenactment to use live ammo

Yes, there’s been a story that’s caused me to come out of my anxiety-induced writing hibernation. Not that I’m any kind of wise sage coming down from the mountain to depart his wisdom onto the masses. (But seriously, if you want me to be able to get therapy, please subscribe to my Patreon.) Anyway, there’s a news story going around about the Parkland school shooting, and I think its headlines…

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School Police Officers Need to Improve

School Police Officers Continue to Prove Ineffective

School police officers study school shootings nationwide in the wake of Uvalde, hoping to do better. In 2018, the armed school police officer monitoring Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, waited outside while Nikolas Cruz killed 17 people. The officer, former Broward County Deputy Scot Peterson, was charged with criminal negligence. His trial is ongoing, and has been reset…

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Jury finds Scot Peterson not guilty in Parkland school shooting | WLRN

A former school security officer was found not guilty Thursday over a failure to confront the gunman who massacred 17 people at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, in 2018. Scot Peterson, who was a Broward County sheriff's deputy and worked as a resource officer at Marjory Stoneman Douglas, was charged in 2019 with seven counts of neglect of a child and three counts of culpable negligence and one count of perjury. He broke down in tears as the unanimous decision was read Thursday. The charges carried a maximum potential sentence of 96½ years in state prison, the Broward County State Attorney’s Office said. Seventeen students, teachers and staff were killed in the shooting Feb. 14, 2018, and another 17 were injured. Peterson, 60, was the only other person at the school with a gun when the shooter opened fire. He was forced to retire following the school shooting.

Behind-the-Scenes of Return to the Falls

I did a post like this once before covering the first two chapters, so it seems about time to do another one covering the next four chapters!  I like to think I’ve got a few interesting tidbits here at least:

IQ-tie

The working title for this chapter was “Mabel and the Smarty Pines”, which never quite sat right with me, but I had a hard time thinking of something better.  What would become the titular pun was originally on Mabel’s sweater, which said “IQ and QT”.  But then when I was trying to think of a better title, @immaplatypus told me the similar pun – that Mabel was an IQ-tie – and it immediately stood out to both of us that it would be a much better title.

Is Trivi-o’s a lame name for a cereal?  I debated about it and decided yes, it is, and that is good.  A lame name for a lame cereal.

I did a lot of second-guessing myself about the logistics of the Sfinx and her very existence, but I’m glad in the end I didn’t let myself overthink it too much.  I’m really happy with how she turned out.

Much like the previous chapter, I wasn’t totally sure of how the heroes were going to turn the tables at the climax, and then when I separately thought up Carla’s “It’s for … arson” line in reference to her lighter, then I decided that’d be a good ole Chekov’s gun to bail them out.  But there was an early draft in which Carla piloted McGucket’s sphinx robot like an anime mech to beat the crap out of the Sfinx herself, so that’s fun to think about.

Challenge of the Hunt

The theme of the chapter always centered around the idea that there are more ways to win a challenge than simply playing along, but the finer details of the plot went through some major changes.  In one particularly bleak version, the Hunt was the ghost of a child who was abandoned in the woods and was misguidedly trying to protect Dipper and Mabel from their Grunkles, but that never felt quite right to me.

Skull Kid from The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask was a major visual and behavioral inspiration for the Hunt, though they ended up being very different in the end.  My original sketches of the Hunt even included a very Majora-esque mask.

Originally instead of having a pet wolf, the Hunt was going to transform into a giant wolf-like beast themself during their chase.  I later decided that having a pet wolf to help would add to the huntsman theme, plus it just didn’t feel like a very sporting ability for the Hunt to have themself.

On a related note, if the joke wasn’t obvious, the Hunt’s wolf is named Virginia as a pun on the author, Virginia Woolf.

Originally instead of taking trophies from the losers of their game, the Hunt was going to just straight-up murder them, with it being implied that the Manotaur from the beginning was killed, but that was darker than I wanted and made it feel harder to let them off scot-free at the end, so I’m glad I had the trophy idea instead.  Plus that led to some fun Stan dialogue, so it’s a win-win!

The chapter didn’t originally feature Candy and Grenda but I was really itching to write for them and already had other side characters to focus on in upcoming chapters, so I threw them in here.  I’m really glad too, got some great material out of their inclusion.

Grenda’s middle name being “Papercut” is, of all things, a Kick Buttowski reference, where Carl Faruolo, Grenda’s voice actor, voices a former wrestler named Papercut Peterson.

The original version of the “Grenda tramples the Hunt” scene instead had her and Dipper being ambushed by the Hunt and her instinctive response being to pick up the Hunt and throw them like a shot put.  I really wish I’d found a way to incorporate that because it’s such a hilarious image to me.

The whole bit of dialogue in the pit with Stan rambling about digging out was graciously provided by @immaplatypus

I had various different ideas for the Hunt’s “trophy room”. The first was going to be something Dipper and the others stumble on while fleeing that really gets them freaked out about what the Hunt can do, but I struggled to organically fit it in and thought things were getting kind of long anyway, so instead I made it the sight of the climactic showdown with the Hunt.

For anyone not catching the joke, Stan calling the Hunt “Helen” is a reference to actress Helen Hunt.

The Carla and Soos subplot was born from this being one of my oldest chapter ideas, at a point in which I hadn’t even added Carla to the story yet, so I realized much later on that I just completely forgot to ever add her to this chapter.  And since Soos wasn’t a part of the family camping trip, then that all worked out perfectly to pair him up with Carla.  And I’m really glad it did, because their scenes were some of my favorites I’ve written so far.

Scrapped line from Soos, reassuring Carla about her place in the Shack: “Rudeness is polite in this house!  It’s just like Mr. Pines always says: get off the premises or I’ll shoot!”

There’s not really any significance to the Hunt being a deer-fox.  I wasn’t drawing from any particular inspiration, it was just two animals associated with hunting that I thought made a good aesthetic, and I think I’d been watching Hilda (which also features a deerfox) around the time I was initially sketching them.

Some other possibilities I considered for the ending cryptogram:

YOU JUST LOST THE GAME – if you get this, you’re liable for a senior’s discount

IT REMINDS ME OF THE HUNT – an obscure Fairly OddParents quote I think of daily

THE HUNT HUNTER HAS BECOME THE HUNT HUNTED – the word “hunt” really just gets used a lot in this chapter

The Sorceford’s Apprentice

Once again, Robbie’s song was spur-of-the-moment spit out by Jessica. Everyone go love up on her and her extraordinary talents.

Instead of a possum king, Dipper and Gideon were originally going to deal with a squirrel king that is defeated because Gideon is a true southern gentleman and always carries cashews in his pockets.

Supernatural Speakeasy

Here’s one passage from the town meeting that I had to cut for pacing but nevertheless love a lot:  “I’m still temporarily deprived of my wealth,” Preston Northwest said.  “And my pyramid scheme – I mean perfectly legitimate business – needs buyers. And I’ve already ripped off – I mean marketed to – almost everyone in town.”  He leaned over to the Pizza Guy sitting beside him.  “Hey, chum, have you heard of essential oils?”

Demusa is 100% voiced by Susan Egan.  She’s gotta be dripping with sultry like Meg from Hercules.

Pacifica was going to be obnoxious BFFs with C-Beth but then I had the idea for Gideon and C-Beth’s interaction and the concept of Demusa came to me.

A scrapped subplot would have had Mabel claim to be over the dating game, but Dipper is afraid she’ll fall back into old habits, so he tries to make her oblivious to any “dateable” creatures, which is difficult since there are now swarms of them in the Shack, and he doesn’t want another Norman situation.  I got rid of it because it just wasn’t working out smoothly and was just enjoying all the other minor conversations, but it persisted slightly in the existence of the Wolf Boy.

There are a few vague allusions here to a scrapped chapter that would have focused on Multi-Bear and his backstory.  It never worked out great and it felt shoehorned in as a continuation of old plots (namely that of Dipper vs. Manliness), so I never did much with it.  It would have involved a Russian ringmaster creating a circus of freaks and capturing the Manotaurs, forcing Leaderaur to team up with Multi-Bear and Dipper to save them.  I don’t remember my exact backstory for Multi-Bear but it was going to involve Mayor Befuftlefumpter of all people being the adoptive brother of Multi-Bear, and Leaderaur as a childhood friend of both.  It was all really weird and it’s good that it was thrown out on the curb where it belongs.

The ending cryptogram is a reference to a quote from Sgt. Frog Abridged on Youtube.

That’s all for now, hope some of you found this at least a little amusing!  Thanks so much for reading and sticking around!  And keep your eyes peeled for the sneak peek of the next chapter!

Basically, the jury’s message is that cowardice is not criminal. I think, in the case of law enforcement, that’s wrong.

Joseph H. Peterson, ed & trans. Grimorium Verum: A handbook of Black Magic. Scots Valley, CA: CreateSpace Publishing, 2007. Paperback. 240 pages. 

Shop link in bio.

[ad_1] Ballistics experts reenacted the Feb. 14, 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Friday as part of a lawsuit against ex-cop Scot Peterson, who fled the scene when shots rang out.Peterson was found not guilty in June of charges of child neglect after an internal investigation found that he retreated while students were under attack.The "1200 building" at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, the crime scene where the 2018 shootings took place, is seen in Parkland, Florida, U.S. August 4, 2022.Amy Beth Bennett/Pool via REUTERSFamilies also met with members of Congress to discuss gun violence.Manny Oliver, whose son Joaquin was one of the 14 students killed in the shooting, spoke with ABC News Live about the latest developments and his efforts to curb gun violence.ABC NEWS LIVE: You're actually in Highland Park right now. But before we get to why you're there, what's the reaction you have to the visit by members of Congress today? MANNY OLIVER: Well, not much. Let me start by saying that today is my son's birthday. He should have turned 23 years old today. So all my attention is on celebrating my son's life. I understand that there was a visit to the school this morning. Some families are very involved in this. I'm not home. So, I rather spent the day just thinking about my son and how such a wonderful person he was.People are brought out of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School after a shooting at the school, Feb. 14, 2018 in Parkland, Fla.Joe Raedle/Getty ImagesABC NEWS LIVE: Every time I get the chance to speak to you, I like to find out something new about your son. So can you share something else with us today?OLIVER: Absolutely…We wanted to celebrate [Joaquin's] birthday in a different way. And 23, it's a nice number. So we decided to visit 23 locations that have suffered from gun violence directly. So that makes us just jump on our school bus and start hitting the road. [We've been] on the road for 34 days today, we have 20 more days ahead.ABC NEWS LIVE: It's a beautiful thing to do in his memory. Manny you've made it your life's mission to advocate for gun violence prevention. Obviously, we've seen you everywhere at Congress. Tell us about the event that you held in Illinois today and who was there.Students are evacuated by police out of Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., after a shooting, Feb. 14, 2018.Mike Stocker/Sun Sentinel via Getty ImagesOLIVER: Well, it's very emotional. We're visiting places where I see people like me, and no one needs to imagine how I feel or how [my wife] Patricia feels. They already know it. We were invited to Highland Park. We had a great event honoring Joaquin and of course, honoring the victims of the shooting here. The community is very strong. They're together and they understand as well as I do that we need to add each other's voice to a bigger voice to a louder movement.And I think that's the plan. We are traveling, me and Patricia, just to make sure that everyone is listening and everyone is having their voice in need of justice [and] to our movement.Nine members of Congress and others wait to enter Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, Friday, Aug. 4, 2023, in Parkland, Fla.Marta Lavandier/APABC NEWS LIVE: You mentioned your wife, Patricia. You both moved from your native Venezuela to the United States for a better life. Now, fighting for the memory of your son has become a major part of that life. How do you reconcile that?OLIVER: Well, I think I failed, right? I mean, this is not a better life than the one that I had before. It's a terrible life. This is a life that nobody wants. Some people take their lives when they're in a situation like mine. So, but we've been strong, and it's one day at a time. And I think I owe that to my son, to Joaquin. I want to keep Joaquin as an activist more than as a victim. So that's what I've been trying to do. [ad_2] Source link

Answer to Why is Elizabeth I buried next to Mary, Queen of Scots at Westminster Abbey? by Jay Peterson https://www.quora.com/Why-is-Elizabeth-I-buried-next-to-Mary-Queen-of-Scots-at-Westminster-Abbey/answer/Jay-Peterson-38?ch=18&oid=113280744&share=a4fcc9b2&srid=7KVRc&target_type=answer

Former Officer Scot Peterson Cleared of Charges in Parkland School Shooting

The not guilty verdict in the trial of Scot Peterson, the former deputy assigned to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, has left many questioning the effectiveness of law enforcement response during school shootings. While Peterson claimed he didn’t know where the shots were coming from, critics argue he failed in his duty to protect the students and prevent the tragedy.

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Scot Peterson biography: 10 things about former Parkland, Florida school resource officer

Scot Peterson is a former school resource officer at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Broward County, Florida, United States.

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A Florida jury has acquitted former deputy Scot Peterson of felony child neglect and other charges. Peterson was accused of failing to act during the Parkland school massacre. 

What the actual fuck.