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darkkitty1208 · 1 year

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Hello there, may I steal a bit of your time? I recently reread Defender Strange's comic and couldn't get this idea out of my head, so I'm asking ya out, can you please write something regarding this- Stephen was gathered from a battle field and SIMTony takes him to Tower with him after kicking the bad guy's ass and takes care of that worn out.

That's it. Thanks ya for hearing me out. Lots of love!

Thank you for the prompt, lovely! 💖 Super sorry it took quite a while. (I say, knowing full well it took longer than just 'quite a while' for me to finish this. *stares at my towering pile of WIPs and prompts sitting in my ask box that I've yet to finish*)

I feel like I've sort of lost touch on my writing style (and writing as a whole) a little bit but, hey, I finished this! Haha.

Disclaimer: I haven't read the defenders or SIM comics yet, so this whole thing is just based on my assumptions of their characters. I'm only familiar with MoM's Defender Strange, and prompter seems okay if I'd write him instead, thankfully, so yeah. ^^ Feel free to point out anything that stood out, though!

TW: This fic contains NON-CONSENSUAL TOUCHING but NO RAPE.

Stephen stumbled back with a grunt, but quickly managed to catch himself before his back could land on the ground. Dodging the whip Mordo sent his way, he conjured twin mandalas over his wrists that glowed a bright blue.

"It's not too late, Stephen!" the man called out, and slid his feet away from Stephen's attack. He took rapid, calculated steps towards the other sorcerer, getting close enough to loop his arm over the man's neck in a tight grip.

"You can still join me," he said, "we can work together."

Stephen struggled against him, clawing at the arm that constructed his breathing.

"Like hell that would convince me," Stephen huffed out, strangled, and knocked Mordo's stomach by his elbow, who stumbled back, enough to let go of him. He panted, readying his next attack as Mordo stood back up. His limbs worked almost on their own volition as they danced their familiar dance in battle, and for a moment the only sounds echoing in the air were their grunts and puffs of air, the way their boots slid against the ground, the swish of their robes flapping at each turn, the way each new band and shield and mandala they conjured emanated familiar sparks.

Just when Stephen thought he had the upper hand, one slip of his feet and a kick to his chest had him toppling to the ground with an 'oomph', and quickly found himself wrapped around bands. He let out a yelp as his hands were squeezed against his body, and struggled against the constraints. But it was to no avail, as it held a tight, inescapable grip around him. Struggling against it only proved to make the pain worse.

It was useless, he thought, as he stopped his ministrations and settled on glaring at the eyes staring down on him. Mordo's stern eyes, looking straight at him, suddenly shifted at the sight, turning almost… soft, to his dismay, and Stephen hardened his glare in return.

"We could've been so good together," Mordo breathed out, almost in a whisper. "I didn't want it to end this way, Stephen. But you must know I have no other choice. You must know that this is for the greater good."

Mordo lifted his hands, and Stephen knew that, at that moment, despite his panicked struggling, he couldn't do anything as the spell was about to be cast on him. It was a simple spell, really – even a novice could cast it – but it was a deadly one. It would render any sorcerer useless if cast against them, blocking their access to channelling interdimensional energy permanently, reducing them to what they once were before being introduced to the Mystic Arts. Mordo always had great capabilities, especially in terms of magic, but to think that he had managed to master that spell for such purposes was… beyond Stephen, to put simply.

The spell wasn’t meant to incapacitate him, he knew that much. Mordo needed something more permanent – he couldn’t risk the possibility of all else.

The spell, he knew, was meant to break him.

“You should be grateful, you know. Many sorcerers have died at my hand in my quest to rectify what they have meddled in the natural law,” he remarked, and Stephen scowled at him. “I do not wish for you to fall in the same fate as they do, Stephen. You are like a brother to me. And perhaps… Perhaps so much more.”

His eyes flickered away for a moment, before they resumed their steely gaze towards him.

Stephen turned his head to the side, clenching his eyes shut and taking in ragged breaths as he braced himself for the inevitable pain. His mind swirled about in a million ways to think of an escape, but he knew there wasn't any counterspell to this, knew that hoping would only lead to nothing.

Mordo sighed.

"It was the only way I could think of that would be quick and painless, Stephen," he said, "So please, consider this a mercy."

Before his mind could process the words, he felt a hit over the side of his neck that made him let out a choked sound. Just as he was about to lose consciousness, there was a sudden, almost electrifying flash of blue that blasted somewhere from beside him to hit against Mordo's head, and the last thing he heard was a familiar, menacing voice that drawled in a way that had always made the hair on his nape bristle.

There was only one thought that flitted through his head as he finally lost consciousness; Tony.

*.~ ◇ ~.*

Mordo stumbled to the ground as something blasted against him, head whipping about as he quickly looked around for its source.

He heard heavy footsteps thump against the ground, and it took a while for him to regain his footing to face whoever – or whatever – it was. Once he adjusted his vision, he noticed there seemed to be a sharp blue glow emanating as the smoke dissipated away from the shadowy figure that was stepping towards him. Mordo wasted no time and automatically went on fighting stance, his defences up in case the man prepared another surprise attack against him. He looked to the side, finding Stephen's unconscious, prone body on the ground a few feet away.

"You really thought it'd be that easy to get your hands on him, did you?" The low voice said to the air.

"Who are you?"

The smoke cleared out. A very light blue, almost white, sort of liquid danced about to then solidify into an armour, its helmet forming around a grinning face.

"C'mon. Everybody knows me," he said, a toothy smile on display but no emotions found in his eyes, his arms spread out. The smile dropped suddenly, and the next words were spoken in a way that could send shivers down anyone's spine: "Now back off. He's not yours."

Mordo's eyes flicked hastily to Stephen's body, back to the man, trying to think of a quick way out.

"Tony Stark," Mordo frowned, "I should have known Stephen had gained… unexpected allies. I didn't know he was so desperate."

There were no possible ways to escape this, he thought, and begrudgingly decided to face him. Mordo conjured a band that whipped through the air and towards the man, but failed to have any intended effect as Stark flew up to avoid it. He conjured a couple of more blasts, which were easily avoided as Stark twirled about with little 'Woah!'s and an 'Oh! Almost got me!', occasionally forming a shield around him but ultimately left unscathed at each attack, as his laughter rang in Mordo's ears. Mordo continued to grunt at each conjured attack, getting irritated by the second. At some point, the laughter ended with a nonchalant sigh.

"Okay, it's getting boring now," he said, "My turn."

He thrusts out his repulsors, whining a short warning before an electric flash of blue striked right ahead to send Mordo flying backwards before he could think of a way to dodge it. And then he blasted another, and another, slowly floating down to the ground as he did so, playfully experimenting different positions on each blast, humming a tune meanwhile. When he was satisfied, he took his time to step ever so slowly towards Mordo's body, which was lying on its side. He turned him over to lay on his back by nudging his side with a foot. Tony stared down at him, and then tilted his head to the side, huffed, and let a menacing smile slowly form on his lips. When Mordo tried to lean up and land a punch on his face, quite successfully, he clicked his tongue, wiped the blood trickling down the slight cut on his face, huffed again, and then carded a hand through his hair. He kicked the man then, straight in the stomach, and repeated so just a couple times. Just enough so that moving any muscle would hurt. And then he pressed his foot down over the sorcerer's chest, delighting in the pained wheeze and the cough that sent blood splattering about. He pressed his foot harder down, twisting it just so that he could hear another one of Mordo's wet, ragged cough, and made a sound that was intended as a delighted giggle but came out sounding like a huff as he leaned down to whisper: "Now let that be a lesson for you to never touch what's mine ever again."

He gave the body a last kick, turning around just as Mordo's body rolled helplessly on the ground.

"Well, that was easy," he huffed, dusting his hands off, and turned to look at Stephen's still unconscious body. "Now to claim my lovely prize…"

The smile returned, but this time, something glinted in his eyes.

*.~ ◇ ~.*

When Stephen came to, it was to the sight of bright, blue lights assaulting his eyes and vague, muffled sounds of what sounded like whirring machines filtering through his ears. His eyes shut closed against the onslaught of light almost on its own accord, and he quickly regretted shaking his head as it did nothing to lessen the pounding in his temples – if anything, it grew much worse.

Gently, he fluttered his eyes back open, squinting as he adjusted to the lighting. He looked down on himself, noting the wrapped up and bandaged wounds over his body and the absence of his robes.

“Ah, my sleeping beauty has finally awoken.” Stephen barely suppressed a flinch at the voice. “How was your sleep, sweetheart?”

He tried to make out the blurry figure walking over to him – even though he already had a solid guess from the voice he had heard – and when the shifting blur of the man finally came to a focus, he lifted himself by the elbows.

"T–" he tried to croak out, and then coughed when he realised his throat was dry as a desert.

Tony sauntered over, grabbed a cup of water from a nearby bedside table, and gently lifted it to his lips, making a gesture with his head to urge Stephen to drink. Stephen stared at the cup, glared up at the engineer, and then snatched the cup with his own trembling fingers. If Tony saw the shaking in his hands and the way he tried desperately to look casual as the water splashed onto his fingers (and if anything, was failing to), he didn’t say anything.

He did, however, huff out in amusement.

Stephen downed the rest of the cup, and then placed it carefully upon the table Tony had taken it from. He felt the bed dip as the engineer sat beside him, and resisted the urge to scoot over and distance himself from the man.

A calloused hand sneaked its way to a loose strand of hair on his face, tucking it over behind his ear in unsolicited gentleness. The same fingers – again, ever so gently – gripped his chin, leaning his head down to face the man. Tony traced a thumb over the cut on his lip, and Stephen tried not to bodily shiver.

The smirk he earned, coupled with the intent stare of the man's steely blue eyes on his own, told him he had probably failed to do so.

Tony’s eyes were a sharp blue, and now that Stephen was looking directly at it, he noticed there seemed to be something in it he couldn’t quite put his finger on. There was something buried in them, something sinister and twisted and wrong in a way that made him feel unsettled.

"You cut your lip…" Tony mumbled, "Does it hurt, sweetheart?"

"Stop calling me that," he spat out.

"I can call my sweetheart whatever I want," was his response, followed with a nonchalant shrug. "Now, answer my question. Does it hurt?"

"Not if you stop touching it like that."

Tony hummed.

"He hurt you…" Tony said, a sudden sternness in his voice, a sudden shift in his expression, a silent burning in his eyes. The grip on his chin tightened, and Stephen had to stifle a wince. Tony's face gentled at that, thumb moving to rub (not) soothingly over his jaw in apology.

"What did you do to Mordo?" Stephen asked. If and whenever Tony was involved, nothing really ended well. Mordo was his business, after all – Tony had nothing to do with it.

"Took care of him." was the only response he received. The hand gently made its way to card over his hair, pulling out his tie and settling over his nape. Tony pulled him forward, breath inching closer to each other. "And now, I just need to take care of you."

Stephen's breath stuttered as he exhaled.

"Stop touching me."

"But you aren't pushing me away."

"I still don't want you to."

Tony smirked.

"You can continue to deny yourself, sweetheart, but I know you want it."

And that was the last straw for him. Stephen lifted his hand, tried to call upon his magic, but barely managed to create sparks before he realised the ever present tingle of magic in his fingers had faded. There was… something blocking his access to channel energy and conjure magic. What previously felt like a steady stream was now blocked by some sort of unbreakable dam.

He inspected his hand, finding what seemed to be… a bracelet, of some sort. A quick check over his other hand confirmed that a matching one wrapped around his other wrist, effectively blocking him from channelling any of his magic.

This wasn't any worse than Mordo's spell, he thought, and a sour expression took its place upon his face.

"Like it?" Tony asked, hands finally pulled away. "Made them just for you."

Stephen grunted in frustration, and attempted to swing a punch towards the man, only to find it unable to move.

A chain formed from his wrist from what seemed to be nanites that crawled its way to attach to the headboard, the other following suit. Stephen tried pulling himself forward, only to be pulled back harshly as the chain suddenly shortened itself. He struggled against the constraints, for only God knows how many times in how many occasions he had that day, and tried not to growl in frustration as Tony just chuckled at him.

The hand snaked back towards his chest, rubbing back and forth in a way that made acid burn in the back of his throat.

"Look at you," he said, "I like it when you struggle. It’s cute. I like having you like this, baby,” Tony smoothed out Stephen’s hair again, fingers tracing the lines of his face and down his cheekbone, thumb tracing his lips as those blue eyes flickered down on it. “Now be a good boy and stay still."

Before Stephen could protest, his words were quickly cut short as a sudden, heavy feeling clouded his head.

"Shh, it's alright. That's it, darling. That's it," he heard Tony murmur, voice slowly morphing away.

"Wh… 've you d…" his tongue felt heavy, his voice felt far away. His vision was blurring out at the edges, eyes drooping, and Tony's voice sounded muffled when he spoke.

"It's okay, sweetheart, it's okay. Just go back to sleep for now. Go back to sleep.”

Stephen: Fuck off. Don't touch me.

SIM:

SIM: Denial is a river in South Africa. You love me

Stephen: I literally told you to fuck off???

Once again super sorry took a while to get back to you, prompter. My writer self is not The Best at the moment and needs some time to get back to my past writing rhythm. There's no guarantee I'll be as active as last time?

But I really do hope you enjoyed this. <3 Despite the whole… 'lowering Defender's capabilities and overpowering SIM for plot purposes' thing. I really couldn't think of another way to write it without it seeming like that. :P

#ironstrange #fanfiction #stephen strange #tony stark #defender strange #SIM!tony #superior iron man #tw #non-con #non con touching #no rape #my fic #my writing

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reasoningdaily · 11 months

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From left: Charles Turner, Timothy Catlett, Levy Rouse, Chris Turner, Russell Overton and Clifton Yarborough, attend the funeral for their friend Kelvin “Hollywood” Smith on Oct. 27 in Capitol Heights, Md. (Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post)

https://wapo.st/3PFKslz

Clifton Yarborough patted his chest as he turned his gray Honda into a narrow alley in Northeast Washington. “My heart racing fast,” he said. He eased the car to a stop and pointed to a garage behind a rowhouse. “That’s it,” he said. “That’s where it happened.” There was graffiti on the weathered plywood door. Otherwise it looked ordinary. There was nothing to indicate what had unfolded in the small structure 39 years earlier.

The alley in the H Street neighborhood is around the corner from the home where Yarborough, 56, grew up, but this is the first time he has been here since he was a teenager. He didn’t want to stay long. He put the car into drive and pulled away from the place where a 49-year-old mother of six from the neighborhood was found dead in 1984, the victim of a brutal beating and rape.

Then 16, Yarborough was the youngest of 17 people arrested in the case. He and seven other young men from the neighborhood would eventually be tried, convicted and incarcerated for a combined 258 years. Justice, it seemed, was served.

But the men have insisted all along that they had nothing to do with the rape and the murder. That they didn’t know anything about those crimes. That their trial wasn’t fair.

Kelvin Smith, who served 35 years before being released in 2019, died at home in October. Steven Webb died in prison in 1999 after a stroke. He had served 15 years. The other six men — Yarborough, Christopher Turner, Charles Turner, Timothy Catlett, Levy Rouse and Russell Overton — are now in their 50s and 60s.

They have completed their sentences and been released from prison. The final one got out just last year.

But this ghastly crime hangs over them. They are free, but not free.

What they want, they say, is for their names to no longer be associated with one of the most vile crimes in Washington history. And they want the government that prosecuted and jailed them to admit it was wrong for not sharing evidence they believe would have helped them prove their innocence.

All of the men now live in Washington or its close-in suburbs. They have jobs — forklift driver, maintenance worker, parking lot attendant, janitor, warehouse worker.

They have reconnected with their families and friends and are trying to shape a new life in a city and world that has changed immeasurably from the city and world in which they grew up. Their newly free lives are dominated by thoughts of what they’ve lost and what they can still salvage.

“What hurts is my character being slandered, that people say I would do such a thing that I didn’t do, especially to someone I knew,” Yarborough said. “Clear this. Make it be known we didn’t commit this crime.”

Rouse says it is hard for him to trust anyone. He was 19 when he was arrested and had a newborn son,whom Rouse wouldn’t see in person until his release in 2019.

“I wrote letters to him a lot, and when he grew older he would write me back, saying — Dad, I know you’re innocent and I’m always going to love you,” Rouse said. “It hurts me inside to know he had to go through that.”

Rouse says he and his 39-year-old-son are now the best of friends, making up for time they were apart.

Since getting out of prison, Rouse has focused on moving forward.Now a maintenance worker, he has completed computer courses from a career training school. He also counsels other former prisoners who have recently been released. And in September, he got married. “It’s wonderful, wonderful,” Rouse said. “Best thing that ever happened to me.”

But even as he looks forward, Rouse can’t let go of the past. “It’s important the truth comes out because they know they was wrong,” he said.

Charles Turner lives at brother Christopher’s apartment in Southeast Washington. He has a full-time maintenance job at the Martin Luther King Jr. library in downtown Washington. He’s determined to reclaim his time.

“They took 36 years from me, so I plan to be out here alive for another 36 years,” Turner said. “I’m gonna get those 36 years back.”

Turner, 59, said he feels cheated that he was locked up when his mother died and that he couldn’t say goodbye to her. And he laments never having children.

“Being locked up, they took my bloodline,” he said. “No one is gonna ever know I was even here.”

Christopher Turner, nicknamed “the Mayor” by other defendants, was the first to bereleased. He was given a shorter sentence than the others because he had completed high school and had no criminal record. In prison, he spent much of his time reading and learning about the law. While incarcerated and in the years since his release in 2010, he has led the effort to clear his name and those of his fellow defendants.

Along the way, Christopher Turner has also become an advocate for prisoners. He is on the board of the Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project, which works to prevent and overturn convictions of innocent people, and Free Minds, a D.C.-based book club and writing workshop for incarcerated youths.

The men’s effort to continue lobbying for their innocence while reentering the workforce and reconnecting with their families and their city, Christopher Turner admits, is wearying.

“I know the guys are really tired,” he said recently over breakfast at a Capitol Hill diner. “We’re trying to move on with our lives. But this is still a fight we need to fight. As long as there’s air in my body, I’ll continue to fight.”

The men compare their case to that of the Central Park Five, the five teenagers from Harlem who were convicted of the 1989 rape of a woman and spent years in prison before DNA evidence and a confession led to their convictions being overturned in 2002.

But this murder occurred before the use of DNA in solving crimes began, and no evidence that can be tested survived. And unlike the Central Park case, no one else has come forward to admit guilt.

Over the years, the men have unsuccessfully appealed their convictions.

In 2017, at the Supreme Court, their attorneys argued that prosecutors violated the Brady rule by not turning over evidence to the defense. The court ruled 6-2 that the withheld evidence would not have made a difference in the outcome of the case. After that decision, the men were out of options.

But their attorneys and some of the most powerful law firms in Washington have stuck with them.

“I wouldn’t represent them if I thought they had any involvement in this whatsoever,” said Shawn Armbrust, executive director of the Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project and Christopher Turner’s attorney. She has been working with the defendants since 2005. “Our standard is — you can’t have any involvement in the crime. If we find evidence pointing to guilt, we’re done.”

But there are no legal appeals left to file. No courtroom arguments left to make. No witnesses left to cross-examine.

For the defendants and their attorneys, their only hope may be a presidential pardon. And that, all of them acknowledge is, a long shot.

Crime was a problem in Washington in 1984, especially in the busy, blue-collar corridor of H Street NE. Murders in D.C. were nowhere near the astronomic levels they would climb to in the late 1980s and ’90s, but they weren’t rare either.

Among them, one murder stood out: The Oct. 1, 1984, killing of Catherine Fuller.

Fuller was 49, Black, a married mother of six who lived a short walk from the alley behind H Street where she was found dead on that rainy October day. She had been beaten and sodomized with a pipe-like object. It tore through her intestines and abdomen, according to medical examiners. Her ribs were broken. Fuller weighed less than 100 pounds. She had been robbed of $50 and some jewelry.

Years later, her son David Fuller would remember her as “a loving, caring parent.” His mother, he told The Washington Post in 2017, “was the type of person who would go out of her way to do anything for you.”

The pressure on police and politicians to find the culprit — or culprits — was intense. The most promising information came the first day, when a street vendor who found the body told police he saw two men acting suspiciously in the alley, one with an object under his coat. They ran when police first approached the scene.

But there was little else to go by. Then a couple of anonymous phone tips. A caller referenced the “8th and H Crew” and mentioned a few names.

Three days after the murder, detectives, acting on the tip, picked up Yarborough. Then 16, Yarborough was a special-educationstudent at Eastern High School. His IQ was below 70, and he had difficulty reading. He was interrogated for hours without a lawyer or a parent present.

Yarborough said he told police he didn’t know anything about the crime, but he eventually signed a statement that provided some details and names. He would later say he signed the document because he was scared.

Despite the early leads, the investigation stalled. It was not until late November that a 16-year-old girl gave police the name of Calvin Alston, a person she said had talked about committing the crime. The girl later acknowledged being high on PCP when she was interviewed by police. Alston denied being involved but eventually gave police information about Fuller’s death and a few names, including Yarborough’s. Later Alston would testify that police threatened him with life in prison if he didn’t admit to a role in the murder.

The detectives brought Yarborough back in.

According to Yarborough, the questioning this time was relentless. He said detectives slammed him against a desk, injuring his knee, and held his head above a flushing toilet. The detectives denied those allegations under oath and said the injury was preexisting.

Eventually, Yarborough said, the detectives wore him down. He said they read a statement to him given by Alston and told him to corroborate it. Yarborough agreed, and his statement was videotaped.

“The homicide people interrogated me to a point where I wanted to do anything to get out and go home,” Yarborough said, sitting at a Starbucks across from a Whole Foods on a revitalized H Street that bears little resemblance to the neighborhood in which he grew up. “First they had to calm me down from crying.”

His attorneys would later argue that Yarborough’s testimony was coerced. The two lead detectives and a police officer who worked on the case either declined or did not respond to interview requests for this story.

Yarborough’s statement became crucial evidence that helped lead to the arrests and conviction of his fellow defendants and cemented the idea in the public mind that the crime was the work of a ruthless gang, the “8th and H Crew.” All of those charged, however, said there was no gang. Some of them didn’t even know one another.

Ultimately, 10 people were brought to trial in 1985 for Fuller’s murder. After deliberating for seven days, the all-Black jury found two defendants not guilty and six guilty. The jury told the court it was “impossible” to reach a unanimous verdict for Christopher Turner and Russell Overton.

The judge ordered the jury to continue deliberating, and two days later, the jury returned with guilty verdicts for both men. It had taken “40 to 50” more votes to reach a unanimous decision, jurors told reporters later.

Christopher Turner, then 20, was stunned. He was so certain he would be found innocent that he had turned down a plea deal that would have required him to serve just two to six years. Taking a plea deal for something he hadn’t done was something he objected to on principle, he said. “People still ask me, do you regret not pleading guilty and going on with your life? And my answer is no, emphatically no, I don’t regret it.”

David Fuller was 16 when his mother was killed. He knew a few of the defendants. Christopher Turner was three years older and helped manage Fuller’s go-go band. Yarborough was the same age and lived around the corner. Yarborough said he used to bring pies his grandmother made over to the Fuller house.

Fuller, who now lives in Missouri, originally agreed to be interviewed for this article but then did not respond to messages. The Post was unable to locate Catherine Fuller’s other children. But David Fuller talked about his mother and the case in 2017 for a Post story.

By then, he said, he had found a measure of peace with what had happened. “Even with loss you got to keep going,” he said.

And he acknowledged that some or all of the men may not have been responsible. “My heart goes out to some of the gentlemen if they were falsely accused, because they suffered,” he said.

Russell Overton, 65, folds his 6-foot-7-inch frame into an armchair in the living room of his 85-year-old mother’s tidy Silver Spring home. He has lived here with his sister since his release in March 2022.

Overton, the last of the men to be released, was the oldest of them when they were arrested. He was 26 then and had children. Now he is a great-grandfather and getting to know his family as a free man.

The adjustment hasn’t been easy. Overton still sleeps with his door open and wakes at every sound. He keeps his toiletries in a container on his dresser the way he did when he was locked up. He has a job at a warehouse where he is doing well but is still coming to terms with engaging in pleasantries and trusting people.

“What happened to [Catherine Fuller] was wrong. I’m sorry that it happened. Sympathy for her family,” he said in an interview, leaning forward in his chair. “But there’s no way I can have remorse when I never did have anything to do with it. I wasn’t no angel out there. I got in trouble here and there, but I didn’t do this.”

The system, he said, failed them all.

In 1995, while still in prison, Christopher Turner wrote to Post reporter Patrice Gaines, who had helped cover the original trial. He told her he wanted her to know he was innocent. Gaines looked into the murder and made discoveries that raised questions.

In 2001, Gaines reported that Harry Bennett, called as a witness in the case, told her he had falsified testimony to avoid a life sentence.Bennett said the prosecutor, Jerry Goren, “painted a picture for me. All I had to do was say yes.”

Gaines would also learn a critical piece of information never turned over to the defense. Three weeks after Fuller’s murder, a woman named Ammie Davis told police she had been in the alley that day shooting heroin and saw a man she knew named James Blue. She said Blue savagely attacked a woman and stole money from her in the alley. The week before the Fuller trial began, Blue fatally shot Davis. He died in prison in 1993.

The defendants in the Fuller case challenged their conviction in D.C. Superior Court in 2012 and learned during discovery that another key piece of information was never turned over.

One of the men who ran when police first approached the scene was James McMillan, a 19-year-old who was new to the neighborhood. Three weeks after Fuller’s body was found, McMillan was arrested in two violent assaults and robberies of middle-aged women in the neighborhood. But even though he had been identified at the scene by three witnesses, prosecutors did not share that information with the defense in the Fuller case.

Eight years after Catherine Fuller’s murder, McMillan would be arrested for the murder and forcible sodomy of a woman in an alley in the same H Street neighborhood. He is serving a life sentence in federal prison in Virginia. He declined through prison officials to be interviewed and previously denied any responsibility for Fuller’s death.

During the 2012 proceedings, Goren, the prosecutor, admitted that evidence had been withheld from the defendants. He testified that he didn’t pass on information about McMillan because he did not believe it relevant enough. He also said he didn’t tell the defense about Davis because he didn’t find her story credible.

Reached briefly by phone at his California home earlier this year, Goren declined an interview.

D.C. Superior Court Judge Frederick H. Weisberg ultimately rejected the bid for a new trial, saying the “petitioners have not come close to demonstrating actual innocence.” In 2015, the D.C. Court of Appeals confirmed that ruling. The Supreme Court decision in 2017 ended any hopes the men had of having their convictions overturned.

For some who have followed the case, the Supreme Court ruling was the culmination of a process that has been flawed at every step of the way.

“It’s reaffirmed for me that there are some deep systemic problems in the legal system and that those need to be fundamentally changed,” said Thomas L. Dybdahl, whose book, “When Innocence is Not Enough: Hidden Evidence and the Failed Promise of the Brady Rule,” tracks the legal journey of the Fuller murder defendants in the context of examining Brady disclosure requirements.

Dybdahl argues that even though the Brady rule requires prosecutors to hand over favorable evidence to the defense, they have little incentive to do so because they face little threat of punishment for not adhering to it.

The defendants in the Fuller case “didn’t want mercy, they wanted justice,” Dybdahl said. “Unfortunately, they didn’t get either.”

In 1985, Michele Roberts was a D.C. public defender representing Alphonso Harris, one of the men charged in Fuller’s murder. Roberts, who retired last year as the executive director of the NBA Players Association, remembers the “intense pressure on the government” to get a conviction. Her client was one of the two defendants to be found not guilty.

While her client went free, Roberts said the evidence withheld from the defendants would have been critical to the outcome of the case.

“If I had what we later discovered … all of them would have walked,” she said. “The most powerful evidence that you can present as a defense attorney, if it’s credible, is to be able to say ‘Not only did my guy not do it, but let me tell you who did.’”

John Williams, a lawyer with the powerhouse Washington firm Williams & Connolly who represents Yarborough and argued the men’s case at the Supreme Court, said one option may be available to the defendants to provide them some measure of justice.

Williams said he and the other attorneys are actively considering petitioning for a presidential pardon. It is a complicated process that could take years, and there is no guarantee they will be successful.

“Those are always long shots,” he said. “But these men are incredibly deserving.”

“They were wrongly labeled as murderers. The system still regards them as murderers,” Williams said. “I understand why they’re continuing to fight, and that’s why we are continuing to fight for them.”

In late October, the six surviving defendants wore suits to the funeral of their gregarious and fun-loving fellow defendant Kelvin Smith, known to all of them by his nickname, ‘Hollywood.’ On a breezy, sunny afternoon at a cemetery in Hyattsville, they walked past rows of headstones and markers to the gravesite. One of Smith’s favorite songs, “Bitter Sweet Symphony” by the Verve, played through a speaker nearby.

Smith was Christopher Turner’s best friend. On the day of the funeral, Turner said he thought about how little freedom his friend had been able to enjoy and how he wouldn’t live to see his name cleared. “I felt bad because I wanted him to have that moment,” Turner said.

On days when he struggles to find the energy for this fight, Turner said, he thinks about Hollywood and about Steven Webb, who died in prison. And he thinks about his fellow defendants and their families and friends, whose lives were forever changed by a horrific crime in a small garage in an alley in Washington almost 40 years ago.

“I’m not even sure what keeps me going,” he said. “I just know there’s a fire burning inside me to right a wrong.”

#DC #Wrongfully Imprisoned #Fake Evidence #No Rape #They served decades in prison for a crime they say they didn’t commit #Black Lives Matter #Six men #wrongly convicted of a rape/murder in 1984 #with no recourse with no DNA evidence available

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luckyladylily · 11 days

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So a few months ago there was the discourse about would you rather meet a man or a bear in the woods. I didn't want to touch it while the discourse was hot and everyone dug in hard because those are not good conditions for nuance, but I waited until today, June 1st, for a specific reason.

I'm not going to take a position in the bear vs man debate because I don't think it matters. What is really being asked here is how afraid are you of men? Specifically, unexpected men who are, perhaps, strange.

People have a lot of very real fear of men that comes from a lot of very real places. Back when I was first transitioning in 2015 and 2016, I decided to start presenting as a woman in public even though I did not pass in the slightest.

I live in a red state. I knew other trans women who had been attacked by men, raped by men. I knew I was taking a risk by putting myself out there. I was the only visibly trans person in the area of campus I frequented, and people made sure I never forgot that. Most were harmless enough and the worst I got from them was curious stares. Others were more aggressive, even the occasional threat. I had to avoid public bathrooms, of course, and always be aware of my surroundings.

I know how frightening it is to be alone at night while a pair of men are following behind you and not knowing if they are just going in the same direction or if they want to start something - made all the worse for the constant low level threat I had been living under for over a year by just being visibly trans in a place where many are openly hostile to queer people. You have to remember, this was at the height of the first wave of bathroom law discussions, a lot of people were very angry about trans women in particular. My daily life was terrifying at times. I was never the subject of direct violence, but I knew trans women who had been.

I want you to keep all that in mind.

So man or bear is really the question "how afraid of men are you?", and the question that logically follows is "What if there was a strange man at night in a deserted parking lot?" or "What if you were alone in an elevator with a man?" or "What if you met a strange man in the woman's bathroom?"

My state recently passed an anti trans bathroom bill. The rhetoric they used was about protecting women and children from "strange men", aka trans women.

Conservatives hijack fear for their bigoted agenda.

When I first started presenting as a woman the campus apartment complex was designed for young families. The buildings were in a large square with playgrounds in the center, and there were often children playing. I quickly noticed that when I took my daughter out to play, often several children would immediately stop what they were doing and run back inside. It didn't take me long to confirm that the parents were so afraid of "the strange man who wears skirts" that their children were under strict instructions to literally run away as soon as they saw me.

"How afraid are you of a strange man being near your children?"

I mentioned above that I had to avoid public bathrooms. This was not because of men. It was because of women who were so afraid of random men that they might get violent or call someone like the police to be violent for them if I ever accidentally presented myself in a way that could be interpreted as threatening, when my mere presence could be seen as a threat. If I was in the library studying and I realized that it was just me and one other woman I would get up and leave because she might decide that stranger danger was happening.

Your fear is real. Your fear might even come from lived experiences. None of that prevents the fact that your fear can be violent. Women's fear of men is one of the driving forces of transmisogyny because it is so easy to hijack. And it isn't just trans women. Other trans people experience this, and other queer people too. Racial minorities, homeless people, neurodivergent people, disabled people.

When you uncritically engage with questions like man or bear, when you uncritically validate a culture of reactive fear, you are paving the way for conservatives and bigots to push their agenda. And that is why I waited until pride month. You cannot engage and contribute to the culture of reactive fear without contributing to queerphobia of all varieties. The sensationalist culture of reactive fear is a serious queer issue, and everyone just forgot that for a week as they argued over man or bear. I'm not saying that "man" is the right answer. I am saying that uncritically engaging with such obvious click bait trading on reactive fear is a problem. Everyone fucked up.

It is not a moral failing to experience fear, but it is a moral responsibility to keep a handle on that fear and know how it might harm others.

#I don't even know how to tag this #rape mention

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nyancrimew · 10 days

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hey @humans, do you intend to ever get to the rape threats ive reported to you or are you doing a transmisogyny themed pride month this year?

#cw rape #transmisogyny #staff

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fresh-snow · 4 months

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IOF: Hamas rapes women

Hostages: They didn't harass the women, treated everyone fairly

Meanwhile IOF: *Releases pictures of naked Palestinian men*

Yeah the real sexual assaulter is IOF. Every accusation is a confession.

May zionists burn in hell forever.

#palestine #free palestine #free gaza #gaza #save palestine #genocide #israel is a terrorist state #keep talking about palestine #palestine resources #social justice #yaffa #al quds #jerusalem #yemen #iof terrorists #iof terrorism #hamas #tw: rape #tw: sa

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peasantexchangeprogram · 2 months

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im not sure you know what ancient rome is

#slavery ment #rape ment #mine*#blorbo from my degree....

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stuckinapril · 3 months

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These updates are fucking insane. Israeli forces are currently besieging 3 hospitals: al-Amal Hospital, Nasser Hospital, and Shifa Hospital. They even executed a doctor, Muhammad al-Nono, for refusing to leave his patients, while a PRCS worker was killed in the al-Amal shelling (they are terrorizing these hospitals all at the same time). A Palestinian woman relayed that other women have been rounded up from Shifa hospital and subjected to rape and torture. There are also accounts of Christian Palestinians being denied access to Jerusalem on Palm Sunday—all while Israeli settlers stormed al-Aqsa Mosque on this same Sunday. My heart is aching for these Palestinians. So devastating there are no words.

#palestine #tw rape

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neotrances · 8 months

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multiple reputable news sources are retracting their statements on supposed rapes and beheadings happening bc of lack of evidence along with literal civilians coming forward and saying it didn’t happen, keep in mind the palestinians have no allies rn, no control in the media, and almost no support from major countries so this isn’t them “sneaking” in propaganda, ur being lied to about people in a literal concentration camp who now have their access to water electricity and food shut off, don’t fall for it

#reposting bc op had me blocked #literally sickening how many news sources are retracting their claims #as i typed this the new york times just retracted three articles dude.#rape tw

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serialunaliver · 11 days

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anyone else feel insane for being uncomfortable with traditional nuclear family humor because everyone else seems to act like it's no big deal? by 'nuclear family humor' I mean parents sexualizing their kids under the guise of just joking when it's actually creepy as fuck and if anyone who isn't family made a joke implying a little girl should be "locked up" because men want to fuck her so bad it would be viewed quite differently. and i've seen SO many kids casually mention "I hate when my mom/dad touches me in xyz way as a joke" but feel the need to rationalize it as innocent fun since family is involved. you don't have to defend these behaviors, you're not a bad person for wanting boundaries at any age.

#seriousposting #also this contributes to rape culture so much

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am-i-the-asshole-official · 5 months

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AITA For Not Tagging a Work?

I, 32F, write primarily for my own enjoyment, my main platform being AO3. I currently have a multi-chaoter series that includes several major plot twists, including one that includes non-con. To avoid spoiling it, because I believe my stories deserve to be read with as little background info as possible, I only tag it as "Creator CHOSE not to Include Archive Warnings". Which is, as I hope is obvious, is not synonymous with "There Are No Warnings". The point is, I don't use the Rape/Non-con tag. Recently, I got a very upset reader in my comments complaining about how triggering that chapter of my work is, and that's where I have a problem. I believe the corporate obsession content warnings pervading even fanworks to be a major problem. I don't want to sanitize my work, but I do get that they contain pretty heavy themes. But I feel like I seriously do give my stories a disservice by adding labels on them, and maybe I am the asshole for this, but I value my pride and joy (my work) over strangers online. AITA?

What are these acronyms?

#aita #am i the asshole #ship discourse #rape cw

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txttletale · 5 months

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non-normative sexuality is not the root of sexual abuse or rape. for a huge amount of history in a huge amount of the world, sexual abuse and rape have been thoroughly normal (cf. marital rape exemptions being removed from US legal codes as recently as 2019). rapists are not 'freaks' -- the default, 'normal' paradigm of sexuality across the world is one of violent misogyny. 640 million women are or were child brides and the men marrying them are not abberations or exceptions, they are normal. men who engage in endemic workplace harassment or frat boys who assault women are behaving in a way that is 'normal', they are fulfiling the gendered expectations for expressions of heterosexual sexuality when they harass and catcall and abuse women. projecting sexual violence onto the specter of the obviously deviant, abnormal outsider is a scapegoating mechanism intended to sanitize and exonerate the cisheteropatriarchal standard of normalized and ubiquitous sexual violence

#tattletxt #rape mention cw #csa mention cw

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visualnovelboyfriend · 6 months

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if you think i am going to care abt mens opinions on lesbianism please consider:

killing yourself is faster and has a more positive effect on society

i have three (3) weed smoking girlfriends to fuck rather than waste time on your essays about how men are oppressed or whatever

yes im a mean nasty bitchy exclusie im sorry that trans men arent magically also lesbians the afab connection is meaningless to me :( sorry for not buying into bioessentialism i guess

if you arent a lesbian you should be embarrassed #skilldiff #gws

in order to comment defending your points in including men in a community of women* who are exclusively attracted to other women* you must first go to my pinned post and open that kofi link and send a minimum of 3 dollars. if u send more than 10 ill even deign to read your essay to make fun of you before blocking and moving on w my day. 😁👍

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awakefor48hours · 2 months

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Please stop telling people, for any reason, to kill themself. Stop advocating for suicide in any form or capacity.

#suicide mention #mention of suicide #for an addition i'm just gonna add >#rape mention #mention of rape

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rapeculturerealities · 3 months

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Link to tweet

Link to article

#California #Prison #Prison rape #carcerality #@geauxgabrielle

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mask131 · 6 months

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The truth about Medusa and her rape... Mythology breakdown time!

With the recent release of the Percy Jackson television series, Tumblr is bursting with mythological posts, and the apparition of Medusa the Gorgon has been the object of numerous talks throughout this website… Including more and more spreading of misinformation, and more debates about what is the “true” version of Medusa’s backstory.

Already let us make that clear: the idea that Medusa was actually “blessed” or “gifted” by Athena her petrifying gaze/snake-hair curse is to my knowledge not at all part of the Antique world. I still do not know exactly where this comes from, but I am aware of no Greek or Roman texts that talked about this – so it seems definitively a modern invention. After all, the figure of Medusa and her entire myth has been taken part, reinterpreted and modified by numerous modern women, feminist activist, feminist movements or artists engaged in the topic of women’s life and social conditions – most notably Medusa becoming the “symbol of raped women’ wrath and fury”. It is an interesting reading and a fascinating update of the ancient texts, and it is a worthy take on its own time and context – but today we are not talking about the posterity, reinvention and continuity of Medusa as a myth and a symbol. I want to clarify some points about the ACTUAL myth or legend of Medusa – the original tale, as told by the Greeks and then by the Romans.

Most specifically the question: Was Medusa raped?

Step 1: Yes, but no.

The backstory of Medusa you will find very often today, ranging from mythology manuals (vulgarization manuals of course) to Youtube videos, goes as such: Medusa was a priestess of Athena who got raped by Poseidon while in Athena’s temple, and as a result of this, Athena punished Medusa by turning her into the monstrous Gorgon.

Some will go even further claiming Athena’s “curse” wasn’t a punishment but a “gift” or blessing – and again, I don’t know where this comes from and nobody seems to be able to give me any reliable source for that, so… Let’s put this out of there.

Now this backstory – famous and popular enough to get into Riodan’s book series for example – is partially true. There are some elements here very wrong – and by wrong I do mean wrong.

The story of Medusa being raped and turned into a monster due to being raped does indeed exist, and it is the most famous and widespread of all the Medusa stories, the one people remembered for the longest time and wrote and illustrated the most about. Hence why Medusa became in the 20th century this very important cultural symbol tied to rape and the abuse of women and victim-blaming. HOWEVER – the origin of this story is Ovid’s Metamorphoses, from the first century CE or so. Ovid? A Roman poet writing for Roman people. “Metamorphoses”? One of the two fundamental works of Roman literature and one of the two main texts of Roman mythology, alongside Virgil’s Aeneid. This is a purely Roman story belonging to the Roman culture – and not the Greek one. The story of Medusa’s rape does not have Greek precedents to my knowledge, Ovid introduced the element of rape – which is no surprise given Ovid turned half of the romances of Greek mythology into rapes. Note that, on top of all this, Ovid wasn’t even writing for religious purposes, nor was his text an actual mythological effort – he wrote it with pure literary intentions at heart. It is just a piece of poetry and literature taking inspiration from the legends of the Greek world, not some sort of sacred text.

Second big point: The legend I summarized above? It isn’t even the story Ovid wrote, since there are a lot of elements that do not come from Ovid’s retelling of the story (book fourth of the Metamorphoses). For example Ovid never said Medusa was a priestess of Athena – all he said was that she was raped in the temple of Athena. I shouldn’t even be writing Athena since again, this is a Roman text: we are speaking of Minerva here, and of Neptune, not of Athena or Poseidon. Similarly, Minerva’s curse did not involve the petrifying gaze – rather all Ovid wrote about was that Minerva turned Medusa’s hair into snakes, to “punish” her because her hair were very beautiful, and it was what made her have many suitors (none of which she wanted to marry apparently), and it is also implied it is what made Neptune fall in love (or rather fall in lust) with her. I guess it is from this detail that the reading of “Athena’s curse was a gift” comes from – even though this story also clearly does victim-blaming of rape here.

But what is very fascinating is that… we are not definitively sure Neptune raped Medusa in Ovid’s retelling. For sure, the terms used by Ovid in his fourth book of Metamorphoses are clear: this was an action of violating, sexually assaulting, of soiling and corrupting, we are talking about rape. But Ovid refers several other times to Medusa in his other books, sometimes adding details the fourth-book stories does not have (the sixth book for examples evokes how Neptune turned into a bird to seduce Medusa, which is completely absent from the fourth book’s retelling of Medusa’ curse). And in all those other mentions, the terms to designate the relationship between Medusa and Neptune are more ambiguous, evoking seduction and romance rather than physical or sexual assault. (It does not help that Ovid has an habit of constantly confusing consensual and non-consensual sex in his poems, meaning that a rape in one book can turn into a romance in another, or reversal)

But the latter fact makes more sense when you recall that the rape element was invented and added by Ovid. Before, yes Poseidon and Medusa loved each other, but it was a pure romance, or at least a consensual one-night. Heck, if we go back to the oldest records of the love between Poseidon and Medusa, back in Hesiod’s Theogony, we have descriptions of the two of them laying together in a beautiful, flowery meadow – a stereotypical scene of pastoral romances – with no mention of any brutality or violence of any sort. As a result, it makes sense the original “romantic” story would still “leak” or cast a shadow over Ovid’s reinvented and slightly-confused tale.

Step 2: So… no rape?

Well, if we go by Greek texts, no, apparently Medusa was not raped in Greek mythology, and only became a rape victim through Ovid.

The Ancient Greek texts all record Poseidon and Medusa sleeping with each other and having children, but no mention of rape. And the whole “curse of Athena” thing is not present in the oldest records – no temple of Athena soiling, no angry Athena cursing a poor girl… “No curse?” you say “But then how did Medusa got turned into a Gorgon”? Answer: she did not. She was born like that.

As I said before, the oldest record of Medusa’s romance but also of her family comes from Hesiod’s Theogony (Hesiod being one of the two “founding authors” of Greek mythology, alongside Homer – Homer did wrote several times about Medusa, but only as a disembodied head and as a monster already dead, so we don’t have any information about her life). And what do we learn? That Medusa is part of a set of three sisters known as the Gorgons – because oh yes, Ovid did not mention Medusa’s sister now did he? How did Medusa’s sisters ALSO got snake-hair or petrifying-gaze if only Medusa was cursed for sleeping with Neptune? Ovid does not give us any answer because again, it is an “adaptational plot hole”, and the people that try to adapt Ovid’s story have to deal with the slight problem of Stheno and Euryale needing to share their sister’s curse despite seemingly not being involved in the whole Neptune business. Anyway, back to the Greek text.

So, you have those three Gorgon sisters, and Medusa is said to be mortal while her sisters are not. Why is it such a big deal? Because Medusa wasn’t originally some random human or priestess. Oh no! Who were the Gorgons’ parents? Phorcys and Keto/Ceto, aka two sea-gods. Not just two sea-gods – two sea-gods of the ancient, primordial generation of sea-gods, the one that predated Poseidon, and that were cousins to the Titans, the sea-gods born of Gaia mating with Pontos.

So the Gorgons were “divine” of nature – and this is why Medusa being a mortal was considered to be a MASSIVE problem and handicap for her, an abnormal thing for the daughter of two deities. But let’s dig a bit further… Who were Phorcys and Ceto? Long story short: in Greek mythology, they were considered to be sea-equivalents of Typhon and Gaia. They were the parents of many monsters and many sea-horrors: Keto/Ceto herself had her name attributed and equated with any very large creature (like whales) or any terrifying monster (like dragons) from the sea. The Gorgons themselves was a trio of monsters, but their sisters, that directly act as their double in the myth of Perseus? The Graiai – the monstrous trio of old women sharing one eye and one tooth. Hesiod also drops the fact that Ladon (the dragon that guarded the golden apples of the Hesperids), and Echidna (the snake-woman that mated with Typhon and became known as the “mother of monsters”) were also children of Phorcys and Ceto, while other authors will add other monster-related characters such as Scylla (of Charybdis and Scylla fame), the sirens, or Thoosa (the mother of Polyphemus the cyclop). Medusa herself is technically a “mother of monsters” since she birthed both Pegasus the flying horse and Chrysaor, a giant. So here is something very important to get: Medusa, and the Gorgons, were part of a family of monsters. Couple that with the absence of any mention of curses in these ancient texts, and everything is clear.

Originally Medusa was not a woman cursed to become a monster: she was born a monster, part of a group of monster siblings, birthed by monster-creating deities, and she belonged to the world of the “primordial abominations from the sea”, and the pre-Olympian threats, the remnants of the primordial chaos. It is no surprise that the Gorgons were said to live at the edge of the very known world, in the last patch of land before the end of the universe – in the most inhuman, primitive and liminal area possible. They were full-on monsters!

Now you might ask why Poseidon would sleep with a horrible monster, especially when you recall that the Greeks loved to depict the Gorgons as truly bizarre and grotesque. It wasn’t just snake-hair and petrifying gaze: they had boar tusks, and metallic claws, and bloated eyes, and a long tongue that constantly hanged down their bearded chin, and very large heads – some very old depictions even show her with a female centaur body! In fact, the ancient texts imply that it wasn’t so much the Gorgon’s gaze or eyes that had the power to turn people into stone – but that rather the Gorgon was just so hideous and so terrifying to look at people froze in terror – and then literally turned into stone out of fear and disgust. We are talking Lovecraftian level of eldritch horror here. So why would Poseidon, an Olympian god, sleep with one of these horrors? Well… If you know your Poseidon it wouldn’t surprise you too much because Poseidon had a thing for monsters. As a sort of “dark double” of Zeus, whereas Zeus fell in love with beautiful princesses and noble queens and birthed great gods and brave heroes, Poseidon was more about getting freaky with all sorts of unusual and bizarre goddesses, and giving birth to bandits and monsters. A good chunk of the villains of Greek mythology were born out of Poseidon’s loins: Polyphemus, Antaios, Orion, Charybdis, the Aloads… And even his most benevolent offspring has freaky stuff about it – Proteus the shapeshifter or Triton half-man half-fish… So yes, Poseidon sleeping with an abominable Gorgon is not so much out of character.

Step 3: The missing link

Now that we established what Medusa started out as, and what she ended up as… We need to evoke the evolution from point Hesiod to point Ovid, because while people summarized the Medusa debate as “Sea-born monster VS raped and punished woman”, there is a third element needed to understand this whole situation…

Yes Ovid did invent the rape. But he did not invent the idea that Medusa had been cursed by Athena.

The “gorgoneion” – the visual and artistic motif of the Gorgon’s head – was, as I said, a grotesque and monstrous face used to invoke fright into the enemies or to repel any vile influence or wicked spirit by the principle of “What’s the best way to repel bad stuff? Badder stuff”. Your Gorgon was your gargoyle, with all the hideous traits I described before – represented in front (unlike all the other side-portraits of gods and heroes), with the face being very large and flat, a big tongue out of a tusked-mouth, snake-hair, bulging crazy eyes, sometimes a beard or scales… Pure monster. But then… from the fifth century BCE to the second century BCE we see a slow evolution of the “gorgoneion” in art. Slowly the grotesque elements disappear, and the Gorgon’s face becomes… a regular, human face. Even more: it even becomes a pretty woman’s face! But with snakes instead of hair. As such, the idea that Medusa was a gorgeous woman who just had snakes and cursed-eyes DOES come from Ancient Greece – and existed well before Ovid wrote his rape story.

But what was the reason behind this change?

Well, we have to look at the Roman era again. Ovid’s tale of Medusa being cursed for her rape at the hands of Neptune had to rival with another record collected by a Greek author Apollodorus, or Pseudo-Apollodorus, in his Bibliotheca. In this collection of Greek myths, Apollodorus writes that indeed, Medusa was cursed by Athena to have her beautiful hair that seduced everybody be turned into snakes… But it wasn’t because of any rape or forbidden romance, no. It was just because Medusa was a very vain woman who liked to brag about her beauty and hair – and had the foolish idea of saying her hair looked better than Athena’s. (If you recall tales such as Arachne’s or the Judgement of Paris, you will know that despite Athena being wise and clever, one of her main flaws is her vanity).

“Wait a minute,” you are going to tell me, “The Bibliotheca was created in the second century CE! Well after Greece became part of the Roman Empire, and after Ovid’s Metamorphoses became a huge success! It isn’t a true Greek myth, it is just Ovid’s tale being projected here…” And people did agree for a time… Until it was discovered, in the scholias placed around the texts of Apollonios of Rhodes, that an author of the fifth century BCE named Pherecyde HAD recorded in his time a version of Medusa’s legend where she had been cursed into becoming an ugly monster as punishment for her vanity. We apparently do not have the original text of Pherecyde, but the many scholias referring to this lost piece are very clear about this. This means that the story that Apollodorus recorded isn’t a “novelty”, but rather the latest record of an older tradition going back to the fifth century BCE… THE SAME CENTURY THAT THE GORGONEION STARTED LOSING THEIR GROTESQUE, and that the face of Medusa started becoming more human in art.

[EDIT: I also forgot to add that this evolution of Medusa is also proved by strange literary elements, such as Pindar's mention in a poem of his (around 490 BCE) of "fair-cheeked Medusa". A description which seems strange given how Medusa used to be depicted as the epitome of ugliness... But that makes sense if the "cursed beauty" version of the myth had been going around at the time!]

And thus it is all connected and explained. Ovid did invent the rape yes – but he did not invent the idea of Athena cursing Medusa. It pre-existed as the most “recent” and dominating legend in Ancient Greece, having overshadowed by Ovid’s time the oldest Hesiodic records of Medusa being born a monster. So what Ovid did wasn’t completely create a new story out of nowhere, but twist the Greek traditions of Athena cursing Medusa and Medusa having a relationship with Poseidon, so that the two legends would form one and same story. And this explains in retrospect why Ovid focuses so much on describing Medusa’s beautiful hair, and why Ovid’s Minerva would think turning her hair into snake would be a “punishment fit for the crime”: these are leftovers of the Greek tale where Medusa was punished for her boasting and her vanity.

CONCLUSION

Here is the simplified chronology of how Medusa’s evolution went.

A) Primitive Greek myths, Hesiodic tradition: Born a monster out of a family of sea-monsters and monstrous immortals. Is a grotesque, gargoylesque, eldritch abomination. Athena has only an indirect conflict with her, due to being Perseus’ “fairy godmother”. Has a lovely romance with Poseidon.

B) Slow evolution throughout Classical Greece and further: Medusa becomes a beautiful, human-looking girl that was cursed to have snake for hair and petrifying eyes, instead of being a Lovecraftian horror people could not gaze upon. Her conflict with Athena becomes direct, as it is Athena that cursed her due to being offended by her vain boasting. Her punishment is for her vanity and arrogant comparison to the goddess.

C) Ovid comes in: Medusa’s romance with Poseidon becomes a rape, and she is now punished for having been raped inside Athena’s temple.

[As a final note, I want to insist upon the fact that the story of Medusa being raped is not less "worthy" than any other version of the myth. Due to its enormous popularity, how it shaped the figure of Medusa throughout the centuries, and how it still survives today and echoes current-day problems, to try to deny the valid place of this story in the world of myths and legends would be foolish. HOWEVER it is important to place back things in their context, to recognize that it is not the ONLY tale of Medusa, that it was NOT part of Greek mythology, but rather of Roman legends - and let us all always remember this time Poseidon slept with a Lovecraftian horror because my guy is kinky.]

EDIT:

For illustration, I will place here visuals showing how the Ancient art evolved alongside Medusa's story.

Before the 5th century BCE: Medusa is a full-on monster

From the 5th century to the 2nd century BCE: A slow evolution as Medusa goes from a full-on monster to a human turned into a monster. As a result the two depictions of the grotesque and beautiful gorgoneion coexist.

Post 2nd century BCE: Medusa is now a human with snake hair, and just that

#greek mythology #medusa #gorgon #athena #gorgons #poseidon #neptune #minerva #ovid #rape in mythology #greek monsters #roman mythology

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