#piningeddiediaz

[buckleys-diaz]

since seeing bobby’s “she makes me feel like im standing on solid ground” all i can think about is “she makes me quiet like henrietta” and i needed to say that to someone who would Get It. hello 👋🏽

tas oh my god shut UP why would you say that to me?????????????????

[aaronstveit]

hello!! lets do 22, 42, 52! <3

howdy tas !!!!!! thank you so much for asking 💛💫✨

22. coney island (feat. the national) by taylor swift

42. shameika by fiona apple

52. rabbit heart (raise it up) by florence + the machine

spotify wrapped is HERE! send me a number 1-100 and I’ll tell you the song it corresponds with on my top 100 playlist!

[piningeddiediaz]

but on a wednesday, in a cafe 

I watched it begin again 

[piningeddiediaz]

treacherous (taylor’s version)

[piningeddiediaz]

[piningeddiediaz]

but this christmas,

I'm gonna risk it all.

wrapped in red, kelly clarkson

[piningeddiediaz]

 ok buckle up besties I'm about to give you a crash course on criminal law <3 quick shout out to ambra (@girlbossadam​) for hyping me up through this and listening to my insane ramblings x 

disclaimer 1: I cant believe I am about to apply actual real life law to a series about magic. it is about MAGIC, real life law does not belong there. but i got mad enough to unironically seriously consider it, so i might as well commit fully

disclaimer 2: I am using english criminal law here. I do not know american criminal law but I did a quick check to make sure the basics are the same 

what is murder: essentially, it is the premeditated act of unlawfully killing someone or causing them serious bodily harm. key words here are: premeditated, killing and/or serious bodily harm. this is because murder as a crime is split into two main elements: the ‘actus reus’ (action or conduct) and the ‘mens era’ (intention or knowledge of wrong doing). what this means is that to be found guilty of murder you need to have done the act of killing and had the premeditated intention of killing and have had the knowledge you are going to kill someone. if any single one of these criteria is not met, you are not guilty of murder. and this isn’t even considering things like breaking the chain of causation, which looks at whether, between you committing the unlawful act and the person dying, another intervening act could have happened which breaks the chain of causation (you causing the death of the victim) and instead puts the blame on the third party who conducts the intervening act. I believe Americans split this into first and second degree murder - first degree is having the actus reus and the mens rea (so doing the act of killing and also having the premeditated malicious intent to kill), second degree murder is having the actus reus and the mens rea intention to kill, but it is not pre-meditated.

what is manslaughter:  manslaughter is a crime in which you do the unlawful act of killing or causing serious bodily harm (so meet the actus reus element) but do not have the requisite malicious intention of causing death or serious bodily harm. voluntary manslaughter is when the crime/killing is conducted in circumstances in which any reasonable person would have become so mentally or emotionally disturbed that they could not reasonably control their actions or emotions. involuntary manslaughter is death caused without intent; essentially, harm caused because of negligence and recklessness. e.g. if you are fucking around with your friends, you trip over a rock and accidentally push them into the water where they drown and die. I think Americans refer to manslaughter as third degree murder, which google tells me Virginia does not recognise (if im wrong someone please correct me). this of course does not mean third degree murder is legal, but rather that its kind of counted as a lesser form of second degree murder (so basically manslaughter but they won’t call it that. idk american law is very confusing). 

ok so we have the relevant criminal background, let’s dive into the night of the crime. 

the timeline (I havent read trb in like 2 years but I went back to read the relevant chapters):

1. Noah tells everyone (sans gansey) that whelk was the one who killed him 

2. whelk threatens gansey/tries to kidnap him and steals the Glendower journal. because of this, whelk finds out where Cabeswater is and later teams up with neeve to wake the ley line. we know that neeve planned to sacrifice whelk to wake the line up

3. sometime during all this Robert Parrish beats Adam up. Ronan intervenes, and Adam presses charges to save Ronan. Adam takes the gun from his father to make sure he doesn’t harm anyone with it. afterwards they all go to Monmouth where they all agree that waking up the ley line is a bad idea but later that night Adam decides to anyway and takes the Camaro to Cabeswater. Noah finds out and tells everyone, and they go after Adam

4. Adam gets there and finds out whelk and neeve are also there, which he admits to not having any idea about. it is very obvious that he expected to be the only one there, and him taking a gun was a) a precaution because he didnt know what else to do with it and b) to get rid of it somewhere in Cabeswater 

6. Adam throws the gun somewhere into the bushes. the Gangsey arrive, and in all the chaos, whelk gets his hands on the gun and threatens gansey with it. Adam, in an attempt to save gansey, throws himself into the pentagram and sacrifices his hands and eyes to Cabeswater 

7. as a result of the sacrifice an earthquake is triggered. whelk tries to shoot Adam with the gun, and gun asks (way calmer than a normal person would be in that situation) whelk to give the gun back

8. the sacrifice triggers a horde of magical animals? beasts? idk something. Adam is protected by the pentagram and the Gangsey hide in a tree (? I am beginning to realise how little of this book I retained). during this course, Cabeswater gives him the gun back

9. Adam uses the gun to stop whelk from coming into the pentagram. important: he doesnt not shoot whelk. he doesnt not really even threaten to shoot whelk. he uses it as a deterrent to keep a very bad person who would most definitely weaponise a source of ancient magical power out of a way to get said magical power (also important: we don’t actually see this. we last see adam in the pentagram with whelk shooting him when the beasts turn up and then next see him when whelk is already dead, outside the pentagram, and not shot)

now the application:

remember i said murder has to be premeditated? well, this certainly was not premeditated. adam walks into cabeswater completely unaware someone else might be there. yes, he knows there is a possibility of whelk being there given they knew whelk wants to wake the ley line, but he obviously did not anticipate whelk going there so soon. he has a brief second where he thinks if whelk is there he would have to use a flashlight which will alert adam of his presence, but otherwise does not really think he has company in there. so no premeditation, which discounts first degree murder.

so, the gun. he remembers he has it, and he takes it out to do something with it. he is not sure what, but you think about being a teenager in a magical forest who has recently been partially deafened, is homeless and is now facing down his latin teacher and girlfriend’s aunt in a magical forest to stop them from doing failed human sacrifice 2.0. you’re gonna whip that gun out, is what i’m saying. he states that he has no intention of killing them, simply just stop them from waking up the ley line, and agrees to throw the gun away as a compromise. this therefore reducts the mens rea element of the crime. so so far, we don’t have an intention to kill and we have no premeditation. even if adam actually committed an act (which he didn’t) it already is not murder. murder is out. he didn’t murder anyone, yay

and even if he did kill (very big if), it was obviously self defence

next time we see adam after the trampling, whelk is laying outside the pentagram, dead, having been trampled on. now legally, adam did not commit an act of killing himself. he had a gun, which he was pointing at whelk, but he did not shoot whelk. whelk’s death was caused by the horde of trampling magical beasts manifested by cabeswater. now we’re gonna have to be creative here because the law does not exactly have a precedence for when a magical sentient forest intervenes to save it’s magician, but we are also writing/reading a long legal analysis of a ya book series about magic, so i think we are able to suspend our disbelief here a bit. most likely, the beasts thing will be regarded as a break in the chain of causation (not that there is a chain of causation to begin with, because up until this point adam still has not committed an unlawful act of killing or causing bodily harm beyond simply just pointing a gun) meaning whelk’s death is caused by cabeswater, not adam. adam did not ask cabeswater to trample whelk, after all.

yeah he let whelk get trampled by not letting him into the pentagram but a) whelk is a very bad man who wanted to commit human sacrifice (a second time) to weaponise an ancient magical source because his entitled rich ass could not handle being of average wealth. are you saying he should have let the guy who shot at him and his friends and smashed their other friend’s head in into the magical human sacrifice circle? and b) virginian law (and american law more generally i think) does not impose a duty to rescue meaning that adam was not legally obligated to save whelk just because he was a witness to his death. if you wanna make the ‘should have saved him out of morality!’ argument with me please refer to my previous point. he shot at him multiple times and smashed noah’s head in.

Manslaughter does not require a requisite intent but it does require an unlawful act of killing or causing serious bodily harm (the actus reus element) which adam does not have here because he did not actually physically do anything except stand in a pentagram! the act of merely pointing a gun but not shooting is not illegal!

also side note: you may argue adam had motive but that means jack shit because real life law isn’t like the movies and you don’t actually need a motive to establish a crime. motive simply helps decide the charges and sentencing. also, he was right <3

so in conclusion if we pretend for a second that we are in some weird universe where the court wouldn’t immediately send them all into a psychiatric institution for talking about magical forests and ley lines and human sacrifice and ghost friends who were murdered seven years ago by bitter latin teachers, adam parrish most likely would not be legally convicted of murder. heck it’s barely even manslaughter! so there ya go. LAWYERED!

[piningeddiediaz]

Hello, I am having quite the shit day and was wondering if you could talk some more about Henry and Alex, I love them and your ramblings always make me feel better. If you dont want to then it is ok of course :)

hello, I'm so sorry to hear you're having a bad day :( and so happy to know my insane ramblings help you. ive always got an excess of them lol, come ask me whenever you want!

I had like a whole list of headcanons ready to ramble about but then I realised ive like made social media edits of them before that I never showed anyone sooo im gonna drop them here instead?

the ‘alex watches bbc merlin’ series that lives rent free in my mind:

the ‘history nerd alex my beloved’ series

i have more but tumblr won’t let me add more than 10 pictures 😒