8-BitBatty

I was told by my professors that Kitty Genovese was a 28-year-old unmarried woman who was attacked, raped, and brutally murdered on her way home from her shift as manager of a bar. I was told that numerous people witnessed the attack and her cries for help but didn’t do anything because they “assumed someone else would”. Nobody intervened until it was too late. 

What I was not told was that Kitty Genovese was a lesbian who lived more or less openly with her partner in the Upper West Side and managed a gay bar. 

Now… is it likely that people overheard Kitty’s cries for help and ignored them because they thought someone else would deal with it? Or, perhaps, did they ignore her because they knew she was a lesbian and just didn’t care?

Maybe that’s not the case. Maybe it was just a random attack. Maybe her neighbours didn’t know she was gay, or didn’t care.

But it’s a huge chunk of information to leave out about her in a supposedly scientific study of events, since her sexuality made her much more vulnerable to violent crimes than the average person. And it’s a dishonour to her memory.

RIP Kitty Genovese. Society may only remember you for how you died, but I will remember you for who who were.

One shouted out his window for the attacker to leave her alone, which did successfully scare the man off temporarily.

Another called the police but, seeing her still on her feet, said only that there had been a fight but the woman seemed to be okay.

And when Kitty Genovese was finally attacked in a vestibule where she couldn’t be seen from outside, Karl Ross, a neighbor, saw what was happening but was too frightened himself to go to her rescue–so he started calling other neighbors to ask what he should do. Eventually one of them told him to call the police, which he did, and the woman he called, Sophie Farrar, rushed out to help Kitty even though she didn’t know whether the attacker was gone.

Kitty Genovese died in the arms of a neighbor who tired to help and comfort her while they waited for the police and ambulance to arrive. Kitty was in fact still alive, although mortally wounded, when the ambulance reached the scene.

The man who saw the final stabbing? Who panicked and called other neighbors first instead of the police? The man who said, infamously, that he “didn’t want to get involved” because he was reluctant to turn to the police for help? He was thought to be gay himself. He was a friend of Kitty and Mary Ann’s. After being interviewed by the police he took a bottle of vodka to Mary Ann and sat with her, trying to comfort her.

So, no. I don’t think the evidence indicates that Kitty Genovese’s neighbors let her die because she was a lesbian, because Kitty Genovese’s neighbors tried to help.

See also: Debunking the Myth of Kitty Genovese (The New York Post)

A Call for Help (The New Yorker)

GHOST (part 1):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlEb3L1PIco&t=2s

FREAKING OUT (part 2):

mistress told me to send money to people because i don’t deserve it

WAS

THAT

Besides the old obvious as fuck Crown Victoria, be suspicious of 2013+ Ford Taurus and Explorer, 2006+ Dodge Charger and Dakota, 06-13 Chevy Impala, 11+ Chevy Caprice and both the Tahoe and Suburban.

So I think my favorite type of character isn’t strong characters or weak characters, emotional characters or stoic characters. Instead, its a type which manages to embody all of these at once: the brittle character.

See, most characters, they have levels. Annoy them and they’ll get irritated. Keep irritating them, and they might move into anger. Keep annoying them, and they might snap into outright fury. Same with pain. Hurt them, and they’ll wince. Hurt them more and they might shout, or scream. Where they switch between these levels will vary, of course, but they’ll all be there. Brittle characters are different.

Brittle characters don’t get those levels. Because brittle characters are basically just this raw, emotional, completely open character - the soul of the character, you could even say, surrounded by a shell. A hard shell, to be sure, but a thin one. And maybe some characters have a candied shell on the outside, while others have corrugated aluminum or something, but they all have their shells.

And if you hurt a brittle character, they won’t flinch. They won’t react. They’ll just stand there and take it…and take it…and take it…until suddenly they don’t. Until suddenly that shell shatters - maybe you hit a weak point, or maybe it just couldn’t withstand the pain anymore. And you get the pure essence of who the character is, something that is harder to see in less brittle characters because of all the levels protecting that. There’s none of that here. It’s all or nothing.

It’s so freeing to write the reaction of a brittle character because any action from them is a release from this tight ball of raw vulnerability they’ve become. And, to them, that action isn’t something they can weigh—there’s no “should I?” By the time they’re compelled to act, it’s the only thing they can do. The essence of who they are, as OP says.

“Long live the king.”