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justynius

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  1. All of that can (and should) be negotiated and documented in a good contract, it doesn't require ownership. Also, when I criticize the arrangements related to these photographs, it doesn't just fall on Fernando - Kat was the one signing the contracts and working under the informal arrangements. Not sure if she was inexperienced on the business side or agreeing to shit out of concern that the gig would go to someone else, but the conditions described in the lawsuit are substandard to say the least. It is unusual to not be better protected up front. The pornography / political propaganda were just extreme examples of what a photographer may not like, wasn't implying GN'R specifically might want to do that. Most professional photographers view their work as "art" and it is a big deal to them for their photographs to not be disparaged in that way. You are correct that GN'R would also want to negotiate how Kat would be allowed to use the images, if at all, that would/should absolutely be in precise detail in the contract.
  2. It seems most of this was done very unprofessionally so who knows what the actual contractual language says, but the photographer would typically retain ownership/copyright to the work and the employer would be granted authorization for specific uses. So, for example, GN'R could use the photographs for their website or advertisements but they could not use them in a pornography video or political propaganda. Either way, ownership of the photographs is inconsequential to GN'R outside of the distribution rights which could be controlled simply with a well written contract. In my view, it would be foolish to go to battle over these petty photography issues and still lose the war due to the mountains of evidence on the more serious harassment allegations.
  3. Consent does not require direct verbal communication. Her own published words reiterate through multiple events in the night how much she "wanted" Axl and the actions she took to make that happen, then she directly specifies she was okay with what happened because she was finally getting what she wanted. You're gonna have a very tough time selling that as an unwilling participant. Now she does consistently say in every version of the story that she only wanted sex with Axl and was unquestionably against the prospect of group sex, there is valid evidence she was against that activity. But every version also implies she did not actually participate in the group sex, let alone having been forced to. Even further, if the events described are true then they disbanded that activity specifically in respect to her lack of consent. That is her problem - was she lying in the book, was she lying in the documentary, or is she lying now? It will be challenging enough to prove Axl was even in the room 35 years after the fact. It will be nearly impossible to find evidence that supports her current narrative while not directly leading to "I was okay with this because ... now I was finally getting him."
  4. In the book, she goes out of her way to directly say the sexual activity was welcome. She needs to prove her written description of the events behind that locked door were false. Unless she was lying about the extent of Rikki’s involvement, his testimony only accomplishes the opposite.
  5. Does it really though? Rikki’s testimony can reinforce the events described in the book, a consensual sexual encounter. She needs evidence/testimony that disproves her own words, and I’m not sure that exists. This is the hole she’s dug.
  6. Even if that's true - and I don't see anything in the act implying it is - you'd still need success on the sexual assault allegations, the physical assault wouldn't stand on its own. By her own admission, "Axl slams the door and locks it. The other girl is gone. Rikki’s in the other room." Unless they try claiming the book is false, Rikki can't testify to witnessing a sexual assault.
  7. The language in the NY Adult Survivors Act is pretty specific to sexual misconduct. I would expect statute of limitations to be expired for allegations of physical assault related to the hairpulling. Definitely not a legal expert though, and Rikki's testimony would at least lend credibility to her story. However, as you said, can't see him being very eager to step in this pile of shit, and even if he's served he can probably say with honesty that he doesn't remember an event from 34 years ago.
  8. I was responding to your post claiming there's "not proof it's a lie." That's a higher threshold than they need to meet. The defense does not need to prove the story is a lie, only that her side has failed to provide sufficient evidence it is true. Rough sex in itself is not sexual assault. Her own published words are credible evidence the alleged encounter was consensual. Now you're the one grasping at straws. Below is the full context. What does this change? I’m crying and bleeding. Axl slams the door and locks it. The other girl is gone. Rikki’s in the other room. And I lay there. And he fucked me, anally. And I could handle it because he wasn’t too big. Weirdly enough, I was okay with this. I had wanted to be with him since the minute I’d first laid eyes on him, and now I was getting him. Once he was done he untied me and we fucked around some more. I remember going down on him and sticking my finger in his ass and he really wanted that, he really got off on that. That’s what made him come.
  9. The burden of the lawsuit is to prove it is true. Axl is not suing her for libel, she is suing him for assault. The defense does not need to prove the assault did not occur, only that her side failed to provide sufficient evidence that it did. Inconsistencies are by definition erroneous testimony. If she presents one timeline, then makes a subsequent statement that is not possible to line up with it, one (or both) of those statements must be in error. A good start would be not publishing, direct quote, "Weirdly enough, I was okay with this. I had wanted to be with him since the minute I’d first laid eyes on him, and now I was getting him." It is not baseless speculation, it's a literal fact. She's spent the last twenty years cashing in on this (and other) sexual encounters with celebrities.
  10. It directly says in the lawsuit that there were no written contracts. Unless/until we hear otherwise, there's no reason to suspect this is false. Employment alone does not permit unauthorized/uncredited use, and there would need to be very specific contractual language for her to fully relinquish ownership and especially authorship. Ultimately, the financial value of the photographs is almost certainly insignificant to GN'R; ownership only matters in that it grants them control over distribution. You don't need ownership for that, they can easily reach an agreement over distribution authorization with a valid written agreement. Then Kat needs to comply with those terms or it is them suing her. Work out these petty issues with the photographs and the real dynamite - the harassment allegations - go away.
  11. The problem with that line of thinking is the defense doesn't even really need to prove it is a lie, they just need to show the plaintiff has failed the burden of proving it's *true* - otherwise, anyone can just make up baseless accusations about anyone else. Her published words do more to contradict the allegations than support, and demonstrate a history of trying to turn this into a payday. By her own admission, the other people were outside the room when the supposed 'assault' occurred, so anything they can offer (if they get involved at all) is speculative at best. There's obviously no DNA or police report. Her verbal recollection is the beginning and end of proof for this lawsuit, and when inconsistencies emerge then even that becomes erroneous testimony.
  12. She also waited until after the tour finished so as to not hurt the band, and if the timeline of events is true she endured a lot of shit over several years before finally filing the lawsuit. My gut reading of all this is that she's not out for blood or a payday. I don't think the (amount of) money is that important to her, and the alleged harassment is more of an annoyance than something she would have sued over in itself. GN'R wanted to control how their images were used, and this inadvertedly created a situation where she felt disrespected as an artist - that's what this is about, acknowledging professional photography as a legitimate art form and assigning appropriate credit to the artist. The harassment accusations are the incendiary part of all this, but she really just threw those in there to get them to take this seriously. I think if they show *genuine* remorse for the way the photography was handled and work out a way to acknowledge her work (plus get Fernando to commit to chill the fuck out), she'd be open to having all this go away and even continuing a working partnership. It should be possible to peacefully resolve this without much of a cost to the band, and everything goes to shit if they take this to trial and lose. There are times to go to war, but sometimes there's better outcomes in recognizing the other side has a point and mending fences.
  13. I agree, if there's nothing else besides the he said she said from over 30 years ago and her own published words, then Axl should take this all the way thru trial and make her reimburse his legal fees when she loses. If he settles for even a buck to a case this weak, then it opens the door for him to be the piggy bank for every other woman he's had any kind of interaction with over the years. The Fernando situation is a bit trickier. There appears to be credible evidence, and a lot of it. Unless they can prove it is fake - and we don't know shit, perhaps it is fake - then I think they need to start looking into how they can make this right. Based on what we know so far, I don't see this turning out well and I say that as a (mostly) Team Brazil supporter. Taking down the evidence is their only line of defense; Kat's actions/history and verbal testimony with no hard evidence are absolutely meaningless if they do not adequately address the evidence referenced in the lawsuit.
  14. I'm glad some of that resonated with you. Always makes the effort feel more worthwhile when it has a positive effect. Below is a different analysis I did on Sweet Child O' Mine many years ago that you might enjoy too. I feel like the Prostitute reading hit on a lot of key points but was still a bit clunky. However, years later I'm still fully convinced this one is spot on... Many listeners think SCOM is a simple love ballad that transitions into aggressive heavy metal for no apparent reason. If you follow the language choices, however, you'll see that the song is less about love for a girl than it is the very, very broken mind of the guy. The first verse reveals the girl is only important to the song in that her childlike physical features remind the speaker of his own childhood, and the last line foreshadows something is up because remembering his childhood makes him want to cry. In the second verse, the girl's physical features that were earlier related to the speaker's childhood are now related to negative metaphors, such as rain, pain, and hiding from thunder and rain. The song isn't so much about the speaker being the age of a child, than the *mentality* of a child. As a child, he was protected from the realities of cold and darkness in the world (in some ways, an understanding of evil/abuse and death) but an awareness of them kept creeping in and was something he needed to hide from. He created psychological barriers, which ultimately caused the chaos his mind is in as an adult. This is why the simple riff of the first part (which I think is intended to resemble carousel music or an ice cream truck) develops into the chaotic heavy metal of the second part. Also, you'll notice the rhyme scheme of the second verse sounds normal out loud, but completely breaks away from the first verse if you write it out on paper. Thus, we're left with nothing but the rhetorical "Where do we go?" repeated over and over again. I know this is VERY similar to the end of the first part of the musical Hair and I haven't studied that closely enough to really analyze any connection, but looking just within the context of SCOM as a stand-alone song I'd say it could have two meanings. The first would be how Avenged Sevenfold alludes to it in Seize the Day: where do we go when we die. The speaker tries to hide in the childhood ignorance of death with promise of your soul going elsewhere afterward. That he would *pray* for the thunder and rain to pass by would be a further connection to spirituality/religion as the escape. But there's also a far darker interpretation, which seems to be a better fit to the song. The speaker was psychologically fucked up in his childhood, and the line is repeated over and over because there's NOWHERE you can go when you're mentally trapped in that state of consciousness. Furthermore, since it is "where do WE go?", it foreshadows that the speaker's association of the girl with his own childhood means the mindfuck will cause him to be abusive until she is mentally trapped in the same way. Like a cyclical curse in a Greek tragedy, victim is destined to become victimizer in a neverending, inescapable downward spiral. So the speaker in SCOM has been literally 'caught in the rye', trapped in the illusory world of childhood, and the consequence is the hell his mind has become.
  15. This response is a little late, took me some time to collect my thoughts before chiming in. Let me start off by saying I applaud you for posting this, it takes a thick skin to throw your ideas out to the wolves here. I think many GN'R songs have lyrics worth digging into, and it provokes quality discussion at a time when there's not much else going on - not to mention, this type of discourse advances everyone's understanding of the songs and the band. Unfortunately, my opinion is your analysis wandered a bit too far off course. 'Saved' is definitely a word with religious and specifically Christian connotations. However, it also has many other common uses. It seems like you're fixating on this one word and putting the entire song under that lens, when there's not much else in the lyrics pointing toward religion. The lyrics are your guide - you don't want to stray too far from what they directly support, or else you're basically just making stuff up that is not connected to the actual song. As you aptly observed, on a literal level this song is a direct dialogue between two characters, who I will refer to as the prostitute and the prostitute's lover. If you want to achieve a better understanding, I'd suggest starting with the banter and lyrical wordplay going on, that is a challenge in itself. The prostitute kind of speaks in riddles, possibly unreliably, and some of the verses only make sense if you tie them back to a noun in the previous verse. Making things even more confusing, I believe several of the you's are the prostitute repeating things said towards them (i.e. *not* the prostitute addressing the lover). So the challenge is to decipher the literal conversation between the two characters, and once that's established you can start looking into more figurative applications to Axl and GN'R. Below is my close reading of it. Just my interpretations, might be completely off base, but I hope some of this connects with you as you listen to the song over the years. Seems like forever and a day If my intentions are misunderstood Please be kind I've done all I should "Forever and a day" is a phrase originally credited to Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew, which is about a newly married man 'taming' his rebellious, outspoken bride into being a subservient and obedient wife. Axl probably didn't have that in mind when he chose to open with this phrase, but if he did then it would be a humorous allusion for his experiences in the music industry. I'm more confident that 'intentions' was a deliberate word choice. It's important to note Prostitute dates back to the 1990's, when the album was going to be called 2000 Intentions. So 'intentions' is likely a retrospective nod to the songs themselves - irrespective of placement, this song is addressing the listener once they've finished the album. On a more surface level, these lines introduce the principal topic of the song. The prostitute is a character who we later learn has provided love and affection - and the person they're speaking to has questioned the sincerity behind it. Was this motivated out of genuine love, or were they means to personal gain? I won't ask of you What I would not do Oh, I saw the damage in you My fortunate one The envy of youth For me, the line 'envy of youth' is the key to the song. If this story is a tragedy, then this character trait is the tragic flaw that set everything in motion. But more importantly, Axl leaves us with some poetic ambiguity with the delivery of that word choice. Is this an older person envious of the young? Or is it attributing envy as a trait of young people? Or is he actually addressing envy itself as an anthropomorphic being similar to a Greek god? You can make an argument that any of these work with the lyric structure. Why would they tell me To please those that laugh In my face When all of the reasons they've taught us Fall over themselves To give way Ultimately, I don't think these lines are too important, though they do provide some interesting background on the prostitute. 'They' tell the prostitute to please the clients and 'they' taught the reasons to do so, this is not something that the prostitute originally pursued on their own. Since the prostitute realizes those actions 'fall over themselves', we can also conclude a change has occurred and the prostitute is not doing what 'they' want anymore. It's not a question Whether my heart is true Streamlined I had to pull through The big takeaway here is that the song is not about *if* the speaker was a prostitute. The question of whether they are or are not doesn't matter. It's easy to get distracted by the 'misunderstood' lines and believe they're trying to deny it. They're not! Like an object streamlined through water, they 'gave way' to the natural flow of least resistance, their past was what they needed to do to get by. Look for a new Beginning on you Oh, I got a message for you Up and away It's what I've got to do Forgive what you have For what you might lose To paraphrase, this is a genuine and necessary new beginning, giving up the past in order to reclaim what would have been lost (presumably by carrying on the old ways). The relationship between the prostitute and their lover (or figuratively, Axl's new start with Chinese Democracy) is their way of escaping (and interestingly, forgiving) the misfortune of their past. "Forgive what you have / For what you might lose" could have two applications. This could be a reference to the 'what I gotta do'; in other words, HOW the prostitute achieves the new beginning they're pursuing. Or it could be an entirely separate command towards the lover, i.e. if they can't forgive and forget the imperfect past of the prostitute, then they risk losing the love they currently share. What would you say If I told you that I'm to blame And what would you do If I had to deny your name Where would you go If I told you "I love you" and then walked away N' who should I turn to If not for the ones that you could not save The You's and I's are all over the place, making this a tough one to follow. Our knowledge of the history surrounding the release of Chinese Democracy helps put us on track though. I think the easiest way to look at this is Axl saying to put yourself in his shoes, how would you have responded to the situations he went through.... "If told you that I'm to blame": Axl being accused of singular responsibility for the breakup of the old lineup, perhaps with a subtle allusion to the "I know that you can love me / When there's no one left to blame" in November Rain "If I had to deny your name": People saying, rightly or wrongly, that the Chinese Democracy lineup is not Guns N' Roses. This could also be a rejection/breakup of a marriage, i.e. the wife denying the husband's last name. "If I told you I love you and then walked away": Pretty self explanatory reference to the old members leaving, with "Where would you go" as a definitely-not-subtle allusion to SCOM. "If not for the ones you could not save": The 'who should I turn to' would be the replacements Axl brought in to replace the 'ones you (he) could not save' from leaving the band. I told you When I found you If there were doubts you Should be careful and unafraid Now they surround you All that amounts to Is love that you fed by perversion and pain Many people assume 'perversion and pain' is attributed to the prostitute. I think this is actually attributed to the lover who they are talking to. The 'doubts' are the recipient doubting the authenticity of the (former?) prostitute's love. Thus, the genuine love provided by the prostitute is perverted by the recipient's doubt into an act of greed and envy. So if my affections Are misunderstood The immediate thing to jump out here is that 'intentions' is now replaced with 'affections'. The word swap could be using each song as a metaphoric act of physical affection. However, another possibility is in spy talk - the code for someone who's been turned is that they're sick or affected (and if someone was affected but is now recovered, I guess that makes them BETTER). Thus, if the listener is not buying it and still believes the speaker is up to prostitution (i.e. affected), then each act/song could be an 'affection'. And you decide I'm up to no good Don't ask me to Enjoy them Just for you Pretty self explanatory here - if the lover still thinks the prostitute is after personal gain, don't ask them to fake enjoying the physical love. Ask yourself Why I would choose To prostitute myself To live with fortune and shame When you should have turned to the hearts of the ones That you would not save I told you When I found you All that amounts to Is love that you fed by perversion and pain There is where we can return to my prior comments regarding the multiple potential contexts to 'envy of youth'. Up until now, the song has leaned toward the first way to look at it: the 'damage' is an older person envying the young. Figuratively, this would be the Chinese Democracy effort trying to gain what the original/younger GN'R lineup had. These lines, however, are saying instead of putting Chinese Democracy under the microscope, take a look at the alternative (of continuing the old lineup) - they were the ones with an insatiable envy back when GN'R was young. Before you think this is an unfair assessment, let's digress for a second and bring up Pretty Tied Up. The first verse is about the literal prostitute, the second verse is about the rock band (which is obviously GN'R), the choruses connect the metaphoric overlap between the two. Can't get any more direct than that! This was written by Izzy, but the rest of the members chose to record and publish it - so I don't think any of them were in disagreement about what they were becoming. The UYI era band achieved historic commercial success and was a guarantee to continue doing so, continuing that downward path would have been the real act of prostitution. This song obviously does not leave the old lineup in a very positive light. 15 years after the song was officially released (and probably 25+ years after it was written), things have changed quite a bit. Most of the Chinese Democracy lineup disbanded, the reunion did occur. Does that mean this song is a waste or that the reunion is a sellout? I don't think so. Throughout the songs on Chinese Democracy, Axl leaves the door open for the old members, it's "never too late". There is an important change at the end of Prostitute, now he refers to "the HEARTS of the ones that you would not save." The people are not permanently irredeemable, their hearts/actions are the problem and those can definitely be changed. The reunion was only going to happen under the right conditions, which might be the main reason it took until 2016. New music would certainly be nice, but beyond that we've seen a more stable, professional, and focused lineup than perhaps any other time in the band's history. (Most of) the people might be the same, but this is definitely not the same band that was going up in smoke in Pretty Tied Up.
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