#Danielle: Model human

[pls-explodingstars-pls]

Swapped Daniel and Emma for Kara and Alice

They are like… two sides of the same coin

bonus- Emma and Daniel in the gallery lighting cause it's so much better

[iwonderwh0]

AU where Daniel and Shaolin arrived to Jericho prior to Markus.

[ikiprian]

Mr. Fenton is a competent teacher. Almost too competent.

If Mr. Daniel Fenton had any more than a BS (with a minor in education), Tim would’ve flagged his profile as a potential Rogue. That’s the way of most charismatic academics, at least in Gotham. (Got a PhD? Instant watchlist.) Instead, he’s Gotham Academy’s newest celebrity, as a young, passionate, out-of-towner substitute while the chemistry teacher’s on maternity leave.

Tim gets the hype. Fenton seems to genuinely love teaching, and is invested in the welfare of the student body. He hands out bananas during exam week, hosts a “study habits seminar” each month to coach effective learning strategies, and the third time Tim falls asleep in his class, he even pulls Tim aside to ask if he’s doing okay. With all the late work he accepts and the protein bars he sneaks Tim, he’s every teen vigilante’s dream teacher. He could’ve been Tim’s favorite.

In fact, Mr. Fenton was Tim’s favorite. Up until Tim walks into Mr. Fenton’s chemistry classroom for a forgotten textbook, an hour after the final bell.

On the board where tallied scores for today’s review game had been kept, “THE CHEMISTRY BEHIND DR. CRANE’S FEAR GAS: ANXIOGENICS, NERI’S, & YOU,” is now scrawled. A detailed diagram of the human endocrine system projects in front of a small crowd of adoring and attentive students.

Fenton is wrist-deep in the skull cavity of an anatomical model. A short tug, and out pops the brain.

It’s plastic. It’s fake.

Tim identifies the nearest emergency exit.

Fenton turns to the door, and in the dark classroom with the projector illuminating half his face, his eyes almost seem to flash red. “What’s up, Tim?” he asks. His friendly grin is too big for his face. “I didn’t know you wanted to join the Just Science League!”

[OR: Danny’s a science teacher at Tim’s school. Gotham’s a pretty wild place, even for someone who grew up a superhero in a ghost-infested town, so he takes it upon himself to start a club teaching kids how to manage themselves in the event of a crisis. These Gothamites are pretty hardy, but a little extra training never hurt anybody! And he suspects one of his students might be a teen vigilante, like he’d been, back in the day. As a senior super, it's Danny’s duty look out for him! Surely, this is the subtlest and most appropriate way to give the kid pointers.]

[Tim immediately assumes supervillain.]

[nostalgebraist]

Anthropic's stated "AI timelines" seem wildly aggressive to me.

As far as I can tell, they are now saying that by 2028 – and possibly even by 2027, or late 2026 – something they call "powerful AI" will exist.

And by "powerful AI," they mean... this (source, emphasis mine):

In terms of pure intelligence, it is smarter than a Nobel Prize winner across most relevant fields – biology, programming, math, engineering, writing, etc. This means it can prove unsolved mathematical theorems, write extremely good novels, write difficult codebases from scratch, etc. In addition to just being a “smart thing you talk to”, it has all the “interfaces” available to a human working virtually, including text, audio, video, mouse and keyboard control, and internet access. It can engage in any actions, communications, or remote operations enabled by this interface, including taking actions on the internet, taking or giving directions to humans, ordering materials, directing experiments, watching videos, making videos, and so on. It does all of these tasks with, again, a skill exceeding that of the most capable humans in the world. It does not just passively answer questions; instead, it can be given tasks that take hours, days, or weeks to complete, and then goes off and does those tasks autonomously, in the way a smart employee would, asking for clarification as necessary. It does not have a physical embodiment (other than living on a computer screen), but it can control existing physical tools, robots, or laboratory equipment through a computer; in theory it could even design robots or equipment for itself to use. The resources used to train the model can be repurposed to run millions of instances of it (this matches projected cluster sizes by ~2027), and the model can absorb information and generate actions at roughly 10x-100x human speed. It may however be limited by the response time of the physical world or of software it interacts with. Each of these million copies can act independently on unrelated tasks, or if needed can all work together in the same way humans would collaborate, perhaps with different subpopulations fine-tuned to be especially good at particular tasks.

In the post I'm quoting, Amodei is coy about the timeline for this stuff, saying only that

I think it could come as early as 2026, though there are also ways it could take much longer. But for the purposes of this essay, I’d like to put these issues aside [...]

However, other official communications from Anthropic have been more specific. Most notable is their recent OSTP submission, which states (emphasis in original):

Based on current research trajectories, we anticipate that powerful AI systems could emerge as soon as late 2026 or 2027 [...] Powerful AI technology will be built during this Administration. [i.e. the current Trump administration -nost]

See also here, where Jack Clark says (my emphasis):

People underrate how significant and fast-moving AI progress is. We have this notion that in late 2026, or early 2027, powerful AI systems will be built that will have intellectual capabilities that match or exceed Nobel Prize winners. They’ll have the ability to navigate all of the interfaces… [Clark goes on, mentioning some of the other tenets of "powerful AI" as in other Anthropic communications -nost]

----

To be clear, extremely short timelines like these are not unique to Anthropic.

Miles Brundage (ex-OpenAI) says something similar, albeit less specific, in this post. And Daniel Kokotajlo (also ex-OpenAI) has held views like this for a long time now.

Even Sam Altman himself has said similar things (though in much, much vaguer terms, both on the content of the deliverable and the timeline).

Still, Anthropic's statements are unique in being

official positions of the company

extremely specific and ambitious about the details

extremely aggressive about the timing, even by the standards of "short timelines" AI prognosticators in the same social cluster

Re: ambition, note that the definition of "powerful AI" seems almost the opposite of what you'd come up with if you were trying to make a confident forecast of something.

Often people will talk about "AI capable of transforming the world economy" or something more like that, leaving room for the AI in question to do that in one of several ways, or to do so while still failing at some important things.

But instead, Anthropic's definition is a big conjunctive list of "it'll be able to do this and that and this other thing and...", and each individual capability is defined in the most aggressive possible way, too! Not just "good enough at science to be extremely useful for scientists," but "smarter than a Nobel Prize winner," across "most relevant fields" (whatever that means). And not just good at science but also able to "write extremely good novels" (note that we have a long way to go on that front, and I get the feeling that people at AI labs don't appreciate the extent of the gap [cf]). Not only can it use a computer interface, it can use every computer interface; not only can it use them competently, but it can do so better than the best humans in the world. And all of that is in the first two paragraphs – there's four more paragraphs I haven't even touched in this little summary!

Re: timing, they have even shorter timelines than Kokotajlo these days, which is remarkable since he's historically been considered "the guy with the really short timelines." (See here where Kokotajlo states a median prediction of 2028 for "AGI," by which he means something less impressive than "powerful AI"; he expects something close to the "powerful AI" vision ["ASI"] ~1 year or so after "AGI" arrives.)

----

I, uh, really do not think this is going to happen in "late 2026 or 2027."

Or even by the end of this presidential administration, for that matter.

I can imagine it happening within my lifetime – which is wild and scary and marvelous. But in 1.5 years?!

The confusing thing is, I am very familiar with the kinds of arguments that "short timelines" people make, and I still find the Anthropic's timelines hard to fathom.

Above, I mentioned that Anthropic has shorter timelines than Daniel Kokotajlo, who "merely" expects the same sort of thing in 2029 or so. This probably seems like hairsplitting – from the perspective of your average person not in these circles, both of these predictions look basically identical, "absurdly good godlike sci-fi AI coming absurdly soon." What difference does an extra year or two make, right?

But it's salient to me, because I've been reading Kokotajlo for years now, and I feel like I basically get understand his case. And people, including me, tend to push back on him in the "no, that's too soon" direction. I've read many many blog posts and discussions over the years about this sort of thing, I feel like I should have a handle on what the short-timelines case is.

But even if you accept all the arguments evinced over the years by Daniel "Short Timelines" Kokotajlo, even if you grant all the premises he assumes and some people don't – that still doesn't get you all the way to the Anthropic timeline!

To give a very brief, very inadequate summary, the standard "short timelines argument" right now is like:

Over the next few years we will see a "growth spurt" in the amount of computing power ("compute") used for the largest LLM training runs. This factor of production has been largely stagnant since GPT-4 in 2023, for various reasons, but new clusters are getting built and the metaphorical car will get moving again soon. (See here)

By convention, each "GPT number" uses ~100x as much training compute as the last one. GPT-3 used ~100x as much as GPT-2, and GPT-4 used ~100x as much as GPT-3 (i.e. ~10,000x as much as GPT-2).

We are just now starting to see "~10x GPT-4 compute" models (like Grok 3 and GPT-4.5). In the next few years we will get to "~100x GPT-4 compute" models, and by 2030 will will reach ~10,000x GPT-4 compute.

If you think intuitively about "how much GPT-4 improved upon GPT-3 (100x less) or GPT-2 (10,000x less)," you can maybe convince yourself that these near-future models will be super-smart in ways that are difficult to precisely state/imagine from our vantage point. (GPT-4 was way smarter than GPT-2; it's hard to know what "projecting that forward" would mean, concretely, but it sure does sound like something pretty special)

Meanwhile, all kinds of (arguably) complementary research is going on, like allowing models to "think" for longer amounts of time, giving them GUI interfaces, etc.

All that being said, there's still a big intuitive gap between "ChatGPT, but it's much smarter under the hood" and anything like "powerful AI." But...

...the LLMs are getting good enough that they can write pretty good code, and they're getting better over time. And depending on how you interpret the evidence, you may be able to convince yourself that they're also swiftly getting better at other tasks involved in AI development, like "research engineering." So maybe you don't need to get all the way yourself, you just need to build an AI that's a good enough AI developer that it improves your AIs faster than you can, and then those AIs are even better developers, etc. etc. (People in this social cluster are really keen on the importance of exponential growth, which is generally a good trait to have but IMO it shades into "we need to kick off exponential growth and it'll somehow do the rest because it's all-powerful" in this case.)

And like, I have various disagreements with this picture.

For one thing, the "10x" models we're getting now don't seem especially impressive – there has been a lot of debate over this of course, but reportedly these models were disappointing to their own developers, who expected scaling to work wonders (using the kind of intuitive reasoning mentioned above) and got less than they hoped for.

And (in light of that) I think it's double-counting to talk about the wonders of scaling and then talk about reasoning, computer GUI use, etc. as complementary accelerating factors – those things are just table stakes at this point, the models are already maxing out the tasks you had defined previously, you've gotta give them something new to do or else they'll just sit there wasting GPUs when a smaller model would have sufficed.

And I think we're already at a point where nuances of UX and "character writing" and so forth are more of a limiting factor than intelligence. It's not a lack of "intelligence" that gives us superficially dazzling but vapid "eyeball kick" prose, or voice assistants that are deeply uncomfortable to actually talk to, or (I claim) "AI agents" that get stuck in loops and confuse themselves, or any of that.

We are still stuck in the "Helpful, Harmless, Honest Assistant" chatbot paradigm – no one has seriously broke with it since that Anthropic introduced it in a paper in 2021 – and now that paradigm is showing its limits. ("Reasoning" was strapped onto this paradigm in a simple and fairly awkward way, the new "reasoning" models are still chatbots like this, no one is actually doing anything else.) And instead of "okay, let's invent something better," the plan seems to be "let's just scale up these assistant chatbots and try to get them to self-improve, and they'll figure it out." I won't try to explain why in this post (IYI I kind of tried to here) but I really doubt these helpful/harmless guys can bootstrap their way into winning all the Nobel Prizes.

----

All that stuff I just said – that's where I differ from the usual "short timelines" people, from Kokotajlo and co.

But OK, let's say that for the sake of argument, I'm wrong and they're right. It still seems like a pretty tough squeeze to get to "powerful AI" on time, doesn't it?

In the OSTP submission, Anthropic presents their latest release as evidence of their authority to speak on the topic:

In February 2025, we released Claude 3.7 Sonnet, which is by many performance benchmarks the most powerful and capable commercially-available AI system in the world.

I've used Claude 3.7 Sonnet quite a bit. It is indeed really good, by the standards of these sorts of things!

But it is, of course, very very far from "powerful AI." So like, what is the fine-grained timeline even supposed to look like? When do the many, many milestones get crossed? If they're going to have "powerful AI" in early 2027, where exactly are they in mid-2026? At end-of-year 2025?

If I assume that absolutely everything goes splendidly well with no unexpected obstacles – and remember, we are talking about automating all human intellectual labor and all tasks done by humans on computers, but sure, whatever – then maybe we get the really impressive next-gen models later this year or early next year... and maybe they're suddenly good at all the stuff that has been tough for LLMs thus far (the "10x" models already released show little sign of this but sure, whatever)... and then we finally get into the self-improvement loop in earnest, and then... what?

They figure out to squeeze even more performance out of the GPUs? They think of really smart experiments to run on the cluster? Where are they going to get all the missing information about how to do every single job on earth, the tacit knowledge, the stuff that's not in any web scrape anywhere but locked up in human minds and inaccessible private data stores? Is an experiment designed by a helpful-chatbot AI going to finally crack the problem of giving chatbots the taste to "write extremely good novels," when that taste is precisely what "helpful-chatbot AIs" lack?

I guess the boring answer is that this is all just hype – tech CEO acts like tech CEO, news at 11. (But I don't feel like that can be the full story here, somehow.)

And the scary answer is that there's some secret Anthropic private info that makes this all more plausible. (But I doubt that too – cf. Brundage's claim that there are no more secrets like that now, the short-timelines cards are all on the table.)

It just does not make sense to me. And (as you can probably tell) I find it very frustrating that these guys are out there talking about how human thought will basically be obsolete in a few years, and pontificating about how to find new sources of meaning in life and stuff, without actually laying out an argument that their vision – which would be the common concern of all of us, if it were indeed on the horizon – is actually likely to occur on the timescale they propose.

It would be less frustrating if I were being asked to simply take it on faith, or explicitly on the basis of corporate secret knowledge. But no, the claim is not that, it's something more like "now, now, I know this must sound far-fetched to the layman, but if you really understand 'scaling laws' and 'exponential growth,' and you appreciate the way that pretraining will be scaled up soon, then it's simply obvious that –"

No! Fuck that! I've read the papers you're talking about, I know all the arguments you're handwaving-in-the-direction-of! It still doesn't add up!

[nobody-nexus]

A world of chaos and destruction, not much is known about what exactly the place is aside from the name of a blood bath of a free for all world where death is only a temporary set back... Welcome to...

The Deadzone

The Digital Deadzone is an AU where Caine is the head of a sandbox free-for-all game that the cast are stuck in. Having infinite lives, they're all here to fight and die for the entertainment of a third party

Constant weapons, supplies, and stuff spawn for them and it's supposed to be everyman for themselves, however some form bonds over the years they've spent in constant chaos. Every character has a class, a passive ability, and an active ability- as well as the power to use any and all weapons that Caine provides them

Caine will also force the players and NPCs into teams to do missions to keep everything fresh and unique. But that won’t help everyone during an almost hopeless situation… Well. At least they have each other

Below the keep reading for the main cast! (All Humans + Caine)

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Health: High Attack: Medium Defense: Medium Agility: High Height: 4’11’’ Real Name: Eliza Pavlova Old Occupation: Full Time Modeler and Coder Class: Offense

Passive Ability: Due to her cat-based abilities, her speed, agility, and flexibility is naturally increased. She has retractable claws and a tail that she can use to hold onto things -----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Health: Very High Attack: Low Defense: High Agility: Medium Height: 5’6’’ Real Name: Amanda A. Raggson Old Occupation: Script Writer Class: Support

Passive Ability: She’s naturally resilient to most damage due to her plush and cotton filled body. She can take more hits than usual, and she can fix herself up easily. However, stuff like water, milk, or any other kind of liquid can slow her down if dosed in enough of it -----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Health: Medium Attack: Low Defense: Very Low Agility: Very High Height: 6’4’’ Real Name: Jackson Mendez Old Occupation: Game Tester Class: Offense

Passive Ability: His jumping capability has been increased due to being a Leporidae, making him able to go high into the air and land without taking damage (if he lands on his feet, of course) -----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Health: High Attack: Low Defense: Medium Agility: Medium Height: 5’10’’ Real Name: Grace Sezer Old Occupation: Concept Artist Class: Defense

Passive Ability: Being made of ribbons, she’s naturally flexible and can go through tight spaces and reach places most can’t. She also can wrap herself around objects (when she doesn’t have clothes on, which is kinda weird) -----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Health: High Attack: High Defense: Low Agility: Medium Height: 7’2’’ Real Name: Zoe Imelda Albrechtsson Old Occupation: Environmental Modeler Class: Support

Passive Ability: They can take themselves apart and put themselves right back together due to their building block like body. This makes them practically immune to a good portion of explosives and limb detachment tactics -----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Health: Medium Attack: Medium Defense: High Agility: Very Low Height: 6’4’’ Real Name: Caesar Kingston Old Occupation: Head of the Game Department / Head Coder Class: Defense

Passive Ability: Due to being made of a strong petrified wood, Kinger seems to not take much physical damage unless it’s from explosives or heavy environmental damages. He can still feel the pain though -----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Health: Low Attack: Medium Defense: High Agility: Medium Height: 5’11’’ Real Name: Daniel Kaufman Old Occupation: Janitor Class: Offense

Passive Ability: His body is blubbery, which makes him less likely to be damaged by bludgeoning or stabbing like damage, however other sorts of physical damage do the same amount of damage to him -----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Health: Very High Attack: Very High Defense: Very High Agility: Very High Height: 5’3’’ Real Name: “Master of the Deadzone” Old Occupation: None Class: ???

Passive Ability: He knows everything about every new player as soon as they enter into the world. It’s unknown how this is even possible, but it seems to be something he’s fed through an unknown source. But this does make him want to know more about the minds behind the stories… -----------------------------------------------------------------------------

This is an AU that means a lot to me personally. It will handle topics that I understand and relate to. It'll also be a rather serious AU as well

Once I post more about this AU (which I very much will be doing because I have a LOT about it), I shall make a proper masterpost on this one

And please ASK AWAY ON THIS AU. I legit have spent MONTHS working on this AU because I want it to be perfect

Hope to see more soon!

[limonmelon]

One idea which I think is central to IWTV is the idea that becoming a vampire is the antithesis of improvement - stagnation. Your hair can't change length, your body will never grow, and as we know with Claudia, your hormones don't even change and you can be perpetually stuck in puberty.

But I love how this is reflected even in the vampire's art and creations throughout the show. The first song we see Lestat play on the piano is a jazz interpolation of a Bach song, his other song a piece created just to goad Louis back to him. Louis's photographs are derivative, and he has no patience to wait for his shots in order to actually capture the essence of his subjects, even if he has a good eye for art, and he drops photography quickly after one criticism. Claudia, who can't ever mature out of her teenage body, can't even make another vampire. The Théâtre des Vampires is struggling before Claudia becomes their main attraction, but it's not her acting that brings people - as we see her giving half-hearted performances to a crowd that barely seems to notice - but her exploitation. Armand had been a muse and model for other artists while alive, but he has no real motivation to make art, and he runs plays for 50 years until they're tired to a half-empty audience. He can also recognize good art, but he can't seem to make it himself. And they all have a horrible attitude towards criticism of their creations as well, sometimes even getting violent in their rejection of the words of critics or other vampires.

But you know who does create, and improves over time? Daniel. While he may have been terrible at interviewing Louis the first time, which he acknowledges, part of the reason he comes back to interview Louis again is because he knows he can do better. Over time he has become a great journalist and interviewer, winning Pulitzer prizes, writing books, working for major newspapers, even having his own Masterclass. He doesn't stagnate with technology, we see him using his laptop and talking about how his cell phone has become the great equalizer in the world or reporting. Being human has allowed him to grow and change and improve, to learn how to be better.

So I'm really curious to see how the handle Rockstar and Vampire Lestat next season, how his music is created, how in-universe critics are responding to it, etc. especially after this recent glam rock Rocky Horror-esque song has been released. I also wonder if being a vampire has changed how Daniel works as a journalist, especially now that we know his role in the next season will be him interviewing Lestat in this MTV Behind the Music documentary setting.

[iwtv-theories]

Armand name dropping the film “now ,voyager” is foreshadowing his future character arc (analysis)

You know how Iwtv is constantly references plays, films ,and paintings to foreshadow plot points or allude to character arcs or motivations ? I really hope Armand dropping the film title “now, voyager” is alluding to the Armand and Benji dynamic in future seasons . And also Armand’s character arc in general.

The main character Charlotte is paralleled to Armand on multiple occasions . Charlotte had an abusive-controlling parent that was her “companion” and who treated her like a “servant “ (cough Marius /Armand parallel). Charlotte is mistaken as a nurse ,went by a (fake) French alias, and was also called a “fledgling” .In one scene Charlotte discusses “immortality “ and jokes that she’s “immune to burns” (like she is to happiness) and says she’s so “OLD” and at this point would be grateful to simply get “crumbs “ of romantic affection (hello, Armand ). Charlotte also says another character is a “gift “ from their ex (Armand says Daniel was a “gift from Louis”,in the books) . There’s even a scene where she shows her love interest an old (unrecognizable) picture of herself, refers to the image of herself in the 3rd person , and then mentions her past trauma.

She also mentions how she was so desperate for romantic love that she did sexual things that her romantic competition wouldn’t . She even says she really doesn’t understand romantic love (despite wanting it) so she just repeats things she’s heard in romance books. Armand also recited Romeo and Juliet ( to Louis), and didn’t understand that -that’s not love but infatuation. And of course the infatuation between the 2 led to a blood bath of those around them (the Romeo & Juliet reference foreshadowing the coven and claudeleine’s fate).

Also Charlotte starts mentally healing after becoming a foster parent to a 12 y old (who reminds her of her past self). Hmm like 12 y old Benji who was sold by his parents and exploited and abused (who Armand later fosters)?

Also , one thing that always bothered me about benji’s characterization in the books was the fact that him being book-smart, street-smart, and adultified (somehow equated to him being as independent and mature as a literal adult). Which is just … not realistic at all! He’d still just be a kid faking it to survive. He’d still be a “boy masquerading as a gentleman.”He’s a 12 y old who was abandoned by his birth parents (so would probably have abandonment issues). He’s Palestinian (so probably has plenty of trauma because of the violent and dehumanizing occupation he suffered through-more than 90% of Palestinian kids have ptsd ) .And he was physically abused and forced to work since he was a little kid (after being sold) . He was so stressed/traumatized that he became a chain smoker by 12 years old!

So yeah , in the show, I could see him behave more like the 12 y old Tina (in now, voyager). Who literally screams themselves awake because of nightmares (ptsd).And who has abandonment issues and feels they’re fundamental unloveable (and thinks all the kids,teachers, and psychiatrists secretly hate him). Who would probably question why Armand is even nice to him to begin with -cause he doesn’t feel he deserves it .

And it would make sense that in the show adaption he’d latch on to (the older looking) Armand and see him as a father figure . When his own birth parents abandoned him, and he never had a positive male role model. And the last guy who had custody of him-hit him and never treated him like a kid (but a servant) . And then after he prays for help : Armand swoops in , kills his abuser, and then proceeds to dote on him and spoil him.

The first thing Armand thinks of when describing “goodness” is : “the child which is innocent” . He even asks madeleine if she'd have mercy on kids, if she was a vampire. In the books he literally loved seeing human kids be innocent and happy, because he never got to experience that as a child . So … he may shock the entire audience and actually be a good parental figure .

By the end of the film Charlotte also says that receiving parental love was more fulfilling than romantic love . * Armand describing his love for his (human) "children":

He literally said he's the happiest he's ever been in his entire immortal life because of his kids. You know it would be super ironic if Armand is the one vampire to prioritize his adopted kids over romance (when even Louis and Lestat couldn’t do that).

Charlotte also says all the men she ever tried to love romantically never reciprocated to the same degree she, herself, did . And it just made her feel empty inside . Charlotte at the end of the film : “ some man that will make me happy? (Scoff) . You talk about some man? Apparently , you haven’t the slightest conception on what torture it is to love a man and to be shut out , barred out , to be always an outsider. An extra.” Let’s be real he was the “extra” / ‘rebound’ in regards to Louis & Lestat.

Charlotte : “What man would look at me and say -I want you?"/ Armand to Louis : " I want you, I want you more than anything in the world ." (Louis doesn’t verbally reciprocate the statement cause he didn’t actually want Armand ). And earlier Louis said to him: "Your problem, not mine. You want me" . Symbolically that line is interesting because later Daniel says to Armand: “He (louis) didn’t even want me in the end” (it applies to both of them-in the end, Louis didn't want either of them like that) . Louis to Daniel: “what do you want ?” (And I know the literal context of this next scene but the texted convo of: Reciprocation? What do you want? (could be foreshadowing that Armand and Daniel, in the end, will both want romantic reciprocation). But I know that’s a bit of a stretch

Also another important part of charlotte’s growth (in the film) was standing up to her abusive parent (Armand , please, please, stand up to Marius ). The only time he actually gets furious and calls out Marius for being a manipulative-liar was when Marius hurt Benji & Sybelle . After this, even Marius admits Armand “loves” the 2 “selflessly” and “more respectfully than (he's) ever loved (Armand).”

Armand about Benji:" I love him enough to tear limb from limb anyone who so much as lays a finger on him."Maybe Armand will finally start to get why Louis was not willing to forgive him (over claudia)?please king ,have some positive character development (before getting into a romance with Daniel ) 😩 🙏 Daniel & Armand only become a couple again- after Armand met his 'children'.

I really hope we get sybelle and Benji in the adaption. They’re fundamental to Armand’s character arc. And I want Palestinian rep sooooo bad.The show has already altered multiple timelines (so why not introduce them earlier...maybe s4? I wish s3 but , I know that’s not realistic ). Give me Armand’s orphan family - right now! 😩

[bigboy-lovers-unite-writes]

Where/how I feel like they would take you out on a first date!!!

Connor; he did alot of research on your favorite things and what humans usually liked to do, especially on a first date. He figured it would be nice to just talk with you and bring you out to a park for a walk, maybe sit down and hold hands or something. He's definitely very vanilla when it comes to dates, but he's still trying!!

Markus; definitely takes you to somewhere fun. Wether that be an arcade, a carnival or fair, he just wants the both of you to have fun together. He likes seeing you happy, plus he would like to try stuff like games and fun things with you <3

Kara; would probably prefer to stay somewhere safer like inside, but you could convince her to go out if you really tried. She just wants the both of you to be okay and safe. Would make some food for you and watch TV and cuddle sm 😭

Simon; sweet boy oml. Would do probably anything for you, would stay inside, take you out, buy you stuff, anything!! Being a domestic model for kids, he probably knows how to cook decently too. Asks for a hug and maybe a kiss after the date 🤭

Gavin; Prick, but he does semi care. Might take you out to get a burger or a coffee if he's feeling generous, but would actually care about what you want. Would share his food or drink with you, it's like a love language for him at this point. Basically demands you two hold hands or lock arms

Hank; he thinks he's too old for dating anymore, so he would let you pick and drag him around to a store or around town. Like gavin, would definitely appreciate it if you two stopper and got some lunch while out. Giving Sumo a bath is like a date for you two, he really needs help washing the big dog 😭

North; she might act like she doesn't care, she kinda does. She wants to do what she mostly wants to do, but also takes your thoughts into consideration. You two will probably cause some trouble around town or mess with some of the other androids in Jericho or town. She loves getting closer to someone while having fun <3

Ralph; LET HIM DO IT FOR YOU 😭 he will be so sad if you try to plan against his plans. If he's going out with you, you already have him trusting you alot. Will accidentally rant about plants the entire time since he feels like he can share it to you. Definitely wants to garden with you, and will try to cook (he really does try his best)

Elijah; he's rich, he's gonna treat you like royalty (probably). Honestly I think he knows how to cook, but be might make one of his other androids cook something for the two of you. Would probably build an android just for you as a sign of affection or some shi 😭 let's you run his credit card up

Daniel; he really, really cares about everything. If it's an at home date, he will clean the entire place and made it look amazing and set up a little area for a date. Probably wants to build a pillow fort. If you two go out, he will be a little anxious and holding his hand makes him feel alot better <3

Nines; honestly probably doesn't like dates too much, will complain the entire time but does go with you if you go out, wants to make sure you're not being stupid. Will want to have a long conversation about anything, and will more than likely want to be next to you no matter what during/after the date wherever yall went

Luther; huge sweetheart fr 😭 would love to stay home and cuddle or just take care of anything you need. He loves to make sure you're alright. He will probably go out to a small quiet area with you and just sit in silence and hold hands, maybe say he loves you

Jerry/s; obviously gonna take you to an amusement park, maybe their own amusement park since they miss having visitors 😔 they're always cheery and happy so they would love to do anything, play in the snow, play games, talk, anything!

[tieflingkisser]

How RSF is adopting Israel’s ‘template for genocide’ in Sudan

For years, Israel has used human rights terminology to whitewash killing civilians, now the RSF is doing the same.

from the article:

On April 11, the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) stormed the Zamzam displacement camp in Sudan’s North Darfur, burning huts and shops, executing medics, and firing at fleeing civilians.

According to monitors, at least 500 people – men, women, children and the elderly – were killed, and hundreds of thousands were forcibly displaced.

The attack provoked global outrage, prompting the RSF to double down on propaganda it had been spreading for months about Zamzam – that it was actually a military barracks.

“Zamzam was a military zone … so the RSF decided that we should evacuate civilians,” RSF adviser Ali Musabel told Al Jazeera, without providing evidence for his claim. “We didn’t want civilians to get caught in the crossfire.”

By labelling Zamzam a military zone, the RSF was trying to apply the same model Israel uses to justify bombing hospitals and schools in the Gaza Strip, said Rifaat Makawi, a Sudanese human rights lawyer.

“This is not a coincidence: it is a deliberate practice aimed at stripping civilians of their legal protection by labelling them as combatants or instruments of war,” he told Al Jazeera.

Throughout Sudan’s civil war, the RSF has used human rights jargon and terms from international humanitarian law (IHL) – the legal framework designed to protect civilians in times of war – to carry out atrocities.

For years, Israel employed this practice in an attempt to ward off criticism for killing and oppressing Palestinians, according to legal scholars. Since launching its genocidal war on Gaza on October 7, 2023, it has doubled down.

[...]

“The fact that the claims made by the RSF in Sudan resemble the claims Israel is making in Gaza … reveals the emergence of a template to commit mass extermination and even genocide,” said Luigi Daniele, a senior lecturer on IHL at Nottingham Law School.

[...]

In April 2024, the RSF besieged el-Fasher and surrounding towns after the Joint Forces – a coalition of “non-Arab” armed groups formed to fight the government in the past – shed their neutrality and sided with the army.

Given the RSF’s track record of enmity towards “non-Arab” ethnic groups, the Joint Forces feared widespread ethnic killings if the RSF captured the entire state.

The RSF blocked aid from anyone not aligned with them, leading to famine in Zamzam. As civilians withered away from hunger, the RSF began claiming that Zamzam was a “military base”, revealing its intention to attack.

“This claim that there was a military base in Zamzam was never correct … we had some people who acted as a police force, but there were no military leaders in the camp,” said Mosab, a middle-aged man who survived the killing in Zamzam and now languishes in the nearby town of Tawila.

[idkplzhalp]

What do you know about Caroline in full? /genq

Some background for those who don't know, Caroline from Portal 2 is my favorite character as of 6 years and at some point I started keeping a big list in which I document everything such as info during development, things from devs/voice actors, debunking theories, literally any of her appearances anywhere and other silly stuff too. I also made an image folder with any potential reference or appearance to her in the series/behind the scenes, which i started to upload to a google drive folder and i need to finish it. When I finally make the entire Caroline post & drive folder, I'd wanna post it to my Valve fact blog @thatvalvefanatic. I'm super into getting canon/official facts about things and Caroline is the funnest for me to do as she's so obscure.

So here's some facts (know I have way more but this is already long enough..) since it'll be awhile since I do the big complete analysis post (or the Caroline lore bible, as I call it) that I've been promising for like 3 years lol!!!

Her heels are red! (This is her face model, Laura Dubuk, when she was at SDCC 2012 with Bill Fletcher, Cave's face, for the Neca booth)

Caroline's name was taken from Jay Pinkerton's (the writer's) mother. Erik Wolpaw says the name also means coincidentally "free man/woman". It's also a variant of the name Charles/Charlie (which is a coincidence to Aperture Desk Job's character Charlie (who is likely more of a reference to Chell)).

She's Argentinan and Ukrainian as that is her face model Laura Dubuk's ethnicity (she's stated she's Argentinian, her family speaks Ukrainian/their last name is Ukrainian (ty to the person who gave me that info!)).

The brand of her dress is "Daniel & Rebecca", an Italian brand made in the 80s/90s. Laura got the dress specifically for Caroline from a thrift store.

Caroline is referenced by Jerry the Nanobot. If you slow his audio down and reverse it, you hear "his injury is not expected to end but she's in charge instead". Hearing is subjective here but that's what I've seen as widely accepted. Though Portal 2 has done similar before with the Ghost of Rattmann track, which was just cut up audio of Marc Laidlaw reading an entirely unrelated paragraph. Or like the Dinosaur_fizzle audios from the radios in Portal 1 that people theorized was Caroline screaming from the radio, when it wasn't that at all as that update came before Caroline was created.

Unlike popular belief, Ellen Mclain did not refuse any of Caroline's lines. People spread rumors that the deleted GLaDOS related lines made her cry and that JK Simmons refused to say his lines due to how they sounded like SA, but that's not true at all.

Also, Caroline is NOT Chell's mother. She's too old and too white to be her mom! GLaDOS' arc towards Chell has been confirmed & implied to be queer/romance-esque. You can see some of that in my LGBTQ Valve post, though I need to update it, and I will be making a singular post just for queercoded GLaDOS since there is SO much. One of Valve' employees, Makani, confirmed Chell was not her daughter.

Cave and Caroline aren't married, confirmed by the Portal 2 guidebook. Though they were still likely good friends, based on some of Cave's cut lines, in which he trusts her to do a lot more.

Cave wanted Caroline to be taken care of and respected as CEO/GLaDOS! That part of his GLaDOS speech had been cut though. Those lines are, "Treat her just like you’d treat me." and "Just make sure she’s taken care of."

Portal RTX has a bunch of hidden codes you can find. There are some you use to change the design of the companion cube. Inputting Caroline's name changes it to the pillow cube!

According to Josh Weier, Caroline wasn't added to the game until one month before its release. Originally she wasn't a part of the story and Cave's assistant was a man named Greg. They didn't want to hire an actor for just a couple lines, so they decided to reuse Ellen Mclain, thus creating GLaDOS' human backstory. Though Greg was reused for Perpetual Testing Initiative and the Cave Johnson DotA announcer pack.

Caroline appears in the spinoff/tech-demo Aperture Desk Job, though only as her portrait. This confirms that she can be in other universes just like Greg, though we don't know what happened to her in this one. She's potentially dead, as Aperture Desk Job had Cave live long enough to be put into the machine. The machine was started and he killed some of the scientists. Also Caroline's portrait there is partially covered, covering her side.

I personally believe Caroline to be biromantic asexual! This one isn't a confirmed fact but more speculation. I think the "she's married- to science!" bit could indicate not being apart of traditional straight relationships, also knowing she was never married to Cave either. We already know GLaDOS is biromantic due to her liking Chell (and in spin-offs liking Claptrap and Batman for a time), and she could be considered ace to her cut line in co-op mode saying she found human reproduction ridiculous. Presumably the same would apply to Caroline.

The "Say goodbye, Caroline!" / "goodbye, Caroline!" Bit is a potential reference to The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show (1950) or Rowan and Martin's Laugh In (1968) as both had bits similar to that, and would make sense for Caroline and Cave to reference due to when the shows aired. Some people interpret that line as Caroline being dumb, though that's not true at all! We know she was intelligent from Cave's high praise of her, and if she was actually making a reference to a TV program then it would be even smarter and show that Caroline probably had inside jokes or references with Cave.

Want You Gone says Caroline and Chell are similar (“She was a lot like you”). If true then Chell, as officially described from the Collaborative Disposition Test, “Resolute and tenacious, you won't quit until a puzzle's solved. Your inability to give up against impossible odds makes you a bad match for cooperative test partners who give up against any odds at all, racing to the internet for answers” Could give insight into Caroline’s personality. The Collaborative Disposition Test could give even more insight into her from Cave’s description “You don't see crises - only challengitunities. you choose to scale like mountains. You're a can-do, shoot-from-the-hip, silver-tongued self-starter. You're a good match for any cooperative test partner, providing they shut up and listen.�� Caroline didn’t have much dialogue and we know she did the majority of what Cave asked of her/they worked together for at least 30 years. Caroline may very well be Cave’s testing partner who will “shut up and listen”.

Caroline was in the Steam 25th anniversary artwork! Art by Claire Hummel. It is her and Cave drawn over this meme:

okay that's it for now but I did find an iceberg chart I made a few months ago about her so I'm including it even tho some things gotta be adjusted because it's not 100% correct. It's the same as this but I wanna share it anyways. Happy Caroline Portal 2 lore learning. I'll make a part 2 with more stuff later.

[emeraldscript]

have some more alien max au cause he's my lil guy

pt. 4 (pt. 1, pt. 2, pt. 3)

"you saying i stink?" daniel asks.

"of course not. i just said you smelled upset," max says calmly, picking up one of the bread cubes on his plate. 

"how can you tell?" daniel asks.

"well when we arrived at your house, for example, you smelled much calmer and sweet. when you're anxious it turns more bitter," max says, shrugging his shoulder a bit. 

"you smell that much? oh god," daniel says lifting his t-shirt to his nose to give himself a sniff. it smells a bit like sweat and a bit like his fabric softener. daniel wrinkles his nose at himself.

"well usually you just smell like human and a bit like some sort of wood. i'm guessing it's a smell enhancer your kind put on. it was clinging to the seats in your car as well but i think it was different to yours. more sweet. hard to tell as i've not been outside much," max continues to explain.

"you're a pretty special guy, huh max?" daniel asks.

"i'm a pretty normal guy, actually," max deflects.

"yeah? are there many interplanetary pilots where you're from?" daniel asks.

"well, not that many, only twenty are picked every year but many try to get in, of course," max says, pushing the last cherry tomato on his plate around. 

"only twenty, huh. out of how many?" daniel asks.

"we got about 100 billion people in our system, so." max confirms, casually.

"yeah maxy, sorry to be the one to break this to you but i'm pretty sure you're not that average after all," daniel says.

max huffs out a laugh then. 

"what do you do, daniel?" max asks in return.

"guess," daniel challenges.

"maybe a farmer? this is a farm, right?" max asks.

"hit the nail on the head, maxy. farmer dan, that's me." daniel says, with a laugh.

"that's nice, very peaceful," max says earnestly. 

"yeah, no stress round here," daniel confirms, smile starting to strain. 

"what are you going to do now, though?" daniel asks max to change topics.

at that max buries his face in his hands, groaning. "my ship, i have to get to it and assess the damage. i'm so fucked. if you point me in the right direction, i can walk there and get out your hair."

a slight surge of panic passes through daniel at that. "what? max don't be stupid, i'll drive you, it's so hot out there, you'll burn and dehydrate. it's the middle of summer."

"it's totally okay, i can wait outside in the shade until the sun goes down. you've been much too nice to me already," max says. getting down from the barstool, folding his hands together and giving daniel a solemn nod. "thanks so much for all your help, daniel." 

with that, max turns on his heel and moves towards the door. 

"woah, wait max!" daniel yells after him, jogging round his kitchen island. 

max continues walking down the hallway, until daniel catches up with him, grabbing him by the elbow. 

"wait up, max. c'mon stop," daniel pleads.

max turns around then, eyes downcast and ears slightly twitching. that's new, daniel thinks. 

"i can't let you go out there with a clear conscience if the guest bedroom is too dry for you, mate. please. it's no bother, honestly." daniel says.

"my mother always taught me not to overstay my welcome." max responds.

"that's fine then. you haven't. and my mother taught me to be a good host and help people if they need it. we don't want to disappoint grace, do we?" daniel asks.

"if you're sure," max mumbles. 

"yeah, c'mon let's get you a water and then we can drive back out there. do you think we could load it onto the trailer?" daniel asks.

"i'd have to see the size and the damage but maybe. it's one of the more compact models," max says. 

after daniel fills up one of the tumblers usually reserved for his nephew with cold water, he hands it to max with a wink. "so you don't dry out like a frog on concrete."

max holds onto it with both hands and mutters a quiet "thanks," in return. 

after crossing the driveway, daniel slides the barn doors open, revealing a collections of bikes, quads and mechanical equipment as well as the trailer. 

"what d'ya reckon? would it fit?" daniel asks max. 

max is currently sucking on the blue straw of his tumbler looking around curiously at all the bikes. 

"hm, yeah probably. it'll probably stick out the sides though with the wings," max confirms. 

"that should be fine, c'mon help me hook it up," daniel says. 

+++

"i think it should be coming up on the right hand side soon," daniel says, scanning the horizon for any traces of shiny metal.

"i think i can see it, there, there," max says, pointing in the distance. 

daniel has his foot on the brake but before the car is even fully halted, max is opening the car door, jumping out.

"jesus, slow down!" daniel says but it's no use. max is basically running towards his ship, skipping over bushes of grass. 

daniel kills the engine and follows as quickly as he can. by the time he joins max, the other has his head stuck in the cockpit, rummaging around inside. he pulls some sort of square out, and taps it a couple times. then he lets out a frustrated clicking sound.

"everything alright?" daniel asks. 

"yes but no. my communicator is broken, i'll have to try and fix it as well to signal back home. my family will be worried, let alone my team."

"it's okay, i can give you some tools that might help?" daniel suggests.

"thanks, i hope i can make it work with the primitive tech you have here."

"alright, damn," daniel snorts. "i'll back the truck up out here and then we can load it up, yeah?"

once daniel got the trailer as close as he can get it, they attach the crane at the top to the cockpit and lift it on top of the loading zone.

max was right, the wings do stick out but hopefully they can get away with it.

on the drive back, max is tinkering away on his communicator with a tiny tool he must have stored in his cockpit but daniel isn't sure he made much progress. 

"so, what family you got waiting at home then?" daniel asks max.

max stops fiddling for a moment to hum in question.

"your family, i asked," daniel repeats. 

"oh, well my mum and dad, plus my sister and nephews. and my sister had another baby on the way. i haven't seen that one yet cause i'm always away months at a time," max explains.

"so, no girlfriend waiting at home?" daniel asks.

"no, no girlfriend, i don't have," max clears his throat, "one of those," max says, casting a sideways glance at daniel. 

"a boyfriend perhaps?" daniel asks, voice neutral. 

"no, no boyfriend either at the moment," max confirms, twiddling the tool between he thumb and forefinger.

okay. daniel refuses to examine why this makes him feel relieved. 

"same for me maxy, we can be alone together, eh?" daniel says.

"sure, daniel. that sounds good," max says, smiling over at him. 

once back home, they carefully unload the plane inside daniel's barn.

"if you want to try and find out what's broken, i can fix us some lunch?" daniel suggests.

max nods abesentmindely at that, already inspecting the sidepod of his plane. 

while heating up some of his mum's tomato soup and browning some baguette in the pan, daniel peers out the window to see max extracting his arm from inside the side of his plane and loads of wires hanging out. he sees max huff a deep breath and scratch his hair on the back of his head quickly. 

that doesn't look like a quick fix. daniel opens the window and yells "max, food is ready, if you wanna come back inside."

max startles slightly where he's standing, eyes searching for daniel before finding him. then max nods, picks up his water tumbler and starts jogging inside.

"i warmed up some tomato soup. i reckoned you'd like it since you liked 'em well enough this morning," daniel explains. 

he sets a bowl down in front of max and puts a smaller plate with some slices of baguette next to it, handing max a spoon along with it. 

he grabs his own bowl and sticks the baguette straight into his soup. climbing onto the barstool next to where max is still hovering. 

"you not hungry yet? i'm starving," asks daniel at max's hesitation, taking a bite of his baguette.

"you remembered," max says quietly.

"hm?" hums daniel over his mouthful of bread. 

"keeping it separate," max clarifies. 

"orgh myeah no biggie," daniel gets out. while hooking his ankle around max's chair to move it backwards for him to climb into.

"dig in, c'mon," daniel says. 

max's ears twitch again and it's much more obvious when he does it due to their pointy shape, almost like a cat. they look a bit red. max's cheeks look a bit pink, too now that daniel is looking at him. 

"mate, did you already get a sunburn out there? i need to find you some sunscreen, you look pink already," daniel says pointing at max's face. 

at that max quickly ducks his face downwards and starts climbing on the barstool quickly.

"sunburn? what's that?" max asks.

"if you stay out in the direct sun for too long, your skin get damaged and itchy. it might start to peel. well at least humans do," daniel says.

"i don't think it's that," max says matter of factly. 

"no, what is it then?" daniel asks.

"i'm just a bit nervous. it's okay," max says, lifting his spoonful of soup in front of his face to inspect it closely. 

"why're you nervous? it's just me," daniel asks, curious.

"well yes, but you are of course very beautiful as i said before," max  says in the most nonchalant tone, still focused on the consistency of the soup. like it's a simple fact of the universe. grass is green. daniel is beautiful. he's not felt beautiful in a little while and definitely nobody's said it to him for even longer. well, except max.

"oh," is all daniel can respond.

"mating season is coming up anyway so it's no surprise that i react like this. it's not personal. well it is because you are attractive of course but pay it no mind. i will deal with it," max continues. "in any case, i think the combustor is broken in my plane, and some electric circuits were fried upon entry into your atmosphere so i'll have to rewire lots of parts. it will be a bigger job than i had hoped. it might be best for me to focus on fixing the communicator first," max explains.

"sure," daniel says. he hadn't internalised much of that as he was still stuck on attractive and mating season and what. 

daniel shakes himself out of it and says "take as long as you need. it's really no biggie."

at that max stops meticulously tearing his bread into small chunks and looks over at daniel, blue eyes on full display. they pop more with the pink flush in max's cheeks, this close.

his lips pull into a bright smile, lip freckle stretching with it. 

daniel hadn't noticed it before but now, in the daylight, up close, it's like his entire focus zeroes in on it. daniel wants to scrape his teeth over it. 

fuck. 

[iwonderwh0]

Child caretaker android 🤝 YK500, someone's "sibling": Depending on the love of another kid and their parents, but despite their best effort to be lovable being doomed to become unwanted and eventually replaced/turned off by the people of whom they think as their family.

[adreamoverlife]

Qsmp French Comms Links Headcanons

I have returned with the full version of this post. So basically for those who aren't aware theres a pretty popular headcanon that every character in the qsmp has like a phone/comm link that they use to send/receive messages So made my own 3ds models of what roughly I think they would look like. This post will cover Antoine, Baghera, Aypierre and Etoiles. I took a lot of inspiration from old style flip phones and I'll show which models I used specifically. This will probably be a long post with a lot of pictures lmao this kinda got out of hand.

First off, Queen of gossip herself, Baghera!

The main inspiration is a NEC N906iu Pink Diamond!

The French Beast, Etoiles!

Mainly inspired by nokia 8800

Master of create and resident capitalist, Aypierre!

inspired by a Nokia N93i

And finally, the resident Eldritch Horror Normal human being like you and me, Antoine Daniel!

Inspired by a Panasonic D Snap SV-AV20

[angelflms]

oh boy. guess i have something to say about CK after all. get ready. it's gonna be a fucking doozy because ima bout to piss off so many people.

yall cared wayyyy too much about robby (this is coming from a robby lover).

for a cheesy, straightforward show, some of y'all didn't understand its tropes at all. or at least what it was trying to tell you, especially when it comes to the roles miguel and robby are supposed to be in.

miguel has been and always will be the show's karate kid. he was supposed to be the daniel of the story, hell even GQ just said it in an article about the show recently. robby was always supposed to be a johnny-like foil to miguel. the thing is that the show tries to bamboozle you into thinking otherwise because of who's training them, how they're trained, and how they act because of the type of training they're initially recieved.

yes, miguel acts very similar to johnny in the show. yes most of the og TKK call backs they make with him are in relation to johnny, but he is the underdog character. you know how everyone expected johnny to win in TKK because he was a fucking champ and such. it's almost like how we as an audience for awhile assume that robby is gonna be the final end all champ of the series. but just like with johnny, we're proven wrong. it's just that the bullet was in a different gun this time. it's the one in the ck gi who won this time.

idk why people get so mad over miguel's victories when it was always supposed to be him that was gonna win. the show is called cobra kai for a reason, therefore, the final winner of the show is gonna be someone from that dojo. it only makes sense. and since the main karate kid that started off the show was a ck member originally, surprise! he's gonna be the final victor of the show.

---

now im seeing a lot of hatred towards johnny's character, again because of robby. now yes, johnny was a fucking horrible dad. and as a girl who's bio dad is a piece of shit like johnny was and has never been in my life (even started a business similar in the world as johnny's), i understand robby's dad pain a lot, even more so than miguel's.

but what you don't understand is that cobra kai is a show about generational pain. generational trauma. generational grief. generational hurt. the whole story revolves around pain that started 30 years prior (even further if you bring up kreese). the show also is about breaking the cycle once brought upon you to better the future for those who look up to you.

johnny is close to miguel because he was his second chance at being a better father figure to him. he didn't expect that he would get robby back in his life the way he did (robby literally told him to rightfully stay away) so he focused heavily on miguel and his family. now once he and robby reconciled, it was a huge breaking the circle moment because johnny lawrence is a victim of physical and verbal child abuse from both his step-dad, sid and his father figure, kreese. kreese was to johnny what he is to robby, but less abusive. and robby was to kenny what johnny was to him, but robby eventually broke the cycle, something that johnny was able to eventually do himself.

that emotional scene between johnny and kreese wasn't just emotional but kreese's final moment of realization that he was a horrible man and father figure to johnny. he hurt him so bad that he couldn't be a normal human being, which in turn caused him to be an absentee parent to robby. not saying that it's okay but it's understandable. not getting that johnny is a broken person just ruins the whole point of the show's point of generational pain, something the show is nearly spoon feeding the audience to.

yes johnny is horrible as a father, but damn it the man didn't have a father figure as a model. all of his figures were abusive, absentee drunks who never saw his potential. that was a norm for him.

---

ive said many times that y'all talk wayyyyy too much shit about miguel for no reason. and the way this season ended and how much y'all are upset, im starting to look at a lot of you in a side-eyed way. like his character arc is poorly written but that's not his fault. the writers hate him i feel. look i love robby and i hated the way he went out but at the end of the day, you need to understand that he wasn't gonna be the final guy. maybe i think too much in terms of the nuances of shows but i'd like to think this was the most straightforward show about fighting out there. like there wasn't much of a hidden message as they told you what they were. maybe yall are too lost in the fact that y'all care so much about robby that you don't care. maybe im missing something as i have only been in the fandom for over a year. or maybe y'all just subconsciously racist atp because the hatred miguel and xolo get for no reason is beyond me.

but i will give everyone this: the show's writing sucks.

they didn't know how to write certain characters and i feel like it was due to wanting to please everyone because i remember the death threats this fandom threw towards so many people during the lockdown days. but the show genuinely can go past surface level shit and it sucks. i wrote a whole thing dedicated to how miguel's storyline should've went post-coma because honestly they fucked his character up BIG time. but at the end of the day, i do think, even with good writing, he deserved that ending. i just wished everyone else agreed.

[helianthus21]

Daniel gets too much shit for the model trains. He spent 12 years running to whatever event Armand dragged him to and when he finally got offered eternal life and survived the vampire apocalypse he was like "a'ight i need a few decades of Me Time now". What is that in human terms, a weekend? he deserved it

[quijicroix]

Sorry not to be a camera nerd but in IWTV S2 ep2, 3 and 4 Louis in Paris having a Rolleiflex and a Leica specifically for Armand is so significant to me!!! Two cameras used at the same point in time but not by the same people.

First the Rolleiflex.

For the the Rolleiflex to work- you have to take a lil bow before your subject. This is because the viewing mirror is on top of the camera's body, so to see what the lens sees you have to incline. A lot a photographers said utilising this camera is also showing humility in front of the subject specially in street style photography (Robert Doisneau said that the Rolleiflex is like gathering images and the Leica like hunting for them, he also was convinced that the Rolleiflex was an "ethic of life and art" not betraying the subject you are trying to capture). You have to take your time and bow before them. (showing also the fact that louis struggles with not admiring humans )

Now the Leica

The Leica on the other hand put you on the same level as the model. The mirror is in a more traditional position at eye level. And is more favoured for fleeting subject, at least one street photographer as describe the Leica's style of photo as "hunting" for faces capturing the moment ( i think it's Janine Niépce or Henri Cartier-Bresson but don't quote me on this). It's really interesting that he photographs Armand with it , capture the fleeting aspect of his nature ,he is being hunted or they are hunting together ,and they are equals in Louis's eyes.

The style of photo he is taking in ep 4 is called "Humanist photography".

The mouvement in France was criticised for being a postcard image of paris, cliché, naïve and not political enough. And giving a romantic image of Paris after the tragédie of the WW2. It focuses mainly on people, often doing daily mondain activities, Humanist photography really liked cafés and bars. The paradox was despite the cliché exterior a lot of pictures were of working class people (we can see that in the pics he gives to Daniel in ep 2, louis has a very similar choice of subject mater and view of the world, taking portraits of his working class lovers and of Parisians in restaurants). The goal was to heal post war Paris and to show a new beginning. (echoing louis owns personal struggles of finding his new self and a new lover in paris, but also the rose tinted glasses he has on this time has a tourist)

Also in post war paris this is sososos significant in the history of photographie hahhahha my nerd heart is dying....