#to be fair they've improved

[thehandymen]

ok controversial opinion but. although spy x family and buddy daddies appear to have a lot in common (traumatized hitmen acquire a child etc etc) i really don’t think they should be compared. yor & loid, despite rushing into a marriage of convenience, are both pretty decently equipped to act as parental figures despite their unconventional backgrounds. yor has the experience of practically raising yuri from a very young age, and loid’s jack-of-all-trades spy career and general hyper competent personality means they’re able to handle anya and the whole sudden family situation better than your average single, childless, late-20s(?) adult. of course they still face a lot of bumps in the road/have a lot to learn, but what they do know from their respective lives and occupations definitely helps, and let’s not forget that anya is a whole telepath. 

kazuki and rei, on the other hand, have absolutely ZERO parental qualifications. it’s pretty obvious both of them have lived through their fair share of tragedy, with kazuki and his presumed dead wife and rei and his brutal childhood, but they’re also just. really messy people individually. kazuki is shown to regularly hang around gambling houses/the red light district and rei is a wet sock of a man when not in uniform. miri is your typical 4 year old: wildly energetic, no filter, constantly making a mess, requires attention at all times, and so on. unlike anya, she cannot read the minds of those around her, which means the only way she knows how to “help” her papas is by unhelpfully inserting herself into whatever tasks they’re trying to complete (and if you’ve been around small children, this is super typical behavior). she means well but she often inconveniences rei and kazuki’s already precarious lifestyle. and frankly, that pretty much sums up the early years of parenthood. 

kids are a lot of work. raising a child, even when you’re a “normal,” well-adjusted adult is really tough. but it’s supposed to be fulfilling, and it’s supposed to be something that parents view as “worth it.” we can’t really blame miri’s mom for resenting her so much when she never wanted to be a mom in the first place (and it’s clear she’s not suited to it, either). kazuki’s argument with miri’s mom demonstrates that his concept of parenthood is pretty idealistic, although not incorrect. kazuki may like the idea of protecting a child’s happiness, but he doesn’t realize the difficulty of the logistics involved, which we see in the daycare episode. we also see in the daycare episode that rei has no clue what a traditional childhood looks like. it’s implied he never went to school and doesn’t really understand how children usually act. 

kazuki and rei are arguably much less qualified than yor and loid to be parents, and therefore the buddy daddies family dynamic is going to be way more dysfunctional in a way that viewers may find bordering annoying rather than comically chaotic (i’ve read the crunchyroll comments). the same goes for miri, who is your average run of the mill small child, and not some super kawaii esper. but kazuki and rei are trying their best, in their own ways, and it’s clear that miri is going to brighten up their lives in really touching ways. so buddy daddies is definitely still worth a watch, especially if you already enjoy spy x family, but people should keep in mind that buddy daddies is not the “ripoff” of spy x family i’ve seen people say. 

[ladybonheur]

When you see academic multi-authored books (actually, hell, most academic books), please remember that there is an underpaid overworked PhD candidate that made everything uniform and corrected all citations. Right now, I am that PhD candidate.

[fatliberation]

I saw a comment on your blog that says 'the way you eat does not cause diabetes'...are you able to expand on that or provide a source I could read? I've been told by doctors that my pre-diabetes was due to weight gain because I get more hungry on my anti psychotics and I'd like to fact check what they've told me! Thank you so much!

Pre-diabetes was rejected as a diagnosis by the World Health Organization (although it is used by the US and UK) - the correct term for the condition is impaired glucose tolerance. Approximately 2% of people with "pre-diabetes" go on to develop diabetes per year. You heard that right - TWO PERCENT. Most diabetics actually skip the pre-diabetic phase.

There are currently no treatments for pre-diabetes besides intentional weight loss. (Hmm, that's convenient, right?) There has yet to be evidence that losing weight prevents progression from pre-diabetes to T2DM beyond a year. Interestingly, drug companies are trying to persuade the medical world to start treating patients earlier and earlier. They are using the term “pre-diabetes” to sell their drugs (including Wegovy, a weight-loss drug). Surgeons are using it to sell weight loss surgery. Everyone’s a winner, right? Not patients. Especially fat patients.

Check out these articles:

Prediabetes: The epidemic that never was, and shouldn’t be

The war on ‘prediabetes' could be a boon for pharma—but is it good medicine?

Also - I love what Dr. Asher Larmie @fatdoctorUK has to say about T2DM and insulin resistance, so here's one of their threads I pulled from Twitter:

1️⃣ You can't prevent insulin resistance. It's coded in your DNA. It may be impacted by your environment. Studies have shown it has nothing to do with your BMI.

2️⃣ The term "pre-diabetes" is a PR stunt. The correct term is impaired glucose tolerance (or impaired fasting glucose) which is sometimes referred to as intermittent hyperglycemia. It does not predict T2DM. It is best ignored and tested for every 3-5yrs.

3️⃣ there is no evidence that losing weight prevents diabetes. That's because you can't reverse insulin resistance. You can possibly postpone it by 2yrs? Furthermore there is evidence that those who are fat at the time of diagnosis fair much better than those who are thin.

4️⃣ Weight loss does not reverse diabetes in the VAST majority of people. Those that do reverse it are usually thinner with recent onset T2DM and a low A1c. Only a tiny minority can sustain that over 2yrs. Weight loss does not improve A1c levels beyond 2 yrs either.

5️⃣ Weight loss in T2DM does not improve macrovascular or microvascular health outcomes beyond 2 years. In fact, weight loss in diabetics is associated with increased mortality and morbidity (although it is not clear why). Weight cycling is known to impacts A1c levels.

6️⃣ Weight GAIN does NOT increase the risk of cardiovascular OR all causes mortality in diabetics. In fact, one might even go so far as to say that it's better to be fat and diabetic than to be thin and diabetic.

Dr. Larmie cites 18 peer reviewed journal articles (most from the last decade) that are included in their webinar on the subject, linked below.

[therobotmonster]

Please don’t use midjourney it steals art from pretty much every artist out there without any compensation. I didn’t know this at first and tried it but then during the creation process i saw water marks and Getty image logos (though I’m sure they’ve hidden that now) so it’s definitely stealing.

No, it isn't. And you've taken the wrong lesson from the Getty watermark issue.

AI training on public facing, published work is fair use. Any published piece could be located, examined, and learned from by a human artist. This does not require the permission of the owner of said work. A mechanical apparatus does not change this principle.

All we, as artists, own, are specific expressions. We do not own styles, ideas, concepts, plots, or tropes. We do not even own the work we create in a proper sense. All our work flows from the commons, and all of it flows back to it. IP is a limited patent on specific expressions, and what constitutes infringement is the end result of the creative process. What goes into it is irrelevant, and upending that process to put inspiration and reference as infringement is the end of art as we know it.

The Getty watermark issue is an example of overfitting, wherein a repetitive element in the dataset over-emphasizes specific features to the point of disrupting the system's attempts at the creation of novel images.

No one denies that the SD dataset is trained on images Getty claims to own, but Getty has so polluted the image search functions of the internet with their watermarked images that the idea of a getty watermark has been picked up the same way the AI might pick up the idea of an eye or a tree branch. It is a systemic failure that Shutterstock and Getty can be so monopolistic and ubiquitous that a dateset trained on literally everything public facing on the internet would be polluted with their watermarks.

Watermarks that, by the way, they add to public domain images, and that google prioritizes over clean versions.

The lawsuits being brought against Midjourney and Stable Diffusion are copyright overreach being presented as a theft tissue. The facts of the matter are not as the litigants state. The images aren't stored, the SD weights are a 4 gig file trained on 250 terabytes, roughly 4 bytes per image. It runs local, does not reach out to image sources over IP. All you've got are mathematical patterns and ratios. I would go so far as to say that the class action suit is based on outright lies.

But for a moment, let's entertain the idea that what goes into a work, as inspiration, can be copyrighted. That styles can be stolen. That what goes in defines infringement, rather than what comes out. What happens then?

Well, the bad news is that if Stable Diffusion and Midjourney were shut down tomorrow, Stable Diffusion is in the wild. It runs local, it's user-trainable. In short, the genie isn't going back in the bottle. Plus, the way diffusion AI works, there's no way to trace a gen to its sources. The weights don't work like that. The indexing would be larger than the entire set of stored patterns.

Well good news, there's an AI for that. The current version is called CLIP Interrogator And it works on everything. Not just AI generated, but any image. It can find what style it closely matches, reverse engineer a prompt. It's crude now, but it will improve.

Now, you've already established that using the same patterns as another work is infringement. You've already established that inspiration is theft. And now there's a robot that tells lawyers who you draw like.

Sure, you can fight it in court. If it goes go to court. But who's to say they won't just staplegun that AI to a monetization re-direction bot like youtube has going with their content ID? Awesome T-shirt design you uploaded to your print-on-demand shop... too bad your art style resembles that from a cartoon from 1973 that Universal got as part of an acquisition and they've claimed all your cash. Sure you can file a DMCA counter-notice, but we all know how that goes.

And then there's this fantasy that upending the system would help artists. But who would "own" that style? Is that piece stealing the style of Stephen Silver, or Disney's Kim Possible(TM)? When you work for Disney their contracts say everything you make is theirs. Every doodle. Every drawing. If the styles are copyrightable, a company could hire an artist straight out of school, publish their work under work-for-hire, fire them, and then go after them for "stealing" the style they developed while working for said corp.

Not to mention that a handful of companies own so much media that it is going to be impossible to find an artist that hasn't been influenced by something under their control.

Oh, and that stock of source images that companies like Disney and Universal have? These kinds of lawsuits won't stop them from building AIs with that material that they "own". The power goes into corp hands, they can down staff to their heart's content and everyone else is denied the ability to compete with them. Worst of all possible worlds.

Be careful what wishes you make when holding the copyright monkey's paw.

[pluttskutt]

i'm high key thinking about editing the backstory for lucy and publishing it on wattpad

it's short (about 10k), has no heavy plot, and i have no interest in making it like, actual novel quality if that makes sense

[incognitopolls]

Genuine question

Why is it bad/frowned upon to submit one poll to several blogs? I personally haven't done it, but I've considered doing it for different responses as not everyone follows the same poll blogs / all of them.

I think it's fine if one person wants to submit their own poll idea to several blogs for whatever reason. The desire for more data is real, especially if it's a burning question that you can't easily get answers to another way. I don't think that's what curiositysavesthecat was referring to, though; it sounds like they've received submissions that are exact copies of polls that are already published, suggesting that it's a different submitter who saw the original poll and thought, "Hey, fantastic idea, let me copy that."

We're talking about two different scenarios:

In the first scenario (what you're talking about), curiousblog1234 wants to know if people sing to their pets. curiousblog1234 sends this poll suggestion to 5 poll blogs because they really want to know and get the biggest sample they can.

In the second scenario (what I'm talking about), curiousblog1234 wants to know if people sing to their pets. curiousblog1234 sends this poll suggestion to generalpollblog7. The poll goes in generalpollblog7's queue and is released 2 weeks later. At that point, opportunistblog55 grabs it and submits it to a few more poll blogs.

There's a secret third scenario in which I do think it would be pretty fair to submit someone else's idea to another poll blog, which is if the question curiousblog1234 submitted to generalpollblog7 was, for instance, "Autistic people, which sense overwhelms you the most often?" and, after it was posted, opportunistblog55 submitted it to autismpolls40 because they knew it would get more targeted responses there.

Submitting duplicates of someone else's polls to other blogs isn't morally bad but it strikes me as just kind of rude if there's not a reason for it. Idk.

Also… this won't be true for every poll blog, but if it's a perfect word-for-word copy of a poll posted on this blog there's a very good chance that it's not the original submitter, because as I've said before I proofread and make slight changes to the wording of most polls to improve clarity at minimum.

Anyway.

[amourdivine]

𝐏𝐈𝐂𝐊 𝐀 𝐂𝐀𝐑𝐃 🦢 𝐇𝐎𝐖 𝐖𝐈𝐋𝐋 𝐘𝐎𝐔 𝐑𝐄𝐂𝐎𝐆𝐍𝐈𝐙𝐄 𝐘𝐎𝐔𝐑 𝐅𝐒?

Hello! Since I wanted to cross this to Instagram, I wrote a sweet and short reading on how you'll be able to recognize your FS. I really hope this resonates! Feedback is always appreciated; If you liked this reading, please consider booking a paid reading or tipping me at @ amourdivinetarot@gmail.com! xo. ♡

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none of the images are mine unless stated otherwise.

how to choose your pile.  take deep breaths for a few minutes & look at each and every one of the piles separately. which pile sparks a feeling inside you? which pile gives you a strong memory or calls out to you the most? take your time and feel free to come back to it later.

♡ ♡ ♡     pick a card masterlist & information.

disclaimer. this is a general reading for entertainment purposes. tarot is a divination tool & is not a substitute for medical and professional advice, nor is it meant to be taken as such. i do not take responsibility for any choice(s) made by you or others regarding my readings.

amourdivine. 2021 - 2023 © do not copy, redistribute or edit my content.

PILE 001.

three of wands • three of cups • eight of pentacles

Before being a good anything, this person is a good friend. You'll recognize them by their hardworking nature, their cooperation and team working skills. It's likely you'll meet them during a work travel or another kind of formal situation - perhaps on a group travel for a college project or some other kind of professional setting. Your FS will be extremely skilled and knowledgeable, but humble about it. You may end up collaborating with this person on something significant here, perhaps a business or a project together. I feel like they're very prim & proper, they'll never cross boundaries and will always be respectful of everyone's beliefs, religion and backgrounds. You'll recognize them by their patience, their independent, wise and practical nature.

Planets and signs: Earth energy, mainly Capricorn and Taurus.

♡ ♡ ♡ if you enjoyed this reading, please consider tipping me via paypal @ amourdivinetarot@gmail.com!

PILE 002.

two of swords • the empress • the hermit.

So much Venus and Libra here. This person is a people pleaser, not in a terrible way, but they want to be discerning, okay. They want to be fair and diplomatic. Your FS is thoughtful - you'll recognize them by how much they always want to do the right thing, to the point where it becomes borderline unhealthy and perfectionist. They want to make sure they make the best decisions for everyone in their lives. Your FS takes everyone's feelings into account because they care deeply about their family and loved ones. You'll recognize them for their big heart, their sensitive, introspective and gentle nature. They may be an overthinker as well, because your FS is terrified of hurting someone or doing the wrong thing by themselves or someone else. They're beautiful in all aspects.

Planets and signs: Earth and Air, mainly Libra and Virgo.

♡ ♡ ♡ if you enjoyed this reading, please consider tipping me via paypal @ amourdivinetarot@gmail.com!

PILE 003.

the star • three of swords • seven of swords.

Your FS is resilient, hopeful and cunning. You'll recognize them by their ability to outsmart the people who don't mean well, by their silver tongue and sharp wit. They have an uncanny ability to get past the heartbreaks and difficult moments in their life. This person has been through it, they've seen many things and they did not let the world get to them. While they may seem smug, your FS is confident in themselves to get through anything in life. They're hopeful, but they're not passive about their hope. They don't sit around and wait for things to improve - no, this person improves their own life and crafts their own destiny. Magician card energy. You'll recognize them by their stubbornness, their desire to fight for better things and their unique sense of humor.

Planets and signs: All air signs, mainly Aquarius and Gemini.

♡ ♡ ♡ if you enjoyed this reading, please consider tipping me via paypal @ amourdivinetarot@gmail.com!

PILE 004.

page of swords • eight of pentacles • justice.

Your FS is a curious, busy and hardworking person. You'll recognize them by how many questions about life they have - they're a truth seeker. They could work in the legal or justice system. This person may be a bookworm and likes asking the hard, philosophical questions. They're not afraid of harsh truths and confronting the people who have done something wrong. Your FS may strongly believe in karma, or perhaps they have a very strong ethic and moral code. You'll recognize them by how passionate, eager and restless they seem for something greater than what the world can offer. A larger-than-life personality. Someone honest, curious, non-judgmental and principled.

Planets and signs: mainly Libra and Gemini, with a feel of Sagittarius.

♡ ♡ ♡ if you enjoyed this reading, please consider tipping me via paypal @ amourdivinetarot@gmail.com!

amourdivine. © do not copy, redistribute or edit my content.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

At long last, a meaningful step to protect Americans' privacy

This Saturday (19 Aug), I'm appearing at the San Diego Union-Tribune Festival of Books. I'm on a 2:30PM panel called "Return From Retirement," followed by a signing:

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/festivalofbooks

Privacy raises some thorny, subtle and complex issues. It also raises some stupid-simple ones. The American surveillance industry's shell-game is founded on the deliberate confusion of the two, so that the most modest and sensible actions are posed as reductive, simplistic and unworkable.

Two pillars of the American surveillance industry are credit reporting bureaux and data brokers. Both are unbelievably sleazy, reckless and dangerous, and neither faces any real accountability, let alone regulation.

Remember Equifax, the company that doxed every adult in America and was given a mere wrist-slap, and now continues to assemble nonconsensual dossiers on every one of us, without any material oversight improvements?

https://memex.craphound.com/2019/07/20/equifax-settles-with-ftc-cfpb-states-and-consumer-class-actions-for-700m/

Equifax's competitors are no better. Experian doxed the nation again, in 2021:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/30/dox-the-world/#experian

It's hard to overstate how fucking scummy the credit reporting world is. Equifax invented the business in 1899, when, as the Retail Credit Company, it used private spies to track queers, political dissidents and "race mixers" so that banks and merchants could discriminate against them:

https://jacobin.com/2017/09/equifax-retail-credit-company-discrimination-loans

As awful as credit reporting is, the data broker industry makes it look like a paragon of virtue. If you want to target an ad to "Rural and Barely Making It" consumers, the brokers have you covered:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/13/public-interest-pharma/#axciom

More than 650,000 of these categories exist, allowing advertisers to target substance abusers, depressed teens, and people on the brink of bankruptcy:

https://themarkup.org/privacy/2023/06/08/from-heavy-purchasers-of-pregnancy-tests-to-the-depression-prone-we-found-650000-ways-advertisers-label-you

These companies follow you everywhere, including to abortion clinics, and sell the data to just about anyone:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/07/safegraph-spies-and-lies/#theres-no-i-in-uterus

There are zillions of these data brokers, operating in an unregulated wild west industry. Many of them have been rolled up into tech giants (Oracle owns more than 80 brokers), while others merely do business with ad-tech giants like Google and Meta, who are some of their best customers.

As bad as these two sectors are, they're even worse in combination – the harms data brokers (sloppy, invasive) inflict on us when they supply credit bureaux (consequential, secretive, intransigent) are far worse than the sum of the harms of each.

And now for some good news. The Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, under the leadership of Rohit Chopra, has declared war on this alliance:

https://www.techdirt.com/2023/08/16/cfpb-looks-to-restrict-the-sleazy-link-between-credit-reporting-agencies-and-data-brokers/

They've proposed new rules limiting the trade between brokers and bureaux, under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, putting strict restrictions on the transfer of information between the two:

https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/15/tech/privacy-rules-data-brokers/index.html

As Karl Bode writes for Techdirt, this is long overdue and meaningful. Remember all the handwringing and chest-thumping about Tiktok stealing Americans' data to the Chinese military? China doesn't need Tiktok to get that data – it can buy it from data-brokers. For peanuts.

The CFPB action is part of a muscular style of governance that is characteristic of the best Biden appointees, who are some of the most principled and competent in living memory. These regulators have scoured the legislation that gives them the power to act on behalf of the American people and discovered an arsenal of action they can take:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/18/administrative-competence/#i-know-stuff

Alas, not all the Biden appointees have the will or the skill to pull this trick off. The corporate Dems' darlings are mired in #LearnedHelplessness, convinced that they can't – or shouldn't – use their prodigious powers to step in to curb corporate power:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/10/the-courage-to-govern/#whos-in-charge

And it's true that privacy regulation faces stiff headwinds. Surveillance is a public-private partnership from hell. Cops and spies love to raid the surveillance industries' dossiers, treating them as an off-the-books, warrantless source of unconstitutional personal data on their targets:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/16/ring-ring-lapd-calling/#ring

These powerful state actors reliably intervene to hamstring attempts at privacy law, defending the massive profits raked in by data brokers and credit bureaux. These profits, meanwhile, can be mobilized as lobbying dollars that work lawmakers and regulators from the private sector side. Caught in the squeeze between powerful government actors (the true "Deep State") and a cartel of filthy rich private spies, lawmakers and regulators are frozen in place.

Or, at least, they were. The CFPB's discovery that it had the power all along to curb commercial surveillance follows on from the FTC's similar realization last summer:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/12/regulatory-uncapture/#conscious-uncoupling

I don't want to pretend that all privacy questions can be resolved with simple, bright-line rules. It's not clear who "owns" many classes of private data – does your mother own the fact that she gave birth to you, or do you? What if you disagree about such a disclosure – say, if you want to identify your mother as an abusive parent and she objects?

But there are so many stupid-simple privacy questions. Credit bureaux and data-brokers don't inhabit any kind of grey area. They simply should not exist. Getting rid of them is a project of years, but it starts with hacking away at their sources of profits, stripping them of defenses so we can finally annihilate them.

I'm kickstarting the audiobook for "The Internet Con: How To Seize the Means of Computation," a Big Tech disassembly manual to disenshittify the web and make a new, good internet to succeed the old, good internet. It's a DRM-free book, which means Audible won't carry it, so this crowdfunder is essential. Back now to get the audio, Verso hardcover and ebook:

http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/16/the-second-best-time-is-now/#the-point-of-a-system-is-what-it-does

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

[ao3cassandraic]

What does Aziraphale know and when does he know it? Part 2, The Chinwag

Prologue and Part 1, for those who need them.

The chinwag is written and shot in two timeframes: as it's happening, and as Aziraphale retells it to Crowley. That's a fair wodge of extra production expense, compared to just having Aziraphale retell the story. There's got to be a reason for it (beyond additional Derek Jacobi, which is never bad).

I think the reason is so that we-the-viewers can check the congruence between actual events and Aziraphale's retelling, also between Aziraphale's emotional reactions to the Metatron and the emotions he pours out to Crowley. (Remember, Aziraphale is a lying liar who lies!) Also, as some meta-ists have already pointed out, to leave the possibility open that we are not getting the whole story in either frame -- there's likely some interaction that we aren't shown and that Aziraphale doesn't tell Crowley about.

But why wouldn't Aziraphale tell Crowley everything? Hold that thought (though if you've read through my metas, you already know my answer).

The chronology of the chinwag is very tangled in-show (we first see the very end of it!) so I'm going to disentangle it here, as best I can.

Aziraphale tells Crowley, "[The Metatron] said that Gabriel obviously hadn't worked out... and he asked who I thought should take over in Heaven..." Then we cut to the actual chinwag. Aziraphale looks a bit how-is-this-my-problem-exactly, and gives the obvious bureaucratic corporate yes-person (well, yes-angel) answer: Michael.

And the Metatron calls him silly for it. The Metatron has just insulted Gabriel, Michael, and Aziraphale in practically the same breath; if Aziraphale had had any doubts about contempt being fundamental to the Metatron's personality, they've been blown away now.

The Metatron: "... there's only one candidate who makes even the slightest bit of sense." Aziraphale's reaction shot: polite interest in his face, but his hands appear clasped together under the table -- he's stressed and he's hiding things. "And that's you."

And we don't get Aziraphale's actual reaction to this -- we cut back to Aziraphale telling Crowley. I know what I think Aziraphale's actual reaction, and how he expressed it, were -- and I don't think for an instant they were the same -- but by all means consider for yourself. The show wants you to. Also consider whether either of those is the same as the excitement he projects toward Crowley. My cards on the table, and a sneak peek of the next post in this series: I don't think so. I think Aziraphale retelling this story is Aziraphalean kayfabe. The Metatron wants and expects him to be excited, so he's acting excited.

We then cut back to the Metatron's actual words: "Well, yes, you're a leader, you're honest, you don't just tell people what they want to hear; it's why Gabriel came to you in the first place, I imagine."

There is not one word of this that is not bullshit. Starting from the end, Aziraphale knows why Jimbriel came to him, because he asked and the utterly guileless Jimbriel told him. It had nothing to do with leadership or honesty; it was because Jimbriel had a strong, if vague, impression that Aziraphale was the one being who could and would improve Jimbriel's situation. (Other metas from other meta-ists discuss why Jimbriel might feel this way.) The rest of the Metatron's line is manipulative generic corporate-style flattery having zero intersection with the phalanx-refusing, frequently-deceitful, go-along-to-get-along angel we all know and love.

So is Aziraphale buying the Metatron's love-bombing? I mean, it's wholly plausible that an angel would buy it, just out of sheer emotional desperation; Heaven's angels -- those who even remain after the Great War and the mass Fall -- are pitifully love- and approval-starved. Aziraphale himself has barely gotten a kind word from Heaven in his entire existence, and he's had plenty of reprimands. Gabriel didn't get a single gift in six thousand years. Lonely, obliging, bottom-of-the-hierarchy Muriel practically plotzes at the least slightest hint of approval from anyone ever.

There's only one angel on Earth or in Heaven who knows genuine, sustained love and support, though, now that Gabriel is gone -- and it's Aziraphale. I look at Aziraphale's face after the Metatron drops that love bomb, and I see no hint of joy or warmth or Muriel-like gratitude. He's not buying it. Aziraphale knows what love is, and this ain't it. (Crowley rescues Aziraphale once again, and he's not even there! I love this.)

What Aziraphale knows at this point:

The Metatron wants him back in Heaven.

Given the Metatron's habitual contempt for everyone around him, and given the blatant lies with which he expresses respect for Aziraphale, the Metatron must be lying about that respect. So whatever his reasons for wanting Aziraphale in Heaven, they're not his stated reasons about Aziraphale being suited to the job.

The Metatron is really buttering him up! "Second-in-command after me" is a pretty solid bribe! A lot bigger than a coffee! And the Metatron doesn't butter anybody else up! So the Metatron has clearly (and likely correctly) determined that ordering Aziraphale around doesn't work -- Aziraphale has a history of defying blatant orders, both openly and by working-to-rule. (The Metatron may or may not know the full details of the Arrangement, but of course it is another example.)

The Metatron is neither omniscient nor infallible. He doesn't know why Jimbriel went to Aziraphale. He doesn't know what line of patter will serve as a suitable love bomb. He can likely be fooled.

What Aziraphale likely wants to know at this point:

What. The fuck. Does the fucking Metatron. Actually want from him.

What. The fuck. Is the fucking Metatron. Actually up to. Because the Metatron has gone a long way out of his way -- en-corporating, coming to Earth, grabbing a coffee, saving Aziraphale from Michael, holding Muriel in reserve, separating Aziraphale from Crowley, pouring poison into Aziraphale's ear (Hamlet allusion, anyone?) -- to further whatever his aims are.

The Metatron, next: "There are huge plans afoot, enormous projects, and I will need you to run them. You are just the angel for the job."

Aziraphale's face, in the next shot, is still full of worry. That's a partial answer to the questions in his mind, but far from a complete one. So he plays to keep the Metatron talking, hoping that will make things clearer. "I… I don't want to go back to Heaven. Where would I get my coffee?" (He doesn't want coffee on a regular basis. He's a tea drinker! This is a prevarication. There is no trust at this table.)

The Metatron, rather than answering, raises his bribe. "You know, as supreme archangel, you would be able to decide whom to work with. I've been looking back over a number of your previous exploits, and I see that in quite a few of them you formed a de facto partnership with the demon Crowley. Now, if you wanted to work with him again, that might be considered irregular, but it would certainly be within your jurisdiction to restore your friend, Crowley, to full angelic status."

I quoted the whole thing because whew, it's crucial and it's layered.

What Aziraphale now knows:

The Metatron sure doesn't look to be taking no for an answer.

The Metatron knows something -- how much isn't clear, but likely something fairly significant -- about the Ineffable Husbands' shenanigans through the ages. He's been studying them. (Which I find chilling, honestly, but I'm a privacy wonk so I would.)

The Metatron knows Aziraphale and Crowley are friends, important to one another; he up and said so.

The Metatron might not mind if Aziraphale got some of his own back from the other archangels. "Deciding whom to work with" in a corporate bureaucracy often means deciding whom to fire, after all. This, too, might be part of the bribe.

The Metatron is somewhat willing to let Crowley return to Heaven. Only as an angel, though, no more bee!demon. He doesn't seem enthusiastic at the prospect, however, or he'd have offered this tidbit already.

What Aziraphale likely wants to know:

The two questions he still has. They have not been answered.

What. The actual fuck. Are these plans and projects? Are they real or are they get-Aziraphale-out-of-the-way make-work?

Is the offer for Crowley on the level? (Nothing else has been so far!) Or is the Metatron's raise not bribery, but blackmail?

As for how Aziraphale responds to this: No joy, warmth, or pleasure, none. His eyes shift quickly when the Metatron first says Crowley's name, and if anything he looks even more worried for a moment. And again, we aren't allowed to see Aziraphale's actual reaction to the raised bribe offer.

If I'm Aziraphale, being railroaded into this return to Heaven by this extremely powerful and worrisomely sketchy being, I sure would want my right-hand demon at my, er, right hand. I'm just saying.

The temporally-last chunk of the chinwag is the Metatron bringing this weird unsavory job offer to a corporately-scripted close: "Well, you don't have to answer immediately. Take all the time you need." Aziraphale plays for additional information, again, by echoing Gabriel's stunned reaction, "I don't know what to say." Note that this is not an eager yes, or any kind of yes at all! Not even the possibility of Crowley being an angel again has managed to wring assent out of Aziraphale! He's the actual opposite of all in on this!

But the Metatron refuses to give any additional information, leaving Aziraphale with a lot of unanswered questions. And he gives Aziraphale an explicit direct order, which is decidedly peremptory of him, considering. "Well then, go and tell your friend the good news."

We see Aziraphale respond to this with his very best go-along-to-get-along faces. He then crosses the street toward the bookshop; his back is turned to the Metatron at last, so he can let out a bit more of whatever he's feeling. What does he do? He takes a deep breath, flashes the Metatron one more brief placating smile, physically pulls himself together, and walks stiffly across the street with another pulling-himself-together gasp for breath in the middle.

This is not a joyous angel returning to his right-hand demon with joyous news. This is an angel with a lot of unanswered questions who's worried sick and unable to let down his guard fully.

Notice, by the way, that the Metatron then goes and has his little insultingly condescending interaction with Muriel, and then he turns back toward the bookshop and stands there. Like Furfur's zombies peering into the magic shop in 1941, he's watching Aziraphale and Crowley from a distance through the bookshop windows. Can he read lips? Who knows. But he's watching.

Next up: The Fiasco.

[slutforpringles]

I think there's been a lot of noise from outside, potentially fuelled by Liam Lawson fans, that Daniel's under pressure and he's about to get dropped, which the team says is not correct at all. They see Daniel's situation [as] similar to Carlos Sainz at the start of ‘22 when he was struggling with a car he couldn't get comfortable with. It took six or seven races to get on top of it and that's what they see with Daniel. They've been chipping away and they say the signs have been there; they saw progress in Saudi Arabia, Australia without the track limits he would have been right up there, Japan qualified really well but we didn't see the race pace because he got caught up in that crash with Alex and this weekend's been his most complete performance. They reckon he was well on for points here and then through absolutely zero fault of his own gets hit by Lance, and he's just picked up a three place grid penalty for the next race because of a safety car infringement [for] overtaking Hulkenberg. So classic Daniel Ricciardo luck, but the team's behind him, they see progress. I think it's too early to judge if the chassis made a difference, the team thinks there was nothing in it, but equally I think racing drivers, sometimes they're so complicated in how they feel everything that sometimes I think they can if they know it's a new chassis, something in their head will tell them it's an improvement so I think he's felt, it's fair to say, he's felt more comfortable this weekend; is it setup, is it car or is it new chassis - I think the final answer will come in maybe three or four races.

Jon Noble speaking on Autosport's F1 2024 Chinese Grand Prix Review

[boytoyhalo]

I know this is a hard pill to swallow, but if you want society to improve especially in terms of how we treat criminals and mentally ill people, if you want to abolish cops and prison and work towards building better communities, if you want the cycle of abuse to end - you HAVE to accept that EVERYONE can change and grow. That includes people who have done things that you consider irredeemable - rapists, abusers, pedophiles. EVERYONE.

Before you get on my ass about it, let me make it incredibly clear that I am NOT saying that anyone, least of all victims, is obligated to forgive or give any sort of grace to people like that. This post isn't solely about forever's current situation but I'll focus on it as an example since it's relevant - I am not going to continue following forever's content, I don't feel comfortable knowing what I know. But I absolutely don't think it's fair to demand that no one support him, or that he not be allowed to continue having a presence in mcyt spaces. Regardless of your feelings on his past actions, it's become clear that he's not currently a threat to anyone and that he really isn't who he was back then, so who does it help to bring it all up?

Especially given that the people who brought up all the tweets weren't even the alleged victim, I don't think any of this should have been the public's business in the first place. All it's done is cause unrest and pain for everyone involved. It is not on us to be the judge jury and executioner for cases that we are not involved in - and if we don't let people leave behind the people they used to be, then those people will never go away. If we continue to isolate and ostracize and crucify people for things that they've already atoned for or grown past, then how and why would they become better people and break the cycle? If we lock into this idea that certain things make you completely irredeemable, then why would they not just continue doing those things?

Dragging up past discretions like this when they're no longer causing harm to anyone just for the sake of putting them in front of everyone IS NOT accountability, especially when it's being done without the consent of the victim. It's punishment, it's this incredibly catholic idea of needing people to face repentance or mass humiliation for their sins instead of actually building up from them. It is not, and never has been, on us as uninvolved fans to decide whether or not someone "deserves" their platform based on isolated incidents from their past.

It's completely understandable if this situation has changed your view of the cc, it's certainly changed mine. But I beg you not to try and force people to stop watching or supporting him or to decide that he's irredeemably evil and anyone who continues to associate with him is too. That helps no one, least of all the people actually affected by the things he's said. Decide for yourself, and only yourself, for your own comfort instead of moral purity.

TL;DR people who do bad things, no matter how bad, are still people and are capable of growing and changing if they choose to do so. And by refusing to let those people grow and change all we do is keep all the pain and damage they've caused around forever. No one can heal if we keep tearing open the wounds

[twig-tea]

Lately I’ve been feeling like Thai bl is truly all over the place with so many shows airing at once and some of the best ones flying under the radar while discourse is focused on a couple of the big messy ones. I think you’re the only person I know who is actually watching ALL of them and has been here for the whole evolution of the genre, so I’m curious what stands out to you about this current moment. Do the shows feel different to you? Is the way fandom is interacting with them changing? And what are your current favs?

I ended up writing a thesis, sorry friend lol To be fair to me there are 3 questions in there, all of them meaty! I've done my best to give a sense of where I'm at with Thai BL and how it feels like it's changed over time.

Caveating all of this: I am just one fan who I'm sure has had specific experiences that will colour my opinion, also a lot of this is just vibes so I'm open to being told I've forgotten something major or misremembered what it was like! If you are reading this and your opinion or experience is different please share, with stuff like this I'm always interested in hearing about differing opinions because the fandom experience will depend at least partly on where you hang out. For years, my main fandom space for BL was the YouTube comments section (RIP me).

Overall feel

Honestly, things overall don't feel all that different to me in Thai BL in particular, even though I'm about to talk about a lot of changes and ways it actuallyd does feel very different below lol And after reflecting about it, I think it's because these things still feel very much in flux, in a way that they've felt in flux this entire time. Producers are still figuring out the best funding and distribution models and merch models to make money; creators are still calibrating how queer these shows can be and still be popular; actors are still figuring out how to do BGP (business gay performances) without having fans interfere in their private lives off the clock. Writers are still trying to figure out how to write 12-episode arcs that don't drag in the middle or fumble the ending (which is also not new). The tension between established ships, fan expectations, and genre requirements has honestly been there almost the whole time, though the reverberations of missteps is louder now because of the larger fanbase that is (comparatively) more plugged in to live viewing. The core question in BL has always been 'how do we make this marketable', and that unsurprisingly hasn't changed, though the answer to that question has over time, if that makes sense?

Shows

Do the shows feel different? As a whole, I'd say yes. The biggest differences are of course total quantity and overall quality, but the actual distribution of % of shows that have high(er) production values (i.e. quality) feels close to the same--it was close to 50/50 in the late 2010s and now is maybe more like 40/60 with a higher percentage coming from more smaller production companies. But the numbers we're talking about are something like 15 shows in e.g. 2018 and something more like 50 shows in 2023 (being vague because there are shows that people could argue over whether they should count). The quality overall has increased, even the pulps look better, sound better, and tend to feel a little bit more put together than the pulps of even 2020 (please note that these are all relative qualifiers, most of these shows are still not objectively good). 2020 in particular was a watershed moment for high production value BLs; we get colorists and special effects artists, and sometimes decent sound production now!

There has also been an improvement in terms of what is depicted and how certain subject matter is treated very generally, though I think that's still in flux. Things like evil ex girlfriends are less common than they were and the women in BL are more likely (in general, still not always) to be treated as realized characters. We've gotten more and better femme representation in ensemble shows, and the "gay for you" trope is much less common. Consent is now considered sexy and is much more common than it was; non-consent as "sexy" has eroded and is much less common. Things that used to happen in almost every BL now happen in a much lower percentage. I also feel a little bit less worried about some of the actors on pulp sets because there is more general scrutiny about things like minor actors, intimacy coordination, BGP (business gay performance) expectations, and sexual exploitation. Overall, show recommendations these days come with fewer caveats.

The assumption that if you worked with someone on a BL once you would stay with them as an established pairing was surprisingly early in BL; I don't know if it's just because there were a few shows that had side pairings then get main shows, so the actors did work together on a few shows in a row, which made them feel established, or whether it's because the BGP started early to build hype both before and after shows aired, or whether audiences just made homophobic assumptions about how if two actors had chemistry they had to be gay for each other, and otherwise nobody would want to "play gay" more than once, or would want to have to kiss too many other men....in any case, there were huge scandals and blow-ups around this in BL on even the earliest shows, and some early shows were snubbed because of the pairing alone. Similarly, it was established very early in BL (i.e. 2016-17) that an unhappy ending for a pair would result in your show being panned; cheating was also a guaranteed flop in BL circles (though some ensemble shows that had gay relationships in them such as Friend Zone did fine with cheating plots and unhappy endings). Overall it feels like some things were only depicted in early Thai BL and creators have avoided them since due to the audience reception at the time. I will say, generally, that there have now been enough examples of people in a "branded pair" moving on to a new pair or multiple shows, that it feels less like a death knell to a BL career if one of the actors says they no longer wanted to make BLs, or if they switched companies.

I pay a lot of attention to queerness in BL, and that has changed a little bit too, though not in the way I expected. I had been expecting a more clear and steady trajectory in BL, but we've instead had real swings, and I've realized there will just always be shows that feel more or less actually gay or queer than others, and that's ok. Early Thai shows really spoiled us for good queer content, GayOK Bangkok and Diary of Tootsies are still shows by which i measure what we get now, and both of those are from 2016. I would say that more "mainstream" BL (i.e. by one of the major production companies) hit what turned out to be queer saturation around 2020 and that's where I was most surprised not see a more clear trajectory; rather than things getting more queer from there, I'd say a greater percentage of shows overall feel more queer, but we haven't (and I now suspect won't) reach the queerness we had in Thai tv in 2016. That being said, my secret running list of things I want to see in BL gets shorter every year as entries get crossed off, so I would say the range of queer experience is slowly getting captured as more content continues to be made by a wider range of production houses (PrEP being mentioned in a mainstream show is my white whale).

I know some people assume that shows are higher heat now overall, but I don't think that's true. I do think Thai television producers and directors have overalll gotten better at capturing sensuality, and acting workshops have improved chemistry-building overall too. But from what I can tell the ratio of high head and low heat content is still pretty similar to what it's always been, maybe slightly higher (e.g. at a quick glance I'd guesstimate 30% of shows had a sex scene in 2018 vs 40% in 2023).

Fandom

The main differences in fandom from the really early days and now are the ways we, as international fans, are able to engage with each other, with thai audiences at the same time, and with content creators, and the entitlement that comes with that. In the 2010s we were almost always watching after Thai airing, with either fansubs or, later, official subs, trailing online releases by days or weeks, which themselves may have trailed the Thailand airing date by days or weeks or sometimes even months. That became less true around 2019ish, and especially in 2020 when I think Thai producers were desperate to reach audiences during the start of the pandemic (and when audiences were desperate for something to distract us from what was happening in real life).

As a fan in the mid-late 2010s, watching something was either unofficial via a fansubber, or you were wading through hundreds of Thai comments to find anyone else writing about the shows in English. Now, it's actually rare we don't have immediate international distribution, though it may be paid. If the subs are not up at the same time as the official upload, even on free sites, fans get furious. It's a bit surreal to see people complain about waiting a few hours for subtitles, especially on YouTube, when we sometimes waited months for a series to finish being subbed (not to say people didn't complain back then too, because they sure did! But there were fewer international fans overall, and it wasn't an expectation that there would be subs, so fewer people complained when it happened). This meant that a lot of people only watched shows when they were complete, and people were not watching with any kind of synchronicity.

With international fans moving into simultaneous watching with Thai audiences, we suddenly had the chance to talk about shows as they were airing and affect the conversations about them and even, sometimes, the decisions. Folks seem to have differing opinions about what makes a BL, and what makes a BL good, and they are vocal about when a show doesn't meet their standard. This has always been true, but the strong opinions have more of an effect on the discourse when they're expressed in real-time to the show being aired. Also, when we have literally 3x the number of Thai shows being aired (nevermind other countries which have also increased), it seems so much more egregious to me to complain if a single show doesn't meet your particular taste. Just go watch something else! That was less possible in 2016, but now nobody has any excuse lol Please note here that I'm not saying shows should not be criticized. But when you have one loud faction saying shows should have nothing but innocent kisses if any skinship at all and showing more is distasteful and possibly homophobic, and another faction saying a show should be panned if they don't have at least one sex scene and if there is no good kiss it's homophobic, I don't know where that leaves content creators but I see the tension and how it sometimes results in my least favourite tropes like "blushing maiden" even after a couple has canonically had sex. These factions have always existed in BL fandom, this is not new, they just both seem particularly silly now with so much content to choose from.

The shows that get attention and the shows that get snubbed feel the same too, in all honesty. You can ask yourself the following questions:

Is the show a little slower paced?

Are the story beats less melodramatic?

Do its characters feel more human?

Do they feel more queer?

Is it a comedy?

Is there any risk of an unhappy ending?

Do people not think one of the lead actors is hot?

Do people ship one of the lead actors with someone who isn't his costar?

Do people have to do anything other than go to YouTube to watch it?

If the answer is yes to any of those questions, and especially to the last one, fewer people will be watching, even if the show is good. That's always been true. [Shows I'm thinking about when I say that: Make it Right, He's Coming to Me, My Ride, You're My Sky, Oxygen (though the sides in this one are also at fault), YYY, Something in my Room, Ghost Host Ghost House, Dear Doctor I'm Coming for Soul, Cooking Crush.] All this is to say, there have always been shows that have been ignored, though I agree with you OP that with more shows airing, more are being ignored at any given time.

The other thing is that when a show is good, it doesn't necessarily invite discourse. The messes are often what encourage people to dig in, fill in gaps, linger in the adrenaline. The part that does feel different is also related to the increase in genre BLs; genre stuff in general tends to get more attention in fandom spaces, and the way people are functioning as fans feels different in that they're bringing the way they interact with genre content to BL as BL has started having larger and better funded genre content. I'm thinking about those early genre BLs like He She It, My Dream, Love Poison, Golden Blood, So Much In Love, Why R U....we started getting genre shows in BL in I think 2017 and basically had 1-2 a year until 2020ish and then it increased from there; and the ones that had funding and decent distribution got engagement until they started going off the rails, and then they had even more engagement and then fell off. I don't think it's a coincidence that the shows last year that got people to write meta were La Pluie, Be My Favorite, and I Feel You Linger in the Air. When a show is building a world, there's more to say and interrogate about it, and when a genre show fails, it can fail more spectacularly than a regular romance story. The most popular BL shows used to all be straight-up BL bubble romances, but I think genre shows really started to take over a greater percentage of the popular spots in 2022 and 2023. Again, the main difference here is that there used to be 1-2 stand-out shows per year, and now there are closer to 6+ per year, and as we got more stand-out shows the variety of what type of show stood out as popular has expanded. I do think the overall percentage of shows that are more standard romance plots has reduced, partly because Thai production companies are running out of popular y-novels to adapt. So I'm anticipating we'll continue to get more genre content going forward, and maybe a higher percentage of original works too.

Shows I'm Enjoying Right Now

Right now, the Thai shows airing that I'm watching are:

Cooking Crush

Dead Friend Forever

Cherry Magic Thailand

City of Stars

The Sign

Playboyy

PitBabe

7 Days before Valentine

For Him

Of those, I'd currently most recommend Cooking Crush as a generic BL recommendation. Dead Friend Forever is very good, but is not a romance and is difficult for some to watch (there are a lot of dark themes in addition to the gore and scary bits).

Cooking Crush is doing so many things I love. I've written about the way it's set up its major conflict to be amongst the friend group here, and way the show is depicting communication between the two main characters and how they improve their communication with one another as they get closer here. Two of my biggest BL pet peeves are a conflict for the sake of a dramatic penultimate episode that ignores or retcons a character's growth or the building of trust that a couple has already gone through in the series, so the fact that this show is working so hard to establish strong communication between its leads and then setting up the significant drama to actually about friendship rather than romance is something I cannot overstate my excitement about. To tie this back into what I wrote above, this reminds me of Diary of Tootsies and I mean that in the best possible way.

Dead Friend Foreever is, like I mentioned above, not a romance; it's a slasher horror melodrama with a very well established mystery, an ensemble cast of mostly hateable characters (which I admit isn't usually my thing, but since they're likely all going to die as a result of the genre they're in I'm finding that more tolerable than usual, and there is at least one character I like). DFF did a great job of structuring the story for the ultimate payoff of information reveals. There are a lot of shows that have been messing with non-linear storytelling recently, Cooking Crush being one of the ones that actually does this poorly in my opinion, but Dead Friend Forever effectively uses non-linear storytelling so that we find out important pieces of information about particular characters at a time when that information will have the most emotional impact on what is happening in the "present" of the storyline. Every time there is a reveal, it informs what we've already seen, recontextualizes it, and means we understand some of the character motivations and actions differently from when we saw them the first time. I mentioned above that there are dark themes in this show; one of the things that I really like about this show is that the impact of class is not glossed over, and that the consequences of these events feel very real for the characters; people do terrible things in this show, but these actions are not treated lightly by the show itself.

You'd think these two shows would have nothing in common, but there are things that they share that put them both in my top category. Generally, in both of these shows, the character arcs are clear and logical; when a character does something, even if I don't like the action itself, I can understand exactly why they that and can see how it matches where they are in their arc at the time. The shows show change in characters as a result of what they experience, and the relationships in this show really matter. When characters start acting in ways that feel out of character or against their own arc because they have to in order to drive the plot forward, I struggle to remain invested; that's not happening with either of these shows. Both of these shows also treat serious topics with seriousness, and consequences for actions are real and felt by the characters in the show (and if someone gets away with something, the show is clear that this is not just). Nothing has happened that hasn't been signalled or implied earlier. Both shows also have clear class consciousness and represent the disparity caused by classism in a critical/harsh light.

Whew! I think I got to everything you asked. Thanks again for the extremely interesting question!

[howtobecomeadragon]

here's what mlvn's say about their ship and what they want from s5 when they're not feeling defensive about byler:

(these are from a reddit post posted about a month ago with no byler interactions, and these are many of the same people claiming that mlvn is perfect, there are no big issues, etc when byler is brought up as an alternative ship. all of these comments have upvotes and no arguing. they were all on the same page with no defensiveness about the perceived shortcomings of the relationship and wishing for better for mlvn in s5.)

many acknowledgments that the ship has been sidelined

acknowledgment that El does NOT compliment Mike. acknowledgment that Mike's self esteem is tied to El, although there is no awareness that this not a good thing. they want to see El supporting Mike in some way, which means they know we're currently missing this. they want to see just 20+ seconds of Mike and El enjoying each other's company. "more than 20 seconds" bc the show does this with other couples but they're still waiting to see that with mlvn. 🤨🤨 "it's only fair." ooookay, and who always says shit about fan service?

acknowledgment that mlvn as a couple has sucked for the last two seasons, for half the show, for the entire time that they've officially been a couple. always going back to the romantic moment of "El fell into his arms in the sauna test" which was not a scripted moment, MBB literally collapsed and Finn caught her. always going back to El being protective, i.e. making sure he doesn't die, which she does for everyone in these scenes.

this was a really interesting one bc I think a lot of bylers think that mlvns want to see improvement from Mike’s behavior in the relationship, but most were more focused on El needing to do more.

"she hasn't demonstrated concern and empathy so much for Mike in the last two seasons" 🤨 then why do you ship it 🤔

"I don't doubt how much El adores and care for Mike but she needs to show it better/more" 🤔🤔 ohhhhh okay, so you have decided that El adores Mike and are frustrated that this isn't reflected well in El's behavior since they've been a couple. you made up your mind probably in 2016 and are frustrated by the lack of follow-up and progression in their relationship since 2017. gotcha. 😇😇

mlvn's blame the writing for El appearing to have inconsistent motivations and characterization bc she isn't a perfect girlfriend to Mike that doesn't act like she's head over heels. hmmm. 🤔

someone seems to be about halfway there in realizing that maybe with her lack of a good foundation of socialization when she entered into a romantic relationship, she doesn't have the standard emotional growth, but not quite extending that as far as "maybe she should grow a little on her own first." reminder that when a byler says something like this, they're accused of ableism and "disregarding what El wants"

acknowledgment that we have not gotten to see mlvn functioning as a couple and that we don't know HOW they function. we don't know their bf/gf dynamics. after 4 seasons. mlvns are often stating to bylers that their endgame ship is already set, all that's left is a happy ending, but in reality they are still hoping to see how their ship functions as a couple, to see one half of the ship compliment the other half. they don't doubt that they are endgame, but they're crossing their fingers for just bare minimum coupley interactions, while all the other established couples get those. I wonder why 🤨🤨

acknowledgment that the duffers haven't been interested in portraying mlvn as a perfect couple: "flakey history"

claims that El was more mature in s1 than s3 and s4. WILD coming from mlvns that call bylers sexist. "more mature" bc she seemed to like Mike more. El not acting like a perfect girlfriend to Mike is bad writing and a total mess apparently. totallllly not purposeful at all, nope 🙄

more acknowledgment that El hasn't been a great girlfriend to Mike. some overlapping reasons with bylers (she's not complimenting Mike, she never apologizes), some not (the root of this is bc she takes on too much responsibility for everyone's safety...?).

acknowledgment that the way mlvn is functioning now is NOT a 2 way functioning relationship and that El is NOT meeting Mike's emotional needs. no acknowledgment of who does meet Mike's emotional need, though. 😏

acknowledgment that their relationship thus far has been bogged down with "unnecessary" arguments and drama

acknowledgment that they don't really discuss their feelings now and there is air that still needs to be cleared

acknowledgment that the writing is good otherwise in the show but for soooome reason it lacks when it specifically focuses on mlvn's relationship. 🤨🤨 again, still hoping for those scraps of "how do these two even play off each other" in the final season and the third season of mlvn together as an official couple.

all of this to say really: the super aggressive mlvns on reddit, for the most part, know that they're exaggerating the idyllic nature of mlvn's relationship when they're arguing against bylers. they thought mlvn was really cute in s1 and s2 and have been waiting 6 years since 2017 for their relationship to be cute again, and they're frustrated and just wanting the bare minimum in s5.

they're still waiting for the basics about "cute moments that last more than 20 seconds," they're still waiting to see how they function as a couple despite them dating for 2 seasons now. they're still waiting for El to act like a good girlfriend and not just a "superhero."

[jadeazora]

A new Message from the Masters Team is out!

New Mysterious Stones Chapter (A Fateful Reunion) coming on May 1, 2024! You'll need to have collected a total of 600 Mysterious Stones to unlock this story's area. Volo and Rei finally meet face-to-face on Pasio. What will Rei do in response to Volo's intentions?

In addition, they've made improvements that will allow you to easily check successful teams when you are unable to win a battle, and also revamped each 5⭐-Guaranteed Sync Pair Scout found in the General tab of the Ticket Scout menu so that you can scout either x5 or x10. (It sounds to me like you would need to have collected 150 to 300 5⭐ Scout Tickets.)

Rika will star in Story Event Good Ol' Rika Here beginning on Apr26, and by teaming up with Rika & Clodsire from their Poké Fair Scout that will be available at the same time as the event, you'll be able to invite Rika as a Guest to the Trainer Lodge! You can also get a Clodsire photo frame for the Photo Creator by teaming up with them. Rika can be invited as a Guest to the Trainer Lodge starting May1.

Rika & Clodsire are a Ground-type Support Sync Pair. Their EX Role is Field. Their Rampant Mud Slap Buddy Move can lower all opponents' accuracy by two stat ranks and leave them poisoned. It can also create a Ground Zone and increase all allies' Physical Moves ↑ Next and Special Moves ↑ Next effects by two ranks each. They can also use their Think Fast! Trainer move to raise all allies' Attack and Sp. Atk by two stat ranks. Plus, they have a Passive Skill that restores all allies' HP when Rika & Clodsire get hit by an attack move, and another Passive Skill that lowers one of the following stats of an opponent that attacked them by two stat ranks at random when hit by an attack move: Attack, Defense, Sp. Atk, Sp. Def, or Speed.

Three different Triple Feature Poké Fair Scouts will begin on Apr27, featuring Sync Pairs such as Skyla (Anniversary 2022) & Tornadus, Palmer & Regigigas, and Gloria (Dojo Uniform) & Urshifu! For each lineup, there will be a regular Triple Feature Poké Fair Scout, as well as a paid-gems-only Triple Feature Poké Fair Scout that comes with a Roll Cake present. Each featured Fair-Exclusive Sync Pair will have an EX Role added, so we hope you look forward to it. (Note: Palmer & Regigigas already have an EX Role.) Also, looking forward to being able to boost Lysandre 👀

The sequel to the ongoing Costume Event New Heroes Are Born will start on Apr30. Two figures have appeared before our heroes as villains! (Cool how we're getting the PokeStar Studios alts as villains, but pretty predictable. Would have been cool to see some actual villains getting in on the fun, add that sense of urgency/seriousness, but was thinking it might be too much of an ask lol)

The next High Score Event "Water and Fairy Conqueror" will begin on May 7, 2024. This High Score Event will have two recommended types. Taking into account the difference in battle difficulty based on the available Sync Pairs of the recommended types for this High Score Event, the maximum number of points needed to obtain the featured reward will be changed from 180,000 to 200,000. They plan to make more adjustments to this point total based on the difficulty of future events as well.

Also scheduled are returns of Solo Event Pasio Gold Rush, Daily Battle The Golden Magikarp, and Story Event A Golden Future, as well as the addition of an Ultimate Battle and a new Trainer Files.

The next message is scheduled for late May.

Edit, here's the event schedule from Reddit:

[unhappy-last-resort]

Astral Desires (Yandere Watanabe x Commandant GN Reader)

Warnings: Obsessive behavior, stalking(?), sneaking into your room without your knowledge, mentions non-con fingering, touches you in your sleep but nothing nsfw

A/N: This was sitting in my drafts for too long. Inspired by that out of pocket secret his astral frame has, that as far as I know, is not given any context or explanation so I assume he's just secretly insane and honestly. Fair.

Not proof read, please lmk any mistakes or improvements.

The lounge was quiet, save for an occasional patrol by the Gray Ravens checking in on their Commandant and making sure nothing was out of the ordinary. They've failed.

Watanabe knows this because Lee hasn't noticed his presence at all and he's willing to bet that he'll leave without checking every nook and cranny. Maybe one day he'll teach him to properly check for enemies without disturbing the Commandant, maybe. Right now though, their lack of awareness made sneaking into your room all the easier.

Lee appeared in his vision once again, doing his final cursory check of the lounge. Watanabe moved with him, staying crouched while evading his line of sight and the lounge security camera until Lee finally exited the room. Thankfully, Babylonia upgraded his Astral frame significantly, replacing his old stealth module with a new one and even adding additional modules and settings to enhance his abilities, turning what was an outdated frame into one that provided him with more of an edge over enemies and proved useful in ensuring a few deals for the Forsaken went smoothly. He should thank you for encouraging him to take it despite his dislike of Babylonia, he thinks to himself. Having verified the coast was clear, and knowing that the none of the other Ravens will make their rounds again for quite some time, Watanabe quickly opened the door to your dorm and entered, silently observing your dorm room as the door shut silently behind him.

Watanabe rolled his shoulders slightly, now he could relax a little more. He stood up straight and slowly walked to your sleeping form, not bothering to hide his presence save for his sound suppression module. You had a thin T-shirt on and he didn't care to guess what the sheets were hiding, he already knew. The artificial moonlight shining through your window illuminated your face beautifully, although he hated that you left the curtains open like that, he had to admit that he never tired of this sight. This was his and his alone.

During the daytime hours you're always putting on a brave face, keeping it together for your squad and others around you so they don't see the way your fingers trembled ever so slightly during the Space Station mission, or your anxiety as you're being shuttled to another mission, wondering if it's your last. At night however, it was different. When you think you're alone you'll let down your high walls and let your shoulders drop under the invisible pressure you always feel with every step. Sometimes you cry, stare at a wall in thought, or write in your journal. Watanabe always liked when you did that, because that's where all your unfiltered thoughts and feelings are put down. He's read every single page more times than he could count. It brought a faint smile to his lips, thinking about all the things he knew about you. You never opened up to him unlike the humans at the Forsaken HQ and his patience started to wear thin after a while.

He couldn't help it. He wanted- no, needed to know you more. Who were you under the heavy title of "commandant"? What were you like before? What would you be doing if it weren't for the Punishing Virus? Would you be happy if you lived on Earth, or do you prefer to live among the stars? Are you loyal to Babylonia or your companions? He wanted to learn so much about you, but you always kept a distance. He could feel it, he could feel an invisible wall you would put up, barring him from getting any closer and from your secrets slipping out, but you...you were like a flower blooming in the desert. Beautiful, resilient, and wonderous, can you blame him? Can you blame him for finally cracking and taking things into his own hands?

He moves towards your window and draws your curtains closed, careful not to be visible from any potential passerby. After all, your sleeping form and all the thoughts and expressions you don't let anyone else see is for his eyes and M.I.N.D. alone. He walks towards your bed slowly, as though he might wake you even though he knew you wouldn't, not even if he pried you open with his fingers. He only knows that because it done it a few times, oh how sweet your soft little whimpers were as you would squirm and writhe in your sleep. The memories tug a small smile out of the corner of Watanabe's lips and his eyes instinctually drag away from your face and down to your thighs at the thought.

Watanabe gently brushes the back of his fingers against your cheek, admiring the way your warmth seeps into his synthetic skin so easily, making his M.I.N.D. hum in satisfaction. He wonders if you'd ever let him this close to you if you were awake, he tilts his head in thought as his fingers brush your skin. Perhaps it's best that you don't, your position as a commandant might be put in danger if you allowed him to display his affection for you this way in public.

He pauses. Affection? Is this really affection, or just obsession at this point? He'd throw away everything for you if you asked him to. He would abandon everything if it meant he could have you, if it meant you'd devote yourself to him the way he does to you. God, if such a thing exists then grant him this one prayer.

Let him stay by your side until your youth fades and your body wilts and withers. And in your final moments, he'll capture your conscious and your memories so he can keep you and protect you until eternity.

Yes. Watanabe smiles softly as he gently lays next you, inhaling your scent and feeling your warmth. You are so naive, so trusting, but it's alright. He'll keep you safe. He's been around for longer, seen the deluge both humans and corrupted bring, he knows what's best. He knows what's best for you, he just needs you to trust him more. Watanabe slowly leans forward and softly kisses your cheek as his nose brushes against your skin.

"I'll keep you safe, Commandant. Even if you struggle against me, I'll make you come to me in the end."

[underscorehealy]

producer in crime - matty healy x labelmate!au

chapter 1: part of the band

wc: 1.1k

cw: none

an: hiya!! this is the new and improved au i've been working on and i'm sorry again for deleting the last one. it really just wasn't it for me. but i'm so stoked abt this one!! this was a lot of fun to write and i genuinely hope you like it as much as i do :)

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

you trip over the main flight of stairs as you enter the main room of the studio. today's the first day of production on your new album, interstella. the name came to you like that, mainly because your name is stella. you'd never really worked in a proper studio before, as before this, you had usually made all of your previous works on your laptop in bed. so naturally, this was a huge deal.

you'd recently been signed to indie label, dirty hit, who is home to a few notable names like the japanese house, beabadoobee, and the one you're most excited about, the 1975. they were such a big inspiration for you to even start making music. but you had been friends with amber (aka the japanese house) for a few years now so when she introduced you to jamie, the label owner, you were ecstatic to finally have a place to showcase your talents. so some hope and a few paperwork signatures later, you were finally about to record your debut album.

"you okay?" a deep, male voice said as he watched you trip over the stairs. "oh yeah!! thanks" you chuckle. when you look up, you notice george daniel, the drummer and producer for the 1975. you had felt honored to be in his presence. jamie had usually set new artists up with george and matty healy because of their level of skill but you still felt incredibly honored.

"yeah thanks!" you catch your breath with a slight blush of embarrassment. george leads you into the studio and you're automatically in love with the sight in front of you. recording booth, guitars galore, it's everything you've dreamed of and more. "george. nice to meet you. first time in a studio?" he says giving off a cheeky grin. "yeah. pretty nervous actually. from a laptop in bed to a full studio really is a big progression." "yeah, been there." you show george some of the writing you've done and the demos you've made when all of a sudden you hear running footsteps rushing into the room.

"fuck. am i late?" a decently tall man (taller than you anyway), with coffee brown curls that look like little croissants at the top of his head and tapioca colored eyes, completely out of breath while almost dropping his guitar case pronounces. "yeah, where the fuck were you mate?" george shoots the man a glare. "alarm didn't go off." "mhm. sure." george passively says. "matty, this is stella. stella, this is matty." you and matty both introduce yourself to each other. from your understanding (what jamie told you), matty is co-producing the album with george, and providing backups on whatever he needs to. you involve matty in the discussion of presenting demos and having them listen to some of the voice notes you recorded on your phone.

both matty and george seem pretty impressed on what you already have. now you just have to bring all of the demos to life, but you have the fantastic duo to help you along the way so in reality you're incredibly lucky to be in this position.

today was mainly spent going over the album, listening to demos, playing around with different sounds and coming up with ideas to make the album even better. though you would be lying if you didn't feel a bit awkward in this position. you're with 2/4 of one of the most popular bands in the world who are so much more experienced than you. to be fair, they've been doing this for 20 something years so next to them, you feel like a tiny ant next to a big tree.

"yo, scarlett!! i have this little intro guitar idea thingy for the 6th song. you wanna hear??" matty shouts from the other corner of the room but you're too busy thinking about the potential of the album and hoping you'll make it work. you feel a sudden slap on your shoulder. "you good?" he says as he lets out a chuckle. "oh! yeah! totally fine! what's up?"

after you guys are done at the studio for today, you get a text from jamie just asking about how today went and setting up a label meeting to talk about the album, it's visuals and the future of your career. you tell him your down for a meeting on monday, which is only 3 days away.

george is the first to leave the studio, having to go take mayhem on a walk. "you excited?" you hear matty's dark but somewhat girly voice across from you, while putting out a cigarette. "yeah definitely!! as well as completely and utterly nervous at the same time. this is my first time ever in like a professional studio so this is a giant leap for me." you say as you continuously spin around in the spinny chair. "yeah, feel ya there." matty says. "we've worked with small artists a lot, especially with ones that are just getting used to the industry. this shit is crazy so it's good to have mentors that can start you out and guide you but its not like we're gonna leave you off after to fend for yourself. hell, george produced ambers last album and she's been doing this for a bit, you know?" "i can't really say i know but i'm totally grateful to have you and george guiding me." you say as matty shoots you a smile .

"well, stella, it was great meeting you!!" he says as you hands you a small paper slip. "here's my number just in case you need anything. cya around!" you didn't get the chance to say goodbye before he packed up his guitar case and left but you were too exhausted so after he left, you followed not too far behind. you hopped in your car and headed off back to your flat.

right after you enter your front door, your cat, eloise, nuzzles up against your ankle and you can't help but laugh and snap a picture. you pick her up and head to your couch, plopping you and eloise in front of the tv. nothing good on, but you decide on some dumb reality show anyway. you pick up your phone and shoot matty a text.

(your texts | matty's texts)

hi!! this is stella btw :)

yo, you good??

yeah. everythings okay. just wondering if you wanted to have a coffee or something before the meeting monday.

yeah, that sounds great actually. 9am-ish??

yeah, sounds great. cya there!!

you smile with excitement filled in your eyes as matty reads your last message sent to him. and at that moment, you feel incredibly lucky to be in this position and to produce your album with 2 of the most inspiring people on the planet.