#actually more like 2 for 9. reviewing the claims

[fatliberation]

they have a point though. you wouldn't need everyone to accommodate you if you just lost weight, but you're too lazy to stick to a healthy diet and exercise. it's that simple. I'd like to see you back up your claims, but you have no proof. you have got to stop lying to yourselves and face the facts

Must I go through this again? Fine. FINE. You guys are working my nerves today. You want to talk about facing the facts? Let's face the fucking facts.

In 2022, the US market cap of the weight loss industry was $75 billion [1, 3]. In 2021, the global market cap of the weight loss industry was estimated at $224.27 billion [2]. 

In 2020, the market shrunk by about 25%, but rebounded and then some since then [1, 3] By 2030, the global weight loss industry is expected to be valued at $405.4 billion [2]. If diets really worked, this industry would fall overnight. 

1. LaRosa, J. March 10, 2022. "U.S. Weight Loss Market Shrinks by 25% in 2020 with Pandemic, but Rebounds in 2021." Market Research Blog. 2. Staff. February 09, 2023. "[Latest] Global Weight Loss and Weight Management Market Size/Share Worth." Facts and Factors Research. 3. LaRosa, J. March 27, 2023. "U.S. Weight Loss Market Partially Recovers from the Pandemic." Market Research Blog.

Over 50 years of research conclusively demonstrates that virtually everyone who intentionally loses weight by manipulating their eating and exercise habits will regain the weight they lost within 3-5 years. And 75% will actually regain more weight than they lost [4].

4. Mann, T., Tomiyama, A.J., Westling, E., Lew, A.M., Samuels, B., Chatman, J. (2007). "Medicare’s Search For Effective Obesity Treatments: Diets Are Not The Answer." The American Psychologist, 62, 220-233. U.S. National Library of Medicine, Apr. 2007.

The annual odds of a fat person attaining a so-called “normal” weight and maintaining that for 5 years is approximately 1 in 1000 [5].

5. Fildes, A., Charlton, J., Rudisill, C., Littlejohns, P., Prevost, A.T., & Gulliford, M.C. (2015). “Probability of an Obese Person Attaining Normal Body Weight: Cohort Study Using Electronic Health Records.” American Journal of Public Health, July 16, 2015: e1–e6.

Doctors became so desperate that they resorted to amputating parts of the digestive tract (bariatric surgery) in the hopes that it might finally result in long-term weight-loss. Except that doesn’t work either. [6] And it turns out it causes death [7],  addiction [8], malnutrition [9], and suicide [7].

6. Magro, Daniéla Oliviera, et al. “Long-Term Weight Regain after Gastric Bypass: A 5-Year Prospective Study - Obesity Surgery.” SpringerLink, 8 Apr. 2008. 7. Omalu, Bennet I, et al. “Death Rates and Causes of Death After Bariatric Surgery for Pennsylvania Residents, 1995 to 2004.” Jama Network, 1 Oct. 2007.  8. King, Wendy C., et al. “Prevalence of Alcohol Use Disorders Before and After Bariatric Surgery.” Jama Network, 20 June 2012.  9. Gletsu-Miller, Nana, and Breanne N. Wright. “Mineral Malnutrition Following Bariatric Surgery.” Advances In Nutrition: An International Review Journal, Sept. 2013.

Evidence suggests that repeatedly losing and gaining weight is linked to cardiovascular disease, stroke, diabetes and altered immune function [10].

10. Tomiyama, A Janet, et al. “Long‐term Effects of Dieting: Is Weight Loss Related to Health?” Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 6 July 2017.

Prescribed weight loss is the leading predictor of eating disorders [11].

11. Patton, GC, et al. “Onset of Adolescent Eating Disorders: Population Based Cohort Study over 3 Years.” BMJ (Clinical Research Ed.), 20 Mar. 1999.

The idea that “obesity” is unhealthy and can cause or exacerbate illnesses is a biased misrepresentation of the scientific literature that is informed more by bigotry than credible science [12]. 

12. Medvedyuk, Stella, et al. “Ideology, Obesity and the Social Determinants of Health: A Critical Analysis of the Obesity and Health Relationship” Taylor & Francis Online, 7 June 2017.

“Obesity” has no proven causative role in the onset of any chronic condition [13, 14] and its appearance may be a protective response to the onset of numerous chronic conditions generated from currently unknown causes [15, 16, 17, 18].

13. Kahn, BB, and JS Flier. “Obesity and Insulin Resistance.” The Journal of Clinical Investigation, Aug. 2000. 14. Cofield, Stacey S, et al. “Use of Causal Language in Observational Studies of Obesity and Nutrition.” Obesity Facts, 3 Dec. 2010.  15. Lavie, Carl J, et al. “Obesity and Cardiovascular Disease: Risk Factor, Paradox, and Impact of Weight Loss.” Journal of the American College of Cardiology, 26 May 2009.  16. Uretsky, Seth, et al. “Obesity Paradox in Patients with Hypertension and Coronary Artery Disease.” The American Journal of Medicine, Oct. 2007.  17. Mullen, John T, et al. “The Obesity Paradox: Body Mass Index and Outcomes in Patients Undergoing Nonbariatric General Surgery.” Annals of Surgery, July 2005. 18. Tseng, Chin-Hsiao. “Obesity Paradox: Differential Effects on Cancer and Noncancer Mortality in Patients with Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus.” Atherosclerosis, Jan. 2013.

Fatness was associated with only 1/3 the associated deaths that previous research estimated and being “overweight” conferred no increased risk at all, and may even be a protective factor against all-causes mortality relative to lower weight categories [19].

19. Flegal, Katherine M. “The Obesity Wars and the Education of a Researcher: A Personal Account.” Progress in Cardiovascular Diseases, 15 June 2021.

Studies have observed that about 30% of so-called “normal weight” people are “unhealthy” whereas about 50% of so-called “overweight” people are “healthy”. Thus, using the BMI as an indicator of health results in the misclassification of some 75 million people in the United States alone [20]. 

20. Rey-López, JP, et al. “The Prevalence of Metabolically Healthy Obesity: A Systematic Review and Critical Evaluation of the Definitions Used.” Obesity Reviews : An Official Journal of the International Association for the Study of Obesity, 15 Oct. 2014.

While epidemiologists use BMI to calculate national obesity rates (nearly 35% for adults and 18% for kids), the distinctions can be arbitrary. In 1998, the National Institutes of Health lowered the overweight threshold from 27.8 to 25—branding roughly 29 million Americans as fat overnight—to match international guidelines. But critics noted that those guidelines were drafted in part by the International Obesity Task Force, whose two principal funders were companies making weight loss drugs [21].

21. Butler, Kiera. “Why BMI Is a Big Fat Scam.” Mother Jones, 25 Aug. 2014. 

Body size is largely determined by genetics [22].

22. Wardle, J. Carnell, C. Haworth, R. Plomin. “Evidence for a strong genetic influence on childhood adiposity despite the force of the obesogenic environment” American Journal of Clinical Nutrition Vol. 87, No. 2, Pages 398-404, February 2008.

Healthy lifestyle habits are associated with a significant decrease in mortality regardless of baseline body mass index [23].  

23. Matheson, Eric M, et al. “Healthy Lifestyle Habits and Mortality in Overweight and Obese Individuals.” Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine : JABFM, U.S. National Library of Medicine, 25 Feb. 2012.

Weight stigma itself is deadly. Research shows that weight-based discrimination increases risk of death by 60% [24].

24. Sutin, Angela R., et al. “Weight Discrimination and Risk of Mortality .” Association for Psychological Science, 25 Sept. 2015.

Fat stigma in the medical establishment [25] and society at large arguably [26] kills more fat people than fat does [27, 28, 29].

25. Puhl, Rebecca, and Kelly D. Bronwell. “Bias, Discrimination, and Obesity.” Obesity Research, 6 Sept. 2012. 26. Engber, Daniel. “Glutton Intolerance: What If a War on Obesity Only Makes the Problem Worse?” Slate, 5 Oct. 2009.  27. Teachman, B. A., Gapinski, K. D., Brownell, K. D., Rawlins, M., & Jeyaram, S. (2003). Demonstrations of implicit anti-fat bias: The impact of providing causal information and evoking empathy. Health Psychology, 22(1), 68–78. 28. Chastain, Ragen. “So My Doctor Tried to Kill Me.” Dances With Fat, 15 Dec. 2009. 29. Sutin, Angelina R, Yannick Stephan, and Antonio Terraciano. “Weight Discrimination and Risk of Mortality.” Psychological Science, 26 Nov. 2015.

There's my "proof." Where is yours?

[kannady]

do you remember me too?

pairing: sylus x mc reader

synopsis: love and deepspace was a newfound obsession of yours. you installed the game shortly after sylus was released as a love interest. it'd be safe to say he was the reason you installed the app. however, finals week was approaching and you had to say goodbye to your favourite game. not for long, ofcourse. but you decide to login for the last time to check the new event.

a/n: hello everyone! this is my first LADS ffc so please bear with me, and yep you probably guessed it. the reader somehow ends up inside the game. very typical, ik. but trust me, i have a different take on this. ALSO my first language is not english so please ignore grammer errors. i recheck atleast 10 times and still end up overlooking every mistake. enjoy!

check out all chapters here

Chapter One

DING! DING!

You woke up to the shrill screech of your alarm. Eight already? Time always seemed to slip away faster during exam season. You had no idea when you’d finally dozed off, but judging by the heavy exhaustion clinging to your limbs, it couldn’t have been more than a few hours. No wonder I feel like shit. Groaning, you mustered every ounce of strength to reach out and silence the alarm.

It was Sunday. Golden sunlight spilled through the window, warming your face as birds chirped outside. A gentle breeze rustled through the trees. 

The weather was perfect. Perfect for a picnic. But first, you had to finish your revision before the midday heat set in. Your gaze drifted to your study table, still littered with notes and textbooks exactly as you’d left them last night couple hours ago.

Okay, let’s see… 

You closed your eyes, mentally retracing yesterday’s progress. Finished chapters 5, 6, 8, and 11. With a yawn, you cracked your knuckles, stretched, and forced yourself upright. If I can somehow finish chapters 2, 9, and 10 in two hours, I can reward myself with some outdoor time.

 Grabbing your chemistry book, you flipped to the first page. Three chapters in two hours? Doable. Maybe.

Just as you reached for your phone to check the time, your eyes snagged on the date.

April 12.

OH. MY. GOD. Sylus’s birthday. Your fingers twitched toward the notification banner—then froze.

No. Not yet. The anticipation alone was fuel. If I finish early, I’ll have the whole day to play Love & Deepspace. Let’s do this!

“Mom! Three pancakes, please! I’ll be down in two minutes!” “You always say that—but fine!” Her voice faded as you bolted to the bathroom. True to your word, you slid into your seat at 8:03.

“Slow down, or you’ll choke,” your dad warned, peering over his newspaper. “I thought exams weren’t until next week. Do you have plans?”

“Picnic,” you mumbled around a mouthful of pancake. “But I need to review my notes first.” A glance at the clock—8:12—sent you sprinting back upstairs, your sister’s snicker trailing after you: “Why’s she acting like she’s never seen sunlight before?”

8:03 – Breakfast. 8:13 – Chapter 2. 8:52 – Chapter 2 done. Five-minute break. 8:57 – Chapter 9. 9:27 – Chapter 9 done. Five-minute break. 9:32 – Chapter 10. 10:11 – Chapter 10 done.

Holy shit. I actually did it. A disbelieving laugh escaped you. All this frenzy… for a fictional man. But this wasn’t just any man—this was Sylus. You’d been hoarding diamonds since the Tomorrow’s Catch-22 event, even skipping Zayne and Caleb’s 5-star memories.

 A small sacrifice for the greater good.

You plugged in your phone, then made your bed, folded your sheets, and organized your desk. A sandwich, grapes, and a cold drink went into your bag, along with your sketchpad and pencils. The weather was too good to waste.

Stepping outside, the crisp air kissed your cheeks. Something about today felt… different. The birds’ chirping wasn’t grating for once. Even the neighbor’s usually yappy dog lay sprawled in the sun, too lazy to bark. The park was eerily empty—odd for such a gorgeous day—but you claimed a shady spot beneath a tree.

“The perfect day for my perfect man.” Smiling, you reached for your phone—

A tap on your shoulder.

“AH!” You whirled around. “S-Sorry! You scared me. I didn’t see anyone when I came in.”

The woman winced. “I did call out a few times…” Probably too busy daydreaming about Sylus.

“Have you seen a white cat? I swear I only dropped the leash for a second—” She raked a hand through her hair, scanning the park. “Sorry, no. Want help looking?” “No, no! Enjoy your day.” She dashed off before you could insist.

Weird.

You pulled out your phone—and froze. A cluster of dead pixels marred the corner of the screen. What? It was fine when I left. You’d just bought this thing last month. Did I drop it when she startled me? No, you were sure it had been unharmed until now. Shaking off the unease, you opened Love & Deepspace.

Five minutes passed.

Then ten.

Then fifteen.

“Seriously?!” The screen was frozen. Force-closing the app did nothing. Rebooting took forever. When you finally reopened the game—

“ERROR. PLEASE TRY AGAIN LATER.”

A dozen attempts. Same result.

Defeated, you trudged home, blinking back frustrated tears. After weeks of stress, this was the one thing you’d been clinging to. And now? Nothing. Maybe tomorrow… After all, the event had just started and you had atleast 6 more days. But with exams looming, would you even have time?

The neighbor’s dog was now snoring loudly. Inside, your family still sat at the breakfast table, all eyes snapping to you as you entered.

“Back so soon?” Mom frowned.

Dad lowered his newspaper. “How’d it go?”

“Unless she chickened out,” your sister sing-songed. “What, scared of needles now?”

You dumped your bag on the couch. “Went to the park. My phone’s glitching, so… yeah. Not in the mood anymore.”

“You’re not in the mood for the doctor?” Mom rushed over. “What does your phone have to do with anything?”

Doctor? Needles?

“I was just at the park.”

Your sister howled with laughter. “BAHAHAHA! SHE'S LOST IT!”

Dad set down his paper, removed his glasses, and leveled you with a grave look.

“Your appointment with Dr. Zayne. He scheduled it himself last week.”

Your blood ran cold.

“…Doctor who now?”

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

Hi Miss Raven! I am here today to ask if you have any thoughts on Ortho’s age. I see a lot of people saying that Ortho is mentally a child which is the reason he’s left out of a lot of like x reader stuff which I totally understand why that would be uncomfortable. Sometimes I see people saying that Ortho is actually closer to 16 though? I’m kinda confused now so I wanted your opinion. Thanks and sorry if this is an uncomfortable subject or something.

Like I expressed in this post about Malleus’s mental age, I don’t think there’s a very obvious right or wrong answer to this. To the second anon, please refer to the post I linked to answer your question.

I understand that people can be uncomfortable shipping Ortho with other characters, who are typically teenagers or actual adults, due to how he appears very young. That’s entirely their right to do so, and it’s a valid stance to have. I myself choose to avoid shipping Ortho too, but I have additional reasons that I won’t get into here since it gets sort of personal 😅 However, I also hold the opinion that Ortho is not mentally a child, even if he may physically present as one because of his small stature.

Let’s quickly review the lore behind Ortho and why some fans see him as a child. He’s a technomantic android created by Idia and imbued with the memories of the original Ortho, the younger Shroud brother who passed away in a horrible accident. In 6-75, we learn that Idia was 10 years old at the time of this accident, meaning that Ortho was 2 years younger than him at 8 (since Idia is currently 18 and, in book 7, Ortho is starting his first year at RSA as a 16-year old).

Ortho mentions in his Birthday Gear vignettes that he has the strongest birthday memories of 11 years ago. If we assume Ortho is 16ish now (also stated in his Birthday Gear), this seems to imply that OG!Ortho died after his 5th birthday, perhaps as young as 5 years old. Idia would be 7ish around the time Ortho is 5. Factoring in the 2 years that pass after Ortho’s death, Idia is would be 9-10ish. This creates a potential contradiction, as the S.T.Y.X. researchers appear to claim Idia was 10 at the time of Ortho’s death and not 2 years after it. The only way this works is if they were talking about 10 year-old Idia in the present, but Idia was actually closer to 7-8 when he hacked the security systems 💦 I’m going to assume ghat the “strongest birthday memories” mentioned in the Birthday Gear vignettes simply refers to a very detailed memory due to the happiness OG!Ortho experienced that year, not that it was the last birthday he experienced before death.

It should also be noted that it took Idia roughly 2 years to actually make the technomantic android we now know as Ortho. If we add these 2 years to Ortho's original age at death (5 to 8), he would be around 7-10ish in his new form. For the sake of simplicity, I will assume the older age estimates in the rest of their discussion.

Ortho's official profile lists his height as 148 cm, which is significantly more than the height of the average 10-year old boy (~138.5 cm). His actual height is, however, very close to the average height of a 12-year old boy (149 cm). Ortho at this point also sounds different than the child Ortho we see in Idia's post-OB flashback, indicating that our Ortho is slightly older than at the time of death. Idia most likely designed robo!Ortho to match the age Ortho would have been at, had he lived those 2 years.

Altogether, this, at best, places Ortho at 8 years old minimum and 10, maybe 12 years old maximum. That makes him not even a teenager yet--so why do I think he's actually closer to 16 mentally and not 10-12? Because he knows much more than the average child does and is able to very eloquently verbalize his vast knowledge.

Now, I do think an argument can be made that Ortho only knows as much as he does (including his vocabulary) because of his inherent nature as a robot and not as an organic being. Ah, and here's the crux of the issue: can we judge an android by the same standards as that of a human??? In my eyes, a gifted or genius child cannot compete with the capabilities of a supercomputer. Ortho is equipped with very advanced learning algorithms, which allow him to pick up on and learn quickly--and this is something that I equate with his ability to grow and develop as though he were human. In Fairy Gala If, Ortho defines his own understanding of evolution and applies that concept to his runway walk. Even the emotions that Ortho currently expresses are the result of him learning from the media he consumes and then emulating them. He's formally recognized as a student late in book 6 as well, which effectively makes him a first year (most of which are 16ish). I assume that Ortho even starts to take classes meant for first year high school students at that point, and has no issues with the difficulty of the material. I think that, to label him as 10-12ish or even 8, it unnecessarily infantilizes Ortho minimizes his own advanced ability to learn and grow and change: things that are most definitely human.

I also think that Ortho's behaviors are too mature for a typical child. That's not to say that he's the peak of maturity (let's not forget how often he defaults to trying to laser beam his problems away), but Ortho is typically very logical and relies on cold, hard facts to make optimal decisions. He is also the one that usually moderates Idia and tries to encourage healthy behaviors in him, like socializing, leaving his room, sleeping on time, eating well, trying new things, etc. Ortho is essentially his brother's keeper for a good chunk of the main story and in vignettes (like Ceremonial Robes) and events (Harveston Sledathon, Wish Upon a Star, etc.). This isn't an absolute, of course. I can see people pointing out that Ortho only acts logical because he's a robot, or that little kids are sometimes forced to "grow up" faster due to their pressing circumstances (which, in this case, is Idia and his anxiety). These are valid interpretations too. If memory serves correctly, the students at NRC don't exactly treat Ortho like some baby that wandered onto campus. At most, they tend to just refer to him as Idia's kid brother. ("Kid" here not referring to Ortho literally being a child; it could also be interpreted as "younger" brother or the "younger/little" Shroud.) The few who do make fun of him for looking young tend to be mobs or painted as misunderstanding him (as is the case with Ortho's Ignihyde Gear vignettes). Ortho even seems to be surprised at being mistaken for a child by Diasomnia mobs: "A kid? Oh, you must not know who I am since you're freshmen."

Idia had the liberty to design Ortho's body however he wanted. As previously stated though, it's likely that he modeled the body off of the age of death rather than updating it to reflect a more mature mentality. In other words, Ortho's body doesn't reflect what he knows or how he acts. If I had to give a real world comparison, it's like how there are really short adults--but that doesn't make them any less of an adult just because they're short; they often can't help their bodies being that way. (In Idia's book 7 dream, Ortho at age 16 is still depicted as being short.)

I do think that, to some degree, Ortho is aware that he presents like a child and knows how to use this to his advantage to get his way. He sometimes plays it up to beg Idia to come out of his room, and, in his Ignihyde Gear vignettes, Ortho plays innocent to Trein so that it seems like some mob students are bullying him (even though the truth is that Ortho was playing embarrassing videos of said mob students for he public to view). "Professor, I was just minding my own business and drying the sheets when these two started yelling at me... *sniffle*"

Those are my thoughts! Please bear in mind that this is just my own interpretation; it's in no way canon, and nor am I insisting it to be. Ortho's age is officially stated as "undefined", so I don't think there's a clear number we can put to him. It's really up to individual interpretation! I hope that I was able to provide both sides to the argument and sufficient information for you to come to your own conclusions about Ortho's age ^^

[absolutebl]

This Week in BL - Thailand Stuck the Landing! Thailand!

Organized, in each category, with ones I'm enjoying most at the top.

March 2025 Week 1

Ongoing Series - Thai

ThamePo (Fri YT) ep 13 end - A truly great final episode. The best that Thailand could do. Good rapping too. (I do enjoy a tonal language rapping) Could have done without the goddamn auto tune on the singing tho.

Still that Notting Hill moment with Po and his friends, “this is Thame, my boyfriend” will likely go down in history as one of my favorite claimings in all BL. And it’s one of my favorite BL tropes. I have already rewatched it multiple times. Genius.

Review 

The boyband idol romance I've been waiting for from Korea, only Thailand did it instead. Quintessentially Thai and very GMMTV with good production values, great chemistry, and a solid support cast. It also was a hung romance mostly driven by external conflict and a found family reunion trope so I didn’t mind (too much) that the romance thread felt secondary. I loved it (except, of course, the singing). 9/10 

Perfect 10 Liners (Sun YT) ep 19 of 24 - I love that GMMTV prop masters are just putting random American 80s bodice rippers lying around Thai men's dorm rooms. I don’t know why I find it so amusing but I do. I’m not happy about the friend snooping in his friend's box (kinky), but I’m pleased with the friendship itself after all is said and done.

“Heaven was fast” made me hoot. So damn funny. And now we have a Cyrano de Bergerac plot? Faifa = the eternal self sacrificer. And that was definitely the best kiss of the series so far. It has gone into consideration for best kiss of the year.

The Boy Next World (Sun IQIYI) ep 9 of 10 - Oh dear, I’m having one of those “please don’t make them actually act” moments. But I'm still enjoying this show. Miracles may never cease. I’ll just skip this front bit of ep 9 in the future. I’m not really feeling the side couple either. But the damn premise is so strong and the leads are good (when they’re not overacting). Mame sure loves her tired old BL tropes like faen fatalle but she has (so far) managed to avoid her worst inclinations with this one. Will she stick the landing?

Meanwhile, the single most unrealistic thing in this whole show is that there are actual physical photos in that yearbook.

Flirt Milk (Sat YT) ep 7 or 10 - Well at least stuff is actually happening in all the relationships. The question is, do we care? Also, I have a terrible case of second lead syndrome, and I have from the very start. I just love that actor. (Oppa!) 

Ossan‘s Love Thailand (Mon YouTube) ep 9 of 12 - I see it’s the Thai tourist board mandated “get them out of Bangkok occasionally” episode.

Ongoing Series - Not Thai

Secret Relationships (Korea iQIYI) ep 2 of 8 - Ooo, the bloody nose trope! Haven’t seen that in ages. Ooo x2, toxic exes! But Korea flavored toxic rather than Thai toxic. Interesting. It’s more reserved and mean-spirited and stylishly cruel. I’m certainly intrigued. I quite like the main couple too, they’re awkwardly adorable. I love the way they keep swapping the care trope back and forth. The workplace gossip and family abuse was really hard to watch though. This show is packed full of stuff, all the relationships are complicated and slightly dysfunctional and codependent.

I like it a lot. 

Eternal Butler (Taiwan Fri Gaga) ep 12 end - This was basically a wrap-up ep, it didn’t advance the plot much. Still it was nice to see a show tackle the eternal youth situation head on. The voice over at the end from our robot who will not age talking about the way the world will perceive them as his lover does age, THAT made me tear up.

Last Downlaod

The story of a boy and his bodyguard/butler/robot falling in love. The robot is very queer and kind of kinky and mostly in charge. This dynamic feels a little healthier and less like indentured servitude than the previous installment in this series, but it’s still somewhat troubling in base concept. Nevertheless, casting a pro bodybuilder as the robot certainly help me to rise above my scruples. BL made me do it. I'm a terribly shallow human. Ultimately, I pronounce this show oddly charming - if you can overlook the implications of "just a robot who can't say no." 8/10 

FC Soldout (Korea Thurs iQIYI) ep 8 end - cute scaredy-cat kiss. Cute soft proper kisses too. I love these boys. Adorable confession. I cackled over the resulting dynamic. But the football captain and the idol are still my favorites. Gutted we got no smooches from them. This time, when our captain uses the word "exercise" baby boy, I don’t think he means the football form of exercise.

Final Score 

An oddly cute sports reunion romance, about an actor and a football player who meet again for convoluted reasons. Essentially one of them is an obsessed fan, and the other one has been pining since high school. So they're kinda stalking each other. They get together after some shenanigans. With a solid side couple it was only the parasocial relationship thing that wigged me out, but it really bothers me. Especially since, had it not been there, this might’ve been the sports BL of my dreams. 8/10

Fight for Love (Vietnam YT) ep 5 - Full of exes and faen fatales. 

Impression of Youth (Taiwan Weds Viki) ep 9 end - Frankly, if you date a kid you shouldn’t be surprised when he behaves like a kid.

PAUSE.

Is that?! OMG yes. That is Marcus Chang playing the role of the professor! I wonder if this means we might get him in a BL? I might just lose my tiny mind.

Summary  

An artist seeking inspiration goes to a beach town to teach where he falls in love with one of his students. An odd disjointed little show that managed to somehow overcomplicate a simple premise. What could’ve been elegant was instead fussy. Despite some expectedly good sex scenes, there wasn’t much chemistry between either pair. Chemistry might have carried this show but without those naked shoulders to ride on, there was no structure and less hope. 7/10

Checkered Shirt (Korea YT) ep 5 of 8 - Ouch. Denial is apparently a river in Korea. This is a bit realistic for my BL. OH WAIT. The story about a man in the closet is called The Checkered Shirt?! I see what you're doing there. Clever, little KBL. Clever.

Exclusive Love (Taiwan Fri Gaga) ep 5 of 12 - What tf is going on with this show? It’s wild but not in an appealing way, in a weird wet dish towel away. I get why @heretherebedork finds the crazy pining side couple appealing, but they’re too frustrating for me. I now mostly just love the sweetly unhinged little assistant.

It's airing but......

Gelboys (Thai Weds iQIYI) ep 1 of 7 - I’m giving this show a pass. It’s just too far out of my wheelhouse. I don’t have patience right now.

Sashes and Hearts (Pinoy YT) - Philippines is doing Drop Dead Gorgeous only all gay boys queening their asses off. Doesn't interst me, not sure if it's BL.

The Last Time (Thai WeTV) 8 eps - Looks dark so I'm giving it a pass until I know about the ending.

Last Meal Universe (Thailand Sun ????) 10 eps - An alien who has come to destroy earth instead falls in love with Thai food and then the Thai boy who cooks it - realistic, actually. I got a link to watch but it still wouldn't work for me, so I guess I'm waiting to see what happens.

In case you missed it...

Wattpad author talks about trying to make a Thai BL out of her KP fanfic (Allure of the Siren). Trailer here.

A Perfect Match (Taiwan iQIYI) - A not very well regarded Taiwanese sports BL from earlier this year picked up for rerelease. Reports from spies (hi twig!) are that this is a "sports BL that did everything it could to show no sport at all" and NOT good. So it's getting a pass from me.

Next Week Looks Like This:

3/12 My Golden Blood (Thailand Weds YouTube) 12 eps - Trailer. GMMTV taking on Weds nights and midweek discourse (they hope) with this hotly anticipated vampire series. I happen to find Joss watchable but this looks very bad and also very Kissable Lips. But at least Thailand is finally giving us the trashy gay vampires we richly deserve? Just realize we don't deserve much.

3/12 Lost in the Woods (Thailand Weds Gaga) 7 eps - Announced for 2023, adapted from a novel of the same name. Fifa just graduated high school and travels to a remote province to take care of his grandma, before starting uni. There he meets Chief Hem, a forest ranger.

Bah, how annoying. We don't usually have a slump this bad in the spring. What am I gonna do with myself?

Upcoming March 2025

3/20 Top Form (Thailand Thurs WeTV) 10 eps - Trailer. Adaptation of a Japanese manga starring Boom (Chains of Heart) opposite Smart (Don't Say No). Actor recognized as the "The Sexiest Man of the Year" has his first-place position usurped by newcomer. But while he sees them as rivals, turns out the new kid has other ideas. I'm super excited for this but hate watching on WeTV so gonna be a challenge.

3/28 Heesu in Class 2 (Korea Fri ????) 10 eps - Trailer. Adaption of the comic by Lily, about a shy unpopular boy with a secret crush on best friend who somehow also ends up his school's relationship counselor. Supposed to have completed filming in 2022, the fact this has been in dev hell since then somewhat mitigates this being my most anticipated BL of it's original year.

2025 Line Up

BL Announced for 2025 - PART 1

BL Announced for 2025 - PART 2

20 BLs Announced for 2025 That I'm Really Excited About

GMMTV 2025 Line Up - My Totally Biased and Wildly Flawed Feels

THIS WEEK’S BEST MOMENTS

Aside from that idol boyfriend claiming?!

Yeah ThamePo ate this week. No room in brain or heart for others.

Not that it matter right now. Things are lackluster and dire.

(last week)

The tag BLigade: @doorajar @solitaryandwandering @my-rose-tinted-glasses @babymbbatinygirl @babymbbatinygirl @isisanna-blog @mmastertheone @pickletrip @aliceisathome @urikawa-miyuki @tokillamonger @sunflower-positiiivity @rocketturtle4 @blglplus @anythinggoesintheshire @everlightly @renafire @mestizashinrin @bl-bam-beyond @small-dark-and-delicious @saezurumurmurs

[victusinveritas]

Trump administration considering suspending habeas corpus

So that's...bad.

From Rebecca Solnit:

Just remember that lots of stuff they say they will do is stuff they don't have the legal authority to do. Here's a legal expert on that. Steve Vladeck writes:

I know there’s a lot going on, and that Miller says lots of incendiary (and blatantly false) stuff. But this strikes me as raising the temperature to a whole new level—and thus meriting a brief explanation of all of the ways in which this statement is both (1) wrong; and (2) profoundly dangerous. Specifically, it seems worth making five basic points:

First, the Suspension Clause of the Constitution, which is in Article I, Section 9, Clause 2 is meant to limit the circumstances in which habeas can be foreclosed (Article I, Section 9 includes limits on Congress’s powers)—thereby ensuring that judicial review of detentions are otherwise available. (Note that it’s in the original Constitution—adopted before even the Bill of Rights.) I spent a good chunk of the first half of my career writing about habeas and its history, but the short version is that the Founders were hell-bent on limiting, to the most egregious emergencies, the circumstances in which courts could be cut out of the loop. To casually suggest that habeas might be suspended because courts have ruled against the executive branch in a handful of immigration cases is to turn the Suspension Clause entirely on its head.

Second, Miller is being slippery about the actual text of the Constitution (notwithstanding his claim that it is “clear”). The Suspension Clause does not say habeas can be suspended during any invasion; it says “The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.” This last part, with my emphasis, is not just window-dressing; again, the whole point is that the default is for judicial review except when there is a specific national security emergency in which judicial review could itself exacerbate the emergency. The emergency itself isn’t enough. Releasing someone like Rümeysa Öztürk from immigration detention poses no threat to public safety—all the more so when the release is predicated on a judicial determination that Ozturk … poses no threat to public safety.

Third, even if the textual triggers for suspending habeas corpus were satisfied, Miller also doesn’t deign to mention that the near-universal consensus is that only Congress can suspend habeas corpus—and that unilateral suspensions by the President are per se unconstitutional. I’ve written before about the Merryman case at the outset of the Civil War, which provides perhaps the strongest possible counterexample: that the President might be able to claim a unilateral suspension power if Congress is out of session (as it was from the outset of the Civil War in 1861 until July 4). Whatever the merits of that argument, it clearly has no applicability at this moment.

Fourth, Miller is wrong, as a matter of fact, about the relationship between Article III courts (our usual federal courts) and immigration cases. It’s true that the Immigration and Nationality Act (especially as amended in 1996 and 2005) includes a series of “jurisdiction-stripping” provisions. But most of those provisions simply channel judicial review in immigration cases into immigration courts (which are part of the executive branch) in the first instance, with appeals to Article III courts. And as the district courts (and Second Circuit) have explained in cases like Khalil and Öztürk, even those provisions don’t categorically preclude any review by Article III courts prior to those appeals.

Toward the end of the video, Miller tries to make a specific point about whether revocations of “TPS” (temporary protected status) are subject to judicial review. Here, he appears to be talking about a California district court ruling in the TPS Alliance case, in which the Trump administration is currently asking the Supreme Court for a stay of the district court’s injunction (the appropriate remedy in case the district court erred). And as the plaintiffs’ response brief in the Supreme Court explains in detail, the district court had very good reasons for holding that it had the power to hear their case.

I don’t mean to overstate things; some of the questions raised by the INA’s (notoriously unclear) jurisdiction-stripping provisions can get very messy. But there’s a big difference, in my view, between reasonable disagreements over the language of complex jurisdictional statutes and Miller’s insinuation that Congress has categorically precluded judicial review in these cases. It just hasn’t.

Fifth, and finally, Miller gives away the game when he says “a lot of it depends on whether the courts do the right thing or not.” It’s not just the mafia-esque threat implicit in this statement (“I’ll make him an offer he can’t refuse”); it’s that he’s telling on himself: He’s suggesting that the administration would (unlawfully) suspend habeas corpus if (but apparently only if) it disagrees with how courts rule in these cases. In other words, it’s not the judicial review itself that’s imperiling national security; it’s the possibility that the government might lose. That’s not, and has never been, a viable argument for suspending habeas corpus. Were it otherwise, there’d be no point to having the writ in the first place—let alone to enshrining it in the Constitution.

If the goal is just to try to bully and intimidate federal judges into acquiescing in more unlawful activity by the Trump administration, that’s shameful enough. But suggesting that the President can unilaterally cut courts out of the loop solely because they’re disagreeing with him is suggesting that judicial review—indeed, that the Constitution itself—is just a convenience. Something tells me that even federal judges and justices who might otherwise be sympathetic to the government’s arguments on the merits in some of these cases will be troubled by the implication that their authority depends entirely upon the President’s beneficence.

***

It’s certainly possible that this doesn’t go anywhere. Indeed, I hope that turns out to be true. But Miller’s comments strike me as a rather serious ratcheting up of the anti-court rhetoric coming out of this administration—and an ill-conceived one at that.

[guusagi]

MCR Fanfic Rec/Review List #2

Welcome in!

I recently created a long mcr fanfic rec/review, that you can find here. This post is a continuation of that! Less introductory yapping in this one, I promise. I read a lot more fics since writing the initial rec/review list, and I just HAD to make another one. Please give all of these a chance! This took longer than I expected oops...

Ships: Frerard & Fun Ghoul/Party Poison, Gerard/Bob Bryar (yep).

AUs: Office Workers, Gardening Services, Ghost/Paranormal, Superheros/Radio Show Host, Murder Mystery, and more!

Without further ado these are my picks!

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The Science of Sleep by chimneythunder

Rating: Teens and Up (there is smut near the end) Pairing: Frerard & Frank/Party Poison Main POV: Frank AU: Modern World/Danger Days Status: Completed with 9 chapters and 93k words Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/883120 My Summary: Frank is living a boring office-job life, but one day he starts having reoccuring dreams about a certain apocalyptic California...Little does he know, they aren't really dreams after all! He also meets an artsy guy at a coffee shop that is somehow connected to all of this? Frank dreams start taking over his waking life...what is really going on here?! Personal Thoughts: This fanfic was really fun!! I was surprised with how unique the premise is here. Frank travels to the Danger Days world everytime he falls asleep, and reading about his journey from thinking it's a dream, to figuring out it was reality after all was super entertaining (this isnt a spoiler as a reader you know its real). I also love the portrayal of everyone in this story, especially Ray and Party Poison, they're just so fun and believable! I can't stress enough how original this story is, honestly a super fun take on the usual Danger Days AU! It also has excellent writing and pacing, can't beat that!

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Living for the knife by drunkonyou

Rating: Teens and Up (no smut) Pairing: Ferard Main POV: Frank AU: Superhero Frank x Radio Show Host Gerard Status: Completed, oneshot with 50k words Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/41442144 My Summary: Frank is what you would call a superhero, after rescuing Gerard from being mugged by a mysterious man and saving his life, he almost quits being a superhero due to the trauma of that night. Inspired by his rescue, Gerard starts a radio show where he discusses what Frank is up to, and his listeners share their experiences, theories on what his secret identity is and...ultimately lots of false rumors as well. One day, Gerard recieves a weird listener on call who claims to know who this hero really is...and that he wants to come back for more. It looks like Frank is going to have to rescue Gerard once again! Personal Thoughts: This is a shorter fic, however it felt really long in the best way! I was super invested in the plot of the story, and Frank suffers SO much in this one, it's really sad actually. The relationship Gerard and him build is super cute, who doesn't love a classic rescuing scenario?! I don't have tons to say about this, but the atmosphere is super cool and film noir-esque! Radio show host Gerard is an excellent idea all things considered, please give this one a read!

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Shadowplay by findingsaturn

Rating: Explicit (smut near the end) Pairing: Frerard Main POV: Frank AU: Ghost/Witchcraft/Vampires & Murder Mystery Status: Completed with 27 chapters and 147k words Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20872241 My Summary: Frank lives in a small town, where magical occurences such as ghosts, ghouls, witches, vampires and the like are part of the norm. He works as a paranormal investigator alongside Ray. One day on a particularly brutal case, they are tasked to find out what happened. Little did he know, it would be the start of a huge conspiracy and a unique relationship! Personal Thoughts: Wow I can't use fancy enough words to describe how I feel after reading this fic. It's honestly in the top best-written ones that I've had the honor of reading so far. The intrigue and mystery is amazing, Frank's relationship with Gerard is just..so tragic yet beautiful, you really feel for the characters in this story. Everyone went through different tragedies in their lives. And the slowburn uuugh uuuuughh.. please give this one a read! It was also surprisingly scary, the atmosphere was real creepy and some of the later scenes are super TERRIFYING! Otherwise, I loved this one so much I'll read it again someday!

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The Best Part of My Day by pixie_revolver

Rating: Explicit (there is smut in the middle and end.) Pairing: Frerard Main POV: Frank AU: Office Workers! Status: Completed with 14 chapters and 63k words Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/45339874 My Summary: Frank works at an office, and one day bumps into a person he had not seen before and spills coffee over himself!.. This person is also the most gorgeous person he had ever seen, and fell in love at first sight! We follow Frank's shenanigans as he tries to learn more about his crush, while also being teased relentlessly by his coworkers. Will he get the courage to learn more about Gerard..? Personal Thoughts: This fic was short but SO fun! I was entertained from chapter 1, it's honestly written in a really comedic way. I was laughing and giggling throughout the entire story. Frank is sooo down bad for Gerard, and Gerard is so oblivious about it! Their relationship blossoms in the most adorable way... I want to re-read this one if I'm ever feeling down. There's also a cute touch at almost every chapter where you see Frank texting various friends who keep teasing him about Gerard, this gives a lot of personality to the story! I usually don’t comment on the smut, but it’s really good not gonna lie. Otherwise it’s a very fluffy fic and one of my faves on this list!

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Tints of Rainbow Hue by turps

Rating: Mature (no smut) Pairings: Part 1 thru 2 is Frikey; Part 3 focuses on Gerard/Bob Main POV: Bob & Various AU: Gardening Services Gang! Status: Completed with 3 parts, total word count 65k. Link: https://archiveofourown.org/series/3399 My Summary: Ray owns a small gardening business, he travels around with Bob, and decides it's high time to hire someone new. They hire a younger Frank, who's very colorful and full of energy! They decide to work on the miskept and overgrown Way house, where two brothers live. Gerard seems to be ill and doesn't leave the house, while his little brother Mikey provides for both of them. This story follows along the relationships that blossom there! Personal Thoughts: This one is the only fanfic I'd recommend right now that includes Bob Bryar as one of the main characters. He's actually the main POV we usually follow throughout the story, especially in the 2nd fic. The characterization of Gerard's depression was hard to read, in the sense that it felt super real. I personally have not suffered with depression, but this felt more seriously written than most others who write him in that way. THE CUTENESS of Frank and Mikey though?! I read this fic originally cus I love me some Frikey, and Frank's pretty different from his usual punk aesthetic, he's actually quite the opposite! He's like, flowery colorful pastels if anything! It was a super refreshing take on him, though his personality mostly stays the same, he's super earnest and clumsy too. I never read fics with Bob due to obvious reasons, but I was actually cheering on this fictional version of him to allow himself to love Gerard. He's so gentle, yet firm with him, and super kind and it was lovely to read... Anyways before I gush and spoil everything, give this fic a chance!

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Lethal Attraction by desolationglow

Rating: Mature (obviously, there's smut here since Frank's ya know) Pairing: Frerard Main POV: Frank AU: Prostitute Frank x Billionaire Gerard Status: Ongoing with 41 chapters and 130k words Last update: 01/22/24 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/40619025 My Summary: Set in the late 90s, Frank gets by living in Los Angeles by means of prostitution. His once best friend Gerard disappears after high school, and still misses him to this day. After a series of brutal murders, people are warned about a serial killer on the loose, and Gerard reappears into Frank's life once more. Gerard is now a successful billionaire, and invites Frank on a journey of revenge against those who wronged them. Yet, their relationship is turbulent to say the least... Personal Thoughts: SO TRIGGER WARNING... this fic includes homophobia on Gerard's part. It's set in the 90s so there's typical bigotry in this one. Also this is the idiots in love trope to an extreme! I still recommend this fic cus the story is super well-written, I couldn't put this one down! Gee's mean in this one, but you can't help but like him as a sort of anti-hero/villain. Frank's the poor dude being dragged around by him... I don't want to spoil cus there's quite a few fun plot twists in this one. Also it has not updated since January of this year, however I bumped into the author randomly on discord! Yep, it was a super funny coincidence. I don't want to say much to respect their privacy, but I will say that they have not abandoned this fic! So I definitely recommend it, please continue supporting them as there will be more eventually!

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If I Could Say the Things I Want to Say to You by I_am_but_a_holyman

Rating: Explicit (some implied smut) Pairing: Frerard Main POV: Frank AU: single Dad Frank and college dropout Gerard / Found Family Status: Completed with 25 chapters and 97k words Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/46030816 My Summary: Frank has been a single father for a while now and has been struggling with finding a babysitter for his 10 year old non-binary child. One day, his friend Ray introduces him to Gerard, who babysits his own kids as well... it was definitely love at first sight! For who..? Well you'll find out soon enough! This story navigates the difficulties of being a single dad, as well as being a gender non-conforming child in an unaccepting world. Personal Thoughts: I loved this story so much omg!! Frank's kid is an original character for the story and they did not dissapoint! I loved that Frank is so supportive of his non-binary child, and protects them the best way they can. Gerard's just too cute in this one as well, he's also not completely cis and likes to wear more fem clothes, like the perfect rolemodel for Frank's kiddo! Overall a fluffy story, please give it a try!

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And that about wraps it up!! Thank you so much for reading!! I don't think I will make any more of these, but who knows?!

[utilitycaster]

Regarding Editing and Innovating in the space, 2 people who get a Fraction of the credit they deserve are Ivan Van Norman & Marisha Ray. I mean, they created and developed one of the original mixed media cinematic interactive actual plays, Sagas of Sundry: Dread, and then Sagas of Sundry: Madness, and Marisha (later hiring Ivan as well) has continued that trajectory in some of the more intriguingly edited mixed format Actual plays at CR, like Call of Cthulhu, Undeadwood, and others, and being Instrumental in the developments at CR. Like, when you do watch the interviews you get a sense of just how Much of CR's current content designs, ttrpg intentions, and series are marisha's brainchilds, and it sucks that she doesnt get the credit others involved in similar projects, and even those projects, do.

This is a great point. I've mentioned this before w/r/t the fandom - Marisha, perhaps more than anyone, gets reduced even by many fans to "she's pretty and her characters are like what if a girlboss were a girlfailure" and her creative direction goes unheralded. It feels like this has gotten worse in recent years; I was baffled at how many people seemingly resented Calamity or Candela for taking up space they felt should go only to the main campaign when those were not only showcases for Marisha as a performer but also clearly something in which she had a strong hand in designing. Whenever people whine about there only being two main campaign episodes in a month because of Candela Obscura, I do think "You realize this was probably Marisha's call?"

I was focused in my response much more on Daggerheart, and so on the game design side (quick side note - reviews of A Familiar Problem, which Marisha worked on, were pretty positive; I wonder if something's happened in the past 2 years since that's when I've really felt this Damn Critical Role energy among actual play journalists), but I had been thinking about Sagas of Sundry and Undeadwood! I think I mentioned Sagas of Sundry in one of my posts about how Kollok isn't, in my mind, impressive. I loved Dread but never finished Madness before Alpha folded, but actually I was imagining something like Madness - fully on a set, people walking around like it's a play - for Kollok! When I saw everyone at a table with that rotating rock I was like "is this...it?" And, you know, Sagas: Madness wasn't entirely for me, but you can't fault the innovation. Similarly, when I think about the (baffling) criticism from one of the prominent actual play journalists I've had in mind while writing this, that Candela Obscura the show did not fully teach people Candela Obscura the game, I think about how Ivan Van Norman did straight up teach Savage Worlds during Undeadwood. Whenever people gush over the shadow puppets in Burrow's End I think it's deserved, but when they claim it's utterly new? Nah. Call of Cthulhu: Shadow of the Crystal Palace did it first. And Marisha had a guiding hand in the creative direction of all of these.

I think this is sort of elaboration on one of my points in my original post: I think a lot of the journalists are really out of their depth. I don't remember seeing their names when I first started watching CR in 2018, or when I got deeper into the fandom in 2019. My first actual play was TAZ, which I binged in late 2017. I really think a lot of the journalists flat-out don't know Sagas of Sundry or Undeadwood because they didn't show up until after Alpha folded. I've mentioned this elsewhere but so much of the claims of novelty and innovation are completely incorrect and not even terribly obscure. Look, I've seen/listened to most or all of 9 actual plays (this is counting D20 and CR each as one single unit, by the way - I've seen all but scattered one-offs from either), and seen or heard an episode or two of many more. I think that simply by doing that? I know more than a lot of these journalists.

Again: Worlds Beyond Number? The innovation is with the Witch class and the Wizard of the Citadel subclasses, and the allowance of extremely long downtime, but: longform podcast actual play with sound design? RQG did it starting in 2015. Griffin McElroy and Emily Axford have been composing their own music since 2017 or 2018 for their respective shows, both of which are also longform podcast actual plays. Again, Brennan pretty explicitly said "I don't think D20 is new, nor longform" in a quote and the article that quotes him argues that Fantasy High is new and longform...and that article also talks about how before D20 most AP video was livestreamed before talking about how boundary-breaking D20 was for having a livestreamed second season (you know, the thing that they just called old hat a paragraph earlier) that quickly pivoted to remote (even though remote livestreaming was actually quite common in smaller productions well before the pandemic, since you don't need anything but laptop cameras to produce it). I don't even keep up with much in the really indie AP scene, but those people I know who do are even less impressed by the state of Actual Play journalism than I, because D20 executes a lot of things extremely well, has a very talented roster of performers, and a budget most productions cannot hope to match, but a good deal of what it's credited for inventing (and which, again, it never claims to have invented. I want to be clear that the journalists decided to be like this for no clear reason) already existed. And, by placing this heavy emphasis on production, they are automatically making it hard for indie productions to impress them. For all they claim to be going after the 700 lb gorilla, they are simply cozying up to the 600 lb gorilla. It's real "um, why don't you try this little indie game called Pathfinder" hours.

I am fairly sure a lot of the people in prominent journalistic positions in the actual play sphere today came in only after the collapse of Geek and Sundry, is my point, and so I think they literally do not realize how much the medium owes to, for example, Marisha Ray and Ivan Van Norman, because they weren't watching in 2016 nor even skipping through the G&S archives, as I did as a new CR fan. I think they're absolutely out of their depth, and most of them don't even realize it.

[itsmyfandomandilikeit]

What we actually know about the renewal of Star Trek: Prodigy

Ok so there's been some speculation going around that Prodigy is or is not being renewed. The fact is that there has been zero news on the topic, official or otherwise, and anyone claiming to know differently is wrong or lying.

That being said, there are some things we do know:

1. Netflix is of course notorious for canceling things. I am an Inside Job fan. I know. However, they almost never leave things ambiguous. They aren't shy. When things are canceled, they make a clear public statement saying that it's canceled. Usually within two weeks of airing.

2. All of the clear public statements we've gotten from Netflix and the Prodigy crew have been consistent: Netflix will decide when they get more data. Recently, Aaron Waltke said on a podcast that they will review the viewing numbers from the first six months after season 2 was released, which occurred on July 1. This lines up with Netflix's data release schedule, which collates viewing data from the first and second halves of the year.

3. They are also waiting on a few other things. Namely, Netflix still commissions Paramount to create seasons of Prodigy. The sale of things like DVDs, Blu-Rays, digital downloads, and those new ship models that are coming out this December, affect the price of a season of Prodigy. Merchandise sales and licensing pay for a portion of it, and Netflix has to cover the rest of the cost. I'm sure the new theme park ride affects this as well. The cost to commission a season of Prodigy is determined by a number that is very much, at the moment, in a state of flux because of the upcoming physical media and merchandise releases, which could do well or not.

4. It was announced that the Hagemans have been added to a LEGO Ninjago project, and there has been some speculation that they will be unable to work on Prodigy because of this. This is irrelevant. The Hagemans have stated repeatedly that they typically work on 2 or 3 projects at once. To my knowledge, Aaron Waltke was working on Transformers One during the production of Prodigy season 2. This is just normal. They're getting work because their work has done well.

5. Prodigy costs the least of any Star Trek project to produce, but it is also the only Star Trek project that Netflix has access to. If, say, Section 31 does extremely well, Netflix can't get any portion of that success except for through Prodigy. Netflix also knows that very few new users are actually signing up for Paramount+, and indeed many users are leaving the platform, so Prodigy remains a good investment for Netflix. No matter how well this season of Lower Decks does, Netflix can't buy it because it's not for sale.

6. Data from 2023 indicated that Prodigy outperformed all of the rest of Star Trek on Netflix (admittedly, the US is not counted in this). What's especially notable about this is that it was only available for one week in 2023. In the first half of 2024, Prodigy continued to do well on the Netflix platform, despite it effectively only playing reruns during that time. Netflix will not release numbers for the second half of 2024 until next year.

7. Prodigy has the budget and appeal of a children's show, but it also has an avid adult audience. Many adults are watching it just because it's Star Trek or because they want to keep up with the overall story. Anyone who wants to maintain Star Trek completion must watch Prodigy, which is only available through Netflix.

8. Marketing is typically the lion's share of the cost of any media, but no marketing was done for Prodigy. It relied on word of mouth and the Star Trek brand. This affects how expensive it is to Netflix.

9. Finally this is not about the show itself but I just don't think that the story is over because plotlines in Star Trek never really end. Watching TAS is like the Leo Dicaprio pointing meme of seeing how Discovery was designed from a ton of these episodes. Every detail of the older shows is spun into entire plotlines in NuTrek. Whether or not Prodigy is renewed, these characters and species have been added to the canon and more than likely it will never let them go. If there isn't a new season, there will be video games, books, comic books, theme park attractions, stupid hats (that I'll buy), sunglasses, t-shirts, board games, markers, branded blankets, posters, and anything else you can think of. I kinda don't know how I feel about this but it is what I think. No matter how many seasons of Prodigy there actually will be, I'm sure the characters and settings will be brought back thirty years from now for better or worse.

[evidence-based-activism]

Do women who commit rape/sexual assault actually get shorter sentences than men? I always see this claim circulated but never any actual data to back it up.

Hi! So, this one can be a bit tricky, because on the surface there often appears to be data supporting this. However, when we look deeper into the data, we find that there is not really evidence supporting a gender gap.

General Criminal Sentencing

First, I talk about the "gender gap" in general criminal sentencing in the reblogs of this post. The important part to note here is that (1) quantitative sentencing data cannot prove a sentencing disparity because it cannot take real qualitative differences between seemingly similar cases into account and (2) there is evidence that real qualitative differences account for a substantial portion (possibly even all) of the gender gap in sentencing (e.g., women are more likely to cooperate with the police, women are more likely to be the "accomplice" rather than primary offender of a crime, women are more likely to be the primary caregiver of a child, etc.).

So, for criminal sentencing in general, we can see that the appearance of a gender gap in sentencing is not truly motivated by gender but by real differences in criminal and contextual factors that happen to vary by gender.

Sex Crimes Specifically

So, what about sexual crimes? There's sustainably less work on this, likely because women make up such a small portion of sexual criminals. Further, the evidence we do have is flawed in many ways, which I will review. That being said, here's the current state of the research:

This study [1] found that "while male sex offenders may have received longer incarceration terms than female sex offenders, it was not chiefly explainable by their gender". In other words, it was not the gender of the offender, but other factors that happen to correlate with gender that affected the sentence length, which corresponds with the results found above.

Other work [2] has found that the gender difference in sentencing varies by crime type. In particular, non-assaultive (i.e., no physical contact) female sex offenders were considered less culpable by sentencing judges than non-assaultive male sex offenders. However, violent female sex offenders were considered more culpable than violent male sex offenders.

This study also found that female sex offenders consistently expressed "more contrition", pleaded guilty, and cooperated with the police more often than male sex offenders. This is relevant because sentences are commonly reduced for offenders who express remorse, plead guilty, and cooperate with the police. (Whether or not you agree with these practices is another matter; as it stands, they are frequently applied.)

They make note that similar "distinct and subtle differences in case-relevant factors" may "account for the difference in sentences". The previous, more plentiful, research on non-sexual crimes supports this possibility.

Further, to highlight the issues with other work claiming there is a gender gap in sentencing, consider this qualitative matching study [3]. The aim of this study was to match cases by qualitative factors so they could "compare apples to apples". Using this methodology, they find that female sex offenders were less likely to be sent to prison and receive shorter sentences when they are sentenced to prison.

However, a more transparent application of this methodology, as shown in [2], reveals that this matching process does not truly account for all the relevant qualitative factors. For example, one matched pair had a victim aged 9 compared to a victim aged 15; another compared a case involving a male victim to a case involving a female victim. Clearly, while there are benefits to such a methodology, it cannot account for all the relevant factors.

And indeed, the case matching factors in [3] do not match for offender contrition, guilty plea, cooperation with the police, offender role (i.e., primary or secondary offender), and other similar factors offense-related factors. Beyond that, they also do not take into account reasonable extralegal factors such as caretaker status (i.e., whether the offender has dependents). We know that all of these factors influence sentencing, and we also know they are correlated with offender gender (i.e., more likely to apply to women). As such, claiming to find a gender difference in sentencing when failing to consider these variables is disingenuous.

Again, it is more likely that these real qualitative differences are affecting the sentencing lengths, rather than a gender bias for women. I believe this conclusion is further supported by their own evidence that probation sentence lengths are similar for women and men. They also note that "as a group, female sex offenders presented to the court as younger, more likely to be white, and less serious offenders overall than male sex offenders" and that "perceptions of female sex offending as less dangerous may reflect, in part, documented differences in patterns of offending".

In other words, the gender difference found here is not actually driven by gender discrimination but by real differences between the groups.

The Importance of Considering Race

I would also like to highlight here the importance of considering race in this discussion. In fact, it's possible that apparent gender differences are actually racial differences [4-6]. (This work is on general criminal sentencing. It is likely at least some of these principles translate across crime types.)

For example, this 2009 article [4] found that White, Black, and Hispanic women all receive similar sentence lengths along with white men. Only Black and Hispanic men received longer sentences, and theirs did not differ from each other.

These results were partially replicated in 2018 [5], which showed that Black men received longer sentences than White men, White women, and Black women. White men and White women's sentence lengths did not differ. Note: this work also suggested that Black women received the shortest sentence lengths of all groups, so I would like to emphasize that this research too is limited by the issue described above. Namely, it cannot account for real differences between cases/offenders. For example, we know that being a single parent is likely to reduce sentence lengths and we also know that Black women are much more likely to be single parents [6], which is just one possible explanation for this finding.

These results were again partially replicated in 2020 [7], here they found that the gender gap was not driven by gender so much as the interaction between gender, race, and age. In particular, White men and women of all ages had similar likelihood of receiving a split sentence (i.e., partial probation), whereas Black and Hispanic men were usually less likely to receive a split sentence than Black and Hispanic women within each age group.

These interacting factors led to some interesting results. For example, White men aged 18-20 were the second most likely to receive a split sentence, behind only Hispanic women. (Please see the above discussion of qualitative differences and child custody in particular.) Further, Black men aged 21 and over were the least likely to receive a split sentence, but Black men aged 18-20 were more likely to receive a split sentence than Black women aged 21 and over.

Ultimately, this suggests that if there is a genuine gender gap in sentencing it would only apply to Black and Hispanic, not White men. That being said, the known qualitative differences between Black and Hispanic men and women (and between Black and Hispanic women and White women) suggest it's likely there is not any genuine gender difference. Instead, other relevant factors simply happen to correlate with gender.

Conclusion

Hopefully, this makes it clear how there isn't actually a straightforward relationship between demographics and criminal sentencing. Various demographic factors interact substantially, and real qualitative differences are hidden in quantitative data.

This was a bit complicated, so let me know if you have any questions!

References below the cut:

Hassett-Walker, C., Lateano, T., & Di Benedetto, M. (2014). Do female sex offenders receive preferential treatment in criminal charging and sentencing?. Justice System Journal, 35(1), 62-86.

Damiris, I. K., McKillop, N., Christensen, L. S., Rayment-McHugh, S., Burton, K., & Patterson, T. (2021). Gendered judicial discourse in the sentencing of sexual offenders: a new explanatory model. Current Issues in Criminal Justice, 33(2), 228-246.

Shields, R. T., & Cochran, J. C. (2020). The gender gap in sex offender punishment. Journal of quantitative criminology, 36(1), 95-118.

Brennan, P. K., & Spohn, C. (2009). The joint effects of offender race/ethnicity and sex on sentence length decisions in federal courts. Race and Social Problems, 1, 200-217.

Leiber, M. J., Beaudry-Cyr, M., Peck, J. H., & Mack, K. Y. (2018). Sentencing recommendations by probation officers and judges: An examination of adult offenders across gender. Women & Criminal Justice, 28(2), 100-124.

Livingston, Gretchen. “The Changing Profile of Unmarried Parents.” Pew Research Center, 25 Apr. 2018, https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2018/04/25/the-changing-profile-of-unmarried-parents/.

Lehmann, P. S., & Gomez, A. I. (2021). Split sentencing in Florida: Race/ethnicity, gender, age, and the mitigation of prison sentence length. American Journal of Criminal Justice, 46(2), 345-376.

[wolpatinga]

re: my recent jekyll and hyde posts

everything makes so much more sense in the book if you assume that jekyll's crisis started being visible to his friends when he hit 40 and quit his promising career as a professor of law

1. why lanyon hates him so much. its not that jekyll was researching magic per se, its that jekyll made a huge change out of nowhere into a field jekyll knows basically nothing about and started claiming he's an expert in it. to hastie, that looks like quackery

2. jekyll is a fellow of the royal society, which means he's done "great things for the world of science and mathematics". considering he was a lawyer up until age 40, the idea that he's bribed his way in (and that straining his relationship with lanyon further) makes a lot of sense

3. why utterson clings to the protege idea for hyde. jekyll, being still very new to that field and kinda out of his league, taking on an apprentice (probably a uni student or recent grad) to help actually run things makes a LOT of sense

4. jekyll writing his own will, and the things he says when utterson complains again. jekyll knows he's done a lot of weird shit. he also knows civil law like a mfer and knows he has utterson by the balls on this one. but this really explains why he's like "i know this is just the icing on the cake of weird shit i've forced you to endure. sorry :/"

5. jekyll living in that shitty neighborhood. he saw some doctor died and medicine (especially being a famous doctor) is a special interest of his, so he bought that lab and WILL NOT LEAVE IT. HIS LAB

6. hyde going in and pointing out loopholes in biblical passages. that's what he was doing, right? writing blasphemies? he was bored and saw a buncha laws written out and figured he'd do what jekyll used to do - case review

7. why jekyll's notes on the experiments SUCK. once its in writing, you're fucked, legally. also why he won't admit to any real crimes in the confession other than the already-solved case

8. him insisting on putting MD before DCL or any other title. that's the one he wants to highlight. please believe he's a real pharm-dawg. please take his medicine seriously

9. he's basically a conspiracy theorist who decides to get really into, idk, learning how 5G towers work, and has a friend who works for a telecom company, and suddenly friend finds out the conspiracy theorist quit his "real job" to build his own 5G towers or some shit like that. jekyll is those flat earthers who get lost at sea trying to find the ice wall

10. im still not over jekyll suddenly building a state of the art lab on his own just for shits and giggles. so much expensive glassware... and the labcoat again. he DEFINITELY has a custom leather labcoat that he never wears except to flex on lanyon

11. any adaptation that lets jekyll be a respected physician is just repeating the lies jekyll told us

12. im not against people suddenly changing careers as they age and realize more about themselves. that's part of the reason i'm obsessing over this, is i can't stand the workplace i'm in rn and will be making a similar choice to jekyll when i can afford it

13. re:12 i want to highlight how maybe if his friends gave a shit about his mental health maybe things wouldn't be so bad. my poor autistic king who accidentally ruined himself with overindulging in his special interest and bad coping mechanisms bc his social support was nonexistant. #mecore

14. re:13 fuck lanyon and fuck utterson for doing this. this is what makes the story such a tragedy to me. its like looking in a mirror and seeing the man you MIGHT become. hyde is here for me but please don't let him be the only one here for me

15. jekyll and hyde being each other's only true friends, in their own fucked up way. hyde loves jekyll's medical endeavors and hypes jekyll up to lanyon. he insists on calling jekyll "doctor" as in jekyll MD as in he's a fucking real medical doc and you WILL take him seriously

16. jekyll x utterson lawyer yaoi, like ace attorney civil cases edition

17. lanyon trying to figure out if the career change is somehow jekyll flirting

18. i want to see an adaptation that is this. i also want to think that jekyll got his MD just to flex on vicky frankie

[caldella]

Beach Lumberjacks, Moon Cheese, and Horse OC's

A collection of the top 10 weird ads I've gotten on Tumblr this week.

This is off brand for my blog. I don't care. I've been sitting on some of these for like 6 days. Ranking them by what, in my opinion, is least to most bizarre. Your opinion may vary. Remember I have no affiliation with these brands and am not recommending any of them! Some of these are legitimate, but some could and very likely are scams.

10. Hockey Dreams

What is a hockey advisor? What are hockey dreams? Is this gambling? Fantasy football stuff but for hockey? Why did I receive this?

9. Flannel on the Beach

You know what warm flannel needs? No sleeves. You know where warm, sleeveless lumberjack plaid flannel belongs? Badly photoshopped onto a beach! These belong together! Don't question it!

8. Who is This Man?

Why is he staring at me like this? Why is the color balance so bad? How am I supposed to believe he worked at Khosla Ventures? I don't like this. I feel like I need to call HR on him.

7. I Don't Live Anywhere Near Dallas

An ominous field of trees in tubs, and a pile of rocks - those definitely sell "foundation repair" to me. Is the rubble all that's left of the foundation? Is this a photo from an insurance claim?

6. Actually, I Would in Fact Like an Air Dancer

Blocked out this company as it was regional for me. Not the weirdest ad, but not sure why Tumblr thinks I want a wacky waving tube man when I don't have a business myself. Then again, they're not 100% wrong. I don't think yelling at them with a megaphone will do anything.

"Air Dancer" sure sounds like they're fluffing their resumes, though.

5. Cheese Moon

I gotta give credit to this one - it's blatant that it's an ad, and apparently this book is exactly what it says on the tin. What, scientifically, would happen if the moon was literally made of cheese? NGL it did get me to look up the book. It has decent reviews, and the author apparently has a sense of humor. I'm kind of interested. Would willingly get more ads for stuff like this.

4. Very Legitimate, Not Suspicious Honey

Texas is back. I'm sure this isn't sketchy in any way, and these 44 oz. of honey will arrive in a 128 oz. milk gallon and will all be from a trustworthy Texas beekeeper. Buy honey! Nothing is strange! Nothing to see here!

3. Netflix Made Dante a VTuber

This is how they decided to advertise a Devil May Cry series. They turned Dante into a Vtuber and had a badly synced voiceover ad promoting himself and trying to get people to share Dante gifs. I'm sad I didn't get actual video recording of this one, because the weird uncanniness and lack of lip movement sync really added something. The responses from Tumblr users was about as welcoming and supportive as you'd expect.

2. PREGNANT HOWRSE

(Aka "I blame Blitzø for this) @rainingfishandfrogs You requested a screenshot lol

It's the 'PREGNANT!' for me on this one.

What in the clickbait ad content farm--? Blitzø! Get off my internet! Turn the targeted ads back off! I respect your OC's; you don't have to try this hard!

Headcanon Blitzø has this game on his phone and has clocked about 200 hours on it.

1. Grandpa's Pregnant Big Booty Harem Thing

This was for one of those scummy short-form content miniseries apps. Apparently this guy was like, a rich guy who believed women with big butts were most fertile and went through like 10 wives and was trying to pick a granddaughter-in-law for his grandson based on her booty. I just ... yeah do I need to say anything that this screenshot doesn't? No explanation on why he was sitting there with a big belly, too. Some of the clips went by so fast that I wouldn't be surprised if this particular one was AI.

(For anyone unfamiliar with these short form content series, they tend to charge or make you wait between clips and you end up paying like $40-50 USD for about an hour and a half of badly translated, weirdly acted content with every story trope and stereotype trope thrown in).

And that's it for this week! ✨ My ads the last couple days have been much more tame. I kinda miss the insanity.

[beardedmrbean]

Some of the neighbors are saying Joss and his husband are meth addicts and the shooter was their dealer they owed a lot too.

Did a search that was just Jonathan Joss Meth, bunch of stuff there gonna put a few of them here, not finding anything drug related from any actual news sources.

Nothing about drugs anywhere, with as many visits to his neighborhood as I'm seeing there would likely be something in the record about it.

What To Know

Records show that San Antonio Police officers made numerous visits to the 200 block of Dorsey Drive dating back to 2024.

(Important to note, this is not just his house, just to be 100% clear on that it's the 200 block which could be many houses)

The following is a list of dates and reasons that Joss' residence received police responses in 2024:

January 26: Patrol by

February 24: Theft

February 27: Mental health (routine)

March 5: Disturbance (neighbor)

March 17: Mental health (routine)

March 21: Mental health (disturbance)

March 23: Welfare check, disturbance, assist the public

March 27: Information

April 1: Disturbance (neighbor)

April 2: Disturbance (neighbor)

April 16: Disturbance (neighbor)

April 19: Mental health (routine), disturbance

April 26: Mental health (routine)

April 27: Mental health (routine)

May 5: Disturbance, disturbance (neighbor)

May 20: Patrol by

May 22: Patrol by

May 23: Disturbance (neighbor)

June 7: 911 hangup

June 8: Disturbance (neighbor, knife in), miscellaneous

June 15: Mental health (routine)

July 9: Mental health (routine), miscellaneous

July 18: Patrol by

September 5: Disturbance (neighbor)

September 16: Miscellaneous

September 25: Miscellaneous

September 27: Disturbance

October 7: Disturbance

October 11: Disturbance

October 12: Disturbance

October 14: Disturbance

October 18: Disturbance

October 21: Miscellaneous

October 31: Miscellaneous

November 6: Information

December 12: Disturbance (neighbor)

December 12: Disturbance

December 18: Criminal mischief

2025:

January 23: Fire

February 9: Suspicious person, disturbance (neighbor)

June 1: Shooting (in progress)

June 2: Information

"SAPD Homicide is currently investigating the murder of Mr. Jonathan Joss," SAPD posted Monday on Facebook. "Despite online claims of this being a hate crime, currently the investigation has found no evidence to indicate that the [sic] Mr. Joss's murder was related to his sexual orientation.

"SAPD investigators handle these allegations very seriously and have thoroughly reviewed all available information. Should any new evidence come to light, the suspect will be charged accordingly."

SAN ANTONIO – Officers were called to Jonathan Joss’ home on the South Side more than 60 times in less than two years, according to San Antonio police records.In all, the department said 66 calls were made for various reasons to Joss’ home in the 200 block of Dorsey Drive that date back to September 2023. Below is a breakdown of most of the 66 calls:

13 disturbance neighbor calls

1 involved a gun

1 involved a knife

1 disturbance involving a gun call (not associated with a neighbor)

1 fire call

10 mental health calls

4 welfare check calls

SAPD said other frequent calls made to Joss’ address since September 2023 also include reasons labeled by police as “patrol by” (eight calls) and “miscellaneous” (seven calls).

KSAT also obtained multiple police reports that correspond to calls made to Joss’ home, including a June 2024 incident involving Joss and Sigfredo Ceja Alvarez, 56, his suspected killer.

Documented previous incident between Joss, Alvarez

On June 8, 2024, San Antonio police officers said they received a disturbance with a knife call at Joss’ home.

According to the officer who wrote the report, before arriving at the home, the officer said they looked up Joss’ information and found he had an active warrant on an unrelated criminal mischief charge.

When the officer arrived at the scene, the first report states that SAPD spoke with Joss, who neighbors said was “walking the streets with a crossbow in his hands, not pointing it at anyone.”

The officer wrote that Joss, 59, was “on his property” and “did not have the crossbow or any other weapons on his person” when the officer talked to him.

This one keeps going so I'll do a readmore.

I really just want justice to be served here, whatever that is.

According to a second police report from the same date and similar time as the first report, another SAPD officer spoke to Alvarez, who complained about Joss “walking outside his home with a crossbow.”

Alvarez also told police that Joss called him names, including “racial slurs.” Alvarez then showed the officer a video of Joss.

According to the second SAPD report, the video showed Joss driving slowly inside his vehicle before he stopped in front of Alvarez’s home, which is a few doors down from his own, and tried to get Alvarez to come out of his house.

Alvarez said he filed multiple complaints detailing how Joss has previously harassed him and Alvarez’s brother, who lives next door, but lamented how nothing has been done, the report states.

According to Alvarez, every time police officers arrived and later left the area, Joss would resume harassment of Alvarez. On at least one occasion, Joss told Alvarez that he is “coming for him,” police said.

Alvarez also told police he was afraid to leave his wife and kids at home because he alleged Joss was “known to follow them around the neighborhood.”

When SAPD spoke to Joss, he admitted to talking to him about their “dogs fighting with each other,” but denied Alvarez’s harassment claims. Joss also told police the video that showed him driving slowly was about showing “his partner something” and not at all connected to Alvarez.

Due to the then-active criminal mischief warrant, authorities said Joss was booked on June 8, 2024, into the Bexar County Adult Detention Center.

October 2023 mental health call

On Oct. 10, 2023, SAPD said one of its officers responded to Joss’ home on a possible disturbance involving a gun call. The person who called 911 told the dispatcher they witnessed Joss naked in the street holding a rifle.

According to a police report, an officer arrived at Joss’ home and called for him to come out. When Joss stepped out of the home, the officer said he remained naked except for a “window curtain” that “wrapped around his genitals.”

In the report, the officer wrote that Joss appeared to be nervous and confused.

Joss told the officer that he had repeatedly heard the sounds of doors opening and closing or “a cough or moan” coming from Joss’ vehicle.

“I know someone is after me,” Joss told SAPD. According to the report, he told the officer he believed the CIA was “tracking him.”

With Joss’ permission, two SAPD officers went into his home and saw the rifle that the 911 caller told the dispatcher about. In all, the officers confiscated three weapons from Joss’ home for Joss’ safety “and the safety of the public,” the SAPD report states.

SAPD officers said they notified MEDCOM, which facilitates the coordination of psychiatric emergency services transfers, about the detention of Joss’ weapons.

Joss was taken to a hospital for further evaluation, according to a police report.

911 calls placed to Alvarez’s home

KSAT also obtained 911 calls made to Alvarez’s home on Thursday. In all, records show SAPD was called to his residence 10 times since July 2023.

Below is a full breakdown of the 10 calls:

5 disturbance neighbor calls

4 shots fired/heard calls

1 threat call

Among those 10 calls, KSAT learned a police report was filed for only one incident: a “shots fired” call that originated on May 24, 2024.

According to the report, an SAPD officer arrived at the home at 10:49 p.m., where they heard shots ringing out and loud music blaring from the back of the residence.

The officer then tried to get the attention of anyone at the home, but was unable to, the report states. SAPD said the officer notified their supervisor before leaving the scene.

More than two-and-a-half hours later, at 1:21 a.m. on May 25, 2024, the department said the original officer was dispatched to Alvarez’s home for a second time on a similar “shots fired” call.

In the report, the responding officer wrote that they heard shots ringing out again at the home and were unsuccessful in getting the homeowner’s attention a second time.

A neighbor, whose name and address were redacted in the report, told the officer that the person at the home, whose name was listed as “unknown” and whose age was redacted in the report, had been drinking and firing a weapon “all night next to her window.”

It is unclear if the referenced window belonged to the neighbor or the person at Alvarez’s address.

According to the report, the officer told the neighbor that they were “unable to force entry” into the home. SAPD said it also sent its EAGLE helicopter to the back of the home. Authorities said no injuries were reported at the home.

[cuprohastes]

Alien: Romulus

No spoiler review: It’s a turd.

Spoiler review under the cut.

OK. So the first scene is Wayland-Utani recovering a Xenomorph pod from the wreckage of the Nostromo. You remember the Nostromo? Ground zero for a nuclear detonation? Didn’t have any alien pods with a full size alien on board?

Then it’s off to Zeta Reticuli where there’s a colony on a world without sunlight. We’re introduced to the protagonist, Generic Forgettable Person. And her brother Clearly An Android.

The company does some puppy kicking, and then it’s off to meet the rest of the cast.

Specifically the protagonist has completed her 12,000 hours of work and her contract is over. The company extends it to 24,000 hours and re-assigns her to the death mines. “Try again in 5 to 6 years!” she’s told

This is the first hint that whoever wrote the movie cannot use a calculator and doesn’t know what time it is. 12,000 hours on an 8 hour shift is 4 years at 8 hours per day. Let’s assume the company likes to make people work 12 or 16 hour shifts. That brings it down to about 3 and 2 years respectively. This will keep happening.

Then it’s off to meet every one else: There’s Sympathetic guy, Tragically Pregnant Girl, Not Vasquez, and Inexplicable Douchebag.

Stupid Plot Point 1: An entire ‘spaceship’ belonging to Wayland Utani is hanging out in orbit, but nobody knows it’s there presumably because with hundreds of cargo ships, they decided to not have any traffic control, early warning etc.

The plan is to steal the cryo-pods and fly 9 years to another colony not owned by Wayland-Utani.

Remembering that in Alien, Aliens, Prometheus and Covenant, they do longer journeys in months. This is another point where the writing team just punted.

OK so everyone zooms off without being queried, checked etc. Obvious Android Guy, whose name is actually Andy gets them onto the station. The cryo pods are out of fuel so they go to get some more, Andy Saves Douchebag form falling into a hole melted into the floor. Nobody seems to query what the fuck happened, Douchebag gets cryoburns which are never mentioned again and then about 200 facehuggers are let loose.

From where? Storage units. No eggs, no queen, just facehuggers.

Not Vasquez gets to play throat-goat, and 10 minute slater takes 5 minutes to die of alien chestburster. Yeah, the chestbursters are now instant.

The ship goes flying off course, hits a fuel silo under the ship (Actually it’s a space station), which somehow makes it zoom off to hit the rings in 1n hour instead of 36 hours, even though it should have been pushed away from the rings. The spaceship miraculously crashes, un-damaged (Y’know after hitting a fuel tank hard enought o blow it up) into a second cargo bay that… OK that’s just fucking stupid, right?

The chestburster now builds a gestation sack, guarded by ribs while everyone is picking themselves up. Douchebag finds it, decides to stick a cattle prod in and… well there’s a really gratuitous scene involving alien blood.

Tragically Pregnant girl is mutilated and dragged off for implantation.

And then it’s back to the science lab to meet an old friend! It’s Ian Holmes everyone! He’s not looking good after the digital necromancers got to him, but at least the writers thought they were being so clever by naming his character ‘Rook’ (Look, aren’t they clever? Because there was the other android called Bishop. Which was a different model, from Aliens?) and having him say the same lines that Ash, his twin said in Alien.

There’s a lot of this.

Tragically Pregnant Girl is rescued but is bleeding out. Slowly. Nobody in the future knows what a bandage is, so they decide to just leave her bleeding and stick her in a freezer

Rook claims he’s perfect the black goo. He wants the crew to return it to Planet Shithole. As a bonus he suggests Tragically Pregnant girl inject it to make her superhuman. It worked on rats! And humans are 25% rat! Look! There’s a video of a rat!

There’s also a giant tentacled exploded rat monster, but nobody looks at that side of the room.

There’s a bit of splitting up, Sympathetic guy gets shredded, Andy turns evil and is factory re-set, everyone forgets how gravity works, Tragically Pregnant girl gets all the way to the ship OK without any real effort then randomly shoots up with black slime.

Andy kills an alien and says “Get away from her… you Bitch” and the alien’s blood is conspicuous in its inability to melt through anything at all.

They get to the ship and manage to climb up to where it’s jammed, close the door, and escape in under 10 seconds, because time is like a state of mind man.

And this is where we get the kink stuff.

Tragically pregnant girl of course does not become super humab but does instantly become 9 months pregnant in 2 minutes shten have something the size of a watermelon fly out of her hoo-ha. I mean 10 seconds earlier she was in overalls but for plot expediency she’s now in some sort of long shirt with no underwear. There’s a point where Final Girl tears an umbilical the thickness of her wrist in half with her bare hands and we see the alien egg pod split… to show a baby. Aww.

The pod immediately eats through the floor. Final girl goes to collect it and uh…

The baby is now a 9 foot tall slenderman.

Where is it getting all this mass?

Meanwhile Tragically Pregnant girl inexplicably gets a scene where she sticks her hand in her top and milks herself and finds she’s got lube coming out of her tit.

This is never commented on, mentioned or in any way shape or form relevant because about two minutes later, Slenderman shows up and sucks all her blood out because sure, why not?

So Final girl just dumps it out the airlock, because apparently the writers have the imagination and creativity of an LLM.

Which is presumably why they then copy Ripley’s audio log from Alien.

Roll credits.

It’s like 30% of a decent movie and 70% a garbage fire where they spend too much time going ‘Hey… remember this from the other films? Huh?

And then just doing whatever random bit of bullshit moves the movie on, regardless of what makes sense.

[pipermca]

I am accepting @altraviolet's challenge (from the post here) for the fic writer questionnaire. This looks like fun! *cracks knuckles*

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

90

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

1,133,042 (holy shit)

3. What fandoms do you write for?

I mostly write for Transformers these days. I do have a little short story cooking for Centaurworld; maybe I'll get that jotted down some day.

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

I can definitely see how writing for a popular ship will skew your stats on your fics, and smut gives bonus points. 😅

Frag the Police. Jazz/Prowl, NSFW

Claim Rejected. MegOP, SFW

Peer Review. Starscream/Wheeljack, NSFW

Anamnesis. Jazz/Prowl, SFWish (has plug-n-play interfacing)

Public Indecency. Jazz/Prowl, NSFW

5. Do you respond to comments?

Yes! I love comments and I want to pass on that appreciation. 💗

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Hmm. Even my darker stories usually have a bit of light in the end, since I am a sucker for happy (if possibly bittersweet) endings. But the story Atrocity (please mind the tags on that one) leaves Bluestreak in a bad place at the end, and nothing is really resolved.

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

I have lots of fics with really happy endings! But in terms of having no hanging ends, I think The Renegade and the Hound might be the happiest. 🤗 The last chapter of that fic is all warm fuzzies for the characters.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

Not yet. 😄 I've gotten some vaguely critical comments sometimes but I wouldn't call that hate.

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

Ooooh yeah. I write it all. I'll even write the weird stuff there's no terms for. Give me that weird-ass smut.

10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written?

I tend to write fusions rather than traditional crossovers, but the weirdest one was very recent: The Spark and the Lightning, which is the War for Cybertron game crossed/fused with Dune.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I am aware of.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Yes! The fic Becoming has been translated into Russian.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Sort of? A friend and I tossed little bits of a story back and forth several years ago, each of us building on what the other had just written. I have the bits all collected, but I'm not sure if it'll ever see the light of day.

14. What’s your all time favorite ship?

Bluestreak/Hound. 💗

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

It's in the Alt Modes and Alchemy AU. Basically it's the events of the climax of The Renegade and the Hound and a period immedately afterwards, but from Perceptor's POV. It's written as a half diary/half academic paper. The title is:

On the Restoration of Cybertron: An Analysis and Personal Account, or A Treatise on the Effects of the Destruction of the Matrix of Leadership on Cybertron and its Inhabitants from an Alchemical Perspective, and a Personal Account of said Event as Recalled by Perceptor of Iacon, Head Alchemist of Optimus Prime.

It's hella fun, and I'd love to finish it, but it keeps moving out of my "currently working on" stack into the "shelved" stack. :/

16. What are your writing strengths?

I think I'm good at worldbuilding and writing those juicy emotional scenes.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Finishing stuff. 😅 But seriously, I have a tendency to go back and rework stuff I've written (but not yet posted) instead of working forward on getting more words down. I love editing too much I think. >.<

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

It's fine? It should be clear to the reader what the dialogue says without them having to Google Translate it. Anything that stops a reader and takes them out of the flow of the story is a Bad Thing imo.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

Hahaha! I think the first actual fanfic I wrote was in the Time Quintet series (specifically after reading A Swiftly Tilting Planet) by Madeleine L'Engle. I think I was about 8 or 9.

20. Favorite fic you’ve written?

Hmm. My favourite long fic is Mind, Body, and Soul (which was long and self-indulgent and I said everything I wanted to say about the Big Themes of the story). My favourite short fic is probably Datastream, mostly because I dipped into Cybertronian brains and weird sci-fi elements, mixed with formatting to help tell the story. :)

That was fun! Consider yourself tagged if you want to play along.

[jasper-pagan-witch]

10 least favorite witchy books. I wanna know what you hate most

Ask Me My Top 10/Top 5 Anything

See what I mean about this and the previous ask?

1: House Witch OR Green Witch | Arin Murphy-Hiscock: Most things by Arin Murphy-Hiscock suck. These two are just copy-pastes of each other.

2: Anything by Doreen Virtue: She's a scammer and a grifter, what more can I say?

3: Psychic Witch | Mat Auryn: A fucking dredge to get through. Painful in so many words. I have a review on it posted on my blog somewhere.

4: Rebel Witch | Kelly-Ann Maddox: I don't hate this because it's bad (it's perfectly fine), it's just that it's so fucking repetitive and Wiccan-centric. It just didn't feel nearly as rebellious as it claimed it was trying to be.

5: The Goodly Spellbook | Coven Olvenwilde: This one got a whole ass rant.

6: A Spellbook For the Seasons | Tudorbeth: The first flaming piece of garbage I ever reviewed on Tumblr. Terrible, horrible, no good, very bad, also extremely repetitive despite the weird season segregation? Don't know what that was all about.

7: A Tea Witch's Grimoire: Magical recipes for your teatime. | S M Harlow: This one was...strange. You know those compilations of tea recipes you find on Tumblr? Now imagine if someone combined that into a book and sold it on Amazon for fifteen bucks. They don't even taste good and the book is somehow STILL stock full of appropriation and misuse of terminology. How the fuck.

8: Elements of Witchcraft series | various authors, published by Llewellyn Publishing: I only use these for crystal and plant correspondences, sometimes animal ones too. Every time I open it to a different page, I want to strangle the publishing house with my bare hands.

9: In fact, let's just add anything original that gets produced by Llewellyn Publishing.

10: And most books on my correspondences shelf. They're fine for correspondences, but I avoid the actual content because otherwise I'd want to bite out someone's throat like a werewolf.

Bonus: It's Witchcraft: a beginner’s guide to secular & non-secular witchcraft | Jamie Weaver: A hodgepodge mess. Difficult to read and follow. Not nearly as secular as it's trying to be.

~Jasper

[stormoftara]

I usually do reviews of the new season of anime, but I don't have time this season. So instead I thought I'd do a quicker review based on the queer vibes each anime has.

My New Boss is Goofy: this is a silly office sitcom-like anime. It has so many gay moments, but it's not straight up gay. However one of the characters, Kinjo, actually admitted to liking men and women, so that makes this a 10/10

The 100 Girlfriends who really really love me: Very straight. A boy who had no luck in love suddenly gets all the luck. And he has 100 soulmates. And he has to love them all or they'll die? Great if you love for real for real harem anime. Otherwise the queer vibe is 0/10

Stardust Telepath: a girl who feels like she doesn't belong? That she would relate to aliens better? Then she meets a girl claiming to be an alien? And they have forehead telepathy? Mmm that Yuri vibes, 7/10

Frieren: What happens after the end of a long adventure? Well mostly, the heros grow old and die, fading into memory and legend. Except for the long lived elves. This series doesn't have much romance, however, Frieren, the elf, is implied to be asexual. Most elves are, which is why the race is dying out now. Great anime 10/10

Our Dating Story: A boy asks out the most popular girl and she says yes??? What will happen now? Well nothing gay, but it's still cute. 0/10 on them queer vibes.

Ron Kamonohashi's Forbidden Deductions: Ron is a detective but is forbidden from working. He has a special power, you see, and it's caused many deaths. However a detective on the police force needs his help, so Ron works through him to solve cases. It's like Sherlock, but not a lot of queer vibes here. Great show though, 2/10

KamiErabi God.app: I can't describe how awful this is, but very straight. 0/10

SHY: A new superhero who is very shy has started to protect Japan. Unfortunately she lets someone get injured, a young girl her age. And then that girl comes to her school? It's actually kinda gay 9/10

I'm in Love with the Villainess: A girl gets transported into the world of her favorite otome game. She loves the villainess of the game way more than the princes. Explicitly gay. 1000/10