#either is plenty plausible

[castielsfuckassdiary]

I saw Moana 2 today with Jack! I won't spoil it for you all, but I cried. :'(

Back to the real source of entertainment.

Clementine is a thriving monarch, the bees are happy. Kevin is getting increasingly more delusional. I think we have to put him down again. Charlie is still my best friend, and I think she's asked Hermione to bless my bee colony. Thank you Hermione <3

Bye diary!

[creatingblackcharacters]

No, That’s Not ‘How Color Works’. - Whitewashing

Whitewashing, as defined by Merriam-Webster:

"to alter (something) in a way that favors, features, or caters to white people: such as a) to portray (the past) in a way that increases the prominence, relevance, or impact of white people and minimizes or misrepresents that of nonwhite people and B) to alter (an original story) by casting a white performer in a role based on a nonwhite person or fictional character"

In fandom context, we know it to include:

Making someone’s skin lighter

Making someone’s hair a thinner texture

Changing someone’s nose to be thinner

Shrinking their lips

Changing the character in their entirety to be someone else

The Normalization of Whitewashing

Remember how I mentioned last lesson that despite the nature of poorly drawn Black characters, most audiences are not turned off enough to discourage the action in professional works? Similar idea with whitewashing. Not the same- unlike the Ambiguously Brown Character, which claims to have plausible deniability, overt whitewashing is usually enough to make fans speak up! But that’s the key word here- overt! It has to be “bad enough” to make enough people speak up, but as we’ve seen many a time, “bad enough” seems to have a much higher threshold for nonblack viewership (sometimes the limit doesn’t exist!)

Some visual examples

This is a link to my personal thread on a Netflix show I was watching- Worst Ex Ever. Now, while the show itself was quite enlightening, there was something I could not get over. I thought I was going crazy. And that was that no matter how dark the person of color would be in real life, the animated portions would draw this light pinkish-brown. Every. Single. Time. It's like they couldn't fathom scrolling down the color wheel. And this is a Netflix original! Netflix has plenty of money for someone to have caught this in creation. But... it was produced. And put out. And they're making more of it.

I asked all of the Dragon Age fans about the series, and uh… I didn’t know things were this bad, guys! Apparently this is a man of color, but it doesn't seem like the creators want you to know that 🤣. Jokes aside, as I’ve discussed before, the noticeable whitewashing- and that was one of many racist things I was told- was not enough to prevent sales... so why would they stop? I can only hope this new game, with all the updates, is enough to turn the tide. But the series has gone on for a while now, that if they’d chosen to do ye same olde… there clearly would not be a lack of financial support to prevent it.

Colorism as a Tool

Even when actors of color are cast, colorism often plays a role in normalizing whitewashing to audiences, even to Black audiences! People think “oh well at least they’re Black!” as if that is the only important part. It is not.

While Aaron Pierre, the actor cast for John Stewart of Green Lantern fame, is a GORGEOUS, STUNNING man, he is not the dark-skinned man that John Stewart is supposed to be and should not have been cast! To me, this is overt colorism, but clearly for many people this is not “enough” to warrant concern or even prevent the casting itself- including the studio behind the movie! Black fans have plead for years for the character of Storm to be played by a dark-skinned, preferably African, woman, and it has never happened.

It naturally happens in fan spaces as well, which is another indicator that colorism as a tool for whitewashing is quite effective for audiences. If I see one more Zendaya fan cast for Kida from Atlantis, I will scream. It’s been happening for years, and I don’t think any of the people who just want to see her and Tom on screen either understand or care that Kida is a dark-skinned character. Zendaya doesn’t look anything like Kida- it doesn’t matter if she’s Black too! Just because someone is Black does not mean they can play every single Black character! I’ve even seen people fancast Emilia Clarke of Game of Thrones fame, to which… I don’t have the words. I can’t fathom what would cause these decisions other than racism.

The Common Excuses

I must be honest. I don’t really feel like re-iterating how certain things are not okay and how to fix them, because I’ve already discussed these things in massive detail. So I’m just going to direct the excuses I regularly hear to my lessons, where you can read up on them.

“Their hair/eyes are like that because they’re biracial so-”

Relevant Lessons: 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 8, 9, 10

There is nothing wrong with having biracial characters with a range of features. I am not saying that! Because yeah, genetics do happen!

But I mentioned this in my last lesson, and I will re-emphasize here, that using biracial identity as a way to whitewash is a sinister form of racism. The intention here- the real intention- is the issue here! The idea that somehow this character can only look the way you want them to look by "diluting" their Blackness… I don’t know how you can explain yourselves out of that one.

You don’t get to use us as an excuse for diversity while still trying to maintain your preference for Eurocentric beauty standards. Black biracial people don’t always look light skinned, thin-haired and ambiguous, and even the ones that do don’t deserve to be treated as your fetish for pretend antiracism. If you just want to draw a white person with a tan, do that. But don’t change a character’s entire look just so you can work in some whiteness. If you want to claim that canon Black character’s mother was white, then I guess they inherited some of her personality because their features should not change.

“It’s my style/It’s the color-”

Relevant Lessons: 3, 4, 10

I hate all excuses for whitewashing, but I’ve grown to despise, hate, abhor and loathe this one the most as I’ve become an artist. I wish there were stronger words to describe just how much I hate the “style” and “color” excuse.

Are style and use of color oft intertwined? Absolutely. I’m not saying they aren’t. But out of everything, there are two things I want artists to understand:

1. Style does not cancel out racism! No style forces you to choose ashy greys and to change peoples’ features. That’s you! If you look at something, and it looks offensive, you change the style. You grow as an artist!

2. “Everyone who is brown will look ashy so I just-” if you recognize that your Black characters look strange in comparison to your nonblack characters, then it’s time to try something else! I don’t understand this sudden need for “realism” when it comes to color and lighting, but not when it comes to hair, for example. No one cares about realism when giving every and all Black characters wavy tresses they probably wouldn’t have, but suddenly milquetoast watercolor attempts at brown and off-putting lighting is “how it works”. That’s not fair.

The color picker is an available tool! I use it often!

Dead giveaway of purposeful whitewashing: if someone gets the outfit color palette right via color picking, but the skin color is multiple shades lighter. That means they were looking at that character and chose not to proceed.

Dead giveaway of purposeful whitewashing: if the white characters in the show are completely correct in their palettes. Again, that means they cared enough to look at everyone else… and not the Black characters.

If you use the color picker and the color picked is… disrespectful, you do not have to use that! You can simply choose a better color that is still similar to the brown that ought to be depicted!

“It’s the lighting-”

Relevant Lessons: 4, 5

If your white characters do not shine like snow in the sunlight because of your lighting, then your lighting does not make your Black characters suddenly light tan.

If your Black characters look bad in your lighting of choice- for example, putting a very dark-skinned character in electric white lighting can be ghastly- try changing the intensity or the color of the lighting. DON’T change your character’s skin color!

I'm going to show you some pictures of South Sudanese model Nyakim Gatwech. Pay attention to the choices of light, color, and makeup.

Look how BEAUTIFUL she is! Look at the choices of intensity and color of light, and how they make her look different in each image.

Now look at this image in comparison:

In this image, whoever did her makeup and took this picture did not take into consideration her skin tone. She's also under this really intense lighting. This is an example of "increasing the lighting does NOT make an image "better"". She didn't need to have lighter skin or "more lighting" to look good. She needed BETTER lighting, lighting that worked with HER.

To see this as an example in drawn art, @dsm7 makes an excellent argument for proper lighting and color, why it is an issue to use it as an excuse, and how to solve that problem.

‼️DISCLAIMER FOR NEXT EXAMPLE‼️

Okay. I am about to show y’all a fan-created example from my personal experience. It is a TEACHING EXPERIENCE ONLY. I am not including the artist’s name in this image. It happened a couple years ago, and it’s over- they’ve chosen to be who they are despite me kindly confronting them about it. The only reason I’m including it at all is because I feel like it would be remiss to have such a clear-cut, multi-level example, and not teach with it. That said, no, I am not telling anyone to act out towards them. Again, that is not what I’m telling you to do. The last thing I need is a literal lynch mob of angry nonblack viewership for trying to teach you all, and y’all sitting there watching it happen to me. Every example of whitewashing is not going to be so obvious, but I hope you learn how to spot the examples in the art you see and share.

I'm obviously a Hades fan, particularly of Patroclus- despite my disdain for the lack of effort in his canon character design. So I've seen a lot of things. That said:

“Well it’s just MY design of them-”

Relevant Lessons: ALL

The sepia coloring did not do this. The lighting did not do this. The design is the exact same as the Hades version, even down to the shape of the hair curling in the back. The only thing that is different… is the man himself.

Y'all. Y'all! You CANNOT take a pre-existing Black character and say “oh well this is my design of them” …and the design is of a whole white person. Because if the rest of the fit is the same, and the only thing that changed is the Blackness… Racism. If you’re going to “make up your own design”, then do that!

“Blackwashing”

Speaking of: I’m sure someone edgy out there thinks they’re so smart as they retort to the screen: “but if that’s not okay, then why is Blackwashing okay?” To which I say- shut up. 😐

The “definition” by fandom: making a nonblack character Black, usually an anime character, but characters in general.

Funny enough, the actual definition in the dictionary (or closest to) is “to defame”, in contrast with whitewash (as in whitewashing history). Maybe racist fans ARE using it correctly when they say you’re blackwashing their characters, when they mean you’re making them “less likable because they’re Black now”. 🤔

Anyway: Blackwashing is not real for the same reason reverse racism is not real.

Me painting these characters brown is not going to take away from the fact that there are far more of you in media than there is of me. Me saying that I ‘headcanon a character as Black with 4C hair’ is not going to make the studio go “oh! Well they must be Black with 4C hair now!” Me saying “oh I think I’d like this character better if they were Black” as a beta tester (less overtly, obviously, because I’m not racist!) will never make a studio change that character. Black viewers have minimal value in comparison to the power of the white viewer’s dollar. I could draw white characters Black every single day of every single game media… and they would still produce majority white characters. There has not been centuries- if not millennia, when we consider Jesus Christ himself, even- of purposeful “Blackwashing” with the intent of removing the original ethnicity- and thus importance- of white people. No one has ever been allowed to forget when someone is white. No one has ever been allowed to forget or not acknowledge white people.

How it could be "solved"

Personally, I love Black edits and I welcome them here. I find them creative and fun. But if you really, REALLY didn’t want us to make those edits, then naturally, we need more Black characters in all of our media!

I wouldn’t have to make edits if I saw more of me to begin with in the things I like to watch- but when we have those characters, racists act an ass about them. We’re not allowed to even be present! I’ve seen too many gamer bros mocking the existence of Yasuke in Assassin’s Creed, and he was a real ass man. But if we made a game about African peoples in African societies, how many of the gamer bros would actually play those games? Do you think there’d be as much support, when we hear so much about Black characters that are treated so abhorrently? How many games do we have where people would love their faves just as much if they were Black? I even learned that Solas was apparently supposed to be a man of color. IMAGINE how many people would not have liked that man, with the same exact plot and characterization.

Something I’ve noticed recently: apparently "Blackwashing" is not a thing when White fans “allow” it. Take this recent trend with Miku. International Miku was beloved! But if you draw any other character as Black on any other day, there will be people that are horrid about it. Ask any artist, Black artists and Black cosplayers especially, who’s ever done it what their comments are like. I’ve read entire missives akin to white supremacist drivel on how it’s somehow morally wrong to make characters Black. Meanwhile no amount of “hey maybe you shouldn’t do this” prevented the movie Gods of Egypt from being created, with a cast full of British White people.

Solutions to Avoiding Whitewashing!

1) Using References!!

Do I think you should know what Black people look like? Yes. We’re humans. It’s 2024. Everyone knows what we look like when it’s time to hate and discriminate against us, so you know what we look like when it’s time to love and depict us. If you’re on Tumblr, you have access to the Internet. ESPECIALLY if you’re in the U.S., as Black people are the source of damn near every piece of online pop culture. If you can find my dialect to make my jokes, you can find pictures of me.

Would I rather you use a reference every single time so that you can only strengthen your depiction of my people? ABSOLUTELY.

Anyone on the Internet telling you not to use a reference or that you shouldn’t need a reference? Unfollow them. You don’t need that negativity in your life. Why would you deprive yourself of a tool to create? The greatest portrait painters in history had to look at their subjects! You are not getting paid nearly as much to do this as Hans Holbein, and he had to stare at Henry VIII correct else lose his head- you can pull up multiple references. I’d far rather be judged for using hella references than be judged for being a racist!

Part of the issue is people draw what they’re used to, what they’re comfortable with (thus last lesson). But if what you’re used to is not what someone will look like… That’s not okay. Their features are not the issue, your skills are the issue. Learn! Practice! There is no rush. No one is rushing you to be perfect at drawing Black characters, and no one is rushing you to post them. You can just practice! If you’re not a professional, you can take as long as you need to draw! If you need to draw that piece of hair over and over until you feel like you have down the shape, you do that! If you need to use a tool that would draw the hair for you, you get that tool!

If you want to post, you can say you are practicing! If you make clear you are practicing, then be willing to accept that people may have feedback. I’d far rather deal with someone saying they’re unconfident and practicing, than someone posting a whitewashed caricature and closing their ears because “well at least I’m trying!”

2) Empathize! Care about actual Black people when you create a Black character!

Imagine, if you will, in the Twilight Zone: you went to an artist, and you asked for a white character (I typed in “regular looking white dude” on google). There’s hardly ever any white characters, you’re so super excited about this one! You paid good money, because you’ve seen just how amazing this artist creates! They’re so good at drawing characters of color! But no matter how many times you ask, they send you back an image of… Assad Zaman.

That man might be fine as hell! Gorgeous! Beautifully done! Chef’s kiss. Stunning! But… He’s not white. That’s not what you asked or paid for. You can’t even fathom how they mixed this up, they don’t even look alike! And when you confront them, they gaslight you, they call YOU the issue for not understanding how you can’t tell that this is a white man! They would never get this wrong! They have white friends, you’re the racist! But you’re not stupid, and you have functioning eyes- you can SEE what this drawing looks like! And… It’s not you.

It’s dehumanizing. It’s being told that there’s a “better way” to look like you, and that’s by… Not looking like you. You, as you exist, are what’s incorrect. Your identity is incorrect, not their drawing. It’s better to have thinner hair instead of an afro or locs, it’s better to have lighter skin, it’s better to have a straighter, thinner nose over a round one, and smaller lips.

And what makes it worse is knowing that people who don’t look like you? Probably won’t care. They won’t be willing to see- not unable, but unwilling- that playing with this caricature is harmful, that they’re propagating harm by not acknowledging it. They’re letting you know that your humanity means less to them than the clout received with a whitewashed or half-assed Black character, and that people will applaud them for that ‘attempt at inclusion’. And people will applaud! They will be entertained by the mere performance! And that hurts.

I’m going to say this, and it’s awkward and I try not to say it directly on here, but… Having Black friends and/or being around actual, real life Black people would help. I can tell from some of the questions I receive that Black characters and their traits- especially things like our hair and our cultures- are being treated as… alien concepts. But even if, for whatever reason, you legitimately don’t know any Black people, you do not need to know us individually to care about our humanity as a whole! Even if you do not know we’re there, we are, and we could possibly see your work!

By acknowledging Blackness and making room to understand what it means- and that includes how we can look- you are doing the bare minimum of acknowledging our personhood. If you cannot do even that, you don’t need to be drawing us.

Conclusion

Here’s the thing: if you want to draw a white man with tanned skin, do that. Just do it! You do NOT have to erase me to have more of you! There is not a single fandom where the majority of the white fans ever said “gee, not another white guy!” It simply doesn’t happen. God knows we wish it did sometimes. You will always have an audience for white characters. There’s no danger to any of you of “being erased”.

(Without putting on my political hat, I will say that a lot of white people who consider themselves to be far from white supremacist will express beliefs in line with great replacement theory if you push them hard enough. It is unfortunately not as uncommon an idea as you might think. I would do some self-evaluation.)

People are going to notice that you only ever draw white people, but… To be frank, that has never stopped anybody from being successful. Again, Jen Zee, at Supergiant with the terrible dark-skinned characters… Still has a job. at Supergiant. A professional studio. Dragon Age. Multiple games of consistent whitewashing and racist writing. Still going. If racism prevented creation and popularity, I wouldn’t have to have this blog. Alas, that is the society we currently live in.

But if you ACTUALLY want to depict Black characters, if you ACTUALLY want to do right and be respectful- not because you want the clout, but because it’s the right damn thing to do- then you need to commit! This means drawing them as they are meant to be! Accept that you’ll likely lose some fan base, who was there (whether they were aware of it or not) for the white and lighter skinned characters. Accept that this means that trying to appeal to those people by whitewashing characters is 1) wrong, 2) racist, which is 3) something you chose to do when you could simply have just… Drawn more white people.

I’ll say it again: antiracism is hard. It’s hard doing the right thing in a society that rewards racism so easily. It’s really hard knowing that people will stop supporting you or caring as much about your work when you start including Black characters as actively as you do white ones, especially if you start talking about the importance of it. But in my honest opinion, I’d far rather be someone that cared about others, with genuine fans, than someone that was racist for the fleeting internet clout of strangers. And that may be less ‘hopeful’ than I normally am in these lessons, but… People make choices. And people who have been informed- as you are now- are aware of the choices they are making. It’s the thought that counts, but the action that delivers- let’s choose better actions.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Even if you think AI search could be good, it won’t be good

TONIGHT (May 15), I'm in NORTH HOLLYWOOD for a screening of STEPHANIE KELTON'S FINDING THE MONEY; FRIDAY (May 17), I'm at the INTERNET ARCHIVE in SAN FRANCISCO to keynote the 10th anniversary of the AUTHORS ALLIANCE.

The big news in search this week is that Google is continuing its transition to "AI search" – instead of typing in search terms and getting links to websites, you'll ask Google a question and an AI will compose an answer based on things it finds on the web:

https://blog.google/products/search/generative-ai-google-search-may-2024/

Google bills this as "let Google do the googling for you." Rather than searching the web yourself, you'll delegate this task to Google. Hidden in this pitch is a tacit admission that Google is no longer a convenient or reliable way to retrieve information, drowning as it is in AI-generated spam, poorly labeled ads, and SEO garbage:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/03/keyword-swarming/#site-reputation-abuse

Googling used to be easy: type in a query, get back a screen of highly relevant results. Today, clicking the top links will take you to sites that paid for placement at the top of the screen (rather than the sites that best match your query). Clicking further down will get you scams, AI slop, or bulk-produced SEO nonsense.

AI-powered search promises to fix this, not by making Google search results better, but by having a bot sort through the search results and discard the nonsense that Google will continue to serve up, and summarize the high quality results.

Now, there are plenty of obvious objections to this plan. For starters, why wouldn't Google just make its search results better? Rather than building a LLM for the sole purpose of sorting through the garbage Google is either paid or tricked into serving up, why not just stop serving up garbage? We know that's possible, because other search engines serve really good results by paying for access to Google's back-end and then filtering the results:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/04/teach-me-how-to-shruggie/#kagi

Another obvious objection: why would anyone write the web if the only purpose for doing so is to feed a bot that will summarize what you've written without sending anyone to your webpage? Whether you're a commercial publisher hoping to make money from advertising or subscriptions, or – like me – an open access publisher hoping to change people's minds, why would you invite Google to summarize your work without ever showing it to internet users? Nevermind how unfair that is, think about how implausible it is: if this is the way Google will work in the future, why wouldn't every publisher just block Google's crawler?

A third obvious objection: AI is bad. Not morally bad (though maybe morally bad, too!), but technically bad. It "hallucinates" nonsense answers, including dangerous nonsense. It's a supremely confident liar that can get you killed:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/sep/01/mushroom-pickers-urged-to-avoid-foraging-books-on-amazon-that-appear-to-be-written-by-ai

The promises of AI are grossly oversold, including the promises Google makes, like its claim that its AI had discovered millions of useful new materials. In reality, the number of useful new materials Deepmind had discovered was zero:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/23/maximal-plausibility/#reverse-centaurs

This is true of all of AI's most impressive demos. Often, "AI" turns out to be low-waged human workers in a distant call-center pretending to be robots:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/31/neural-interface-beta-tester/#tailfins

Sometimes, the AI robot dancing on stage turns out to literally be just a person in a robot suit pretending to be a robot:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/29/pay-no-attention/#to-the-little-man-behind-the-curtain

The AI video demos that represent "an existential threat to Hollywood filmmaking" turn out to be so cumbersome as to be practically useless (and vastly inferior to existing production techniques):

https://www.wheresyoured.at/expectations-versus-reality/

But let's take Google at its word. Let's stipulate that:

a) It can't fix search, only add a slop-filtering AI layer on top of it; and

b) The rest of the world will continue to let Google index its pages even if they derive no benefit from doing so; and

c) Google will shortly fix its AI, and all the lies about AI capabilities will be revealed to be premature truths that are finally realized.

AI search is still a bad idea. Because beyond all the obvious reasons that AI search is a terrible idea, there's a subtle – and incurable – defect in this plan: AI search – even excellent AI search – makes it far too easy for Google to cheat us, and Google can't stop cheating us.

Remember: enshittification isn't the result of worse people running tech companies today than in the years when tech services were good and useful. Rather, enshittification is rooted in the collapse of constraints that used to prevent those same people from making their services worse in service to increasing their profit margins:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/26/glitchbread/#electronic-shelf-tags

These companies always had the capacity to siphon value away from business customers (like publishers) and end-users (like searchers). That comes with the territory: digital businesses can alter their "business logic" from instant to instant, and for each user, allowing them to change payouts, prices and ranking. I call this "twiddling": turning the knobs on the system's back-end to make sure the house always wins:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/19/twiddler/

What changed wasn't the character of the leaders of these businesses, nor their capacity to cheat us. What changed was the consequences for cheating. When the tech companies merged to monopoly, they ceased to fear losing your business to a competitor.

Google's 90% search market share was attained by bribing everyone who operates a service or platform where you might encounter a search box to connect that box to Google. Spending tens of billions of dollars every year to make sure no one ever encounters a non-Google search is a cheaper way to retain your business than making sure Google is the very best search engine:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/21/im-feeling-unlucky/#not-up-to-the-task

Competition was once a threat to Google; for years, its mantra was "competition is a click away." Today, competition is all but nonexistent.

Then the surveillance business consolidated into a small number of firms. Two companies dominate the commercial surveillance industry: Google and Meta, and they collude to rig the market:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jedi_Blue

That consolidation inevitably leads to regulatory capture: shorn of competitive pressure, the companies that dominate the sector can converge on a single message to policymakers and use their monopoly profits to turn that message into policy:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/05/regulatory-capture/

This is why Google doesn't have to worry about privacy laws. They've successfully prevented the passage of a US federal consumer privacy law. The last time the US passed a federal consumer privacy law was in 1988. It's a law that bans video store clerks from telling the newspapers which VHS cassettes you rented:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Privacy_Protection_Act

In Europe, Google's vast profits lets it fly an Irish flag of convenience, thus taking advantage of Ireland's tolerance for tax evasion and violations of European privacy law:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/15/finnegans-snooze/#dirty-old-town

Google doesn't fear competition, it doesn't fear regulation, and it also doesn't fear rival technologies. Google and its fellow Big Tech cartel members have expanded IP law to allow it to prevent third parties from reverse-engineer, hacking, or scraping its services. Google doesn't have to worry about ad-blocking, tracker blocking, or scrapers that filter out Google's lucrative, low-quality results:

https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/

Google doesn't fear competition, it doesn't fear regulation, it doesn't fear rival technology and it doesn't fear its workers. Google's workforce once enjoyed enormous sway over the company's direction, thanks to their scarcity and market power. But Google has outgrown its dependence on its workers, and lays them off in vast numbers, even as it increases its profits and pisses away tens of billions on stock buybacks:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/25/moral-injury/#enshittification

Google is fearless. It doesn't fear losing your business, or being punished by regulators, or being mired in guerrilla warfare with rival engineers. It certainly doesn't fear its workers.

Making search worse is good for Google. Reducing search quality increases the number of queries, and thus ads, that each user must make to find their answers:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/24/naming-names/#prabhakar-raghavan

If Google can make things worse for searchers without losing their business, it can make more money for itself. Without the discipline of markets, regulators, tech or workers, it has no impediment to transferring value from searchers and publishers to itself.

Which brings me back to AI search. When Google substitutes its own summaries for links to pages, it creates innumerable opportunities to charge publishers for preferential placement in those summaries.

This is true of any algorithmic feed: while such feeds are important – even vital – for making sense of huge amounts of information, they can also be used to play a high-speed shell-game that makes suckers out of the rest of us:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/11/for-you/#the-algorithm-tm

When you trust someone to summarize the truth for you, you become terribly vulnerable to their self-serving lies. In an ideal world, these intermediaries would be "fiduciaries," with a solemn (and legally binding) duty to put your interests ahead of their own:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/07/treacherous-computing/#rewilding-the-internet

But Google is clear that its first duty is to its shareholders: not to publishers, not to searchers, not to "partners" or employees.

AI search makes cheating so easy, and Google cheats so much. Indeed, the defects in AI give Google a readymade excuse for any apparent self-dealing: "we didn't tell you a lie because someone paid us to (for example, to recommend a product, or a hotel room, or a political point of view). Sure, they did pay us, but that was just an AI 'hallucination.'"

The existence of well-known AI hallucinations creates a zone of plausible deniability for even more enshittification of Google search. As Madeleine Clare Elish writes, AI serves as a "moral crumple zone":

https://estsjournal.org/index.php/ests/article/view/260

That's why, even if you're willing to believe that Google could make a great AI-based search, we can nevertheless be certain that they won't.

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

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/15/they-trust-me-dumb-fucks/#ai-search

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

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djhughman https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Modular_synthesizer_-_%22Control_Voltage%22_electronic_music_shop_in_Portland_OR_-_School_Photos_PCC_%282015-05-23_12.43.01_by_djhughman%29.jpg

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en

[sylvestris123]

What does the pre-Fall scene actually mean?

I’ve been thinking about that first scene, with pre-Fall Crowley. We are all swooning over how sweet and innocent Angel!Crowley is, and how smitten Aziraphale is, but on reflection there is something odd about this scene.

The action takes place before the rebellion, before the Fall, when bad things hadn’t even been invented yet. So why is Aziraphale already worried about Angel!Crowley getting into trouble for asking questions? Shouldn’t he also be a cute innocent bundle of fluff without a care in the world?

There is a meta that examines this (sorry, I can’t find it, I’m useless at this), which comes to the conclusion that Aziraphale later on is suffering from guilt (that he might have unwittingly prompted Crowley to seek answers and hence fall), but this still doesn’t explain why Aziraphale knows that asking questions might be a Bad Idea, and Angel!Crowley doesn’t. After all, Angel!Crowley has apparently been working “very closely with Upstairs”.  Shouldn’t he be a bit more clued up?

This leads me to think that there are 2 possible explanations for this.

1. Angel!Crowley has been so far out of things playing with stars that he really is clueless about everything (possible but doesn’t really match up to the Crowley that we know today).

2. This is not a true record of events.

Either: it is one of Aziraphale’s memories, but coloured by what he knows today, so the conversation that actually occurred might have been quite different. Maybe it is because of Aziraphale’s less than perfect recall, or maybe the memory was tweaked (e.g. by the Metatron) to emphasize the innocence of Angel!Crowley and the injustice of his later fall.

Or: IT NEVER EVEN HAPPENED AT ALL. Their true first meeting was as S1, on the walls of Eden, and it is all a false memory planted by the Metatron. (This could also explain why we don’t get to hear Angel!Crowley’s name. It’s not actually known, so can’t be added to the ‘memory’). Why would he do this? It could be to make Aziraphale think that Angel!Crowley was so full of joy that he should be reinstated to recapture that innocence.

There are plenty of theories about the other flashback episodes in the series, all of which could be interpreted as showing off Crowley’s 'good' side, to make the thought of his reinstatement as an angel more plausible or even necessary to right an ancient wrong.

If any or all of this is the Metatron’s doing, what is the motive? He clearly loathes Crowley. Maybe reinstatement as an angel would automatically wipe out his memories of being Crowley and all of his Earthly experience, so you would end up with a cute innocent (and ultimately useless) angel with no memories of his friendship with Aziraphale. Or perhaps it was a way to get him to come up to Heaven where he could be ambushed and imprisoned.

Or maybe the Metatron always knew that the very concept would go down like a lead balloon and that its aim was to make Aziraphale and Crowley part in such a way that they would be less likely to try to contact each other later.

There are so many pieces to this puzzle. Just when I think that a couple might go together I find others that don’t fit with the patterns already made, and which sometimes seem to belong to a different puzzle altogether. I’m sure that I already have 5 corner pieces.

[senseandaccountability]

“It takes the wrong sort to put the world right.”

A huge problem for me with the tone of the narrative is that outside a very carefully curated playthrough experience with preconceived ideas of and love for Solas, Veilguard is probably the least compassionate game I’ve played in forever, while spouting out lines about how everyone can find a new path in life because our nature isn’t written in stone, our fates are our own, as well as plenty of HR department lines about working together as a team.

“It takes the wrong sort to put the world right.” The game says that, but it definitely doesn’t mean it. At least I don’t feel it. You are so very rarely challenged in your idea of who this wrong sort is and what they could bring to the table. Davrin speaks of the Wardens recruiting at the Gallows but you meet only adorable, righteous and charming ones. The Crows aren’t the wrong sort anymore, they’re just adorably Antivan upper class. And so on and so forth. Rook certainly isn’t the wrong sort either, they’re mentally around 19 years old and stumbling their way through the world like some romance novel protag. In one of the most thematically shallow plots, Rook gets thrown into a prison of regret fit to hold a god but unlike Solas, Rook doesn’t do regrets or guilt because Rook isn’t that complex. Rook hasn’t been allowed to feel any guilt for three acts, just how are they meant to be stuck in a regret prison?  

Compare with Origins where you yourself could be just that wrong sort that would put the world right. ALL of my Origins PCs would get stuck in Solas’s prison due to the weight of their own fuckups. If not during the game events where you could make shitty moves en masse, then because of their origin stories. Brosca and Tabris would get out of there through sheer fury alone - fuck you, I am a wreck because YOU MADE ME ONE, WORLD OF THEDAS - but the nobles would stew. Amell would loop in some guilt trip regarding blood magic and Jowan and whatnot.

Compare with Origins where Loghain is a piece of shit for most of the narrative. He actively wants to kill you and your Order, it’s nothing personal (okay, a little personal) but he just needs you gone. If you want to, you can hack and slash your way through some release there and just have him executed. BUT the game also challenges you on that idea. It presents a very pragmatic alternative that comes with a very plausible downside (you lose Alistair). It presents not excuses but explanations - do with them what you will. Loghain has people in his corner through the entire trilogy, arguing his case. Cauthrien FALLS TO HER KNEES before you, pleading to spare his life. Threnn in DAI will stan him for the rest of her life. Anora tells you stories about the man behind the name.  And Arl Eamon’s world view and idea of Loghain is shown to be more than a little self-serving when faced with the politics of the Landsmeet. Things around Loghain blur. In the Ostagar DLC they allow things to blur even further when Loghain’s pragmatism is countered by Wynne’s player character-moralism (ie “someone died, it’s always wrong if someone died even if that death prevented 9000000 deaths you KILLED someone!!!!!111”). Origins tells me - or hints at - why Loghain became the wrong sort, shows me ways in which he is also the right sort and leaves me wondering about him. Because the game is gritty and dark and weird but also yes, compassionate. If you execute him, Anora will mourn him because she loves him regardless. If you have him join the Wardens she will sit with him while he recovers because he is undeniably an asshole but he’s also her father who braided her hair and showed her the world. A good narrative never, ever forgets that.  Veilguard feels so different here, maybe it's just me. I'm pretty sure I'm almost done being salty now, I just... feel a lot about narratives.

[minus-plus-zer0]

"You Know You're Fictional, Right?"

♡ Genre: Fluff, crack ♡ Pairing: Bakugou x Fem!Reader ♡ Tags: Established relationships

You just wanted to fuck with his head, that's all.

"Katsuki," you said to your loving and ever-patient boyfriend, "you know you're fictional, right?"

"Hah?"

You leaned on his bedroom desk, giving him the utmost pitying and concerned look. Bakugou was not having it today.

"Don't you got anything better to do than to mess with me?!" Bakugou banged his fist on the desk. "Why the hell are you accusing me of being fictional?"

"I'm only warning you for you own sake," you said, voice wobbling from sadness. Bakugou just narrowed his eyes at you. "I've wanted to tell you for a while... but..." You sniffled. "I didn't know how to bring it up!"

"So now that we're dating, you wanna pull this shit?"

"...Yes? I-I just needed to earn your trust before I--ah!"

Bakugou tickled you and you giggled, wrenching yourself away from his evil fingers. You caught your breath a short distance away from him, while he grinned madly in his seat.

"Got you back," Bakugou said, satisfied at your state of disarray from the tickles. "Now don't go calling me fictional again! I'm your real boyfriend! Not a fake one. Who do you think you're calling 'fictional'?"

"But what if I have to go back to my home world someday? you asked. "You can't just avoid this conversation, Katsuki!"

"I can and I will. Now, are you gonna cuddle with me or not, babe?"

You sighed and curled up in his lap while he finished his homework. You continued to ramble on about your theories regarding your shared world, how superpowers weren't natural, and how even All Might didn't exist in the world you supposedly came from.

“Am I the most popular in your world?” he asked, barely trying to humor you. “Or do those idiots got bad taste?”

He was the most popular, but you wouldn’t tell him that. “No, it’s actually Midoriya.”

“What?! Him?! You’re lying! That world is messed up.”

“You still have plenty of fans though!”

“...Are they weird and creepy fans?”

“Um… define ‘weird and creepy’.”

“Uggggghhh." Bakugou held you tighter in his lap. "Just shoot me.”

“Don’t say that!" You stroked his head. "At least people still like you at all! They love seeing your adventures!”

Bakugou slammed his pencil on the desk. “That wasn’t for them to see! That was private! You hear me? Private!” Bakugou lowered his voice, his face close to yours. “What goes on between us is private too. Now don’t go telling your little imaginary friends what we do. That’s only for us to know.”

Bakugou kissed you and then turned back to his homework. You sighed and wrapped your arms around his neck.

“You still don’t believe you’re fictional,” you murmured. “Poor baby is in denial.”

"It’s ’cause your world sounds boring," Bakugou said, mindlessly writing out answers in his homework. Then, he turned back to you. "You should stick with this one. I want you staying here forever. You’re mine.”

"Katsuki, I was only trying to prank you. Of course I'm staying here!"

"Then why the fuck did you bring up all that sad shit about leaving to your own world! Don't say that kinda crap outta nowhere!"

"But that's my specialty."

Bakugou kiss-attacked your face, making you giggle as you swatted his terrifying kisses away.

"Specialty my ass," Bakugou said, beaming at you. "Go be special at something else then, how about that? Like tell me about your day or who's been bugging you. Don't go talking about how you're leaving me, it pisses me off."

"Katsuki, you know how my day was. We hang out all the time!"

"Well then fucking remind me!"

Nothing you did could convince Bakugou he was fictional, and maybe that was fine. The next day, you instead tried to make him believe that you were his fictional girlfriend, and he didn’t like that either.

“I didn’t get an imaginary girlfriend ‘cause I’m supposedly lonely, dammit!”

“I don’t know,” Kaminari said. “It sounds pretty plausible for you.”

The moment Bakugou’s hands started exploding, Kaminari ran away screaming. From then on, Bakugou had to prove to everyone that you and him were actually together and that no, dating him was not another one of your elaborate pranks. And from now on, Bakugou will side-eye you if you mention any other fictional crushes you have...

(This one has been sitting in my drafts for ages!)

[eightyonekilograms]

Obviously, JD Vance's proposal to give parents additional votes stirred up a furor from progressives saying it's anti-feminist, reactionary, trying to keep women in the kitcen, etc.

And I agree with them. Frankly I wouldn't shed a single tear if Trump "who will rid me of this meddlesome running mate"-d a second VP in a row and I never had to hear from Vance or his 2010!NRx ideas ever again. But I have a more prosaic objection also: if implemented, I don't think this plan would actually work?

Like, as I understand it, there are two proposed justifications for how this might be a good idea, but I don't think either of them stand up to scrutiny.

The first (and less plausible) one is, people who selfishly want more votes will have more children in order to get more political leverage for [whatever they want]. Even though they're doing it for selfish reasons, children are a public good, and so on net this is good for society.

I think this theory can be dispensed with pretty easily. It sounds just like one of those $1000 payments for having another child that budges the birth rate not at all because it's way too small a reward for the expense involved. Even speaking as someone intensely annoyed by trendy anti-electoralist cynicism, I know the EV of an additional vote is microscopic compared to the expense of having children. It won't move anyone except at the very bleeding edge of the margin.

But that's the easy case. The much more interesting theory of the Vance Plan is that of fixing broken incentives. The story goes like this: one feature of democracy, for better or worse, is that it rewards those who show up. If you have no vote (or don't use your vote), you are invisible to democracy, so your wants will be systematically underrepresented. This is why wealthy first-world countries are increasingly gerontocratic in both legislative makeup and resulting policy: old people reliably vote, young people don't, so even with no conspiracy involved, democracy gravitates to favoring the wants of the old. Vance says, hey, children cannot vote, so just as you'd predict, their interests (as a class!) get ignored, so we end up with a legislative landscape that doesn't favor children and makes it harder to raise them.

It makes perfect sense on paper! But I think in the real world it falls apart.

What are the actual bits of legislation and policy which discourage people from having more children? I mean, people can and do argue furiously over this question, but IMO three of the most significant ones are:

NIMBY localist housing policy locking young potential parents out of the housing market

More localist tax and education policy making competition for "good schools" a Red Queen Race which drives up house prices still further, requiring two working parents

Safetyist legislation which, while well-intentioned, is making everything from cars to child care more expensive than it necessarily needs to be

In order to believe that giving parents additional votes will cause a more child-friendly society to emerge via electoral pressure, you have to believe that parents are more likely than non-parents to oppose 1, 2 and 3. And that just... doesn't seem true? At best there's no difference, and to be blunt, I think as a class parents tend to be worse than non-parents on all three. #NotAllParents, of course, there are plenty of people with kids who still want good abundance policy, but averaged over everybody I think it's hard to deny that parenthood tends to push people toward defensive, loss-averting "protect the children" mentalities which, on a global scale, fuck everyone else over. That talking point you constantly see among the Very Online Right that parents are more likely than non-parents to think Beyond Themselves and want to build a stable world for the long term, just seems obviously false to me. Or at least if it is true, it's true in a way which is mostly irrelevant, since these "long-view parents" don't know how to turn those wants into policy which actually achieves them.

Frankly, I think it's easy to envision a world where the Vance Plan makes all policy around child-rearing worse instead of better, and depresses the birth rate even further.

[marinettesaltprompts]

The Maribat deconstruction got me thinking: am I the only one who thinks Adribat is a more....plausible (??is that the word) concept than Maribat? Like, not even in a romantic sense but a familial platonic sense.

Think about it, he's :

got the tragic backstory & suffered from neglect

canonically been abused waaaaay beyond school bullies

taken for granted by adults (primarily his dad & Master Fu) and by his peers (LB)

dealing with the existential crisis of not being human if we go the sentimonster route.

Look, I get that trauma & suffering should NEVER be a competition but when you think abt it, Adrien's suffered just as much, if not more so than Mari ever did even with Chloe & Lila in the picture. You could argue that some of what she suffers in salt fics (isolation, no support system, emotional suppression, harassment) are ALSO things Adrien goes through bcz while he's a superhero like her, UNlike her, his home life sucks.

So if there's either hero the Bat Fam would empathize with more, it's him. Yes, they can hold him accountable for screw ups but if we go the Good Parent!Bruce route, he can give Adrien the physical & nuanced emotional training he needs to spot red flags & deal with them beyond passivity. The training is harsh but at least he doesn't play favourites, giving Adrien no excuse to slack off & proper motivation to mature. Plus, in the Bat Fam, everyone has clear roles & secrets aside, nobody strings anyone along, offering him a reliable structure to fall back on.

He doesn't come into the Bat Fam expecting to be in charge. Instead, the nitty-grittiness would push him to be more independent & decisive instead of impulsive.

If LB tries to call him out, he could point out how for all she claims to be the 'responsible professional hero', she REacted instead of acted & if real IDs are thrown in the mix, he can call out how she just went with the 'woe is me' route, resenting that everyone didn't jump on her call for a witch hunt when she could've communicated to them privately.

Sorry, this turned out longer & less explicitly mari salt-centric than I thought but I tried to stay objective. I hope you don't mind.

Technically everyone would have their own opinion about whether a Miraculous/Batman crossover could actually work. In my opinion however, I believe that the best bet for a good crossover would be through Adrien more than Marinette, in part because of the reasoning you gave, but also because Adrien would fit the idea of a Batfamily member more thematically than Ladybug ever could. If anything, he's like Catwoman but without the whole stealing bit.

Keep in mind that the whole Maribat AU was created with the goal of creating a salt fic (albiet with a crossover), and the OG creator even took a character that was no way romantical and turned him OOC to make their convoluted idea work, ironically in a method reminding me of the "My Immortal" Harry Potter fanfic. Regardless how it later developed, the original idea was pure salt, albiet one that took off because of everyone's hate boner for any character that wasn't Marinette, with people later trying to justify it for one reason or another. It's an idea that should have never worked in the first place outside of this context. In contrast though, Adribat would actually work because of a genuine commonality connection.

Also I don't mind talking about Adrien on this blog. In my mind, Marinette salt and Adrien sugar are the one and the same on this blog, because the salt of one character is usally sugar of the other due to how these prompts go.

Hell, my entire blog was made in opposition to the more well know Adrien Salt Blog made by another individual, which has both plenty of Adrien salt and LOTS of Marinette sugar, though I would call the latter justification for Marinette's own bad behavior as it never discusses her own issues, it just let's her go off scott free by pinning the blame all on Adrien.

In any case, I like your idea! If you or anyone else want's to share any Adribat prompts that you got, feel free to send them here!

[so-much-for-subtlety]

So, I've been reviewing all the timelines that are available around UHC CEO killing.

There's some conspiracy theories going around that he couldn't get from UWS to midtown on an ebike - with people putting in biking trip times for google maps shows 20-25 mins.

But if he went from hostel to Central Park entrance on 100th street, and then from 100th street to midtown that's 3.3 miles, and on an ebike that does 28 mph that's 7 minutes which exactly aligns with security footage timestamps (and I know from personal experience that this is possible going through Central Park because you don't have any stop lights - and at this time of morning no tourists either).

Assuming 28 mph ebike that also matches times for leaving the scene and going back up through central park etc (and gives him plenty of time to stop and drop backpack somewhere).

But there are still some things that I find odd:

why would he bike at 28mph to the scene potentially risk getting caught with a gun on person? why not just leave earlier and bike at legal speeds?

he seemed to be around the scene for 33 mins before deciding to go to Starbucks which was about a 24 min roundtrip - if he'd got there early to stake out and wait for CEO, why did he leave after 33 mins to take 24 mins out of stakeout time just to get coffee/water/granola bars?

on walk to Starbucks cameras show him existing 57th st station - it's totally plausible that he entered between 55th & 56th and exited between 56th & 57th (no swipe needed) but WHY? also MTA says they have had security cameras installed at all stations since 2021, so why no footage of him in the station? from whatever place he entered subway, he would have been able to see the Starbucks across the street.

15 mins before shooting, on walk back from Starbucks he's on camera with phone up to ear, and he gets to scene just 6 mins before CEO gets there. Did he get a tip from someone that CEO was leaving?

Here's a map I've drawn (black for walk from scene to Starbucks, red for walk from Starbucks back to scene & shooting, and green for leaving the scene after shooting) Anything with a timestamp is verified by camera footage. Points C & J are just my assumptions.

I think he probably had his bike locked up around point C:

and so the trip to Starbucks might have also been a chance to check that his bike was still there (by then it would have been locked up for over 30 mins).

But after already waiting at scene for 30 mins, why make quite a lengthly detour to Starbucks unless he'd received a message that CEO wouldn't be there for another 30 mins? And on the walk back to the scene from Starbucks, he also look a long route back. Maybe walking off nerves, but even so unless you knew the time the CEO would be at the scene you'd not take an unnecessary long route back right?

To me, leaving the scene after waiting ~30 mins, and then arriving back at the scene just 6 mins before CEO arrives all seems like he was in contact with someone who had info around CEOs movements.

The quick dip into the subway doesn't make sense. I think he knew the area well, and had chosen a place to lock up bike for a fast exit to central park. Maybe just a red herring but seems so strange (maybe he dropped something off? picked something up? met someone? if anything happened it happened fast because timestamps show he was from point B to point D in just a couple minutes and it's a 3 min walk).

[storiesabouteli]

MotorBoy. // Elijah Hewson X Reader! (Fluff)

prompt: reader dealing with the fear of being a passenger and riding a motorcycle with Eli. (I know Eli looks like the type to stick to scooters, but to make it more believable, I tried to describe a slightly more plausible bike.)

words: 2k

  Eli's curls were disheveled, his skin slightly flushed, and he was grinning at you—a radiant, toothy smile. It was a little different from his usual one, subtle enough to go unnoticed if you weren’t paying close attention. His eyes, however, gleamed with an extra spark whenever they landed on you. Your stomach churned nervously as you took in the sight of him leaning on his motorbike, the helmet balanced on the handlebar.

 You had told him last time that you were okay with it, but despite finding the whole “bike thing” charming, you weren’t entirely sure how you felt about being on that thing yourself.

 "Everything good?" he asked, leaning closer, his fingers brushing your waist lightly before tightening in a grounding embrace. He’d greeted the table earlier, and the bar conversation had continued without much input from you—you were too fixated on the motorbike and how rash you’d been in agreeing to leave with him when he’d brought it. You nodded silently, feeling the weight of his gaze on you.

 He kissed your lips, and you slid your fingers around the nape of his neck, not in a vulgar way, but keeping him close for a few more minutes. The steady rhythm of it calmed your nerves. When he pulled away, he took a sip from your beer, ordered another for himself, and handed yours back.

 Eli seamlessly rejoined the conversation with the guys, his charisma making it effortless. You didn’t feel quite as at ease but appreciated how he made it a priority to ensure you were comfortable. His arm stayed draped around you, and whenever you spoke, even quietly, he inclined his head just slightly toward you, ensuring he caught every word. If your voice got lost in the noise, he’d answer you, even if it was just the two of you talking, and at the right moments, he would repeat what you said so the person you were speaking to could hear as well.

 You weren’t used to this—not yet. Maybe it was because your previous relationships had been disasters, but moments like these mattered to you.

 "Thanks for coming," he said later as you were watching the streetlights gleam against his leather jacket and the buckle at his waist. His hair was slightly flattened by the humidity, but he still looked so handsome.

 "I like them," you admitted, your hands trembling slightly as your voice caught in your throat. You understood his cautious tone, as if he thought you might not want to be here. But you were trying—you wanted him to like you.

 "They like you too, y’know," he replied. "I’m glad you’re feelin’ more comfortable."

 You raised your eyebrows at that, considering it. It was true—you weren’t as anxious around his friends as you had been the first time.

 "The train’s still open at this hour. You don’t have to, you see?" You hesitated, stopping in front of the motorbike. "You don’t have to go with me... I mean, I can just take the train."

 Eli shook his head, parking the bike closer to the bar and signaling to someone inside to keep an eye on it. "I’ll come back for it later. Either way, I’d have given you my helmet since yours hasn’t arrived yet. There’s no rush."

 You turned to him, still nervous. He pulled you into a hug, and you couldn’t help but smile despite yourself. "I wasn’t going to let you ride without a helmet," he said firmly. The trip was short, through familiar streets, and you knew plenty of people didn’t even bother with helmets. But you’d started insisting that he always wear one, no matter how short the ride.

 "Well, I wasn’t going to let you ride without one either," you teased, laughing against his chest. He smiled, pressing a kiss to your forehead and brushing your hair back from your face.

 "No rush, okay? I mean it. Worst case, I could start driving a car, huh?"

 The train ride was short enough that you didn’t bother sitting down. Eli stood close to you, his scent surrounding you in a way that felt reassuring. He was being honest with you—about everything.

 "You really bought me a helmet?" you asked, glancing up at him as the train swayed slightly. He held your waist a little tighter, keeping you steady. His curls brushed your cheek.

 "Yeah," he admitted, his voice soft. "I found one I think you’ll like. But seriously—you don’t have to do this just because I do."

 You nodded, resting your head on his shoulder. Maybe there wasn’t so much to be afraid of after all.

…

 Your helmet was lavender, with subtle sparkles, and Eli had even bought a pack of stickers for you to decorate it. It was beautiful, and you genuinely liked it. You planned to make good use of it.

 “You okay, little one?” he asked after it took you a while to get on the motorbike. He’d waited patiently, not rushing you at all. He wouldn’t start the engine until you were sure you were okay with it, as promised. Resting your chin on his shoulder, clad in dark leather, you abruptly wrapped your arms around his waist, practically immobilizing him.

 He chuckled lightly, a soft, amused sound escaping through his nose. You could imagine his lopsided grin. You were holding him so tightly you were convinced he could hear your heartbeat hammering against your ribs. You also couldn’t bring yourself to open your eyes.

 “Alright, take it easy,” he whispered, his voice soothing. Gently, he moved your cold hands from gripping him like a vice and slid them under his jacket so he could still steer. Your cheeks burned, but Eli seemed to find the whole thing endearing, maybe even a little funny.

 “Sorry, I think I’m ready now,” you mumbled, though your muffled tone didn’t sound entirely convincing.

 “That’s okay. I’ll go slow, I promise,” he said softly. His hands briefly rested over yours, warming them up before letting go. He narrated each step, keeping an eye on you through the rearview mirror. Your helmet sparkled, your hair peeked out messily, and he could feel your uneven breaths against his neck.

  “We don’t have to do this now, you know,” he said again, already prepared to put the bike in motion.

 “Oh, for God’s sake, just go, Eli,” you snapped, exasperated. And then the wind picked up, brushing against your face, drying your mouth. You clung to him tighter, as if that were even possible. Your arms and legs locked around his frame, and Eli seemed perfectly at ease with it.

 He didn’t drive fast—not even close. You could hear his breathing, steady and calm. Occasionally, he glanced at you in the mirror until, finally, you opened your eyes. His smile broke out immediately.

 “You good?” he asked for what felt like the hundredth time.

 You rolled your eyes a bit, and Eli laughed, his shoulders visibly relaxing.

 “Eyes on the road,” you muttered.

 “Yes, ma’am,” he replied, pretending to be all serious as he carefully obeyed. He might’ve been the only person in history worried about getting ticketed for driving too slow.

…

 You had a blue sweater that casually matched your helmet and was one of your favorites. Eli always reminded you to bring a jacket because, while it might be warm during the day, riding back on the bike at night could mean facing an unbearable wind. Yet, you often forgot, playing tough and stubborn, only to end up wrapped in his jacket. You’d ride home clinging to him, but it was clear your body wasn’t enough to keep him warm. He’d arrive with the tip of his nose red and his eyes watery, even though he always rode cautiously. You couldn’t help but curse yourself for that.

 As a result, most nights out at bars ended with Eli holding your blue sweater when you weren’t wearing it. It was pretty adorable. Eli’s wardrobe leaned towards neutral tones, nothing overly colorful, but he didn’t mind carrying your royal blue sweater around.   During the summer, when it wasn’t really necessary, Eli kept it stored in the motorbike’s internal compartment, just in case.

 And honestly, Eli didn’t mind the feeling of your cold nose resting against his neck or the soft fabric brushing against him as you held on tight. There were plenty of little things about those moments that he’d grown to love.

…

 The sun had added a warm flush to Eli’s cheeks, deepening the freckles scattered across his face. His shoulders were peppered with sun-kissed dots, and his chest glowed with a faint redness. You smiled at him, brushing his damp hair back and sliding his sunglasses up into place. “So they don’t block your view,” you said with a playful wink. He nodded, pulling on a tank top.

 You were wearing shorts and just the top half of your bikini—it was vacation, after all, and judging by your surroundings, it was perfectly fitting. The two of you had rented a nearby beach house for the holiday, planning to spend it together.

 “I think I’ve got a shirt here if you want one,” Eli offered, adjusting your hair the same way you had done for him before placing a soft, slightly wet kiss on your forehead.

 “I’m fine, it’s way too hot for that,” you replied. He studied you for a moment before letting it go, though in the back of his mind, he preferred you more covered—not out of modesty, but because it felt like protection. Swallowing the thought, he simply nodded.

 He climbed onto the bike and offered his hand, waiting for you to hop on behind him. As he rode, Eli kept glancing at you in the rearview mirror. Your eyes, tinged with redness from fatigue, were still fixed on the road ahead. His heart pounded—not the exhilarating kind of rush, but an anxious thrum.

 Your hold on him was familiar, one arm wrapped around his waist, fingers clutching at his tank top like it was a paper. The other arm looped across his torso horizontally, pulling his back snug against your chest. It was an oddly comforting embrace.

 You pressed your nose against his warm shoulder, letting your damp hair cool his skin. After a moment, your face burrowed deeper into him, and the grip of one arm on his chest loosened slightly.

 “Babe?” he called, his voice low but not quite a whisper. You hummed in response, your fatigue pretty evident.

 Glancing back at you through the mirror, he noticed your head drooping further, your forehead resting against the back of his neck. Your eyes were closed now, hidden from view. While it was nice knowing you felt safe enough to relax, the thought of you falling asleep wasn’t comforting.

 “Talk to me, yeah? Keep me company,” he urged, giving your hand a few light pats.

 “Eli, I’m just a little tired,” you muttered, slightly irritated. Talking wasn’t exactly what you wanted right now.

 He checked the mirror again, catching the mess of your wind-tousled hair haloed by the sunlight and the subtle glow on your skin. He thought you looked stunning.

 “You don’t have to answer, but I can’t let you fall asleep back there,” he said, his voice steadier this time. “I’m worried something might happen to you.”

 The way he spoke so earnestly made it clear he’d thought about this before. It wasn’t something you’d considered—falling asleep and the risks that came with it—but he was right.

 “Alright,” you murmured faintly, knowing he hadn’t heard you. Leaning forward, you pressed a kiss to the side of his helmet, earning a soft laugh from him.

 “Thank you,” he said, his relief evident. You bit your lip, smiling as you saw color rush to his cheeks. He really was adorable.

 “So, do you know what you’re getting to eat yet?” you asked, shifting the conversation. “I want to order some different jams to try with the fries.”

 He grinned, his eyes back on the road. “Not sure yet, but that sounds good.” He knew, without question, that if he had looked away, you’d have found a way to grab his attention anyway.

[phantomrose96]

Oh okay so I have a Pikmin theory.

So for starters: Pikmin 1->2->3 are chronological. Pikmin 4 is a sort of AU of Pikmin 1, precedented on Olimar not making it off PNF-404 alive (sort of a bad-end of Pikmin 1, but also with various other AU differences).

This leads me to wonder... is Pikmin 4->2->3 arguably a canon sequence of events? Cuz either the differences between 1 and 4 have knocked canon off course, and as such 4 will never lead to 2 and 3. Or you can string them together in a way that makes 4->2->3 a plausible canonical chain.

The biggest thing that stands out to me is Louie. In 1->2->3, no one was ever sent to rescue Olimar in 1, and the second he arrives home in 2 his boss informs him that Louie was attacked ("attacked") by a space rabbit that ate the precious cargo of golden pikpik carrots, launching the company into massive debt (and he forces Olimar back to PNF-404 to treasure hunt to pay off the debt.) It's later revealed Louie was never attacked, and he ate the cargo himself.

In 4, LOUIE is sent to rescue Olimar. (He never does. He completely gives up because he forgot what Olimar looks like, and then becomes the biggest pain in your ass after YOU rescue Olimar, because Louie starts taking hostages and running from you insisting he never wants to leave PNF-404 for... some unclear reason?)

This feels like it could break 4->2->3 as a plausible canon, considering Louie is not home on Hocotate to eat his whole cargo (fucker). But I realized something.

Pikmin 4 starts more or less around when Olimar's life support runs out and he dies. You get his SOS signal not long at all before this happens. And TBH, it's probably a good additional in-game month in 4 before you actually rescue Olimar and encounter Louie. In a good-end run of Pikmin 1, Olimar needs to repair his ship and escape PNF-404 before his life support runs out. So in short: Louie fucks up the cargo sometime prior to Olimar's life support running out, and Pikmin 4 is set after his life support runs out. (Technically, they changed the amount of time his life support lasts between 1 and 4, but I figure that was to trim down Olimar's Tale in 4 and not actually for a canon reason).

My point being, Pikmin 4 being largely set after Olimar's life support runs out means Louie had plenty of time to fuck up the pikpik carrot cargo.

Then there's the fact that in Pikmin 4, Louie is desperate to STAY on PNF-404 for reasons he refuses to ever explain. Maybe, because, ya know, he's waiting for the other shoe to drop. He knows he's responsible for plunging Hocotate Freight into what was essentially $10 million of debt. Louie doesn't want to be charged with $10 million worth of theft. And without Olimar bringing home the bottle cap, there's no plan for repaying that debt.

Louie maybe wants to stay on PNF-404 because he's not going the fuck to jail.

All this to say: I think 4->2->3 is actually a completely reasonable canon sequence, if you figure the "Louie lost (ate) the $10 million of golden pikpik carrots" happens in the background, right at the start of Pikmin 4 before Olimar's life support has run out. Olimar's SOS comes through, and President, desperate for his only competent employee back to help fix this, sends Louie to PNF-404 on a rescue mission. On PNF-404, Louie figures himself a fugitive who'd rather spend his days cooking bulborbs than ever return home to Hocotate to potentially face the music of his "this was definitely a felony" crime, and so he kicks and screams and fights to stay on PNF-404...

...And you drag him home anyway, along with poor rescued Olimar who's died and come back to life... just in time for their boss to be like "YOU idiots, go get me out of debt! Go back to PNF-404"

[dead-lights]

trai-lore!

because ya know. trailers. with lore.

i'll see myself out

but! before i go - I went and compiled all of the Vampires trailers I could find! I wasn't familiar with all of the shorts and I'm not 100% sure I found them all. There are a lot of contradictions, but aside from the gameplay trailer they can mostly be stitched together.

Also, I recognize I'm trying to wring blood from a stone, reading into things that EA never intended, but ya know. That's the point of exploring lore!

this is mostly validated by werewolves - Lily's dialogue confirms that Caleb was turned by Miss Hell, and the 7 years unlucky mirror confirms that Vlad ambushed her while she was brushing her teeth.

It looks like the bar Miss Hell attacks Caleb in is supposed to be in Forgotten Hollow. There are plenty of reasons he could've been there, but to me that implies that Lilith turned first, and he was there because that's where she hangs out now.

It looks like you're supposed to be able to see the normie parts of Forgotten Hollow from that cliff with the bench, rather than just more of the mountain. There's definitely supposed to be more than just those 5 lots.

I'm not sure if the person behind Miss Hell in the bar is anyone specific? they feel slightly familiar but I might be thinking of Leila Illes from island living, which came out afterwards.

It's unclear how Caleb ended up in the bathroom or whether he asked to turn - the animation is the same either way. In game, I've had a lot of success with both bat-form bathroom ambushes and the good ol' "ask for woohoo and then cancel the order as soon as you're alone together" maneuver so either is plausible. To me, it looks like she's reenacting her transformation, with her as Vlad, so she would've wanted unwilling prey. I've generally thought that Caleb followed her into the bathroom thinking he was going to get laid, but with that in mind it does make sense that she would've just ambushed him when he got up to pee (poor humans and their bladders can't handle their nectar). @charsimsalot has a lot of interesting things to say about how being forcibly turned would have affected Miss Hell in this excellent post about the apartment they built for the rebellious vampires!

That bathroom door is on backwards. I checked - that door only has a sign on one side. Maybe they really wanted to hammer home the point that this is a bathroom? the sink and toilet do a pretty good job of that...

Caleb is not a daywalker in this trailer - since this seems to show him in his earlier days, that 100% checks out. It takes 15 skill points to become a daywalker, which... yikes.

note: I know the sims is very gay these days but do keep in mind that vampires was released January 2017. Gay marriage wasn't fully legalized in the US until June 2015. It was a big deal that Caleb suave kissed a guy in the trailer!

fun fact: the song used for this, deadly flo, seems to be either very cheap or free to license. It is used in a few episodes of the Baking Championship franchise. Y'all, that franchise got me back into baking and directly inspired GOBC. I lost my absolute shit when I heard it playing! There are also parts of Holiday Baking Championship that sound suspiciously like the sims 2 theme... I kinda wonder if there's a simmer in their sound department.

Not really that interesting - earlier versions of their outfits/vlad's dark form. Lilith cannot actually turn into a bat in-game.

vlad bloodvein can use "deprive needs" (must be a master vampire at minimum)

brandy can turn into a bat (should be a minor vampire at minimum)

based on the view outside Brandy's bedroom window, it looks like the virtuous vampires might live in an apartment in San Myshuno?

vlad uses supernatural speed to collect figurines

Not very interesting - just Brandy and Elle eating.

↓↓↓ WARNING - jumpscare below ↓↓↓

lmao what

this one doesn't even seem real, but as far as I can tell it was in fact released as a teaser for the full trailer.

This is the official trailer - it lines up reasonably well with other lore. Also the song is so fun.

Most notably: this trailer shows that Caleb is the one who turned Inna. No context is given. Other promotional material & the in-game paintings show that she was a thrall, potentially for hundreds of years before Caleb turned her.

The exterior of the house where Caleb turns Inna looks exactly like Wolfsbane Manor. However, Inna's bedroom doesn't match any room in the manor. It looks like there is a nearly identical house where Widowshild Townhouse currently is, so either Inna was in that house, or Wolfsbane Manor has since been remodeled. It would be kinda interesting if Caleb and Lilith decided to buy Inna's old house when they moved...

When Caleb turns into a bat, he's in the graveyard to the left of Vlad's house. Maybe he and Lilith lived with Vlad for a time? It kinda looks like Vlad had a lot of vampires filtering in and out of his place.

Elle real horny. I wonder what happened to that guy - he isn't a gallery vampire but he shows up in a lot of the paintings. As far as I'm aware Elle doesn't show up in any paintings.

This trailer is an absolute mess. It contradicts enough existing lore that it shouldn't be taken as any sort of canon, but it's a decent source of inspiration to fill in the gaps, and I pulled heavily from it when I was choosing powers for the gallery vampires.

Elle uses her mist form (I checked the animations) - she must be a grand master. She can use Command.

Markus Crow has supernatural speed - must be master+

Lilith is using a computer at the beginning of this, which feels weird because this is supposed to be at least 50 years ago. That said, technology doesn't advance in the sims, so, sure.

This makes it look like Vlad just broke into her house and turned her like he did with Miss Hell, but to me Lily makes it sound like Lilith was a more active participant: "I remember when my cousin, Lilith, first told me she'd met a fascinating man named Vlad. After that, she started spending a lot of time "training" with him. I thought she meant they were workout buddies. It wasn't until later that I found out she'd been lured to the dark arts."

Lilith's bed is a reward from the painter career - not sure if the implication is that she earned it herself?

I can't really see outside Lilith's windows, but it does kinda look like Forgotten Hollow? Which doesn't make a lot of sense to me - why would she and Caleb have to move to Forgotten Hollow if they already lived there? That said, that isn't Lilith. And that isn't Caleb. This was from when their names were Gina and Raylan.

Note that "Raylan" doesn't have the good vampire aspiration, and his traits are completely different. The others aren't quite the same as the gallery sims, but at least they still have the same names.

Looking out the window, it looks like the Virtuous Vampires are in Forgotten Hollow with everyone else. In one of the shorts, it looks like they live in a big city. I'm not sure which I like better!

Lilith is used as the example for supernatural strength. While she doesn't actually have that in-game, this is part of why I like to make her fitness 10 brute with vampiric might.

Elle continues to be real horny. Who is that guy? I like the implication that they had to go get it on as bats because Vlad was taking a nap and they couldn't fuck in his coffin :(

Bonus! While this isn't a trailer, exactly, it's a promotional blog post from Vlad's point of view and it is the best. Every last part of this makes me happy, from Caleb and Lilith ganging up on Vlad to Vlad referring to sparring matches as "epic duels" (or, in this particular case, what seems like a pretty good training sesh for Caleb).

Nothing about Lilith makes it seem like she doesn't feed on people except a) her household description and b) this post. That said, those two things about as primary as canon can get.

Vlad claims to own 100 gray coats

Vlad only fought Caleb. There could be so many reasons for that - was Caleb the one who made the challenge? Does Vlad not want to fight his offspring?

Vlad claims that the Encyclopedia Vampirica is mostly based on him. Make of that what you will.

Second bonus: Did you know that Vlad has a normie cousin??? There was a bit of promotional content for seasons involving the Climate family. This is that time they invited Vlad over for Harvestfest.

Please let me know if I missed anything! There's a lot of material out there, much of it no longer available on EA's site, so it's definitely possible there are things I didn't find.

[nonbinaryeye]

I am certain that plenty of metas regarding shapeshifter's and whose copy version is whose has already been written by lots of people but let me add my take on it.

First let's start with Laois'. The biggest one belongs to Senshi. Senshi is naturally the one to have the least accurate takes as he's traveling with them for the shortest time. Laois is tall man so of course he sees him as tall and the tallness would seem most prominent to someone short so likely to either dwarf or to half foot. Also he looks a bit older than Laois actually is and Senshi is the one most unsure about Laois' age, assuming than unlike Chillchuck and Marcille, Laos is the oldest one of them. The Laos obsessed with monsters probably belongs to Chillchuck. He's the most accurate looking except for his babbling about monsters and Chillchuck is the most observant of them. Marcille of course could be the likely culprit as well as she seems to be the one most done with Laois' obsession with eating monsters but I really think that the Falin like Laois belongs to her even though she claims they are nothing alike. The fact she is the one to point it out is already good enough reason to suspect her. But also she knew Falin first so it's quite imaginable she would see her sibling through the similarity as much as she woukd of course love to deny it. (Also all the Laois x Marcille hints through the series which are closely intertwined to all Falin x Marcille but that's its own conversation I won't dwell into right now)

Regarding Senshis. The one with inaccurate helmet has been already told to belong to Laois. Chillchuck have quite strong opinion about Senshi being handsome so I think the handsome Senshi cones from his mind. Not to mention that overall Marcille is more likely notice less about his cooking equipment as she always tries to distance herself from his cooking as much as she can so it makes the most sense that the one with inaccurate cooking equipment comes from her mind.

Next Marcilles. As I've said Senshi is travelling the shortest time with the party and he does not always see eye to eye with Marcille. It is safe to say the most inaccurate Marcille is drawn from his mind. It can always also be deduced by elimination because Chillchuck is quite observant so it probably is not from his mind and I'm quite confident that Laois is the one whose Marcille is the most accurate. Because Laois is the only one familiar with her magic book as he studied it for quite a while when he was trying to figure out how to cure her from her bite from Cockatrice. As observant as Chillchuck is, he's never been interested in her magic and never saw her book up close probably so only one who could plausibly create somewhat accurate looking book must have been Laois.

Last we have here Chillchucks. Again Laois' Chillchuck is said to be the inaccurate one because of wrong neckband and eliminated first. Then the one with wrong tools is the hardest one to guess but I think it's how Senshi views him as Senshi is likely to know and notice less about his toolkid then Marcille because he was quite clueless about traps disarming and Marcille traveled with him much longer and should know a bit more about his equipment because of it. Also I think that one looks the youngest and Senshi is the one assuming Chillchuck is a kid. But this one I'm the least certain about so really feel free to argue with me and share your takes.

[saintsenara]

I know you responded with a meme, but if you're able I'd love to hear your thoughts on harry/hermione 👀

fine. i'll scream into a pillow periodically and get through this...

obviously, i don't actually find the concept of harmony sincerely upsetting - people shipping things is never that deep, and because, as i've said before, i subscribe to the principle that any pairing is possible if you just have enough nerve. i've been recommended some harmony fics by people who are fonder of the ship, and while i've not found them immediately compelling, i do appreciate that there are plenty of people who disagree.

but my feelings are basically the same for harmony as they are for dramione: that it's never done interestingly.

harmony is - like all hermione pairings except [broadly] romione - a breeding ground for fanon!hermione, who is perfect and flawless and so clever she can solve millennia-old mysteries in afternoon. i hate this version of the character because i find her boring - it's just standard self-insert stuff, which is fine but not something i have any interest in reading. i similarly dislike the version of harry who appears in these stories, who ends up - like all men in hermione pairings except [broadly] ron - being either this impossibly sophisticated and suave intellectual with the body of a greek god or a doormat who's happy to shut the fuck up forever and do whatever she says.

[i also hate - obviously, since he's my king - the way harmony stories are often even more egregious than dramione ones in writing ron as a cruel and violent misogynist who is ontologically indistinct from your average death eater. and i think it somewhat proves my point that neither of these ships work particularly well that this character assassination has to take place in order to make them plausible...]

and i think the flattening of harry and hermione's personalities within most harmony is the main thing which keeps the ship from being interesting. because - while i certainly don't go in for the common anti-harmony argument that harry actively dislikes hermione - it's undeniable that there is a lot about the two of them which wouldn't be conducive to a harmonious [lol] relationship.

their communication styles - hermione works through problems by debating them, harry prefers not to be challenged - are the obvious one. their ways of expressing affection - hermione shows people she cares about them by nagging them and meddling in their lives, harry very much does not - are another. they have extremely different views about authority, they decompress in different ways [harry is someone who clearly needs to keep physically active to clear his head, hermione is much more of a homebody], and harry's impulsiveness is a poor match for hermione's fondness for planning.

they are also similar in ways which would cause them to butt heads. both have a tendency towards obsessiveness, which they rely in canon on ron pulling them out of. both have a significant capacity for cruelty and extremely black-and-white moral codes - harry has a tendency towards forming judgements on people and situations based on whether they are people he likes or things he benefits from [i.e. how he's appalled by dobby's treatment because his masters are the malfoys, but doesn't give a shit about kreacher's because his abusive master is sirius], while hermione tends to regard any rule-breaking she does as justified even if she'd regard it as outrageous from anyone else [i.e. her fury over harry appearing to use felix felicis to improve's ron's performance at quidditch when she herself confunded cormac mclaggen to get him onto the team...]. both have a tendency towards giving people the silent treatment when they're angry. both are incredibly stubborn...

and so on.

obviously, they also have positive qualities in common too - a shared loyalty, for one - but it always seems to me that the standard move in harmony is for authors to completely ignore these conflicting traits, either really over-egging what makes harry and hermione compatible platonically in the books or just inventing similarities [especially intellectual ones] to justify the pairing. whereas i would much prefer to see just how difficult it would be for harry and hermione to fall and sustain being in love with each other, and i've never seen that done compellingly.

but the conflict i'd love to see explored in harmony fics most of all, but which never seems to be acknowledged by fans of the pairing, is that [despite the fanon slander that ron is the person who behaves poorly towards her] harry is often horrible to hermione and hermione is often scared of harry.

this is at its most profound after ron leaves the horcrux hunt in deathly hallows, but we see several times throughout canon that - if ron isn't there to mediate between them - harry often treats hermione in a way which can be considered downright cruel. if she criticises him in a way he considers unjustifiable, he tends to side with other people against her [ron in prisoner of azkaban over the firebolt; ginny in half-blood prince over snape's textbook]. if she tries to reason with him he often beats her down with the force of his emotions [i.e. when she tries to get him to think about whether his vision of sirius in the department of mysteries might be a trick] or his convictions [i.e. when he lures her into near-death by being certain that nagini is really bathilda bagshot], and she often ends up having to soothe or appease him when he's the one who's screamed at her.

hermione is also scared more generally of harry's experiences - she's by far the least amenable of the trio to talking about voldemort [even though she says his name earlier than ron does] - and mission, which puts up a barrier between them which will be difficult to bring down post-war. i think there's something which could be really interesting there - the most interesting dynamic in hinny, after all, is when harry and ginny's tendency to not actually be honest with each other is explored - but unfortunately at the minute that sort of character work is drowning in a sea of "ron is so stupid and harry and i just love talking about classic literature, come darling, put on your leather trousers and let us solve world hunger; i look like emma watson" nonsense.

dull!

[outmakingmoonshine]

I wrote this in response to this post about Adam Shapiro but I didn't wanna hijack OP's post as I was replying to @freedelusionshere comment anyway so i'll put it here instead.

I agree the way Shapiro's character has been presented seems suspicious. Like a lot of things on this show it's portrayed subtly and indirectly but purposefully.

It's interesting to me that Syd had no idea who he was even after she stopped to look at him, until he said his name and she recognized it as a chef from Ever. But he knew who she was and seemed to know enough details about her role at The Bear to ask her to do an almost identical job for him the next time they met. How did he know she was capable of all that?

All the articles we've seen about in the show don't mention Syd, they don't credit her with helping to build the restaurant or even mention that Carmy is partnered with another chef. As far as we know her work isn't being publicly acknowledged and nobody outside of the staff and Emmanuel (and possibly Claire) know how much Syd's done there, so how does Shapiro seem to be aware of details you don't just pick up eating at a restaurant "under the radar" one time?

Richie worked at Ever for a week in S2 but he wasn't exactly Syd's biggest fan then so if he did talk about her I doubt he made her role at The Bear sound like a good thing or said positive things about the changes she'd made to make Shapiro want to poach her.

Shapiro said he ate at The Bear with friends, maybe one of them told him. But again, how do they know? The show makes it seem like Syd's full role at The Bear isn't public knowledge. Especially not the kind of details Shapiro seemed aware of.

Syd told a couple of chefs Carmy's her partner in S2 and judging by the lack of Syd mentions in the articles, I'd imagine they're probably thinking "I told you so" right now...but this does seem like the most plausible way he could know. It's still a flimsy connection imo bc the show has given us no other outside acknowledgement for Syd's work at The Bear. No other chef mentioned it or congratulated her in 3x10, even Chef Terry who congratulated Carmy then partied with Syd at her apartment didn't mention it to her. I assumed Luca would have an idea through Marcus or Carmy but he didn't say anything about it either and there was plenty of opportunity in their conversation. Shapiro is the only other chef who's congratulated her or mentioned it.

Knowing this doesn't necessarily make him a bad person, maybe he just noticed the negative environment of The Bear and decided to offer Syd an opportunity but it does make you wonder how he knows so much and no one else seems to. Maybe the show just does a bad job at portraying that it's public knowledge but judging by their usual level of attention to detail in storytelling, I don't think that's the case.

I guess Shapiro could know other chefs Syd's worked with in the past but getting info from them then approaching Syd the way he did without mentioning that is also just weird. And how would he know she can single handedly build a restaurant from scratch to the point of giving her complete creative control?

If it was sudden for Carmy to offer Syd such a big role in building his dream restaurant after months of working together in S1, it's very strange for Shapiro to offer Syd an almost identical offer but even better, after only meeting her twice.

Plus he says he doesn't want it to be "a gross poaching" but what else do you call asking someone who's already trying to build a restaurant with a chef he personally knows to basically abandon that project to come build his business full time instead? A decent person with good intentions would've spoken to Carmy and Syd together or at least gave Carmy a heads up that he planned to offer his CDC an opportunity to work for him instead. And Shapiro made that offer hard to refuse, even Syd knew it seemed too good to be true. That in itself is such a shady thing to do.

The definition of poaching in business: "Poaching is when an employer actively approaches, or 'head hunts', someone who is already employed by, or working at, another organisation, as opposed to advertising a vacancy and going through a usual recruitment process." [Source]

Shapiro can dress it up all he wants, poaching is the literal definition of what he's doing and the way he's gone about it is "gross" bc it's not like Carmy is a stranger to him, Syd was a stranger though.

His character has been subtly presented as someone who shouldn't be trusted imo. Kinda like Claire in S2. There seems to be no reason to dislike them on the surface but if you look beneath the surface there are plenty of reasons, too many to be a coincidence. Maybe Shapiro's not a good guy or maybe it's deliberate misdirection, either way I think he's been presented as a slightly suspicious character on purpose.

[zaxal]

'you don't dance' is ruining my life

either 1) crowley asked him and aziraphale went 'of course i dont dance, im an angel' then learned to dance when he and crowley werent talking or 2) crowley made an assumption abt aziraphale while aziraphale has been wanting to be asked for centuries

bc thats what they DO, thats how their relationship works, crowley offers something, aziraphale pulls back, crowley offers again in slightly less polarizing terms, aziraphale accepts

except aziraphale is finally to the point that hes ready to start asking, to start taking the lead, and hes being so bold about it. the existence we carved out for ourselves. our car. the bookshop that's only technically mine, we both get plenty of use out of it. while we dance.

hes just not saying The Words bc The Words are hard. their entire relationship has been this familiar push and pull, things left unsaid and assumptions made, for better or worse. also crowley has, historically, been hostile to the words aziraphale uses for him

bc theyre not the right ones. crowley doesnt want to be told that hes nice and kind in general terms. crowley doesnt want the plausible deniability even when it's something they still need to hide behind. he wants something personal, something intimate, for it to mean something

crowley, the one who fumbles and stammers and makes inarticulate noises, mx ngk, is the one who needs a solid foundation laid for him

while aziraphale who worships books is willing to live in ambiguity, to leave the things unsaid, bc words can be false, but theyll know the truth

theyre just so narrowly missing each other and by the time both of them find it in them to say The Words, it's too late. there are no less polarizing terms that can be accepted for either of them, so when they pull away, it feels like they cant come back