#my definition of 'data' is loose

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Holy CRAP the UN Cybercrime Treaty is a nightmare

Support me this summer on the Clarion Write-A-Thon and help raise money for the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop!

If there's one thing I learned from all my years as an NGO delegate to UN specialized agencies, it's that UN treaties are dangerous, liable to capture by unholy alliances of authoritarian states and rapacious global capitalists.

Most of my UN work was on copyright and "paracopyright," and my track record was 2:0; I helped kill a terrible treaty (the WIPO Broadcast Treaty) and helped pass a great one (the Marrakesh Treaty on the rights of people with disabilities to access copyrighted works):

https://www.wipo.int/treaties/en/ip/marrakesh/

It's been many years since I had to shave and stuff myself into a suit and tie and go to Geneva, and I don't miss it – and thankfully, I have colleagues who do that work, better than I ever did. Yesterday, I heard from one such EFF colleague, Katitza Rodriguez, about the Cybercrime Treaty, which is about to pass, and which is, to put it mildly, terrifying:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/07/un-cybercrime-draft-convention-dangerously-expands-state-surveillance-powers

Look, cybercrime is a real thing, from pig butchering to ransomware, and there's real, global harms that can be attributed to it. Cybercrime is transnational, making it hard for cops in any one jurisdiction to handle it. So there's a reason to think about formal international standards for fighting cybercrime.

But that's not what's in the Cybercrime Treaty.

Here's a quick sketch of the significant defects in the Cybercrime Treaty.

The treaty has an extremely loose definition of cybercrime, and that looseness is deliberate. In authoritarian states like China and Russia (whose delegations are the driving force behind this treaty), "cybercrime" has come to mean "anything the government disfavors, if you do it with a computer." "Cybercrime" can mean online criticism of the government, or professions of religious belief, or material supporting LGBTQ rights.

Nations that sign up to the Cybercrime Treaty will be obliged to help other nations fight "cybercrime" – however those nations define it. They'll be required to provide surveillance data – for example, by forcing online services within their borders to cough up their users' private data, or even to pressure employees to install back-doors in their systems for ongoing monitoring.

These obligations to aid in surveillance are mandatory, but much of the Cybercrime Treaty is optional. What's optional? The human rights safeguards. Member states "should" or "may" create standards for legality, necessity, proportionality, non-discrimination, and legitimate purpose. But even if they do, the treaty can oblige them to assist in surveillance orders that originate with other states that decided not to create these standards.

When that happens, the citizens of the affected states may never find out about it. There are eight articles in the treaty that establish obligations for indefinite secrecy regarding surveillance undertaken on behalf of other signatories. That means that your government may be asked to spy on you and the people you love, they may order employees of tech companies to backdoor your account and devices, and that fact will remain secret forever. Forget challenging these sneak-and-peek orders in court – you won't even know about them:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/06/un-cybercrime-draft-convention-blank-check-unchecked-surveillance-abuses

Now here's the kicker: while this treaty creates broad powers to fight things governments dislike, simply by branding them "cybercrime," it actually undermines the fight against cybercrime itself. Most cybercrime involves exploiting security defects in devices and services – think of ransomware attacks – and the Cybercrime Treaty endangers the security researchers who point out these defects, creating grave criminal liability for the people we rely on to warn us when the tech vendors we rely upon have put us at risk.

This is the granddaddy of tech free speech fights. Since the paper tape days, researchers who discovered defects in critical systems have been intimidated, threatened, sued and even imprisoned for blowing the whistle. Tech giants insist that they should have a veto over who can publish true facts about the defects in their products, and dress up this demand as concern over security. "If you tell bad guys about the mistakes we made, they will exploit those bugs and harm our users. You should tell us about those bugs, sure, but only we can decide when it's the right time for our users and customers to find out about them."

When it comes to warnings about the defects in their own products, corporations have an irreconcilable conflict of interest. Time and again, we've seen corporations rationalize their way into suppressing or ignoring bug reports. Sometimes, they simply delay the warning until they've concluded a merger or secured a board vote on executive compensation.

Sometimes, they decide that a bug is really a feature – like when Facebook decided not to do anything about the fact that anyone could enumerate the full membership of any Facebook group (including, for example, members of a support group for people with cancer). This group enumeration bug was actually a part of the company's advertising targeting system, so they decided to let it stand, rather than re-engineer their surveillance advertising business.

The idea that users are safer when bugs are kept secret is called "security through obscurity" and no one believes in it – except corporate executives. As Bruce Schneier says, "Anyone can design a system that is so secure that they themselves can't break it. That doesn't mean it's secure – it just means that it's secure against people stupider than the system's designer":

The history of massive, brutal cybersecurity breaches is an unbroken string of heartbreakingly naive confidence in security through obscurity:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/05/battery-vampire/#drained

But despite this, the idea that some bugs should be kept secret and allowed to fester has powerful champions: a public-private partnership of corporate execs, government spy agencies and cyber-arms dealers. Agencies like the NSA and CIA have huge teams toiling away to discover defects in widely used products. These defects put the populations of their home countries in grave danger, but rather than reporting them, the spy agencies hoard these defects.

The spy agencies have an official doctrine defending this reckless practice: they call it "NOBUS," which stands for "No One But Us." As in: "No one but us is smart enough to find these bugs, so we can keep them secret and use them attack our adversaries, without worrying about those adversaries using them to attack the people we are sworn to protect."

NOBUS is empirically wrong. In the 2010s, we saw a string of leaked NSA and CIA cyberweapons. One of these, "Eternalblue" was incorporated into off-the-shelf ransomware, leading to the ransomware epidemic that rages even today. You can thank the NSA's decision to hoard – rather than disclose and patch – the Eternalblue exploit for the ransoming of cities like Baltimore, hospitals up and down the country, and an oil pipeline:

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

The leak of these cyberweapons didn't just provide raw material for the world's cybercriminals, it also provided data for researchers. A study of CIA and NSA NOBUS defects found that there was a one-in-five chance of a bug that had been hoarded by a spy agency being independently discovered by a criminal, weaponized, and released into the wild.

Not every government has the wherewithal to staff its own defect-mining operation, but that's where the private sector steps in. Cyber-arms dealers like the NSO Group find or buy security defects in widely used products and services and turn them into products – military-grade cyberweapons that are used to attack human rights groups, opposition figures, and journalists:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/24/breaking-the-news/#kingdom

A good Cybercrime Treaty would recognize the perverse incentives that create the coalition to keep us from knowing which products we can trust and which ones we should avoid. It would shut down companies like the NSO Group, ban spy agencies from hoarding defects, and establish an absolute defense for security researchers who reveal true facts about defects.

Instead, the Cybercrime Treaty creates new obligations on signatories to help other countries' cops and courts silence and punish security researchers who make these true disclosures, ensuring that spies and criminals will know which products aren't safe to use, but we won't (until it's too late):

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/06/if-not-amended-states-must-reject-flawed-draft-un-cybercrime-convention

A Cybercrime Treaty is a good idea, and even this Cybercrime Treaty could be salvaged. The member-states have it in their power to accept proposed revisions that would protect human rights and security researchers, narrow the definition of "cybercrime," and mandate transparency. They could establish member states' powers to refuse illegitimate requests from other countries:

https://www.eff.org/press/releases/media-briefing-eff-partners-warn-un-member-states-are-poised-approve-dangerou

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/2024/07/23/expanded-spying-powers/#in-russia-crime-cybers-you

Image: EFF https://www.eff.org/files/banner_library/cybercrime-2024-2b.jpg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/us/

[sendothetaurus]

How to write good dialogue

Almost every story needs dialogue - obvious right? Well, this post is about the not-so-obvious sides of conversations. I've struggled a LOT with snappy and realistic speech, so I've made it my mission to collect some handy directives. Here is what I found:

Contents

Information Dumps

Setup And Payoff

Characterization Through Dialogue

Three Simple Questions

Four-Sides Model

Depth

About Answers

Sources And Credits

⮮ Let's go! (^▽^) ⮯

Information Dumps

Everybody knows them, everybody hates reading them. But how do we avoid them? Something really clicked for me when I understood context. If your character talks about something that happened in the past, they don't need to explain what happened. They were there. Here's an example:

"It would be nice if we at least got a B for that paper. Since I will go to college next year, I feel that this is important to me."

The speaker and the listener should be aware of the exposition (regarding their last year at high school). During dialogue, these conditions go without saying.

Setup And Payoff

Instead of dumping everything at once, let the reader guess what's happening. This is done by mentioning something that is not answered right away. Also dropping hints can increase tension.

Scene 1 "Why do you always carry that with you?" she asked and pointed at the box cutter. Her friend eyed her with suspicion. "For cutting." "Yeah, but why?" "Might come in handy sometime." Scene 2 An ice cold shiver ran down her spine as her fingers felt around the bag, searching for the familiar shape. There was nothing. The other tossed the thing onto the floor between them. "Care to elaborate?" She couldn't have known. "How could you!"

Someone definitely has a secret here that they don't want uncovered. It makes the reader speculate: Does she carry the knife to defend herself or does she plan on hurting someone with it?

Characterization Through Dialogue

The general rule of thumb is: Show not tell. If a character is shy, self-absorbed or chaotic, make them act like it. Also, readers take part in the characterization of your protagonists. Make them guess why a character acts a certain way.

"C- can I have your pen?" She twirled her thumbs and looked at the ground. "What the hell, no!" Disgusted, he brushed off his hands on the front of his jeans. "I'mma better disinfect that."

Notice how the girl is stuttering and the boy has a loose tongue. Mannerisms help identifying traits in a character. Everyone has a distinct way to speak (e.g. relaxed, polite, malignly) which makes it easier to tell them apart. Sometimes there is a difference between speech and behavior. This can be quite useful to highlight conflict inside a character.

Three Simple Questions

Who wants what from who?

Why now?

What happens if they don't get it?

These questions ensure plot consistency. For question 3 the only other outcome is conflict. Conversations thrive off of conflict and it is of benefit to have a supplicant and potential provider for a solution. It's basically intention versus obstacle.

1. She wants to be his wife. He doesn't want a marriage. 2. She is pregnant. 3. She needs to provide for a baby all on her own.

Tadaa, a conflict ensues.

Four-Sides Model

The four-sides model is a theory on communication. It assumes that a message has four distinct ways of being conveyed:

Facts -> data, facts, truth and relevance

Self-Disclosure -> explicit and implicit information about the own mindset; likes, dislikes, opinions

Relationship -> information about whether the person is liked or detested; approval and disapproval; "I assume you have [this] opinion of me"; body language

Want -> a direct attempt to influence the behavior of another person; advice, desire or instruction

Since this is highly technical stuff, I'll provide you with an example:

Customer: "I always drink my coffee black." 1. Fact: The coffee I drink is black. 2. Self-Disclosure: I like black coffee. 3. Relationship (POV of the waiter): Did I do something wrong? OR It's their fault! They ordered the wrong thing! 4. Want: Bring me black coffee.

Controlling the message through sender and receiver gives a new level of influence to an author. The relationship-level is the bottleneck in a conversation that holds the most potential for misunderstandings. I'm trying to be aware of it when I write subtext (see below).

Depth

On the nose dialogue is what we want to avoid at all costs. For this reason subtext is created in stories. Read this:

Scene 1 A: "I like you." B: "Nah, I don't like you back. You're so annoying." A: "Ouch, that hurts. I'm not sure if I heard that right." B: "We were never friends. Go away."

This is not how conversations work. Thankfully, dialogue like this is not entirely useless. It conveys what the characters really want to say. The challenge is to think of a way to not say the thing but keep a similar meaning.

The true meaning behind the dialogue is called subtext (scene 1). If I don't know how to continue after a certain line, I write down the subtext first before I decide on how to paraphrase it.

Finally, I add a fitting description of expression and body language if needed. I try to keep it short and simple.

Check this out:

Scene 2 She tucked her hair behind her ear. "I need a ride home later. Are you free?" -> I like you. "Sorry, all seats' re taken," he said without looking at her. -> Nah, I don't like you back. You're so annoying. "Uhm, okay. But I'm small. You could fit me in the footwell, honestly." -> Ouch, that hurts. I'm not sure if I heard that right. He leaned forward as if he had the urge to stand. "Ha, funny. But no, I'm not planning on doing something illegal tonight." -> We were never friends. Go away.

A character's action depends on their own intention and the other's response. I feel it is easier to keep track of what's happening behind the curtains when it's written alongside the dialogue.

Simultaneously, you can keep habits and traits in check. Does the the character apply all criticism to themselves? Are they disregarding or constantly marginalizing others? Do they worry only for themselves or solely for others? Subtext truly is the most powerful tool in conversation-writing.

About Answers

Did you know that you don't have to answer every single question? In fact, there are two other ways to show an emotion without telling it.

The first one is called sidestepping. The character ignores the posed question and carries on with an entirely different topic.

A: "Do you still love me?" B: "We should get going."

It's very obvious, right? By sidestepping the question, we can assume that the character is uncomfortable or angry with the other person.

The other way to answer is actually a bit paradoxical. Through silence, a great variety of emotions can be displayed. It is recommended to refrain from actually describing silence with words like "he remained silent", "he refused to say anything", "he never responded".

- The laptop hummed. - The birds chirped in the trees. - She felt her legs going numb from sitting in an uncomfortable position. - His eyes wandered around, searching the parking lot for a familiar face.

It feels more natural to explain the things that grab our attention when we sit in silence.

This is it, folks. That's all I could find on the topic - for now. If there's anything missing, I'd love to hear it.

‧͙⁺˚*･༓☾ Anyway, thanks for reading, I hope this helped ☽༓･*˚⁺‧͙

My sources are this and this video as well as this article.

Also a big thank you to @zoropookie for helping me with the colors ⸜(｡˃ ᵕ ˂ )⸝♡

[neil-perrys-reincarnation]

How TOS characters would react if you asked them for a hug (platonic)

this is based on that time i asked all of my teachers and basically everyone who i knew for a hug and compiled all the data into a best hugger spreadsheet. yea i’m neurodivergent and touchstarved why do you ask

“can i have a hug please?”

Kirk:

he would definitely ask you if you were okay

If he knows you he gives amazing hugs, absolutely fantastic. If he doesn’t really know you, you might get a quick, well-meaning one-arm hug

“sure thing, come here <3”

chub is good for cuddles

it’s kinda intimidating to ask for hugs from him, especially when he’s on shift

you feel a bit honoured that he actually said yes to your request

he always does a quick little squeeze at the end before he lets go

his hugs aren’t super tight though

the kind of hug that makes you both smile

wouldn’t rank super high on a “best hugger” list but that’s not his fault, he’s trying to run a ship here and he can’t get too attached to people

you probably wouldn’t get a repeat hug unless you really needed one or you knew him well

he smells like shampoo!

Spock:

he’d definitely raise an eyebrow

it looks like he’s considering saying no but on reality he’d never refuse unless the circumstances were dire

“of course, officer. is something wrong?”

he’s not an enthusiastic hugger but he’s really really good at long hugs

like not-letting-go-until-your-heart-rate-is-steady kind of long hugs

not super tight, not super loose. very medium strength hugs

he would clasp his hands together behind your back so he doesn’t have to touch your skin with his fingertips

if it’s a calm hug he might continue talking about ship duties while he holds you

if you’re freaking out he’s quiet enough that you can hear his heartbeat, which is surprisingly calming

he smells like lavender

he’ll hold on until you’re ready to let go

when you do let go, neither of you will talk about it again but it’s never awkward

he doesn’t offer up hugs if he sees you again, but you know he’d accept one no question if you asked

Bones:

he might not register what you’re asking for a second, because it’s not a request he gets very often

grumbling under his breath about not having time for this, but in reality he’s over the moon

“get over here, sweetheart”

king of platonic pet names. he knows well enough that this is notttt romantic

he smells like antiseptic and pear soap

his hugs are tight as hell, enough that you might have to remind him that he’s not trying to break your ribs

swaying hugs are his thing

while he holds you he’d definitely ask if anything’s up, or if this is a just-because-hug

would complain that this is why he doesn’t get close to patients, while simultaneously rubbing your back happily

once you get past the intimidating facade he’s a softie and pretty easy to ask for hugs

only in private though. never in public

if you do something great in the future he might hold out his arms for a hug randomly

Scotty:

he’s honestly miffed you haven’t asked him for a hug before

absolutely lights up at the question, clumsily putting down anything he’s holding and putting his arms out wide

“tha’s a good kid, c’mere”

he smells like engine oil and grease and something slightly singed. in a good way

surprisingly soft. he’s gentle and squeezy and keeps patting you on the back

he might lift you off your feet for a couple of seconds before putting you back down

very laughter-filled hugs

if youre upset he might try and tickle you a little

after asking, of course

he wouldn’t do long hugs, but he’d be regretful about it. as it is he’s probably neglecting some jefferies tube that’s about to malfunction or burst into flames

after that you’re not getting hugs when he’s busy, but if he’s got time and he sees you in the hall he’d call out “where’s my hug, lad?” (gender neutral) and follow through on it

he’s the one asking for hugs, and even though they’re short they’re very good natured

Uhura:

perhaps the least intimidating person on the Enterprise to ask for a hug. if you were asking all of the crew, you’d do her first because she gives off comfortable vibes

she would repeat your question back to you - “can you have a hug? of course you can!”

the first one to initiate the hug

no swaying whatsoever. she’s like a steady rock, and her hold is the perfect tightness

this is the best hug you’ve ever had

you are going to remember this hug for at least two years

you’re legitimately planning on calling your parent and telling them all about this hug, it’s just that good

she smells like perfume and freshly brewed herbal tea

while you’re hugging, she would definitely go “awwww” or make some sort of sweet little positive comment

you both let go at the same time. it feels like you never want to step away

she tells you that you guys can do hugs all the time if you want, and you get the feeling she really means it genuinely

whenever you see her she’ll hold out her arms for a hug no matter what, even if she’s talking to someone she’ll hold them out knowing you’ll come

[beweepbomp]

I NEEDED TO URGENTLY VENT BECAUSE IDK WAHT ELSE TO DO.

A lil background. I knew my sexuality as like early as 12. I had two gfs but never anything physical. Now as adult trying to venture out to physical things with another woman. This person we will refer to as Lizzy, from the convos we had never was with a woman in any manner ever but interested to try with me. Okay now this is the insane shit i went thru. enjoy.

Lizzy matched on tinder with me and she asked after some great chit chatting to exchange #'s. Sounds great what could go wrong. After several back n forth spicy texts of what we want to do finally we say hey we should definitely meet up. A few days pass by to finally our meet up date. Science. Ghosted. Okay no biggie. 19 DAYS LATER “Hi i got busy how are you?” I brush it off things do happen and I’m trying to be reasonable. I reply with a hello. No reply again. 40 DAYS LATER “How are you?” At this point I roll my eyes. This is not worth the energy but wow she’s actually replying back idk maybe just shit happens. She tells me it’s been a busy summer travel & work. Okay fair. She shows me cute magnets she made and tells me she’s house sitting.

After a few text exchanges she’s asking me to come over. I get hesitant but she insists. WHAT COULD GO WRONG I SAY? I text her I’ll get ready and take an Uber over. Let me tell you i was giving femme hotness. My skirt was so hiked up. My cute shirt low v cut. Had a jean jacket since it was late into the night. I’m jittery with excitement. I call my best friend she gets the address and says to text me after etc. I order the Uber which was $30+ DOLLARS but i was too excited to care. In the middle of my Uber drive she texts she’s having a panic attack and throwing up. I feel awful. Did i freak her out? But i kept reassuring that we don’t need to do anything physical even when i arrive. No pressure. Assuring to have full consent before engaging in anything. But she insists she’s stuck in the bathroom throwing up and to turn around. Now I’m over 20 minutes away from my apartment around 11:30pm in the middle of the damn suburbs. I arrive and ask by text if i can just sit in the living room until the next Uber comes she says no. I’m outside alone in a foreign place terrified. I video chat with my best friend explaining the situation and she’s in shock as well. Putting me in danger in the middle of nowhere , just alone. Just perfect. My gay ass in the wind trying to remain calm since the streets are barely lit and i have no immediate way home. The connection to data is shitty but im able to order another Uber. Another $30+ out of to go back. But it’s fine no one’s fault right.

She insistently asks texting when my Uber will ber here. My connection isn’t great but it shows 9 minutes. It’s been at least 8 minutes now but the Uber isn’t properly showing the accurate time. My best friend what a god send kept me sane as i waited but a car pulls up and it definitely isn’t my Uber. “Oh i thought you were the girl im meeting with.” OH MY GOD i laugh almost loosing my mind. I point to her house, “oh no no she’s in there.’ Thankfully my Uber arrives as the guy calls out you’re beautiful. Oh thanks bud. Lizzy texts me to say that’s my friend helping me with my panic attack. of course i say seriously you have to be fucking joking. I freak out on her thru text and she insists she’d never intentionally try to put anyone in danger and every other excuse in the book and STILL try’s to see if we will meet up again. Of course i tell her she is fucking nuts and maybe next time be a hospitable hoe if you’re gonna be a hoe at all. I’m not against it but also don’t make a crazy lie and embarrass me. I have no idea im like crushed to seek out afraid to have the same experience of wacky shit. What do i do???? Help pls

[cheriladycl01]

The month of winning - Alex Albon x ZimbabweanOlympicSailing! Reader

Plot: As an old money girl, having been part of your dads sailing club for years you become an athlete, getting a silver medal for your country and a new boyfriend!

You and Alex new it was going to be a busy few weeks, You'd been training hard for the Olympics your whole life. Your dad was part of a fancy yacht and sailing club in your home town. And he was a very very wealthy man, some of the yachts he sold ended up in places of the world like Monaco.

You'd grown up with just your dad, and were homeschooled and were constantly helping him with the boats and that started your love for sailing as a sport. You started to compete in championships when you were old enough and your father had taught you everything you know about the sport.

Everyone you grew up with and Alex came to watch you at the Paris Olympics. And it was a moment to remember getting silver. You were stood on the podium your flag flying in the wind making the biggest grin ever to appear on your face.

You could see Alex and your dad in the stands cheering loudly for you, making you wave and blow them a kiss.

After your win, you wanted to travel home to see all your old friends and family who couldn't go all the way to France for the Olympics, and wanted to congratulate you on your win. It was the off season for Alex too, so you both got to spend loads of time sightseeing Zimbabwe.

Alex loved animals, mainly pets but that didnt stop him from freaking out when you guys took a day to go on a safari and see all the animals your dad would take you to see in the reserves as a kid.

He used probably 3 sd cards for the digital camera he brought to take pictures and filled out storage on his phone too with the amount of pictures he'd taken on just the safari alone. It was crazy, and when you asked him to take a nice picture of you, it would take him ages scrolling through to try find it when you wanted him to send it to you so you could upload it to your Instagram.

"Baby, come on its a picture of me vs a picture of a cheetah how cant you pick me out!" you laughed looking over his shoulder as he's scrolling through trying to find the picture of you at the watering hole.

"Look, I took so many of all the animals and only like 4 of you because the rest were on your phone!" he exclaims before he gasps and see's a gorgeous picture of you.

"Awwww look at my pretty baby!" he grins showing you the picture making you shake your head in disbelief.

"Right, send that to me now... before you loose it!" you chuckle. And he does air-dropping it to you there and then.

After a beautiful week in your home country it was time for the end of Alex's summer break and for him to get back in the car racing. You were excited because he'd extended his contract with Williams and you knew that even though this year wasn't going very well for them, that each race the data they were gathering making it easier to predict which upgrades were needed and worth it.

Monaco, being as historic as it was came with a few upgrades that not only had Williams buzzing but the whole paddock because it looked like they might be in the position to fight for some points this weekend unlike Alpine and Sauber who unfortunately were still struggling with various issues.

You could sense in both Alex and Logan how excited they were for these huge next steps.

"How's the car feeling this weekend? It's looking nicer to drive, more steady on both of you" you questioned the boys who both nodded with grins on their faces.

"Yeah, it's an incredible change it feels so smooth now. Like it felt like we were fighting the car before but now it's complying with us, its a great feeling!" Logan answered only for Alex to nod in agreement.

"Yeah i can definitely see us grabbing points this weekend!" Alex smiles.

Two days later on the Sunday Alex was in P11 and Logan was defending P8 incredibly well and there was only a few laps left to go. Ahead of Alex was two drivers. Yuki Tsunoda in P9 right behind Logan and Lewis in P10.

Last lap action was every fans favrioute but as a WAG it was the most stressful. Especially for you as you knew Alex, even though he was a smooth driver would start to push more than he might be able to handle.

You were stood with his mum and sister and Logans girlfriend and parents biting your nails in anticipation as he pulled up alongside Yuki and Lewis, and taking the inside line managed to overtake both of them.

A cheer came through the paddock upon realizing that Logan also just made the overtake of his career getting him up to P7, placing Lance Stroll in between the two Williams drivers.

They crossed the finish line, Logan in P7 and Alex in P9, a double points finish for Williams, the first points they'd gotten this season and the garage and pit wall went wild as you all ran out to go find the drivers to celebrate.

Alex was grinning from ear to ear in his post race interview, his eyes kept meeting yours behind the camera and interviewer making him chuckle every now and then.

"Amazing race today Alex, first points for both you and Logan. How are you feeling having this and your girlfriend winning and Olympic medal all in the same month!" she asks and his grin widens if that's possible.

"Yeah, i mean I'm so thankful to everyone this weekend for making it happen, it was definitely a long time coming getting these points but we've done it. We're happy with this weekends progression and yeah we're gonna push harder next weekend in Montreal! Obviously I'm so proud of my amazing girlfriend as well, she has worked so hard for everything she's achieved and yeah she deserves the world for the support she's given me over this weekend" he answers.

"Thank you Alex!" she smiles before letting him go and getting ready for Logan.

"What a month" he sighs pulling you into a hug and kissing the side of you head.

"What a month indeed!" you grin back.

y/user

Liked by alex_albon georgerussell63 landonorris and williamsracing

y/user: From a weekend in Zimbabwe Sailing and winning Silver to a weekend in Monaco, Fast Cars and Formula One all w/ Boo 🔥

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y/dads/user: Amazing medal sweetheart! So proud please come back soon!

-> y/user: we will! Alex loved all the animals and seeing you guys again!

fan1: so proud of this woman for bringing silver home!

alex_albon: two weekends I’ll never forget! Big celebrations incoming 🫶🏼🇿🇼🇹🇭

-> fan2: omg he put their flags together!

-> y/user: Love you Alex and I’m so great full you were there! 🫶🏼❤️

fan3: she just looks expensive, you guys know what I’m saying?

-> fan4: she comes from old money so she has those vibes!

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[improbable-outset]

📂 𝐒𝐭𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐬…

↳ 📂 𝐒𝐩𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐞 𝐌𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭.𝐟𝐢𝐥𝐞

Loosely inspired by @mybvalentine fic here but reverse comfort lol

There was a mechanical hum that droned on in his sterile lab— a sound that was nothing but white noise to him but now it felt obnoxious.

Miguel’s brows creased further as he thoroughly analysed the data on his screen, adjusting the intricate genetic sequence.

His holographic blueprint of a DNA strand would flicker above his workstation as he continuously ran simulations.

He felt extra pressure of an upcoming meeting loom over him like a dark shadow. He was preparing for a meeting in a few hours with the Alchemax executives, reviewing the data he had been collecting; so precision and accuracy was vital.

Any miscalculations or errors could result in long-term consequences, putting more strain on his work.

He was running on a few hours of sleep, burning the midnight oil, and had been sitting on the same desk chair over the last few hours.

Not too much time had passed before you knocked on the door to his lab. He looked up from his work to see you.

All the tension that thickened in the room had vanished, and he felt his shoulders droop a fraction in ease as you headed closer towards his desk.

His sanctuary.

His solace.

The whiff of your familiar perfume was a reminder of why he would come home every night. A stark contrast to the stale air in the lab he was accustomed to.

You placed a steaming mug of coffee on the desk before you pecked his cheek.

A blissful blip in his blaring background noise of his life. Even if it was a small gesture, it was enough to give him that drive he needed.

“Eres increíble, pero olvides cuidarte amor,” you uttered before you swiftly left the lab.

If he wasn’t feeling motivated before, your words definitely gave him the boost he needed now. Even if he wanted you to stay a little longer, he knew you had your own work to catch up on.

Just before you were out of his sight, he noticed you were wearing one of the dresses he loved. It eventuated your waist and gave the perfect view of the curves of your ass.

But right now it was covered up by your lab coat. He couldn’t wait to get home and take that dress off of you later that day.

As a technician girlie who works in the lab, when it is my turn pls pls

[jovial-thunder]

Pre-alpha Lancer Tactics changelog

(cross-posting the full gif changelog here because folks seemed to like it last time I did)

We're aiming for getting the first public alpha for backers by the end of this month! Carpenter and I scoped out mechanics that can wait until after the alpha (e.g. grappling, hiding) in favor of tying up the hundred loose threads that are needed for something that approaches a playable game. So this is mostly a big ol changelog of an update from doing that.

But I also gave a talent talk at a local Portland Indie Game Squad event about engine architecture! It'll sound familiar if you've been reading these updates; I laid out the basic idea for this talk almost a year ago, back in the June 2023 update.

We've also signed contracts & had a kickoff meeting with our writers to start on the campaigns. While I've enjoyed like a year of engine-work, it'll be so so nice to start getting to tell stories. Data structures don't mean anything beyond how they affect humans & other life.

New Content

Implemented flying as a status; unit counts as +3 spaces above the current ground level and ignores terrain and elevation extra movement costs. Added hover + takeoff/land animations.

Gave deployables the ability to have 3D meshes instead of 2D sprites; we'll probably use this mostly when the deployable in question is climbable.

Related, I fixed a bug where after terrain destruction, all units recheck the ground height under them so they'll move down if the ground is shot out from under them. When the Jerichos do that, they say "oh heck, the ground is taller! I better move up to stand on it!" — not realizing that the taller ground they're seeing came from themselves.

Fixed by locking some units' rendering to the ground level; this means no stacking climbable things, which is a call I'm comfortable making. We ain't making minecraft here (I whisper to myself, gazing at the bottom of my tea mug). 

Block sizes are currently 1x1x0.5 — half as tall as they are wide. Since that was a size I pulled out of nowhere for convenience, we did some art tests for different block heights and camera angles. TLDR that size works great and we're leaving it.

Added Cone AOE pattern, courtesy of an algorithm NMcCoy sent me that guarantees the correct number of tiles are picked at the correct distance from the origin.

pick your aim angle

for each distance step N of your cone, make a list ("ring") of all the cells at that distance from your origin

sort those cells by angular distance from your aim angle, and include the N closest cells in that ring in the cone's area

Here's a gif they made of it in Bitsy:

Units face where you're planning on moving/targeting them.

Got Walking Armory's Shock option working. Added subtle (too subtle, now that I look at it) electricity effect.

Other things we've added but I don't have gifs for or failed to upload. You'll have to trust me. :)

disengage action

overcharge action

Improved Armament core bonus

basic mine explosion fx

explosion fx on character dying

Increase map elevation cap to 10. It's nice but definitely is risky with increasing the voxel space, gonna have to keep an eye on performance.

Added Structured + Stress event and the associated popups. Also added meltdown status (and hidden countdown), but there's not animation for this yet so your guy just abruptly disappears and leaves huge crater.

UI Improvements

Rearranged the portrait maker. Auto-expand the color picker so you don't have to keep clicking into a submenu.

Added topdown camera mode by pressing R for handling getting mechs out of tight spaces.

The action tooltips have been bothering me for a while; they extend up and cover prime play-area real estate in the center of the screen. So I redesigned them to be shorter and have a max height by putting long descriptions in a scrollable box. This sounds simple, but the redesign, pulling in all the correct data for the tags, and wiring up the tooltips took like seven hours. Game dev is hard, yo.

Put the unit inspect popups in lockable tooltips + added a bunch of tooltips to them.

Implemented the rest of Carpenter's cool hex-y action and end turn readout. I'm a big fan of whenever we can make the game look more like a game and less like a website (though he balances out my impulse for that for the sake of legibility).

Added a JANKY talent/frame picker. I swear we have designs for a better one, but sometimes you gotta just get it working. Also seen briefly here are basic level up/down and HASE buttons.

Other no-picture things:

Negated the map-scaling effect that happens when the window resizes to prevent bad pixel scaling of mechs at different resolutions; making the window bigger now just lets you see more play area instead of making things bigger.

WIP Objectives Bullets panel to give the current sitrep info

Wired up a buncha tooltips throughout the character sheet.

Under the Hood

Serialization: can save/load games! This is the payoff for sticking with that engine architecture I've been going on about. I had to add a serialization function to everything in the center layer which took a while, but it was fairly straightforward work with few curveballs.

Finished replacement of the kit/unit/reinforcement group/sitrep pickers with a new standardized system that can pull from stock data and user-saved data.

Updated to Godot 4.2.2; the game (and editor) has been crashing on exit for a LONG time and for the life of me I couldn't track down why, but this minor update in Godot completely fixed the bug. I still have no idea what was happening, but it's so cool to be working in an engine that's this active bugfixing-wise! 

Other Bugfixes

Pulled straight from the internal changelog, no edits for public parseability:

calculate cover for fliers correctly

no overwatch when outside of vertical threat

fixed skirmisher triggering for each attack in an AOE

fixed jumpjets boost-available detection

fixed mines not triggering when you step right on top of them // at a different elevation but still adjacent

weapon mods not a valid target for destruction

made camera pan less jumpy and adjust to the terrain height

better Buff name/desc localization

Fixed compcon planner letting you both boost and attack with one quick action.

Fix displayed movement points not updating

Prevent wrecks from going prone

fix berserkers not moving if they were exactly one tile away

hex mine uses deployer's save target instead of 0

restrict weapon mod selection if you don't have the SP to pay

fix deployable previews not going away

fix impaired not showing up in the unit inspector (its status code is 0 so there was a check that was like "looks like there's no status here")

fix skirmisher letting you move to a tile that should cost two movement if it's only one space away

fix hit percent calculation

fix rangefinder grid shader corner issues (this was like a full day to rewrite the shader to be better)

Teleporting costs the max(spaces traveled, elevation change) instead of always 1

So um, yeah, that's my talk, any questions? (I had a professor once tell us to never end a talk like this, so now of course it's the phrase that first comes to mind whenever I end a talk)

[save-the-villainous-cat]

villain x hero where the hero gets seriously injured after a fight and looses a limb, and the villain makes them a new robotic one? :0

It was strange technology, unknown to the hero and definitely not...legal. Their new arm was perfectly fine, without any errors, without any unexpected movements. It was a perfect replica of their old arm and yet...

"It's linked to your brain," the villain explained. "I've constructed one very similar to this one a few years ago. I'm confident that you won't have any troubles."

The hero formed a fist over and over again, training their hand but even that didn't seem to be necessary. The villain looked at the data on their computer, avoiding the hero's eyes. Their ears were red.

"You don't have to feel guilty," the hero said. "You don't have to do this out of pity."

"I know," the villain mumbled.

"We both know you had to cut it off. It was damaged beyond repair."

"I know," the villain said again. They looked at the hero for a split second before their eyes found the monitor again. The villain had always been someone rather nervous. Fidgeting often, a little clumsy even. "You're left-handed. You need your arm in battle."

The hero didn't know the villain was aware of that.

"No, I can't accept this. It's too much," they said. They eyed the arm, perfect in its functionality and pleasant in its aesthetic. It looked futuristic and touching the table, feeling the cool surface was like a memory they had lost coming back to them.

"I'm not gonna take it back. What am I supposed to do with a third arm?" The villain laughed and it was soft. Very sweet. It tempted the hero and almost made them smile.

"You're kind," the hero said. It had been a chore to them, fighting and protecting. The job had made them bitter and a little cold. It wasn't something they wanted to be. They wanted to be as excited as the villain, as optimistic as them, they wanted to be free of responsibility like them. It was unrealistic wishful thinking.

When they had lost their arm, they hadn't spoken for weeks. Because, honestly, once they were old (if they made it that far), how much of their body would be left? In a year they might lose a leg, they might lose their fingers. The arm was nice but it wasn't real. It wasn't them.

"I've been cruel for a long time," the villain said. "And I have made mistakes. But you saved me and you shouldn't suffer because of it."

Their eyes locked.

"I'll be honest. I like the arm. But it isn't the same. I still feel as if a part of myself is lost. As if I am still incomplete. I still feel unnatural. I know I shouldn't...I know it's not my place to..."

"It's not about the arm. It's about the touch. It's about being able to experience life to the fullest. It doesn't matter what it looks like or that the original is lost. It's about experiencing life in the best way possible," the villain explained. "Physical touch is important. It is a universal language that everyone understands...no wonder that all of us crave it. I didn't make this because you're worthless without an arm or incomplete, I made this..."

The villain didn't finish the sentence right away. They looked a little lost in thought. "...I made this for you."

"I have never liked physical touch that much," the hero admitted. "But I have to admit, I did crave it. I craved a gentle form of it."

"You haven't experienced much gentleness, have you?" the villain asked and the hero didn't answer since the answer was quite clear. "Come here."

The hero hesitated but when the villain stood up from their chair, they did the same. The villain took their arm, the robotic one, and guided it towards their face until the hero could feel their cheek pressed against their palm. It was warm and it felt real, it felt kind.

Automatically, their other hand followed until they cupped the villain's other cheek. The villain closed their eyes and smiled softly.

"Can I touch you, too?" The hero nodded slowly and as the villain's fingertips brushed against their cheeks, they felt a peace they hadn't felt in a very long time.

[painted-bees]

August 12, 2008.

 Magritte had only ever heard good things about Vancouver's Granville Island and so, naturally, it was the first place she set out to find upon arriving in the city. The Greyhound station her bus pulled into had been only a short walk from the Skytrain that would carry her two minutes to Granville Station. And it was here that Magritte had the good sense to find a nice, unintrusive space to sit cross-legged and lay her old, faithful piano keyboard across her lap.

  The instrument, pulled out of its cozy bed from within her large duffel bag, was a well loved Yamaha PSS-270. Its dull, black, plastic body was covered in ancient, disintegrating stickers, and a generous amount of electrical tape served to hold its batteries in place.

  With an affectionate press of a button, she woke the machine up from its slumber, selected her choice presets and, with no specific setlist in mind, began to improvise a little tune. Something cute and fun, perhaps a little bit like Donkey Kong’s Stickerbrush Symphony in tempo and progression. Or just…”Stickerbrush Symphony”, wholesale, why the hell not? Improvisation melted seamlessly into the classic video game tunes that were fondly familiar to her.

The beloved instrument cradled in Magritte’s lap had been pulled apart and reassembled more times than she kept track of. But still, it held together and played its charming FM sounds dutifully. A tidy row of silver metal switches, lined up along the side of its body, were left carefully undisturbed as her fingers danced across the yellowed plastic keys. Magritte had learned very early in her busking career that the general public did not appreciate the unpredictable discordinance of a bent circuit as much as she did. And so that row of silver little switches connecting the data lines stood stoically in their ‘on’ position, not allowing for any delightful surprises, but also not deteriorating the synth-chip’s sound into glitchy noise on a bad turn. Perfectly vanilla, perfectly agreeable, endearingly nostalgic.

 She had placed an old ball cap upside down infront of her, tossing in a few quarters of her own as a way of inviting more from friendly pockets. Ideally, she’d play an hour or two and leave with enough change to buy a coffee. Not just a Tim’s coffee–no. She wanted a decadent foamy latte from a cute, artsy little cafe she could sit in. She couldn’t bear to walk through the streets of Granville Island without having the spare change to treat herself on an impulse. And so–she’d not leave the train station until the passing public funded her frivolous spending habits.

After all, it was her birthday. She deserved a little gift.

 Busking in a transit station was always a bit of a trade-off. It was a bustling place full of foot traffic but the people here were focused on reaching their destination; busy and preoccupied. In a place like this, Magritte had no expectation to captivate loiterers. Not many transit-goers could spare a minute or two to sit and listen while she hammered out her cheap little tunes on cheap little piano keys. And so, when a well worn pair of tan colored, loose-laced Timberlands entered her field of vision, stopping definitively to stand before her, Magritte turned her gaze upward to welcome the listener with a wide, sloppy smile.

 Without giving her brain time to register the face she was speaking to, Magritte opened her mouth to chime a cheery greeting. She was cut off faster than she could process his expression.

  “You’re in my spot.”

  The man’s voice was curt, and the cold annoyance in his tone was mirrored in the expression on his short, square face. Pale blue eyes looked down a sharp, slightly bent nose at her. His narrow lips were pressed narrower still in a stern line, framed by a full, sandy colored beard and moustache. Atop his head, long hair of the same light color was pulled back into a small, tight bun; more slick and tidy, but far less full than the sloppy bun that Magritte’s unruly mane of curly rust colored hair had been wrangled up into.

 Her dorky smirk dissolved with a few confused blinks into a slack jaw of nervous apology. “O-oh! I uh-s-sorry!” 

Her startled gaze snagged itself on the acoustic guitar slung over his shoulder, and the instrument’s exciting potential made her straighten her back with intent.

 She found her smile again. “What if–maybe we could jam? For a few minutes! And then I can scoot on outta here and leave you to it if you want. It’s been a long time since I’ve had the chance to–”

 “Do you have a permit?” His tone was unchanged by her eager proposition.

 “Huh?” It wasn’t that Magritte didn’t hear him, but she needed a moment to process what was being asked.

 “You can’t be here without a permit. Not the stations, not anywhere in Granville either.” The unaccommodating man took a few steps towards her duffel bag and used the top of his foot to lift and slide it away from where she had safely tucked it. “Get a move on.”

 Magritte protectively reached out to grab her bag as the man carelessly footed it out of ‘his’ space. And in doing so, she caused her keyboard to slide off her lap, forcing her to clumsily abort her duffel-grabbing effort in favor of clutching her instrument before it could somersault over the edge of her knees and land face-down onto hard ground.

 The man, it seemed, was done with words and had already begun moving into the small space that shoving her bag out of the way had created. She felt her face turn hot as she began to gather up her items. Any desire to engage the guy more than she already had was lost along with her nerve.

 As she relented to stowing her keyboard back into her duffel bag, an unfamiliar hand shoved a cold, unopened can of Coke in front of her face.

 “Here you go.” Another man’s voice. A softer one, this time. Magritte glanced up to meet eyes with the stranger who was offering her a free drink, only to gaze into a pair of red, plastic, star shaped dollar store sunglasses.

He gave the soda can a little shake, prompting her to take it into her hands. “Sorry I took long, I had to give someone directions to the aquarium.”

 “Is this…for me?” Holding the can in both hands, Magritte stared at the unopened beverage, unsure what to do with it.

 The new stranger leaned onto his back foot. “You said coke, right?”

 Before Magritte could stammer out a response, the new stranger turned his attention to the man with the guitar. “‘Ey, Kurtis. You mind, dude?”

 The unaccommodating man, ‘Kurtis’, had just started settling in, and looked towards the new stranger with an expression that appeared as perplexed as Magritte herself felt. He turned up both his palms in a slightly contentious gesture. “Didn’t know you were playin’ here again. I’ve had this spot for, like, a year. People don’t usually park here without asking me first.”

 “Okay, but you can’t just kick ‘em out like this, man.”

 “I didn’t know she was with you–”

“Doesn’t matter,” Magritte’s new best friend replied. “Sixty minutes. It’s not a long time to wait if you gotta wait.”

 Magritte, who had been watching Kurtis’ confidence slowly drain from his body with each passing second, turned to examine the cut of her spontaneous new accomplice. His hair was a shade or two darker than Kurtis’, and trimmed much, much shorter, with longer locks in front that fell in straight tufts over the tops of his ears and just past his thick, blocky eyebrows. His eyes remained obscured by the cheap plastic shades, and their childish novelty paired strangely with the well trimmed goatee that fanned out from under his lip to define the curve of his somewhat long but gentle chin. And he had with him a rectangular instrument case of…some variety. Not big enough for a guitar, not small enough for a flute. It didn’t give away the shape of the instrument inside, but the black oxford cloth and gold colored metallic detailings of its exterior gave it a classy, charming look she had not seen for an instrument case before. It was cute. Magritte wondered if such a style was available for portable keyboards.

 His hands, which wore white fingerless driving gloves, cracked open his can of sprite, and he took a casual sip while waiting for Kurtis to, “Get a move on.”

  Relenting, Kurtis shuffled away from the spot he had been deliberately crowding Magritte out of. With a snort and a nod of his head towards her, Kurtis said, “Can’t exactly play Paganini on a Portasound, Raf. What’s on your setlist?”

  Raf brandished a lopsided smirk and jutted his chin in the direction of Magritte’s upturned hat on the ground. “Put a toonie down and I’ll show you.”

  “Fuck off.” Kurtis’s scoff was accompanied by a laugh–one that sounded surprisingly genuine to Magritte's ear. “I came here to earn change, not spend it. But I’m curious to hear how the Ephrem Classical pairs with Toy Piano.”

 Raf let out a low groan that could have been mistaken for a growl. Moving into the corner that Kurtis had surrendered, he unslung his instrument off his shoulder with a shrug. “There’s plenty you can play on just forty-nine keys.”

 Being very confident about this fact, Magritte couldn’t help but provide her insight on the matter. With an enthusiastic lean-in, she interjected, “Yeah, like Kirby’s Dreamland!”

 Raf’s head flinched in her direction almost imperceptibly, and if she had caught the subtle downward twitch of his eyebrows that betrayed a pang of confusion, she might have felt a bite of embarrassment. But instead, she heard him agree. “Like…Kirby’s Dreamland, yeah.”

 He turned to look over his shoulder at her, his sunglasses mercifully hiding the bafflement in his eyes. Magritte beamed gleefully back up at him.

  “Well, have fun.” Kurtis levelled a stern yet somewhat pleading glance at Raf.” I’ll be back here in an hour. Don’t let anyone else move in if you leave early, please.”

 Raf simply shrugged and sipped loudly from his can of sprite in response.

  As Magritte watched Kurtis disappear into the foot traffic, she began to tentatively scoot back towards where she had previously sat. “I didn’t mind giving that guy his spot back, he was just kinda–”

 “A dick. Nah, I saw that. S’why I stepped in.” Raf had carefully set his instrument case down, and was in the process of zipping it open.

 Leaning slightly to get a peek at what he was playing, Magritte said, “Thanks for the pop, by the way! I can pay you back after. If uh–you’re actually gonna stick around and jam with me.”

 He pulled his instrument out of its protective cradle; a pale varnished wooden violin. “Don’t worry about it.”

Inside the carrying case, Magritte noticed two bows neatly stowed. The bowstrings on the bow Raf selected was a standard white color, but the strings on the one he left in the case were an eye-catching red.

“Truth be told,” tucking the chin rest of the violin beneath his chin, he played one string, and then two experimentally, “I don’t really play anymore.” His fingers closed around one of the tuning knobs at the head of the violin, but if he had tweaked it at all, it wasn't perceptible. “So it’s gonna be pretty rough. But uh…gotta commit to the bit, I guess.”

  Magritte took the moment to open her soda and enjoy a refreshing sip. “What kinda music do you normally play?” 

  “Classical,” he replied almost too quickly. “You?”

  Magritte hesitated for a second. She should have had an easy answer for this by now, but all she could manage was, “a bit of everything. Anything, really!”

  Raf ran his bow over the strings again to hear their tune before turning to look at her. “Yeah?” His eyebrows were raised, and his smirk favored one side of his face; an expression Magritte interpreted as incredulous. He fidgeted with a tiny, lone knob on the violin's body where the strings ended.

  “Y-yeah! I, um…” Settling her keyboard back into her lap, she turned it on. “You can just play whatever, and I can fill it in. I can improvise, I think.”

  Raf paused and stared down at Magritte’s little Portasound with a sigh much heavier than he intended. The thing was lacking, not just in keys, but in sound. It was a struggle to think of something he could play that she’d be able to accompany. The titles which did come to mind where…overplayed and would have to be simplified considerably to suit the keyboard's limitations. Weighing it in his mind, however, he decided that ‘simple’ may benefit not just the limited range of her instrument, but of her musical skill as well.

 He ran the bow over his strings to measure their tune one last time before tentatively, very slowly playing the first few crystalline notes of Für Elise. He felt a tension he didn’t know he was holding melt off his shoulders as he watched Magritte’s face light up. She curled over her little piano in a hurry to play his accompaniment. She knew this one.

  She picked a soft, more ambient sound from the keyboard’s voicebank, electing to quietly cushion the violin’s notes rather than chafe against them. It was…difficult. Her little yamaha and its quaint library of FM chip sounds did not get along nicely with ‘real instruments’ that were being played ‘straight’. It wanted to be weird and annoying, just like her. But the notes Raf played, while simple, were extremely clear in tone; neat and tidy. The bow did not once stutter on the rough strings, it glided with practised ease. And with a great deal of restraint.

  This guy…he was playing beneath his skill level. For her sake, presumably. Like a gentleman.

 As Raf brought Für Elise to a close with the last, steady draw of his bow, Magritte swapped her soft, ambient voicing out with an annoying music box sound, and began hammering out a choice section from the 3rd movement of Appassionata. Her fingers slammed the keys harder than was necessary, solely because she enjoyed the percussive sound it added to each obnoxious, feverish note. 

  Lowering his violin, Raf watched Magritte’s fingers flutter furiously across the mini keys with respectable precision. Holding both the bow and the neck of his violin in one hand, his free hand reached up to remove his sunglasses and he rubbed his eye with the heel of his palm. A humbled snort escaped through his nose. “Yeah, okay.”

  “Play any song.” Magritte slowed her fingers to a stop without completing the movement. “Even if I don’t know it, even if it goes beyond the range of my little piano, I can improvise something nice for it, I promise!”

  Fitting his sunglasses back on, Raf let out a tentative hum. “I’m not much of an improviser–”

  “You don’t have to improvise anything! Play whatever you want, however you wanna play it. I will improvise around whatever you give me!” Magritte’s voice had risen to an excited shout, and instinctively, she withdrew into herself just a little bit, as if making herself smaller would also make her voice smaller, too. “It’s my favorite thing to do. It’s a lot of fun.”

  His incredulous smirk returned, but this time his brow furrowed slightly, encouragingly, under his growing sense of intrigue.

  “It’s–” Magritte held up both hands haltingly, “it’s probably not gonna be like how you know it should be. Just…so you know. It might even be…bad? In some parts? But-! Mostly it’ll be neat! I promise!”

  “Neat…” Raf brought the violin up once again to rest under his chin. “Neat’s cool. Alright, let’s see, then.”

  As though he had been inspired by Magritte’s aggressive interpretation of Appassionata, he began with a series of fast, chirpy, clean notes of his own. A wholly different song, but Magritte recognized this one too. She had most often heard it as a phone ringtone, but she couldn’t recall who composed it nor what the song was titled. She provided a jaunty, equally bouncy accompaniment that she’d have described as ‘percussive’. The violin’s unwavering confidence was a delight for Magritte’s deft little fingers to dance around. He never fell out of tempo, and she was able to punctuate his notes with hers in perfect time. Maintaining synchrony for the entire length of the fast paced composition filled her with such satisfying joy, she had failed to properly appreciate an obvious fact about her musical accomplice until he brought the song to a close; he was a skilled musician.

  Staring up at him from her spot on the floor, Magritte’s wide eyes almost sparkled with delight. “You’re like…Concert hall good, aren’t you? Are you part of the local orchestra? Or at least like–aspiring to be?”

  Raf’s gaze hung on her as both his jaw and posture slackened. “Uh…” 

  She didn’t give him enough time to respond, hitting him with another question. “What was the title of that song? I just know it as one of the Nokia ringtones.”

 “P–” Raf’s stunned silence cracked with a laugh that sprang forth from his chest and took him by surprise almost as much as Magritte’s line of questioning had. “Paganini. It’s–it’s Paganini, Caprice number…number 24.” The response was punctuated with warm chuckling. “Or, you know, that one phone ringtone, yeah.” He smirked at her for a moment longer, studying her for any sign that she was putting him on. “How do you…accompany me that well, on that little machine, and not even know the song?”

 Magritte waved her hands in front of her. “No, no, I knew the song! I’ve heard it before, I just didn’t know what it was called.”

 “Yeah, alright.” He snorted one last incredulous laugh and brought his violin back up for another song.

 Magritte stopped him before he could settle on his next pick. “Do you play professionally? I mean, it sounds like it but, like–”

  “No.” Before Magritte could inquire further, the first notes of their next song filled the space between them, drawn out of his violin with long, purposeful strokes of his bow.

  The next several songs, Raf played seamlessly one into the other–without pausing for conversation. That was just as well for Magritte. It had been ages since she was given the chance to play music with someone, and never had she played with someone who was so…solid? Consistent? The real deal. Usually, she had to avoid getting carried away when playing with another person. It was very easy for her to close her eyes and get taken to places that her musical partners could not follow along with. But with Raf, she was finding herself challenged to keep up with him. Most of the songs he had chosen, she had not heard before. And so she needed to keep an attentive ear out if she wanted to pick out repeated phrases, and predict melodic trajectories.

  Finally, they arrived at the end of an especially eclectic piece, and Raf did not immediately follow through into another composition. Instead he lowered his bow, and Magritte took her opening to converse again.

  “I really liked that one. It was super janky, in a fun way.”

  “Yeah,” Raf said. “I was always fond of it, too.”

  “I liked the plucky bits. Did you write it?”

 “Did I–” Raf palmed both his bow and violin in one hand, and massaged his eyes and browline with the other. “No, some guy named Ravel did. Tzigane, that one’s called.”

  Magritte chewed the inside of her cheek. “R-right.”

  He furrowed his eyebrows at her. “You knew that one, though.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “...You just let me solo the first four minutes based on vibes?”

  “I thought I missed the bus on it.”

  “The actual composition has no accompaniment until about half way through, so…bravo.”

  “Wait, really?” Magritte leaned forward eagerly. “Did I play the accompaniment correctly, too?”

  “Not even close.”

  “Drat.” She slumped.

  “Was good, though.” Raf picked up his sprite from where he had placed it, on the ground next to his case, and drained the last bit of its contents.

  Magritte perked up again. “Yeah!?”

  He held the lip of the empty can between his teeth as he began tucking his violin back into its carrying case. “Mmhm.”   

  Magritte watched him pack up for a moment longer than it should have taken her to realise, “Wait, you’re leaving already?”

  Raf zipped his instrument safely away before removing the empty soda can from his mouth. “Yeah, I gotta get going. But look,” He bent over to collect Magritte’s upturned ball cap off the ground. The few quarters she had started with now had a generous handful of friends with them; more quarters, some loonies, a few toonies and–

 Magritte accepted the hat when Raf handed it to her, and pulled a crisp twenty dollar bill out of it. “W-who left this!? I wasn’t even paying attention, I should have said thanks!”

  “A mystery.” He slung his violin case over his shoulder.

  Magritte urged him to wait, fluttering a hand at him. “Half of this is yours!”

  “Nah.” He favored her with a smile. “Genuinely, this was a treat in itself. It’s been a long time since I’ve played for fun like this. It…was fun.” That last part sounded as though it came as a surprise to him.

  Frowning, Magritte pleaded with him. “Okay, okay but–okay. Lemme treat you to a coffee then, at least? If you’re in no real hurry.”

  Raf paused to regard her with a measuring stare. He then sighed and shoved his hands into the pockets of his black denim hoodie jacket, waiting for Magritte to stow her keyboard away into her bag.

  Zipping the duffel closed, she hoisted it with effort over her shoulder and beamed up at her new friendly acquaintance. “If you know any cute, cozy coffee places with a real decadent latte, I’m open to suggestions!”

  “There are…a few.” 

  “I’m Magritte, by the way!” She extended her hand out to him.

  With slight hesitation, Raf shook it. “Rafael.”

  As the two of them began to make their way out of the station together, he dared to ask, “Are you here visiting, or..?”

  “Oh!” She bounced on the balls of her feet, “I just came in from Calgary like…two hours ago. Ideally, I’d like to stay until the spring, but that’s gonna depend on things.”

  “Calgary?”

  “Yeah! I was in Edmonton before that, and in Winnipeg before that–but that was mostly a fever dream. I wasn’t there long. Montreal before that, though, was nice..!” She talked the entire walk, and he was content to quietly listen. part ii

[russellsppttemplates]

hi, I was wondering if you could write something with one of the drivers overworking themselves and the reader sees how badly it’s effecting him and he doesn’t get to spend much time with her and his family and there all worried that he’s may burn out and asks him to take a break and is met with a bit of resistance but eventually agrees, thank you 🥰

Note: I don't have a big Carlos piece yet and I'd be happy to make this into a bigger piece if you'd like 🫶💗

Another week, another opportunity Carlos missed spending time with his family and friends. Lately, his worries got the best of him - as well as the surgery - and he worked a lot. If he wasn't working out, he was in the Sim of in the office reviewing strategies and data, leaving very little time for everyone around him. His lack of contract next year definitely occupied a good part of his mind and everyone else started noticing how much it really was taking up and how it was soon going to be too much if he didn't manage everything well.

"My love, can I talk to you for a second?", you asked as you walked inside the office, seeing his sat in the long sofa instead of at the desk, "sure, come here, cariño", he urged.

"I'm not going to bat around the bush, this is going to be straight off the bat - me and your family are concerned you're running yourself harder than you should, and of you keep going at this rate, you're going to burnout soon", you tried, rubbing his thigh softly.

He pondered his words for a bit, "I have to do all I'm doing, Y/N, if I stop, I'll fall behind - it's bad enough as it is", he argued.

"But it's not doing you any good, handsome, you're more tired, you barely spend time with your family, with me even", you argued back. You didn't want to play that card or make him feel like he was failing you, that wasn't the point, "you're not doing the things that bring you joy outside of your work, and it shows", you attempted again.

"I have to keep working, I can try and make more time for them, but I can't miss my workouts and these data analysis sessions", he reasoned.

"Handsome, I never wanted you to stop all of a sudden - and I knew you wouldn't anyway, I know who I'm dating, believe it or not", you smiled, "all I'm saying is you need to protect yourself too, have a place to just be yourself and let loose for a bit", you grabbed his hand and brought it to your mouth, kissing his knuckles.

"I will try my best", Carlos stated, "I'm sorry if I've been neglecting you", he said and you shook your head.

"No worries, now come and help me because your parents are coming over for dinner!", you have him a cheeky smile, pulling him to the kitchen and away from work for the rest of the day.

(Thank you for sending this in ✨️)

[robotsandjunk]

In honour of pride month do you have any sexuality and BDSM hcs for the tfp Decepticons?

So I had to have a bit of a think about this one because in my personal view of Cybertronians sexuality isn’t as easily defined as it is for humans for various reasons but I’ll put down what I think they’d be in human terms since it’s an interesting thought experiment. I also went literal on the BDSM headcanon part since this’ll be such a big post

Megatron - Gay

He’s a dom top, he would be a switch in the top/bottom sense but he has some weird hang ups because of the gladiator pits, so connects submissions to loosing and all the consequences that come with that. It would take him a while to get through all that but he’s not the kinda guy to do deep introspection

He prefers holding his partners down rather than any sort of bondage, he also prefers partners that ‘put up a fight’ so to speak. He thinks dominance is something that should be earned so he needs to have a partner who could at least stand up to him

He’s kinda weird about interface in general

Soundwave - Demisexual

He’s a switch but likes to fight to determine the positions. These fights can be actual physical fights but he usually only does that with Megatron (it’s a bit more playful with other partners)

He’s a fan of bondage and will usually use his data cables to hold his partner. He’s not so much into being tied up himself though, it makes him feel trapped

He’s not really much of a sadist of masochist but doesn’t mind being a bit rough here and there

Starscream - Gay

Dom bottom, he likes things his way. That’s it

He’s not big on bondage, he’s never enjoyed being held or tied down but doesn’t mind tying his partner up on the odd occasion

Starscreams definitely got a slight sadistic streak, usually in small ways like a small pinch or a corrective tap with a cane. He can be a little bit of a masochist but there’d need to be a massive amount of trust before he’d even consider it, and he’s not a particularly trusting bot so he doesn’t indulge it often

Shockwave - Pan

Shockwaves a switch and bottom I’d say, but he has a lot of opinions on what’s going on and how things are done either way

He likes bondage for certain scenes it just depends on what he’s experimenting with that week, he’s got some nice equipment for it though everything’s very sturdy

He’s a bit of a sadist and masochist in the sense he he likes seeing how far a frame can be pushed and he finds the different reactions different bots have fascinating

Knockout - Gay

He’s a dom switch and just a little bit bossy in bed in general

He likes bondage but more in an artistic sense, so he more does it for aesthetic purposes rather than to actually restrain his partner. He has equipment that’s complement near any frame and paint job

He can be a bit of sadist but only to a small degree, he does enough repairs in his day job after all. He’s not a masochist in the slightest he’d barely tolerate his paint getting scuffed let alone any actual scratches

Breakdown - Bi

He’s a switch all around and is pretty go with the flow when it comes to interface in general

He’s so-so on bondage he’d never go out of his way to do it but he’s happy to discuss it with a partner

Breakdowns neither a sadist or masochist, he’s there for a good time and pain doesn’t constitute a good time to him (He’s also aware that he’s a big strong guy so even when he’s trying to be gentle that could still be a bit heavy handed for some)

Dreadwing - Pan

He’s a switch top but would probably fall more under the service top category he enjoys looking after his partners

Dreadwings not big into bondage, flight frames tend to get claustrophobic easily and being tied up exacerbates that. He doesn’t do bondage on partners either just because he can’t get his head around it being enjoyable

He’s not really a sadist or masochist he thinks violence of any kind should be kept to battle (not that he’s judgmental towards bots who are into it it’s just not his thing)

Airachnid - Lesbian

Airachnids a dom top and a mean one at that, she has high expectations of her partners and is very quick to correct mistakes

She a big fan of bondage and the kind she does is very artful. Usually its suspension bondage with the ropes tied in a very elegant manner that hides how sturdy they are

I think she’d definitely be a sadist, you’ve got to correct unruly subs one way or another. I’m genuinely not sure if she’d be a masochist or not, probably not but there’s always the possibility

[binaural-histolog]

Hypnosis vs Trance

Here's my thesis: there is no hypnotic trance, it's hypnosis AND trance. Hypnosis and trance are often correlated, but they're not same.

Hypnosis is an intention to believe and follow suggestions automatically, an activity of phenomenological control. We can see this intention at the very beginning of the Elman induction, during the eye lock.

The Elman eye lock goes "Close your eyes. Imagine that your eyelids are so heavy that they just won't open. When they are so heavy that you know they won't open, then go ahead and try to open them." Right there is the core principle of hypnosis: believe these things are true, and behave accordingly.

Another variation is seen with the automatic imagination model, which asks the hypnotee to imagine not imagining through willing suspension of disbelief.

The format of these sessions resembled a normal conversation where the hypnotist simply asked a series of questions and gave clear instructions, and the subject remained awake and fully alert throughout. "Can you imagine that your hand is stuck to the table?" - "Can you continue to imagine that and also imagine that you’re not aware that you’re imagining that, like it’s happening by itself?"

and all people need is a context saying "we're doing hypnosis, here's how it works" to get started. Likewise, post-hypnotic suggestions imply that people can follow hypnotic suggestions without being in an explicit trance.

And because there's a thing called "waking hypnosis" in which the hypnotee responds to suggestions while being apparently fully conscious, without an induction or a trance... all that's left is hypnosis.

As an example, Martin Taylor is a hypnotist who does not use inductions. He does just fine.

There's no question that you can really zonk people out with hypnosis, whether you call it trance or not. Cardeña has a paper on deep hypnosis states and neurophenomenology but I'm not going to dig too much into it here. It does seem like hypnotic coma and plenary hypnosis are the same thing. I'm not going to go into what trance is, or exactly what zonking/deepening entails. Honestly, I think trance by its nature is subjective, and so is up to individual interpretation.

Instead, what I'd like to dig into are the attempts of Kirsch and Lynn to remove the brainworm of trance from the conversation in a series of papers over the years.

It's 1995. Kirsch & Lynn are not thrilled about the word or concept of trance, and detail the "state vs non-state" positions.

At one end of this continuum are scholars who espouse the concept of hypnotic state in its strongest possible form, as a condition that is fundamentally different from normal waking consciousness and from other altered states, such as daydreaming and relaxation. [...] At the other end of the continuum are theorists who use the term state to describe hypnotic phenomena but deny that it explains or causes those phenomena in any way; those who acknowledge allegiance to the state construct but then ignore it entirely in their theories of hypnotic responding; and those who explicitly reject the hypnotic state construct as inaccurate and misleading. Surprisingly, this latter group now includes some prominent Ericksonian clinicians (Zeig & Rennick, 1991) who maintain that the concept of trance has little explanatory value and claim that it only distracts from their preferred emphasis on hypnosis as an interpersonal process. Between the two extreme positions on the state issue, there is a concept of trance as an altered state, one that is not unique to hypnosis. [...] The problem with these definitions of trance is that they are too inclusive, loose, and imprecise to be subjected to empirical study. Without some means of determining whether a person is in trance, it is impossible to test any hypotheses about the effects of trance.

The paper continues in this vein, finally arguing that trance is not a useful way to think about hypnosis.

There are two sets of data that have led to a convergence of opinion on the state issue among most researchers. The first is the very modest effect of hypnotic induction on suggestibility. Most people are almost as responsive to so-called "waking suggestions" as they are to the same suggestions given in a hypnotic context (E. R. Hilgard, 1965). The second is the consistent failure to find any reliable markers of the hypothesized state. Erickson's (1941 /1980) hypothesized behavioral markers (literalism, catalepsy, and amnesia) have either failed to distinguish hypnotized from nonhypnotized participants (Green et al., 1990) or have been shown to be products of participants' perceptions of the hypnotic role (Orne, 1959; Young & Cooper, 1972). Similarly, no physiological or even self-report markers of a hypnotic trance have been found (Dixon & Laurence, 1992; Kirsch, Mobayed, Council, & Kenny, 1992). [...] Having failed to find reliable markers of trance after 50 years of careful research, most researchers have concluded that this hypothesis has outlived its usefulness.

It's 2000. Kirsch takes aim at the loose conceptualization of trance in this beautiful piece of snark.

A second point of agreement is that many hypnotized subjects experience themselves as being in a special state of consciousness denoted by the term trance. Nonstate theorists do not reject the proposition that these experiences are real , although in many cases they may merely be deep relaxation interpreted as a hypnotic trance because they happen to be occurring in a hypnotic context. [...] There is yet another variant of the trance position that must be considered. Some writers see trance as an altered state, but not as one that occurs only in hypnosis. Trance may be identified as a state that often occurs in nonhypnotic contexts, such as daydreaming, absorption, focused attention , or concentration. Spiegel (1999), for example, has identified the hypnotic trance as "just a shift in attention." This very popular type of definition is consistent with nonstate formulations of hypnosis. It may indeed be true that responding to suggestion requires absorption or concentration. But if the hypnotic state is merely narrowly focused attention or absorption, then most people are in a hypnotized state when studying for or taking an exam, driving a car, watching a film, or engaging in any other absorbing task. What is accomplished by calling these instances of hypnosis? It tells us nothing new about studying, driving, responding to suggestion, or any other activity that requires focused attention, and I cannot imagine us ever convincing the larger scholarly community that research on attentionally demanding tasks is by definition research on hypnosis . The term focused attention has the virtue of being more descriptive than the term hypnosis, and it has less surplus baggage associated with it. So if hypnosis is nothing more than a state of focused attention, perhaps we should consider names like American Journal of Focused Attention and American Society for Clinical Focused Attention as more accurate labels for our journals and organizations.

It's 2007. Lynn and Kirsch take another shot in Hypnosis And Neuroscience: Implications For The Altered State Debate. There's some pushback on their earlier papers.

Gruzelier (2000) proposed that an integration of neurobiological and socio-cognitive perspectives could promote the understanding of hypnosis and its humanistic applications. He further stated, ‘… hypnosis is an altered state of brain functional organization …’ (p. 51). Under a heading ‘The death knell of neurobiological investigation: the rush to judgment’, Gruzelier (2000) states, ‘Kirsch and Lynn (1998) and Wagstaff (1998) claim that no marker of a hypnotic state has been discovered after decades of investigation, and that the search for one should be discontinued. A neurobiological explanation does not exist. Neurobiologists may rightly wonder how such an unworldly view exists’ (p. 52).

And while they admit that they did say "trance should go live on the big farm up state" they also say that maybe if it could be measured in something other than handwavey feels it might be more useful.

In our 1995 review (Kirsch and Lynn 1995), we did state that after the failure to find reliable markers of trance after 50 years of careful research, ‘most researchers have concluded that this hypothesis has outlived its usefulness’ (p. 853). However, we went on to say that this state of affairs did not preclude the possibility that such indicators would eventually be discovered, and we underscored the importance of identifying the physiological substrates of hypnosis. Far from declaring the issue dead, we identified three ways in which scientists could usefully approach the question of identifying the physiological substrates of hypnosis: (1) identify the physiological substrate of the hypothesized hypnotic state; (2) identify the physiological correlates of differences in hypnotic suggestibility; and (3) determine the physiological substrates of responses to suggestions.

And it turns out that as of 2007, technology has advanced to the point where poking at brains does show that hypnosis does do some things.

The present chapter is written in the spirit of fostering a congenial dialogue between state and non-state theorists (Kihlstrom 2003). We will review studies relevant to each of the three ways we proposed to address the question of the physiological substrates of hypnosis, including studies that Christensen (2005, p. 286) identified as representing ‘replicated research over the past 2 decades supporting state-based theories of hypnosis’.

However, there's a problem. Trance is subjective, and trance itself may be a product of suggestions in the hypnotic induction.

The design also fails to address the critical issue of the causal role of the trance state in producing other suggested subjective experiences. Hypnotic inductions are suggestions to experience a trance state. [emphasis added] For that reason, they should produce altered subjective states in many people, and these altered states should possess neural substrates (Kirsch and Lynn 1995). It is not clear that the experience and neural correlates of trance would be the same for all hypnotized subjects or even all virtuosos. Having different pre-conceptions about trance might lead to different subjective states and therefore to different neural substrates. In any case, the altered state hypothesis does not concern the existence of these altered states, but rather their hypothesized causal role in producing other hypnotic phenomena.

And the paper's conclusion: those studies are just showing evidence of suggestions, rather than of a base hypnotic state.

[...] Research in this area has succeeded in finding baseline correlates of suggestibility, effects of induction procedures and effects of other specific suggestions. Perhaps the most important finding to date is the specificity of neurological effects in response to the specific wording of suggestions. The neural concomitants of suggested analgesia, for example, seem to depend on the specific suggestion that is used (Rainville et al. 1998). This finding, however, also points to one of the weaknesses of some of the research. In particular, there has been a tendency to confound induction with suggestion variables, i.e. subjects either receive or do not receive a hypnotic induction and then are given a suggestion to experience a particular effect. However, the wording of the suggestion following a hypnotic induction differs from the wording of the suggestion given without the induction. This confound renders it impossible to ascertain what is responsible for obtained differences, and this problem is compounded by the finding that neural activity may be exquisitely sensitive to suggestion wording.

It's 2010. The Clinical Handbook of Hypnosis has two chapters. One says that state might be a thing. The other one (Wagstaff, David, Kirsch, and Lynn) points to the first chapter and says state has still not been shown to be a thing.

No specific physiological markers of the hypothesized hypnotic states have been found (Lynn, Kirsch, Knox, & Lilienfeld, 2006; see also chap. 4, this volume)

It's 2016. A new book comes out, Hypnotic Induction: Perspectives, Strategies and Concerns. It says that trance is a thing, much to the consternation of Kev Sheldrake in his review.

I’ve been operating under the assumption that the induction was just a suggestion to enter an imagined hypnotic state, but I had to read this book to realise the ferociousness with which some academics still (and I mean still) imagine that state to be real. As a final thought, if there isn’t anything magical going on during an induction, and an induction is just made up of words (no mesmeric fluid or invisible energy passing from hypnotist to participant), and practically anything can be used in place of an hypnotic induction (placebo pill, for example), then what else could the induction be, other than a series of suggestions? And what, other than a suggested state, could those suggestions suggest?

It's 2020. Lynn & Kirsch are frustrated that papers are still turning up discussing "trance" as being inextricably tied to hypnosis.

Surveys of students from various countries (Green, Page, Rasekhy, Johnson, & Bernhardt, 2006) document the wide prevalence of a number of myths and misconceptions we review. A powerful engine driving these myths is the popular media, including movies, television, and the Internet, which capitalize on the core myth that hypnosis is “an altered state of consciousness quite different from normal waking consciousness” (70% agreed, Green et al., 2006); termed by many, a trance. The myth of trance is arguably the mother of all myths [emphasis added] and has birthed many related myths that we will discuss. The idea that hypnosis brings about a trance state was first popularized in Du Maurier's blockbuster novel, Trilby (Du Maurier, 1894/1999), in which Svengali—a name now synonymous with a brutal manipulator uses hypnosis to ply the ill-starred Trilby to his will. De Maurier portrayed hypnosis as a sleep-like trance state that produced amnesia, loss of control and willpower, and special abilities (e.g., Trilby became an opera diva). The term “trance” is still featured in titles (and contents) of articles in influential hypnosis journals (e.g., Wickramasekera II, 2016) and unfortunately still carries the baggage of its historical roots.

Again, the paper points out that trance is either not defined or defined so broadly as to be useless.

Hypnotic trance is rarely clearly or explicitly defined by researchers or clinicians, and the nature of this hypothesized state has been described in a plethora of contradictory ways (see Kirsch & Lynn, 1995). One definition is that hypnotic trance is “the cognitive end state produced by a hypnotic induction procedure” (Halligan & Oakley, 2014, p. 111). While the authors are among the few to actually define “trance,” broad definitions place no constraints on the nature or constituents of this state, which is often the case when this term is used. In the absence of reliable physiological markers, it is generally operationalized by self-report of its presence.

The paper then goes on to break down some myths that you can reliably test for a hypnotic state. It's a great overview, you should check it out.

Despite concerted attempts, researchers have not succeeded in finding purported markers of the hypothesized hypnotic state. For example, Lynn et al. (2008); see also Lynn & Rhue, 1991) found no reliable evidence that hypnotic and nonhypnotic conditions differ in terms of (a) literalness of response to a series of questions (e.g., saying “no” to the question or negative shaking of the head in response to the question, “Do you mind telling me your name”); (b) trance logic (i.e., heightened tolerance for logical incongruity/saying a hallucinated person appears transparent), or the hidden observer phenomenon (i.e., a hidden part of consciousness directs behaviors/experiences, while another part, separated by an amnesic barrier, is unaware and responds in a manner consistent with suggestions). Either no differences are evident across hypnotic and nonhypnotic comparison conditions (e.g., nonhypnotized imagining participants or individuals who role play or simulate hypnotic responses: literalism, trance logic) and/or the findings are determined to be the product of suggestion or experimental demands (i.e., hidden observer) rather than an altered state unique to hypnosis (Kirsch & Lynn, 1998). [A larger study] failed to find support for the claim that eye behaviors index a hypnotic state.

It's 2024. The Routledge International Handbook of Clinical Hypnosis just came out. Lynn argues that hypnosis is independent of trance explicitly.

A cornerstone of our theory is that hypnosis unfolds independent of a background “trance” or special state of consciousness unique or specific to hypnosis. We argue that such a state is rendered irrelevant by findings that different hypnotic suggestions (i.e., direct imaginative suggestions) elicit diverse experiences and attendant alterations in consciousness (e.g., sensations, cognition, emotions, perceptions, memories), behaviors, and psychophysiological responses (Landry et al., 2017; Lynn et al., 2007), and no special state is required to experience a gamut of suggestions.

Let's hope it takes this time.

[emotionallychargedtowel]

Since you're familiar with tokusatsu actors and their journeys into BL, what kinds of careers historically have tokusatsu actors had as they start to get more credits and mature?

Thank you for the ask! This is a great question. It’s something I’ve been curious about for a while, as you know.

I never get tired of this gif of Seto Toshiki (a Kamen Rider alum with two BLs under his belt) eating cake. (It's from Kamen Rider Ex-Aid, which he starred in with Iijima Hiroki of Our Dining Table fame.)

Oh, I should probably say at the outset that I'm talking about the suit transformation type of tokusatsu shows here. Technically the category is broader and also includes kaiju movies, but I'm focusing here on the kind of tokusatsu series in which human characters (or human-like ones) transform into masked heroes. I think that's what you had in mind, Ben, and it's the type of tokusatsu that tends to overlap with the BL world.

Another thing you'll notice is that I'm mostly going to talk about men here. Tokusatsu has been making some progress as a genre when it comes to gender equity, but it still has a long way to go. And since most of the progress that has happened, like the increase in female Riders, has been in the last few years, the actors who played those characters haven't had much of a subsequent career yet.

Now, to your question.

Unfortunately, I haven’t figured out a way to really look at this systematically. So, definitely take my conclusions with a grain of salt. (If anyone reading this knows more about this or has thoughts about how to get more/better info, I'd love to hear them.) The main source of information I have--aside from just soaking stuff up from watching tokusatsu shows and reading toku fans' tumblrs, of course--is looking at toku actors’ entries on MDL and seeing how many roles they’ve gotten, if they’re “guest,” “support,” or “main” roles, and trying to find out about the type of shows and movies they’re in.

One of the biggest weaknesses to this approach as an American viewer is that it's usually hard for me to tell what constitutes a popular or prestigious series or film even if I go to the listings for specific shows/films. I should also note that one thing that biases my “data” (to use the term loosely) is the fact that I’m more likely to look up this information about actors I like. Well, occasionally I’ll also look at info on some sample of actors out of curiosity, like a bunch of lead Ultraman actors’ subsequent careers or something like that. But it's usually more random.

A little background. As you're aware, tokusatsu roles often go to younger actors who don't have much previous experience. They tend to function both as a way of getting a foothold in the industry (building a resume, starting a fanbase, etc.) and as a way of learning on the job. Part of the reason they work so well in this regard is that they have long seasons. Ultraman seasons are typically around 25 episodes long, which is pretty long compared to many shows in Japan, but Kamen Rider and Super Sentai seasons are usually around 50 episodes long. This means two things: a toku part gets you a lot more of the aforementioned work experience than you'd get in other genres, and it provides a solid year of consistent work with additional work to follow (particularly hard to come by in Japan's entertainment industry, from what I understand). The additional work is substantial, too. There are typically post-series TV movies and touring live shows and there are often guest spots on other series in your franchise.

When it comes to landing other roles, as in other types of media, it makes a big difference what type of role you had. This is stating the obvious, I know, but there are some specific ways this works with tokusatsu series, and it relates to who ends up in BLs and in what capacity. So, all of the big three tokusatsu franchises are pretty ensemble-based but they still have distinct leads and some degree of a hierarchy of roles. Ultraman has the strongest leads, Kamen Rider has lead/title Riders and secondary (and often tertiary) Riders, and Super Sentai shows are especially ensemble-y (the word sentai basically means "squad," after all) but they always have some kind of group leader.

When I look up subsequent work by tokusatsu actors who had sizable roles in their toku series--lead roles, or other parts that are what MDL would call "main" roles--what I see most often is a lot of supporting and guest roles in a variety of TV shows and some films. You can usually find a smattering of lead roles as well, but if you look closely they may turn out to be smaller productions (but not always). When it comes to the number/frequency of credits, there's a lot of variation but an average case would be 2-3 such credits per year. Like I mentioned above, it's hard for me to tell how desirable/prestigious/well-paying those guest and supporting roles are. But they don't usually seem to be scraping the bottom of the barrel or anything. So, yeah. Lots of these actors have different paths, but this is what I see most frequently.

Given how challenging it is to make a career out of acting in Japan, this is nothing to sneeze at. Despite its relative influence, the Japanese entertainment industry is still comparatively small, and there are only so many opportunities. In that context, regularly getting guest and supporting gigs constitutes a pretty uncommon level of success.

Could these folks support themselves on this amount of work? I often see just a few credits per year, so maybe not. But when I like a one of these actors enough to follow them on socials, it usually seems like they are supplementing those parts with other stuff like stage plays, toku fan appearances, modeling gigs, or other types of performance including music. Even with these different sources of income, some probably still can't live on their entertainment industry pay alone. But it appears that some can.

So that's the most common thing. One less common outcome is leaning really hard into being a tokusatsu actor for life. It's not typical to get significant roles in multiple toku shows, but it does happen. And some actors manage to play the same character in a lot of post-series movies, miniseries, etc. stretching out for years after their actual series. For example, Tsuruno Takeshi, who played Ultraman Dyna's human host Shin Asuka, has been in ten different Ultraman things including his main series, a short series, a lot of TV movies, and a special. Dyna aired in 1997, and his last appearance as Asuka was fairly recent, in 2016. That's almost a 20-year span. Yet Tsuruno has never had a non-Ultraman main character part. (Though this is partly because he seems to have focused more on his music career and related variety show type things post-Dyna.) There are even some actors who are tokusatsu superfans whose whole career plan is centered on the genre from the get-go.

For those who are looking to branch out, there are a lot of trajectories. So I'll try to talk about some of them through a few examples.

Takeda Kouhei

You probably knew I was going to bring him up. On Kamen Rider Kiva, Takeda's character was important but not the lead (he played the main character's father in the 1980s, in a timeline that ran parallel to the present day one). That was in 2008, when he was 22. Nine years later, in 2017, he was in Kamen Rider Build, in which he was the "tertiary" Rider. This character was a potato farmer-turned-antihero. As tertiary Riders go, he was pretty popular. But Takeda seemed to be mostly hovering at a certain level at that point. Then Old Fashion Cupcake happened. It's significant that he went from playing supporting characters (albeit important ones) to a lead character in OFC. It's also helpful that OFC came out at a point when the prestige of BLs was on the rise. It seems like Takeda has had more consistent and larger parts since then. The difference isn't night and day or anything, but it's observable.

If you look at Takeda's Build costars, Inukai Atsuhiro and Akaso Eiji, here’s what you'll find. Akaso has a similar trajectory to Takeda's only somewhat steeper. His role on Build (the secondary Rider) was a bit bigger, he seemed to get slightly bigger roles overall after Build, and Cherry Magic gave him a significant boost from there. Inukai had a bigger upswing early on followed by slower growth that still had him outstripping both Akaso and Takeda. From what I can tell, his “data” more closely resembles that of Yamada Yuki, who I’ll talk about in a second, though they have different niches.

Suda Masaki

Suda Masaki was only 16 when he played the main rider in Kamen Rider W in 2009, which is unusually young. (W has a unique premise where two different people inhabit the same Rider, so Suda played a lead rider but so did his costar Kiriyama Renn.) From what I can tell, he seems to have had a pretty organic path to larger and larger roles while varying genres and styles quite a bit. At this point he's definitely a very respected actor. (One interesting bit of trivia: Hagiwara Riku has said Suda is his biggest acting role model.) He's won two Japan Academy Film Prizes and been nominated three more times. I don't know of a more successful ex-tokusatsu lead. Actually, I looked him up for this post to fill in some details and found out for the first time that he also has a pretty successful career as a jpop musician. It's almost annoying that he's that talented in yet another area.

I don't see any indication that Suda has ever played a queer character, though he has definitely done some pretty bromantic stuff. He did kiss a man once in a drama series, but it was for plot reasons and was 100% played for laughs in a gross way. He also played a gender nonconforming character in the 2014 live action version of Princess Jellyfish. (Another bit of trivia: when another live action adaptation of Princess Jellyfish was released in 2018, the same character was played by another former lead Rider, Seto Koji from Kiva.) I wouldn't put it past Suda to play a queer character, if it was for a highbrow movie or something analogous to what Nishijima Hidetoshi has done in What Did You Eat Yesterday?, but I'm also not holding my breath.

Yamada Yuki

A less extreme case. Yamada was on Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger. He was the blue member of the team, a soldier-turned-pirate. It may have helped Yamada along later on that Gokaiger is an especially popular Sentai series. Post-Gokaiger, Yamada didn't have any sort of big breakout role that I can find. It just seems like fairly soon after Gokaiger, he started having significant roles in TV dramas and has pretty much continued from there, with some upward momentum but no huge changes. When he was in a drama with Akaso Eiji recently, his part was first billed and a smidge bigger. Yamada's trend line seemed to have a biggish upward swing early and then just a slight slope from there. But I just saw him in something different: he plays the younger member of the minesweeper crew in Godzilla Minus One. I wonder if that will mark any sort of shift for him.

Yamada hasn't played any queer characters as far as I can tell. His Sentai role was shippy as hell, though. It's a tradition among Sentai shows that subtext-level queer ships happen between the red and blue team members, and that's exactly what happened in Gokaiger. Sometimes the subtext pretty much became text. If magazine images from that time are any indication, their relationship seems to have been a promotional angle for the show. There's even one where they seem to be in some kind of high school AU that looks like it's straight out of a BL.

what about women?

I tried looking up a few women I know from tokusatsu roles while I was looking up these and other dudes. Some of them were still in the business, at least. Some were getting the same trickle of guest and supporting parts a lot of men do after a tokusatsu show. A few had a slightly bigger trickle. But many of them seemed to have disappeared from the public eye entirely. Not only are women underrepresented in tokusatsu, and not only are their roles often relatively small and two-dimensional, but it doesn't seem like they get even a slight career boost after these roles.

It's possible this will change for some of the actors who got bigger, more interesting toku roles in recent years. Here's hoping!

The changing relationship between tokusatsu and BL

The relationship between tokusatsu and BL has been changing as BL gains more prestige, like I alluded to when I talked about Takeda Kouhei. There was a time when they seemed to be pretty analogous in terms of how hard it was to get a role and how effective they were as rungs on a career ladder. If you went from being a tokusatsu side character to a BL lead (like Takeda), that was a step up, but only because you were shifting from a supporting spot to a lead one. Tokusatsu leads usually didn't usually do BL or, when they did, only played straight supporting roles. I think it was seen as a lateral move. But now, BL is becoming a very established next step after tokusatsu. It's like BL has moved up in status so that the consensus is that it's above tokusatsu on the ladder, but just by a little bit. It's also kind of an organic transition since we're seeing more queer ships in tokusatsu that, while they mostly happen on a subtext level, are close to being canon (and in some cases, arguably already are). It occurred to me while I was writing this that there's also another type of role that is in a similar zone of accessibility and prestige to both tokusatsu and BL. It's a franchise, not a genre, but with so many movies and such huge casts it almost functions like a genre for the purpose of this discussion. I'm talking about the High&Low movies. If you're a fan of tokusatsu or BL, you'll see actors you know in every High&Low movie and if you're a fan of both, you'll see tons.

Case in point: Here's our ol’ pal Yamada Yuki. He's in quite a few High&Low installments. If only he’d do a BL and complete the trifecta! The only person I know of offhand who’s done a tokusatsu show, a BL, and a High&Low role is Takeda. I bet there are others, though.

the new (?) prestige tokusatsu

There's another piece to this I should probably point out as well. In recent years there have been some more high-budget, prestigious takes on existing tokusatsu properties. First, Anno Hideaki, who's best known for the Evangelion anime series/films, put out three live action features that are new, well-financed takes on three big tokusatsu properties: Shin Godzilla, Shin Ultraman, and Shin Kamen Rider.

Last year there was also a Kamen Rider series geared toward adults that had higher-than-usual production values called Kamen Rider Black Sun. It did that “you can tell our show is for adults because it's all gritty and grimdark" thing, which I'm not a fan of. But it definitely had its points.

Really distinguished actors starred in both the Shin movies and Black Sun, including Nishijima Hidetoshi, who's about as distinguished as it gets. Nishijima was in both Shin Ultraman (in an important supporting role) and Black Sun (as a co-protagonist--and he's the biggest highlight of the series). So these are examples of toku media that are too prestigious to be a springboard into the industry for most actors.

This seems to be a new phenomenon, though I could be wrong about that. I don’t expect the trend will continue at this pace (after all, so much of it is attributable to Anno alone and I don't think he'll continue down this path indefinitely), but I bet some other shows/movies in this vein will come out sooner or later.

Here’s Nishijima doing a henshin sequence. He does these moves with such commitment. Is there anything he can't do?

before tokusatsu

As I was writing this, it got me thinking about what actors do before their tokusatsu roles as well as after. It's not uncommon for toku roles to be someone's debut, but that's not really the norm. Even when it is, most of those actors were doing something in the realm of performing or modeling beforehand. I don't usually look at this sort of information as much as I do later roles when I'm investigating toku actors I like. So I looked up some people to try to get a sense of where the actors tend to have done before their toku parts.

There's one starting point that a whole bunch of tokusatsu leads share: winning the Junon Super Boy Contest. When I first saw references to it, I thought, OK, this is some kind of national talent contest. I guess there are probably lots of them. But when I looked for others, I didn't see anything come up. Maybe I'm just not looking in the right places or using the right search terms. But I think maybe this contest might be pretty unique in Japan.

It's run by a magazine called Junon and, well, if I describe how it works it's going to sound really familiar to you and anyone else who's seen Utsukushii Kare, because it's pretty much exactly the contest Kiyoi participates in. Like, if it's not what Nagira Yuu was thinking of when she wrote that part of the UK novel, I'll eat my shoe.

A ton of tokusatsu leads won, placed in, or made it to the finals of that contest. The Tokupedia fan wiki even has its own page dedicated to the contest with links to various winners' toku characters. The majority of Junon Super Boy contestants who ended up in a toku series went to Kamen Rider, but there are some Sentai dudes as well and at least one Ultraman lead.

So I guess if Kiyoi had won that contest, he probably would have ended up on Kamen Rider or something. Weird.

Inukai Atsuhiro and Iijima Hiroki both won that contest. Those are the only two Junon Boys (that's what people call the contest winners) who became tokusatsu actors and were on a BL that I know of right off the top of my head. But it seems likely that there are other toku-and-BL or just BL actors who won, placed, or made it to the finals of this contest.

Other dudes who ended up on tokusatsu shows started out in other ways. Some were simply signed to agencies as actors. There's a fair number of them who were in idol groups. (Though when an idol/ex-idol is looking for a gig as a transition into acting, BLs seem to be a more popular choice.) Some mostly did modeling prior to their toku series. Some already had quite a few acting credits, though usually not very big ones. Although he's a Junon Super Boy winner, Inukai had eight other acting credits before Kamen Rider. Takeda had the same number, and he started young--his first credit is for a TV show that came out when he was 10 (though it took another six years to get a second).

I also looked up some women who've had prominent roles in tokusatsu shows, including more recent ones. The most frequent things I found when I looked for information on their pre-toku careers were that they had been models or idols (or both). It's also not uncommon for women in toku roles to be former or present gravure models--basically models who pose in bikinis or comparably revealing outfits.

The coolest thing I found was that Imoto Ayaka, who played Igarashi Sakura/Kamen Rider Jeanne, was an award-winning ballet dancer. Which is not only incredibly cool but makes a lot of sense in terms of preparation for a tokusatsu hero role.

I mean, just check out this henshin.

Well, this has gotten ridiculously long. Sorry about that. I may have gotten a little carried away. But thanks again for the question.

And now, I have something to write for @wen-kexing-apologist...

[pieheda]

So, I realized only after watching the Todd In The Shadows video AND the hbomberguy video that I, too, have caught James Somerton just making shit up.

I’m not going to cite actual video titles because he changes them all the time anyway so why bother, but he has one that’s about Angels in America and Rent. This is my jam, I’m a theater gay, so I watched them - and immediately felt like the main thesis would fail an English 101 class. The thesis was “people have the misperception that Rent was made before Angels in America, and why is that?” which is not a thing that people believe, actually. At least, not people who know how google works and can just look up release dates. I found myself thinking that maybe he and some friends were surprised at this, and he decided it was a widely held misperception. But I kept watching the video, and when talking about how popular Rent was when it premiered on Broadway, he said that it was taboo to even mention AIDS at the time.

That is completely untrue. I was an adult in 1996 when Rent was released on Broadway, and AIDS was no longer a taboo subject in the US. There is plenty of data out there to support this, but I think it’s particularly compelling that in 1993, the movie Philadelphia, about a man suing his employers for firing him upon learning that he has HIV, was an enormous box office hit. It won Tom Hanks and Bruce Springsteen both Oscars, for Best Actor and Best Original Song. The Oscars aren’t very daring, perhaps you’ve heard. They aren’t big on giving out awards for things that everyone is terrified to talk about.

In another video that is cited by Todd in the Shadows, I realized that I had ALSO caught James making shit up in that one. When I watched the video for Red, White, and Royal Blue, James said that all these straight women wanted gay romance without sex and I laughed and said “they most definitely do not want that”, because I’m a fan girl and I’ve seen AO3. No research needed to debunk that, most if not all women who knowingly consume gay romance absolutely want there to be some fucking. The only person who would complain about that would be some exceptionally clueless homophobe who accidentally stumbled into this movie.

Both of those things, when I saw them, made me shake my head and say “that’s just not true.” I even commented on the Rent video.

What I did not do is think hard about what exactly is going on here. My opinion of Somerton went down with each of those discoveries, but it wasn’t very high to begin with; I never have liked his presentation style, because of how often he talks down to the people he’s discussing or to his audience. But frankly, there’s a lot of content out there that plays free and loose with the facts or starts with a bad premise (“people have this misperception” with no evidence of that isn’t far off from “Marvel fans on twitter hate this movie!” followed by only 5 tweets cited in the article). I just accept that people lie on the internet, I didn’t expect better. I didn’t stop to consider that gays really should do better, particularly we should not lie to one another about gay culture and history, and ESPECIALLY not when claiming to be doing what we do for the purpose of uplifting gays. I didn’t google to see if there were other issues with him, because if I had I would have learned about him getting into it with Jessie Gender and wouldn’t have given him a view ever again.

We’ve reached such a garbage state that I overlooked that. Seeing everything he’s done all lined up in these two videos had a real impact on me. Todd is absolutely right that it’s abominable to add to all the misinformation in the world, and hbomberguy is right that it’s particularly egregious for James to rob from gay writers who don’t have the funds and attention that James does. But it’s especially bad to just make shit up about gay history and the current state of gay acceptance, particularly when James constantly had the perspective that it’s always bad and gay men always have it the worst. Most likely the “everyone hates gays like me especially” was a calculated choice to create an attitude of persecution within his fandom so that they would accuse anyone calling him out of homophobia. But misinformation about acceptance is ALSO harmful to our community. It’s harmful to go around believing that people are out to get you when they aren’t. The cost of damaged mental health is ALSO important.

And he coldly exploited that because there’s a stupid fucking app that is tailor made for grifters to make cash hand over fist by confirming their audience’s worst fears and creating new anxieties in them. It’s absolutely ghoulish.

[rarespawnwrites]

WIP Wednesdsay

ugh, I don't feel like tracking down my notebook to transcribe anything, so take this old No Hearts snippet

~

Jason owed Tim an insurmountable debt. Of all the things he’d fucked up on his return as the Red Hood, the least forgivable thing, in Jason’s mind, was what had gone down between him and Tim. Despite that, Tim was both the first to offer his forgiveness and the most sincere about it.

It gave him a lot of leverage over Jason, and the little bastard knew it.

Still. There were some things a guy just didn’t do, even in the shadow of a history like that.

“Yeah, no,” he drawled out, perched on the edge of the roof of his latest apartment. “I’m not giving you my dog for Red Robin’s portal doohickey.” Across from him, Phantom floated cross-legged in the air, the portable portal in one hand looking like the world’s least ergonomic portable data terminal. He wasn’t sure how the ghost had tracked him down, but he wasn’t surprised that he had. From what Jason was able to determine, he and Red were the only people Phantom knew in the living world. Between the two of them, Jason’s the one who owed him anything, and Red Robin’s the one Phantom antagonized, so… here they were.

“Okay, so first of all, it’s my portal doohickey.” Interesting claim. It was probably true that he recognized it. But Phantom had definitely noticed it was what Tim had used to open and close the portal with, and if he couldn’t get to the living world on his own, that gave him motive to both take it and convince them he was justified in doing so. Tim obviously hadn’t been willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, and Jason was willing to trust his judgment on that. As for whether Phantom meant that the device had belonged to him in the first place or that it belonged to him now that he’d stolen it from Red, that was still unclear. “Second, Cujo is my dog!”

Now that was too far. “Clifford decided to haunt me on his own,” Red Hood stressed. “He does what he wants.”

“Clifford.” The skepticism was understandable. Even if Phantom was familiar with kids’ books from the living world, while Clifford could become very large, he was also indisputably green. But the Crime Alley kids had been the ones to name him, and who was Jason to say no?

“Yeah.” Red Hood leaned in with his elbows on his knees, one hand curled around a loose fist. From Danny’s disgruntled expression, he could sense that Jason was grinning under his helmet. “Clifford the Red Hood’s dog.”

Phantom’s eye twitched.

Jason watched his reaction with curiosity and wariness. He liked the guy, but he’d also seen him fight in the Ghost Zone. Part of the reason Jason hadn’t lent a hand to Red Robin against Phantom when the ghost pulled his little stunt was to prevent that game of keep-away from escalating. Jason wasn’t in a hurry to fight the guy; especially not indoors. He had no doubt that sonic attack of Phantom’s could bring a building down, if he felt cornered enough to use it.

Interestingly, Phantom had done nothing but evade once he had what he wanted. He hadn’t retaliated once, just grabbed the item, quipped a bit while playing with Red, then left.

Jason had been reminded of the supers when he first met Phantom. That behavior reminded him of them once again. Specifically, the big man in blue himself. Clark was always careful to use exactly the amount of force necessary to get what he wanted too, the condescending prick. He generally pulled that shit when the Kryptonian felt something was necessary for the greater good, but it still sucked to be on the lesser end of those decisions.

Phantom’s priorities, unlike Clark Kent’s, were still a mystery. So far, he’d rescued Jason, shown he could fight, shown he couldn’t keep his eyes off Red Robin, and stolen tech.

Getting Red’s tech back was on Jason’s agenda; he was labeling it a work-in-progress for now. But he also had questions he wanted answers to, and the first one was gonna be how this ghost making eyes at his brother handled hearing a “no”.

[scribe-of-hael]

The Path to Hell is paved with good intentions

I think what is interesting is the drive that is the Autobots and Decpeticons. Mostly the cause of the Decpeticons and Megatron himself.

Alot of the time we see Megatron to be a crazy, battle hungry, warlord whos hel bent of causing destruction, conquering all in his path and who cares only about his goal to rule.

Over the years we have seen many version of Megatron. From silly goofy villain who's somtiems could acutally be a threat like in g1, to pash, cold, cunning like TFA, to being a crazy war lord who is incredibly cruel in TFP.

But these versions are mostly a Megatron who came from fighting, or had no good intentions to begin with besides being selfish or power hungry.

Then you have TFE and IDW/IDW2 (and possibly tf one). A different apprich to a character. Some may say its to make someone who has done cruel things as more sympathetic. But I think adds depth and personality.

Giving more than a crazy leader with silly goons, to a person who genuinely thought at the beginning, "I want things to change, for the better ,because it is broken"

Much howOptimus, the humble data clerk (hate he is a cop in idw tbh) and the hard working miner. Your everyday ppl, going through diffenrt struggles and honestly. I think woukd be fair to say that Orion wouldn't know the struggles of lower level bots that don't even have proper names..

Like D-16. The mech whis become Megatron.

Both Optimus and Megatron i think wnates to see a change , but how they both went about it i what added the conflict.

These two are basically your average everyday people. Megatron was an average everyday person. He wasn't born into the pits, net a warrior. A worker.

I think with alot of cartoon "villains" to we get older and started to see from a adult perspective. "Oh wait they are making sense." And how MESSED up the situation even was to drive these characters to this point.

Its no longer good vs evil, it is two ideals fighting aginst each other. What was once a fight for what these two sides believes in, turned into warfare and blood shed. To the mentality of Megatron being

"I can't trust anyone to right thing, besides me. I am the only one who can fix this, I can lead us."

You know what I could also see Optimus having the SAME mentality when comes to fighting megatron and restoring Cybertron. They are very much two sides of the same coin. I think that's what adds to the conflict between them. Optimus could be one bad day away from becoming Megatron onnthe sense of wanting to control the situation despite what costs just to not se Megatron when.

And you know he HAS done this. Yeeting the allspark for one to not let Megatron have ir but at the cost of Cybteron and its occupance. It was a loose loose situation regardless.

When it comes to alt-modist mentality, this high class vs low class, and the corruption of Cybertron. It is no wonder why so many people believes in the Decpeticon causes.

The reason why I clung so hard to Transformers Earthspark Megatron is because this was a break out from his character. To later learn it definitely took inspo from IDW who explored this character further sealed my admiration for him.

No one in the tf universe is less or more guilty. Both sides have done HORRIBLE things. Experimentation, brutality, killing innocence and their own soldiers just to get the won up. The autobots are not without their own blood shed. Only SOME of the autobots have a bit more regard for life and the planet they sit on. It doenst mean all of them do, and it doenst mean people within the groups around Optimus like it. But because they are painted as good guys we exapect them to.

Its when Decpeticons seem to take an interest in life do I find it way more compelling because it is out of their characteristics. They are the "bad guys"

Knockout being interested in Human cinema

Thundercracker being into writing and making movies

They are still PEOPLE. With interests and hobbies, internal conflicts and hesitations.

To see a Megatron not only fight aginst his own army , but take a human, a HUMAN as a friend that he TRUSTS?! That he gave up his Cybertronian already mode UP FOR?! Thats a bug FUCKING deal.

Just the contrast to TFW Megs to say TFP. Tfp depsite it beingbbetter for camouflage NEVER changes his alt mode. He is never willing to acutally change, he is so deeply rooted in what he is, who he is. What he is doing. That he is unwilling to change to the surroundings. No the surrounding will change BECAUSE of him.

While TFE realized a change was needed to fix things, to work together, to show I AM CHANGING, I WANT TO DO THE RIGHT THING.

This is not a Slander Optimus rant or a WOW Megatron is such a great guy essay.

Was mostly me rambling.