Someone really wanted our initials to spell SHIELD

Because when it all came down to it, it was always you and me. It's always been you... and me.

Ok! Look at Garcia's exes:

Now look at the women Morgan's been attracted to:

Now look at his wife:

It's a rule from the Hays Code (from the year 1934) called "like goes with like" that strictly prohibited interracial relationships because "the sanctity of the institution of marriage and the home" must be upheld (people were fucking weird about race in the 1930s), as in "White Person x White person, Black Person x Black Person ONLY".

They didn't wanna do anything that doesn't "look right" to them, and that means not putting Morcia together because then they would be mixing races (and giving a plus-size person a story that isn't "you can be fat, but you're gonna suffer and be lonely about it") and that's huge no-no.

And as for Garcia being a plus sized character in the mid-to-late 2000s, that was the ABSOLUTE PEAK of media using the absolutely shitty and fucked up to all Hell "Before and After" trope, where people were seen as unloveable if they were fat or "ugly", which fat was basically a synonym for at the time (which is GROSS). True happiness or romance was only "unlocked" if they underwent a massive, traumatic weight loss transformation and started dressing "better".

In the Battle arc, Penelope literally told Morgan, "I'm not the girl men see across a smoky bar and write songs about", and, "Just because you wouldn't cross a crowded room to hit on me does not mean that a more perceptive, less superficial guy wouldn't", like she literally called out how shitty and horrible the men of the decade she's living in are to her, and just because Morgan calls her a sexy and brilliant Goddess, he's still written by racists and fatphobes who follow rules from the fucking 1930s for no reason.

Also, take a look at this post I made:

But if by any chance this post reaches anyone who hasn’t read this marvelous, delightful book, let me tell you what you’re sleeping on:

A perfect example of how to write the most oblivious protagonist while still making things clear to the reader what’s going on

A competent protagonist who still has relatable self-esteem issues

Oblivious p I n I n g she wants Howl so bad and is in SUCH jealous denial

Misunderstandings related to that obliviousness

The most ridiculous Drama King to ever slime his own house

But who also is head over heels for that adorably oblivious protagonist

Like he dotes on her and she just thinks the whole time he doesn’t like her

Okay it’s not exactly enemies to lovers, but like, Sophie has such an impression of Howl’s reputation due to his own efforts to blacken his own name that Howl has a lot of work to do to correct her impression of him

and besides which, he really is a slitherer-outer so you can hardly blame Sophie’s frustration with him

and besides which Sophie does meddle an awful lot so you can hardly blame his own frustrations with her

I mean she basically just barges into his home and insists on staying an indeterminate time, like just tonight or you know, forever?

On that note, it’s not fake dating but these two are essentially living in a domestic relationship before they even kiss

File under: how to write a romance without needing the protagonists to kiss!

When Sophie insists on cleaning all the time Howl is just like “??? why??? do you want to clean when you are so awesome and powerful and could do so much better??? i keep telling you there’s a spell for that and you do not have to clean???? but if it’s what you want to do I guess?????”

like for real he’s just disappointed that she seems to only think she’s good for serving and doing chores and wants her to want more for herself

you can reread the book and try to pinpoint when Howl starts loving Sophie but then you cannot and for sure it just must be a case of ‘he was already in the middle before he knew he begun’

like he cures her aches and pains and he buys her nice clothes clearly trying to cater to her taste and

when he has to redo his whole HOME he asks her what kind of shop she wants to run and he buys her old home like as if they’re already married and they’re building a new home together

and Howl tries multiple times to break her curse, but in the end only SHE can really break it bc like I said this story is brilliant

and the WHOLE TIME, the whole time ALL OF THIS doting and pining is going on, Sophie looks like a 90-year-old woman and Howl is just head over heels for her 

I mean with tropes like these???? what are you waiting for?

Learning about flyovers and pyrotechnics at American games being a thing

Non-americans discovering the size of American football stadiums....for high schools in texas. Also the size of our stadiums in general.

Going to baseball games as a side treat! Lmao.

Non-americans losing their minds over "like, 100 petrol pumps," at buc-ees.

Related: Americans often forget how huge target and Walmart is.

People discovering American BBQ

Non-americans being obsessed with mid American restaurant chains like Golden Corral and Taco Bell

A lot of them really did feel god in this chile's apparently

The rightful obsession with waffle house

New understanding of American Big Drink With Ice supremacy as summer creeps in

Begrudging acceptance of mandatory water breaks during games

Americans realizing we have a Team USA and we are not, in fact, just "hosting our friends" from around the world — mostly because we won our first match and our team is decent??? Not amazing but not the worst.

Side rant: us women's football team is legendary good and we should care about that more like. Hello???

Admitting Americans are right about air conditioning

Related: the english team did warm ups in Florida RIP, and also the there's a video of the French team just being like fuck the heat, fuck the sun, this is so hot...

Americans who do not normally care about international football but fucking love a sport and cheering so we're just hyping whatever team is nearby, like we see a party and just show up and learn the chant. Like sorry many of us don't know shit about soccer but if we see a bunch of people in viking helmets or kilts or holding a bunch of flags and cheering we're game.

TAILGATING!!!!

I already said this but American yellow school bus is an international celebrity

The Scottish drank Boston dry of beer apparently, like they quadrupled what Boston normally sells for fourth of July weekend. SAM ADAMS HAD TO GET AN EMERGENCY BEER DELIVERY.

Also the English team fans got kicked out of The Londoner pub in Dallas after drinking 5,000 beers and going over max capacity lmao

Free refill drinks, tortilla chips & salsa.

So many non-americans are going to be here for the 4th of July for our 250th anniversary which is going to be great and hilarious

Non-americans discovering ranch as a beloved condiment

Non-americans understanding American obsession with hamburger now

Japan's homebase is in Texas and the cultural differences are frankly great and also the Japanese fans are SO NICE and helped clean up the stadium after a match???

The Fic Writer's Guide to Formatting (An AO3 Repository) by AnisaAnisa - This is the holy grail of how to format an ao3 fic using HTML and CSS

Inline Tooltip Translation by AstariaEverlasting - Hovertext made easy! Instead of constantly jumping to the author’s notes or google translate for every foreign phrase or word, all you’ll need to do now is tap or hover over the text in question and a translated speech bubble will appear! (Requires preplanned translation)

How to Make iOS Text Messages on AO3 by CodenameCarrot and La_Temperanza - If you like chat fics or inserting a little text message for the immersion (without having to use screenshots or images!), then this is the guide for you. You can also “text” images with this tutorial.

Whatsapp Work Skin Template /Revamped by etc e tal (pe_pe_peperoncinocandy) - If WhatsApp is your preferred messaging platform, this is the workskin for you. It even includes a scrollable template, as well! (Check it out, it’s really cool!)

How to Make a "Choose Your Own Adventure" Fic by La_Temperanza - The ever elusive Choose-Your-Own-Adventure format! It is possible to create with an ao3 workskin!

2020 Reddit Work Skin by timstokerlovebot (SchmokSchmok) - If you want to include a Reddit post for some immersive fun, this work skin is calling your name!

Those are Expert Systems, tuned to do exactly one thing. If you (say) ask a medical expert system a question about financial law, it's useless. The autopilot that flies a 787 has no idea how to drive a truck on the freeway. A Coulter Counter is excellent at identifying lymphocytes in a blood sample but can't predict the next card in a blackjack game.

And so on.

The problem with so-called generalized AI (AGI) is that we don't have that yet. It doesn't exist. It MIGHT some day, but AGI has been "10 years away" since the 1980s. The goals keep moving as we learn more about how people and machines process data.

But the current crop of AI techbros have been selling generative Large Language Model AI (LLM) as AGI because generative systems do a good job of faking it. There's no actual thought going on, merely the illusion of thought via predicting the next word in a sentence accurately.

If you let a human toddler listen to 800 hours of YouTube car influencer videos, that toddler might end up sounding like a car influencer. They'd parrot horsepower numbers and 0 to 60 times, mention EV range and MSRP numbers.

But they wouldn't understand any of it.

That's ChatGPT.

And yeah, it's worse than useless because it doesn't even know when it's lying or hallucinating. It just babbles convincingly until you stop it.

But for techbros to make money selling that as "AI"? It's the perfect scam, especially if you don't understand how it works.

For Twilight, the need to think every decision and every action through in an attempt to foresee all possible outcomes and determine which is best for The Mission™ vanished when that gun was pointed at Yor. No calculations, no plans, just pure instinct telling him to protect her NOW. And he did.

For Yor, the embarrassment and nervousness caused by actual or anticipated physical intimacy with Loid disappeared when he stepped between her and that gun. First tugging on his shirt, and later crashing into him and burying her face in his chest to cry and scold him because THAT'S how scared she was to lose him.