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eluxcastar · 9 months ago

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Hello Riri! :]

I'm in my platonic harbingers with a child reader era, and you're one of the few people I follow who writes platonic stuff on an occasion. So here's my request!

Here's the small storyline I have. Reader is the child of a god (you're free to decide what they are the god of, if you want) who is extremely well known around Tevyat, and puts on a very intimidating and serious presence. Yet one unfortunate day, the readers parent dies, so now they have to take on their legacy at a too young of age. Making them grow up out of their childhood much faster and pressuring them into becoming exactly like their parent. Cold, intimidating, and serious.

And out of all the mortals the reader has met, the harbingers are who they find comfort in. They could be lecturing some other mortal one minute, and the next minute, they see one of the harbingers. They're grabbing them by the hands, bouncing on their tip toes with a bright smile.

(Hope you're having a good day! And please don't overwork yourself<3)

Fatui harbingers with a child god

── ୨୧：fatui harbingers & reader

୨୧﹑synopsis :: child reader taking over as archon and basically immediately proving why child rulers are a bad idea but it's ok because it's cute and endearing

୨୧﹑genre :: fluff

୨୧﹑content :: gn reader, god reader, signora might be ooc tbh I struggled to think for her, not proofread

୨୧﹑words :: 3k

this has been in my inbox for some time, even though I've really wanted to do it for ages. I'm sorry honey it took me a while to get to it. the description of their parent at least to me was giving mr zhongli when he was morax and I immediately thought of the ramifications of him faking his death in the rite of descension which makes me wanna write something else BUT THAT'S FOR LATER

I meant to post this four and a half hours ago but suddenly it was like twice the length I thought it would be and uh yeah that was not the plan but enjoy the food served hot and fresh

There has hardly been a moment of grief since you were orphaned, and the people are turning to you for their next overseer. You, small, fragile, and ill-prepared, are the one they wish to see take up the pillar left in your father's wake. You weren't ready, and maybe you never would've been, embraced by the caring side of your well and truly mellowed-out father and cherished by the people as the child of the nation.

Your transition from people's treasure to people's guide was jarring, and you're still not used to it. You move with what pleases and hide what brings deep frowns and disappointed eyes. The people no longer want a child but a god. They want their pride, once a god who had walked by their side for millennia, now the passing generation of a god as the mantle shifts to his blood.

It's hard not to notice what they make you, now the spitting image of your father, though you can only parrot his earned wisdom and show a brave face to keep the nation from despair.

You have but a single ally—the Tsaritsa—someone whose messengers approached you to ask for your father's gnosis and who gladly agreed to offer you an invitation to Snezhnaya at your request to speak to her personally, quite honestly not knowing how to say that you frankly didn't know what to do with the gnosis. Though you could keep it, you're unsure how to harness its power, wield it, or even control it. Your father was strong, you're not.

She is an intimidating presence but gentle. She knew of your father for as long as she had been an archon—though they weren't on good terms toward the end—perhaps you could understand her more than he would. He was the original archon in his seat, but you are an inheritor like her. In her lands, you are the careful balance of both a god and a child, spoken to with the grace of a higher power but the softness that is befitting to a young child.

It is as you are.

Tartaglia is the first to seek a test of your strength, though you wish not to hurt him and convince him to wait. So long as the answer is someday, he allows you to let him down easily and settles at indulging your requests to join the snowball fight you noticed him having. You want to join in, fidgeting and with your gaze flickering between the smiling children and your feet. You push away your every want to join them and play as well, but remind yourself of the people who would scorn you. It's unfitting for a god to behave like an immature child, you remind yourself, but every hope of remaining steadfast to that is gone as Tartaglia notices you watching.

His offer is merely that—an offer. He speaks with a snowball forming in his hands as he approaches, his thick coat engulfing his form and the red scarf bundled around his neck to keep him warm. You have to look up to meet his eyes, playful and perhaps a little mischievous. Tartaglia holds the snowball out to you as if it were his peace offering.

"You look like you want to join the fun. Care to throw a snowball or two with us?"

"May I?"

And with that, you take his offering.

Pantalone's musings and the intentions of his gifts are not beyond you. He means to win you over and perhaps spoil you a little. It is coddling, and you notice it. He wants what he wants, and he will get it out of you, but it is also not beyond him to recognise that you are...naïve, endearingly. Pantalone can lavish you in fine silks all he wants, but you have received many offerings, so they don't particularly sway you as he had hoped, and he moves on. Your true weakness lies in children's toys, the many things you have been denied since you have been forced to steel yourself. The smile that twitches at the corners of your lips as he presents you with the first is enough to confirm it.

Toys are made for children; though you try to deny it, you are still a child at heart. Gifting a child a toy they will try to pretend they don't cherish but will protect with their life is perhaps the quickest way to earn their favour. He watches as you fiddle with the arms of the plush cat when you think nobody is looking, asking it questions and then responding to yourself in an all-too-dedicated voice you put on for this cat.

"Oh, Mr Cat, would you like some borscht too? It's very good."

"Yes, please, I would love to try some!"

Pantalone admittedly can't deny that you come with your own charms.

Signora spoils you what many of your aids have tried to before you, the chance to fix your hair, marvel at a pretty lady and wish you were half as sophisticated as her. She is your role model, second only to the Tsaritsa. She is beautiful and elegant and willing to teach you her ways as long as you continue to show up as cute as you are. Fix your posture a bit, head up, and walk everywhere with purpose, even if there isn't one. She has mastered the art, and you want it. Pantalone has his own appeal, a sophisticated man who learned through blood, sweat and tears, but there is something so distinct about Signora that makes you run to her at your first problem of presentation.

Like your mother, she will take you by the hand, lead you to a mirror, straighten your back, tilt your head up by the chin, and tell you to look at yourself now. Each time, you stare dumbly in awe of her reflection standing behind you, observing you like something precious, and it fills you with the confidence you need to heed her advice. It doesn't occur to you that Signora looks at you that way only because she thinks you're cute in your efforts, but too much like a child who got into their mother's perfume to be taken seriously.

"How others see you is important. Do you think they want to see their god with their back slouched and head hung? Hold your gaze above the people."

"It's-- well, different. I think I just look tense."

Sandrone has also come to realise that your weakness lies in toys, though she will not admit to aiding and abetting Pantalone's endeavours to find you a plushie. Instead, she shows you Katheryne. You have seen Katheryne before; you are sure of that, and that is only confirmed as Sandrone informs you that she exists in every branch of the Adventurers' Guild, including the one in your homeland. Katheryne is your access to knowledge, and the Northland Bank is your connection to Snezhnaya. Sandrone offers you comfort, the path that will lead you back to where help is and where you can go when you become overwhelmed by responsibility.

She likes your company, a reluctant admission that does not come cheap as she bargains your silence with the knowledge that she's aware of your liking for your cat toy. The embarrassment that overwhelms you is palpable until she offers you her workshop to play when your quarters are so overcrowded by your aids. You couldn't come to Snezhnaya alone for your safety, and it leaves you stranded without a moment of peace at times.

"Really?...and I can just, stay here? For as long as I want?"

"Isn't that what was offered to you?"

"Well...yes, thank you."

Scaramouche, whom you meet adjacent to Sandrone, is ill-tempered in the presence of others but a tad nicer when it comes to you. He does not drop his rough-around-the-edges personality to melt his heart out of his chest for you, but you manage to strike the perfect cord in his to gain liberties others cannot, having him share sweets with you. You learned at one point he really doesn't like them, leading you to wonder why they suddenly appeared ready and available for you to stuff your pockets full and snack on them when nobody's looking. You earn his favour through endearment and talk to him like he's normal because he is.

He is the child of a god, though in a different capacity to you. He was not loved quite so dearly by his mother and cannot share with you the pain of losing someone who treasured you. He was merely abandoned. There is the vague part of you that shuns the idea his softness is pity, sympathy even, as you're stuck stumbling through the world alone. It is all too familiar to him, and if candy will make you smile at him so cheerfully and hug him so tightly, then candy is a simple trade-off.

"Are you sure you don't want any? These are yours."

"Sickly sweet things make me feel like my teeth are fusing together. You can have them."

Pulcinella reminds you of home, the trinkets gathered on a whim that he keeps, the years showing through the rooms dedicated to him as you notice things your father told you of in stories. These are stories that Pulcinella will start off on without prompting, indulging your curiosity before you even lowered your guard enough to show it and casually enough that you slowly ask more. Every item holds a story: what it is, how he obtained it, why he kept it, who it was for. You see many such things around what used to be your house, but you don't know all of the stories, treasuring the ones you remember.

Pulcinella doesn't recall every story either, as some of your pointing and questioning is met with remarks of how long it has been. It is the only thing you feel you share with him, a living space filled to the brim with memories. Many of your trinkets don't belong to you, but his do, and it's nice to hear someone tell you stories again as he lets you pick from the collection of sweets in your pockets to eat when it suits your fancy.

"What about this? It reminds me of a lumenstone, the ones from the chasm."

"It is, and it came from Liyue when I asked that one of my subordinates bring it back for me. You must have a fine eye for these things."

"Not really, only lumenstone and noctilucous jade glow like this."

Arlecchino's offering to you is company, and plenty of it. Children who are so far removed from the stretch of news beyond the issues of the Steambird they manage to get their hands on that they wouldn't know your face from a haggler on the street. Father brought a guest to play with, and that's what matters as they induct you into their games, teach you the rules, and regard you exactly as they regard every other child their age. You are given the choice to simply become nobody, and you love it. Though you were once only a child, you were still the child of a god, and everyone knew it. Now, you elicit excitement only because someone new enters their lives, someone to learn about and befriend, merely a guest their father brought them.

Despite her sharp exterior, she is sweeter to you than you expected. You thought Arlecchino might be scarier, meaner, harsher, but she softens when she speaks to you. It is not with the cutthroat demeanour she holds speaking to the Harbingers and lacks a degree of the stern attitude she fronts to the children. You are not the average child, and it's necessary to treat you with some degree of respect, but you notice she's gentler with you than others, and it almost makes you feel special.

Columbina has sung you to sleep many times during your stay; her voice is sweet and more than enough to calm you. You let her hold your cat plush and dance with you in the hallways with the excuse you need knowledge of these things should you aspire toward being an archon, even if spinning around until you fall on the floor from dizziness and burst out laughing is a tad non-traditional. Columbina can see things others can't notice more than the human eye is capable of, and you'd rather not know what that's like. Something in the way she speaks tells you that it's hardly adjacent to anything human, closer to you, but still quite far off. It's interesting to hear the strange things humans have no business knowing.

Your hand is grasped in Columbina's, her fingers holding you tenderly. Her eyes are partly obscured beneath the lattice of a mask she wears. You're not sure if you could really call it a mask. She steps back, tugging you with her, and spins you in time with the steps she takes, each accompanied by a shift that forces you to keep up with where she moves, her other hand on your shoulder. It is the closest you will get to proper dancing, though merely a fool's waltz. You can't dance; being spun down a hallway while you struggle to match her movements feels much like you imagine a waltz would.

"It's not really proper dancing if we have no pattern to it."

"There is no such thing as proper dancing. If you'd prefer it, I could sing."

Dottore is someone you did not expect to be so open to the idea of you, and your assumptions were proven correct by his apprehension to engage with you. He is curt with you at best and avoidant at worst. You are a child filled with the yearning to touch everything that doesn't belong to you, desperate to hear too much about the things that don't concern you. You are young, needy, and with no concept of what is beyond you. Dottore's unique abundance of knowledge is appealing to you, however. He knows things your father did, many of which he didn't tell you, but Dottore will, so long as it gets you to sit still and stop interrupting him. You may be convinced you have pocketed your unnecessary emotions away, but he has seen you, and that is an insulting lie.

Your wants are written on your face plain as day, so long as people pay enough attention to you to care what you feel. He does not especially care, not for the child of a god, but it helps to know what you want to stick your nose in most. It helps to know how you benefit from him, and on luckier days, you might even catch him in a better mood when he is willing to indulge your interest in his knowledge. Your capacity to understand, let alone remember, hardly worries him.

"So you have clones of yourself? And they just...work for you?"

"Not exact clones—segments. They have wills of their own and use them as they see fit."

Capitano is strong, a man of few words, and he does not abhor your presence quite so strongly, nor does he indulge your more childish desires. What you get from Capitano is respect, the highest honour you can get from his book in your eyes, and it comes from your perseverance. You're running around working so hard when you're so young, and you deserve a break sometimes. You deserve a quiet place to curl up in the corner with that cat he's caught you hiding under where no one can bother you, and maybe with a few sweets you always seem to have these days. That corner still does not exist, though he will find you one if you want it.

You show no signs of slowing down, are energetic and eager and are far too committed to the act of being something you're not to listen to him when he tells you to rest. Gods must all be fickle. The most he can do for you is make sure you're safe and happy as you will be in your position, maybe wipe your hands of powdered sugar when you find pastries at the market you want and recklessly eat them without thinking of how you'll clean up short of wiping the remnants on your clothes, but you'll never do that as you are.

Pierro once made you nervous. He is a stern, serious man who never smiles. Pierro is steadfast in loyalty and never wavers, which is precisely what you have begun to aspire to be now that that is what has been asked of you. You could never hope to replicate the kind of dedication he has, and perhaps that is part of what sways you. Though you have become so comfortable behaving childishly around some people, you fear you may never be around him, whether because you fear his disapproval or yearn for his approval. Despite that, he is arguably who you trail around behind most, quiet, observing, trying to figure out how to copy and apply what he has to yourself.

It settles the quick realisation he reminds you most of what the people saw in your father. Someone like him is someone people envision fostering a nation to prosperity, and you fight your own subconscious to keep all of your slipping habits, making sure he never sees you sneaking candy, hiding your cat plush from him, refusing Tartaglia's every offer to play games around him. You're not sure why you think that will make him like you more, having long ago gained his favour, unable to notice the faint smiles and the conscious effort to make you believe he doesn't notice you out the window barreling snowballs at Tartaglia.

You are still a child at heart; he is just about the last person you can hope to hide that from.

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sheawritesstuff · 4 months ago

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Redacted Characters Who...

[Vaguely angsty edition]

[I've seen a couple people use this kind of format n thought I'd give it a try,, not sure if I did it right.]

✩ Asher who says “I love you” like punctuation in a sentence. Who tells everyone he loves as often as possible just to make sure they know. Who ends every phone call with “I love you” out of habit because you never know when the last time will be.

✩ Lasko who rambles as a way to get information out as quickly as possible without getting interrupted. Who was taught early in life that his input was less important than his mom's. Who always assumes he's annoying people as soon as he opens his mouth.

✩ David who hates saying “goodbye”. Who says “talk to you later” or “see you at [insert date/event]” instead. Who is superstitious that somehow, if he says goodbye, it'll be the last time.

✩ Elliott who automatically assumes he's unwelcome in any given situation. Who hovers around the outskirts of friendly gatherings, only speaking when spoken to. Who thought for years that Aaron felt the same way about him that their parents did.

✩ Milo who gets uncomfortable around alcohol and cigarettes. Who avoids big events where strangers will be drinking. Who always makes sure people get home safe and has the best hangover cures.

✩ Damien who is an overachiever to make up for his “shortcomings”. Who thinks his personality and emotions are inherently negative traits that need to be balanced out with academic success. Who sent his mom test scores after coming out in a last ditch effort to “make it up to her”.

✩ Gavin who knows he'll outlive everyone he cares about. Who knows he'll never love anyone like he loves Freelancer. Who spent so long without any meaningful relationships that he doesn't know what he'll do once he's alone again.

✩ Huxley who loves with every fiber of his being. Who gives everyone the benefit of the doubt, even when he knows they don't deserve it. Who changed himself for years because he was scared of being “too much”.

✩ Porter who keeps everyone at arm's length. Who pretends to be cold and emotionless to protect the people he cares about. Who has never known a life of comfort and gentleness and doesn't know how to accept one.

✩ Sam who learned to fight so he could survive. Who got caught up with the wrong crowd after escaping Mont Blanc. Who still dreams about the life he could've had if he'd never gotten involved with Alexis.

✩ Camelopardalis who never feels good enough. Who believes his struggles to deal with the traumatic memories he's taken makes him weak. Who feels guilty for needing a therapist.

✩ Guy who wishes he earned more money to provide for Honey. Who regrets his degree every time a publisher rejects him. Who is so grateful that his partner supports his dream despite all the setbacks.

#most of these are kinda built on canon #but some are just me bein a little silly :P #redacted asmr #redacted audio #redacted david #redacted asher #redacted sam #redacted milo #redacted elliott #redacted camelopardalis #redacted gavin #redacted lasko #redacted damien #redacted huxley #redacted porter #redacted guy #redacted headcanons #shea writes

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yandere-daydreams · 3 months ago

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It’s been confirmed by Mavuika that archons can extend people’s lives! So just imagine an archon extending their unwilling partners life. Likeee 😂

no because i saw that and my literal First Thought was 'okay how can i turn this into a fic'. ever since, i've been haunted by visions of one of the archons currently living as a human (most likely zhongli, but mayhaps venti if he's feeling silly enough) making their darling immortal despite never actually having spoken to them, only admiring you from a charitable distance. you aren't warned, aren't informed, aren't given any clue as to what's happening or who's doing it - all you know is that one day, you simply failed to grow older, and you haven't had much luck since. time marches forward, the people around you age and die, but you're trapped in amber - unchanging save for the lengths you take to differentiate yourself from what you once were. you've looked for cures, seen doctors, considered taking matters into your own hands, but you don't crave a violent death. you only want what you've been wrongfully denied.

you're scared and confused and trapped, and as far as you can tell, there's only one other person who shares your affliction - a familiar face you'll sometimes catch in your peripheral, never too distance but never too close, either. they've taken on different names as the decades slip by, but their appearance never changes, not really, and on the rare occasion that you actually speak with them, they seem just as lost in time as you are, reciting events from hundreds of years ago with the confidence and the affection of a witness, rather than a historian. you don't care for them, no more than you would any other stranger, nor would you grow more fond of them if they really did have something to do with your paralysis, but...

but, you really don't have anyone else, anymore. not really. not in any way that brings you comfort.

it's either find solace in the only other person who shares your suffering, or face eternity alone.

#personal #anon ask #yandere genshin impact

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calumfmu · 7 months ago

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hoping everything bends

Divorce Lawyer!Steve x Reader (based off this request)

You didn't plan on meeting him that day. It was an accident really. A mistake that should've had you fleeing from the door, but the second you laid your eyes on him, you knew this was an opportunity you couldn't pass up. (2.9k+ words)

cw: 18+, mdni, smut, p in v, oral (female receiving), unprotected sex, cream pie, rough sex, older!Steve, mean!Steve (in the best way possible), age gap (mid-twenties reader),

soon to be one of my favorite fics that i've started, thank you to the original anon who requested it! title is based off of cable management by violets crush, i've taken some inspiration from the lyrics for the pov for reader. so check it out <3

You didn't plan on meeting him that day. It was an accident really. Rushing into the office, you tripped over the high Louboutin's on your feet, stumbling over nothing as you reached down to adjust them. You repeatedly pressed the open door button on the elevator, cursing as it took its sweet time opening. You were running about fifteen minutes behind, waking up from a drunken slumber about 45 minutes ago, New York City traffic betraying you as always.

A receptionist looked up at you through her small frames, grimacing slightly--something you had assumed was to be a smile.

Giving her your last name, you patted your ring finger against the gloss of your lips.

"Twelve o'clock?" She confirmed, typing away at the monstrous computer in front of her. You nodded, straightening up as she pointed you in the right direction.

"Left or right?"

"Right!"

Rapping your knuckles against the tall wooden door, your skirt suddenly felt too short, too unprofessional to meet with this lawyer. He was an old family friend apparently, someone who had helped your dad with his 5th or 6th divorce, you couldn't remember at this point. He was spoken highly of, someone who handled business straight to the point--assisted your family name in getting everything they wanted.

A soft call beckoned you in, the door opening under your grasp to reveal floor to ceiling windows, highlighting the city that stood in front of you. The room was empty, save for a few pieces of furniture, metallic against the stark white of the room.

A man stood with his back to you, leaning against one of the windows as he peered out, a black coffee in his grip. He spoke on a phone in his other hand, frustration dripping in his voice as he discussed terms with them.

"Have a seat, I'll be right with you."

You tip toed as best as you could to the desk, finding a seat in one of the chairs. The desk was organized--meticulously so, a single pencil laid next to a ballpoint pen, aligned with a black leather bound planner. A computer was pushed in the far corner of the desk, neat and organized as the rest of the items, a single keyboard placed in front of you. There were smaller items in the opposite corner, a small lamp, fake plant, framed picture of what appeared to be a group of people.

You ran a finger along the length of the desk, testing your theory if there were to be a speck of dust found anywhere. There wasn't.

"Sorry about that," the man hummed, sliding out his chair to take a seat. Glancing up at him, a small gasp escaped your lips.

"Oh, you're cute," you whispered, smiling to yourself as you took him in. His hair was pushed back out of his face, styled so his gray speckled hair poked out from his hairline, framing his face perfectly. Thin wire glasses adorned his face, resting on the tip of his nose bridge, a pair of plump pink lips beneath them.

A blush crossed his features briefly before he cleared his throat, raising his eyebrows at you.

"And you smell like alcohol," he shot back, dragging his eyes over your frame. Winking at him, you pulled up the hem of your top, brushing your fingers over your exposed breast bone.

"Long divorce, long night."

"Ah," there was a slight smirk on his lips, a glint in his eyes that you decided would be dangerous for you. You could deal with that later though. "Last name? I don't remember having a twelve, but I may have overlooked it."

He opened the planner in front of him, scanning the pages for your name as it fell from your mouth. Frowning slightly, he hummed, leaning over to type something in his computer.

Just as he opened his mouth to say something, the door flung open, an even older man appearing in the frame. He didn't even look at you, rolling his eyes as he leaned against the metal, fingers gripping his nose bridge, eyes squeezed shut.

"Remind me why I do family favors, again?" His voice was gruff, irritation lacing his tone. "Second time, we've tried to reschedule, and this chick won't show up."

The man in front of you cleared his throat, glancing at you as he began to put two and two together.

He cut the man off from the speech that began to pour out of his mouth, "Uh.. Harrison?"

The older guy stopped, eyes finding you for the first time. His eyes widened as he straightened up, adjusting the tie that sat around his neck.

"I'm in the middle of something here."

"Right, sorry, Harrington," he fled just as quickly as he arrived, the door shutting behind him. Reality hit you as it made a soft thud that echoed in the otherwise quiet room, you sinking into the chair a little.

"I take it you're supposed to be his twelve," that smirk only deepened as he looked at you, a sheepish look crossing your features. Smiling innocently in return, you sucked at your teeth, running it along them.

"I won't tell if you won't."

Shaking his head at you, he leaned back in his chair, spreading his legs wide as he pulled at his jacket lapels, huffing with the movement. Your eyes trailed down his form, lingering at the fabric where it bunched around his abdomen, dipping down into his groin.

"I'm going to be honest, kid, I don't know if I have room for another client right now," he began, speaking with his hands. He didn't notice your curious gaze, his own eyes focusing on his desk as he gave you the run down. "What do you have to be? 30? 31? Harrison, there, he's the best money could buy in this industry right now, with the most time. Used to young clients too. You're better off with him."

Pulling your eyes away from him, you shrugged, crossing your legs. Your skirt pushed up a little bit, exposing more of your thigh than would be considered appropriate for the setting. You pretended not to notice him look at you as you leaned over the desk, elbows perched on the cool wood.

"''M 25," You gave him the same smirk back, watching the way he briefly looked away, muttering 'Jesus Christ' under his breath at your age. "And I have all the money in the world to want you."

His eyebrows raised at your suggestive tone, clicking his teeth together as he thought of what to say next. You beat him to it.

"I think you'd be pretty good for me," your voice was low as your leaned over the desk, your chest beginning to spill from your strapless top that hugged your body. His gaze was unfaltering, focused on your face as you began to tease him.

"I doubt that's hardly appropriate or professional."

He stood up from the desk, adjusting his jacket once more before holding a flat hand out, gesturing towards the door.

"Ma'am?"

Your face fell as the rejection hit you, your mouth falling open in surprise. You weren't used to this, instead having men fall at your feet before and during your marriage even, used to throwing out the tens, hundred even of suitors that you plague you during the weeks.

Standing up, you leaned a hand against his desk, the other resting on your hip. "Sir."

He let out a deep sigh before running a hand over his perfectly styled hair. Knowing you weren't going to move, he crossed his hands over his chest.

"You're stubborn, aren't you?" His voice was firm as he rounded the desk to your side, landing feet away from you. From this proximity, you could smell the musk from his cologne, filling your nostrils with a slightly sweet scent. It only turned you on more.

"Don't you have to in this industry to get what you want?"

A genuine smile cracked through, warmth from his eyes showing as he (finally) dragged his eyes over your figure.

"Smart girl."

Those words did wonders for you, warmness pooling between your thighs as you took a step towards him. He backed away slightly, maintaining his professional composure.

"Harrington-"

"Steve."

Your smile deepened, your teeth digging into your bottom lip. "Steve. I don't see a wedding ring, so what's the problem?"

"Ironic, isn't it?" He didn't back away from you as you cornered him, placing a hand on his chest as he leaned against his desk, one of his hands grazing your thigh. He looked down at you, his eyes slightly hooded as you tilted your head up at him.

"Is it my age? Is that scaring you?"

Steve remained silent, darting his tongue out to lick at his lips. You could see the hesitation on his face, your question answering himself.

You trailed your hand up his chest, dancing your fingers along his neck, up to the nape of his hairline. "Well, I can promise you, I know what I'm doing."

A small nod left him, his head leaning down slightly to breathe you in, his lips parting. You craned your neck up to brush your mouth against his own.

"I could even teach you a few things."

A moan escaped you as he crashed his lips into yours, all professionalism leaving through the window. His hands found your waist, gripping the skin there as he spun the two of you around, lifting you up so you sat at the desk.

Your legs immediately came up to wrap around his hips, your hand pulling him further into you. He tasted like mint, his tongue finding its way between your parted lips, making claim there.

You leaned back against the desk, laying flat against it as he pushed you down, leaning over your body as his hands roamed free, grabbing at every exposed part of skin you had to offer. The largeness of them had you gasping into his mouth, eyes rolling back behind closed eye lids as you imagined them elsewhere, dipping inside of you.

Pulling away, he pressed kisses to your jawline, the scruff on his face leaving redness as he sucked in a few marks, nipping at the skin as he led himself lower.

"Steve," you moaned, gripping at his hair. He leaned back, his hands disappearing underneath your skirt as he pushed up the material.

"Don't touch the hair," he quickly said, pressing a kiss at your chest before sinking to his knees. You rolled your eyes at him, spreading your legs anyways as he slid down your panties, throwing them to the side. "I'm at work."

You could barely spit out a response before his mouth made contact with your wet cunt, licking you open immediately. A strangled moan was choked out, your hands shooting out to grab onto anything you could find. The organized items you recognized from before fell onto the floor, loud clatters filling the room.

His tongue left you briefly, Steve shushing you as he hitched your knee over his shoulder. Returning his mouth to you, your back arched, the wetness between your legs increasing.

You didn't know if it was him or you that had you dripping, your core tightening as he worked his magic, tongue flicking in and out of you, one of his fingers nurturing your clit under its touch.

"Steve, Steve," his name fell out of your mouth in a mantra, your eyes squeezed shut. Reaching behind you, you curled your hand over the edge of his desk beside your head, pushing your hips into his face even further.

He moaned at the push against his face, shoving his face in even deeper. His mouth alternated between licking at you, diving his tongue in and out of your wet hole and leaning up to suck at your clit, working fast as you fell apart around him.

"I'm gonna-"

It was fast, over just as quickly as it happened, your legs tightening around his head as you came, orgasm coursing through the length of your spine. Your eyes opened, staring up at the high ceiling as he tongue fucked you through it, running his thumb over your clit.

"Such a good girl." His words were addicting, praises that had you wanting to continue. You knew it was bad, just how good this felt, but you didn't care, it had been so long since you had a decent lay, this attention feeling like heaven.

Whining, the over stimulation felt like a strange vice, something you knew you shouldn't have, but so pleasurable at the same time. Steve removed himself from between your legs, leaning up to return his mouth to yours. You tasted yourself on his lips, the area around his mouth dripping wet with your release.

His hands were pulling at his belt, pushing at his boxers, releasing himself in a swift motion. Your lips were pushed together so sloppily, loud smacks filled the air as he ran the head of his cock through your folds once, twice, three times before sliding in.

Snaking your legs around his hips, you pulled him deeper, the stretch burning so right.

"Slow do-oh fuck--please, slow down," he muttered, resting his forehead against yours. One of his hands rested on the desk beside your head, the other trailing down the length of your leg. Stopping at your heel, he freed your foot from the constraint of the Louboutin, it already hanging half way off.

Tossing it away from the two of you, he pulled your leg up higher on his hip. You cursed at him, two thousand dollars being carelessly thrown to the other side of the desk.

"I'll buy you a new pair, relax," he said, pressing one more kiss to you before rearing his hips back. You expected him to slam into you, only for him to carefully ease his way back in, rolling his hips in a way that had you shaking already.

You moaned, dragging your nails up under his shirt. The crisp material bunched up under your hands, pulling half way up his back.

Your words came out stuttered, groans falling from your lips as you struggled, "Perfect, this se-season, ah, right there, is to die f-for. Fuck, Steve."

"Shut up," he rolled his eyes, as he sat up, hand beside your head leaving the desk to press against your mouth. He muffled your moans, thrusting into you repeatedly as he picked up his pace. The desk was shaking under the movement of your two bodies, his computer threatening to topple over.

The ruddy head of his cock pressed against your walls, hitting that sweet spot over and over. You could barely hold back your screams of excitement, grateful for the large hand that muffled them from fully coming out. They would have sure been heard from miles away, urging concern from his colleagues who shared the floor. Hell, maybe even a few floors down.

Steve was getting close, his head falling back in pleasure as he repeatedly bottomed out, pushing in deeper each time compared to the last. You pulsed around him, dripping as he drew you closer to your second orgasm.

His hips stuttered a few times before he came, filling your cunt deep as he pushed in one last time to the hilt. That final push was all it took for you to be sent over the edge, pulsing around his twitching cock as it was nestled deep inside you.

His hand left your mouth, running over the side of your cheek as you leaned into it, spent from the high. He tested himself once more, once small push of his hips inside again before you whined, reaching down to press your fingertips against his stomach. He got the hint, pulling out of you with a squelch that filled the air, white ribbons of cum spilling out of you.

He grabbed your hand in his, pressing a small kiss to the back of it as you reached down with the other, feeling the mess he left behind.

"Good girl."

Groaning, you shook your finger at him in a warning, sitting up on your elbows. "Don't start that again, please."

Your legs fell from around his hips as he took a step back, adjusting himself back into his pants. He took a look around the room, as if someone would be watching, his hand brushing down his face.

"Same time tomorrow?" You asked, pulling down your skirt as you stood up on one heel, the other on the desk chair pushed opposite of you two. You turned on the desk, leaning over to grab it as you pushed your ass in his direction, teasing him one final time.

As you turned around and sat up, you noticed the vacant look behind his eyes as his eyes lingered on you, pants being left unbuckled, his belt hanging loosely from the loops. "I actually have a twelve tomorrow."

You shook your head at him, walking over to him as you grabbed the discarded pair of panties that were draped over one of the open drawers. Wrapping your arms around his shoulders, you smirked up at him, "Better start making some arrangements then."

The look on his face returned to what it was during the heat of the moment, a dark stare with his mouth parted open in want. You leaned in to press a kiss to his cheek, a smear of the remnants of your gloss left on the skin.

Tucking your underwear into the waistband of his pants, you took a step back from him, pulling your skirt down even more.

"Hold onto those for me, yeah?"

Another mutter of 'Jesus Christ' was heard as you walked over the door, swinging it open to reveal the long hallway you came from. You were giddy as you smiled to yourself, the fun of this separation finally coming to fruition.

masterlist. inbox and requests are open! <3

a/n: long awaited I know! but here it is! I hope you loved it anon, I love you. I decided to put this as as stand alone instead of in the request because I wasn't sure how long it was going to be.

#requests #my writing #Steve Harrington x reader #Steve Harrington x you #Steve Harrington smut #smut #older!steve harrington #lawyer!Steve harrington #I love this fic verse #lawyer!steve

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asgardian--angels · 1 year ago

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Izzy Discourse Masterpost

Hey all, given the amount of awful splintering and wank happening in ofmd fandom rn regarding Izzy's death, including the flat-out immature and unacceptable harassment of David Jenkins and Co, I wanted to just make this one all-encompassing post to address the various grievances and complaints I've seen (almost entirely on Twitter). If I've missed anything, please feel free to add on. I'm putting most of this under a read-more for length.

Please be aware, I say all of this as an Izzy fan. I've loved his character since season 1, and while I was sad to see him go, I completely understand and support David & Co's reasons for concluding his arc, and I think it was done respectfully in a way fitting to his character. So let's break down some of the takes I've seen. I am not referencing specific posts or people here, I just want to address the general themes that I keep seeing about why some people are upset.

Izzy's death served no narrative purpose.

Look, this is one that I'm sure fans will debate for the rest of the hiatus. It's completely within your right to disagree with this writing choice, but Izzy's death did serve a narrative purpose in the story that David Jenkins is telling - and he has spoken to this end in several interviews already. I can only summarize here, and fans may find other perspectives in time as well. What we need to remember is that Our Flag Means Death is, at the end of the day, Ed and Stede's love story. That has been made abundantly, explicitly clear. The show has been fantastic at fleshing out the other supporting characters, but that's what they are - supporting characters. They often have their own subplots but ultimately the narrative seeks to move Ed and Stede's story forward and they are tools to spur Ed and Stede's growth or mirror their struggles. Izzy has been a wonderfully complex, multifaceted character but we must remember that all characters are vessels through which stories are told, lessons are imparted, and metaphors are established. He's not a real person who 'deserves' any particular fate. David said he's always intended for Izzy to die at the end of his arc.

Firstly, Izzy (now canonically, through his own dying words) represents part of Blackbeard. He enabled and encouraged Ed's darker side, they were mutually toxic forces to each other. Ed is attempting to cope with and move on from this phase of his life, and like Stede in season 1, set out a free man, unshackled by expectations and loose ends of those he's hurt and been hurt by (though we realize this is an ongoing process that takes time). This lovely gifset sums it up nicely, with Izzy being the Mary parallel, and making s2 mirror s1. Blackbeard is both Ed and Izzy; Ed cannot be free of Blackbeard while Izzy is in his life, and when Izzy is gone he will never truly be Blackbeard again. They are each other's rotting leg!! Yet, they love each other - and David has said that for Ed, this has developed into a mentor and father relationship, and where Ed has previously despised his father figures (his actual father, Hornigold) he does not want to lose Izzy. This time, Izzy brings out Ed, not Blackbeard - and that's where we get the callback to 'there he is', bringing their impact on each other full circle, freeing Ed, getting approval of sorts that he never had, to be soft, to be loved (and there are parallels to Zheng and Auntie here as well that others have made) from that force that drove him to stay in line all this time. David has said in multiple interviews now that he was going for the idea of the mentor/father figure dying and the hero living on and trying to do justice to them.

From Izzy's side, Izzy cannot be free while Edward remains either (Mary cannot find peace while Stede remains). The scar never truly healed, the leg will always be a reminder. At this point the argument becomes 'yes, but why did he have to die? Why not just sail off with the crew of the Revenge?' David has stated that he feels they've done everything they can with, and for, Izzy; he's come leagues from season 1, he's found community, he's found hope, he's found new parts of himself, and he's made good memories. He's found worth outside of what he can be to others. That's more than most pirates could hope for. Where would his character go from there, when the Golden Age of Piracy he belongs to has burned to the ground? Would he stay around and whittle on the Revenge? If he were a real person, yes, that would be lovely, and he'd deserve all the quiet peaceful happiness in the world. But as I explain several points below, he's not interested in being a captain. He's not up for the hard physical labor of regular crew, and he's extremely overqualified for that besides. He has served his narrative purpose, and symbolically, to enter a new age, everything must go. He's connected to the old age of piracy, to the Republic of Pirates, that is now demolished. To him, fighting for what he believes in, for the family he's found, bringing down an army of British twats in the process, is how he should go. It's a pirate's death, and as Izzy's said, he's a pirate - unlike Blackbeard who's succeeding in breaking away from piracy, Izzy never wanted to stop being a pirate, throughout his arc. To me, that's why Izzy remains trapped in the narrative, trapped in history, whereas Ed and Stede will escape history. They leave piracy, and canon, behind, while Izzy was content to remain a pirate and face a pirate's fate.

Burying him on land, right next to Ed and Stede's beach house, shows that his sacrifice was not in vain - they start this new life together, thanks to Izzy's mentorship, his role in their lives that sometimes for worse, sometimes for better, made their love what it was and made their breakaway possible. The new age is built on the foundations of the old age, and is stronger for it.

As we're well aware by now, David tweeted that there's no version of ofmd without Izzy. Whether that's literal or not, symbolically it's true. Izzy's arc of growth affected everyone on the Revenge. Jim fondly remembered fighting for a time when life meant something on that ship; the crew helped give Izzy new meaning in life, and he helped them in return. When he dies, they mourn and have a funeral; that wouldn't have happened under Blackbeard's watch in episode 2. His life meant something to them. He influenced Ed and Stede immensely, and they will take that with them. As David's said, they're all a family, and Izzy was a part of that family, and his loss unites them and brings them closer to continue to fight for that family they've built. It's a tragic, sudden death of someone they've all grown to care for, and that steels their reserve to keep the torch lit. They literally sail off into the sunset to hunt down Ricky to avenge Izzy; he will always be a part of this show. And, of course, with the brief appearance of seagull Buttons, the door is left open for anything.

If this was The Izzy Show, then sure, we'd be content to see him simply engaged in shenanigans every episode. But the plot, and therefore the characters, need to keep moving forward, and Izzy got his growth and development. He got what he needed for his character to have closure, and he served his symbolic narrative purpose in Ed's (and Stede's) story. You may have your own ideas and perspectives, and that's great - that's what fandom is for. But we cannot say his death was pointless when David Jenkins and the writers clearly had a well-defined motive for pushing the narrative in this direction. I actually think the narrative around Ed and Izzy is the most well-developed in the entire show. I for one am so happy we got such an interesting and complex character, and had the brilliant Con O'Neill to portray him.

Izzy's growth & healing arc was rendered pointless by his death.

As this post so eloquently puts it, it's pretty bleak to have the outlook that taking steps to heal and find meaning in life is worthless if it's later lost. Seeking happiness and self-actualization is worthwhile for its own sake; no one knows what's down the road, and we all die eventually. Find meaning in life now. Would you rather have had Izzy not miss with his bullet in ep2? He was given the chance to experience joy, freedom, and hope for the first time in potentially a long time, and when he died he did so with those happy memories. As mentioned, Izzy's death was decided long beforehand given the narrative, and the point of storytelling is to make you feel emotions. We were given impetus to connect and relate to Izzy's character through his process of healing, so when he did die, we felt it keenly. That's how stories work actually! We felt what Ed felt. It moved us. It's not a bad thing that Izzy's arc made him more likeable to fans before his death. It's not a bad thing to lose a beloved character - guess what, it happens constantly in stories - and it's not bad to grieve over it either, but to say that it made his journey pointless is just not true. People saying that Con must be upset that they snatched his character away from him after getting to develop him so much - again I say, would you rather him have died in ep 2 before he had the chance to grow? Or how about in s1, when the crew tried to mutiny? How'd you feel when Stede killed him in his dream, in the very first scene of the season? I think Con's probably glad for the opportunity to have explored this character so much in season 2. Ask him if he thinks it was pointless.

Killing off Izzy was bad for queer rep/burying your gays/"Izzy was the queer heart of the show"

I'm putting 'bury your gays' on the top shelf so people can't use it when it doesn't actually apply. Most of the main cast of characters in this show are queer, and it's a show about pirates with a good amount of violence. Ergo, chances are a queer character will die in the course of Things Happening In Stories. Izzy didn't die because he was queer, and he wasn't the token queer rep. Please turn your attention to the boatloads (literally) of queer characters that are happy and thriving (how about the LuPete wedding immediately afterwards??). As for Izzy being the "queer heart of the show," this is literally the Ed and Stede show. You know, the two queer leads whose queer love the show revolves around, per David Jenkins himself. I'm glad folks connected with and derived joy from Izzy's growth and especially his performance in Calypso's birthday, but he is not the main character of the show. The queer heart of the show is in fact, the entire show, all of their characters and the community & found family they create aboard the Revenge. Not to mention the fan community as well. Izzy was never carrying the show's representation on his back, and frankly that's an absurdly wild take to have (esp when he spent most of s1 actively working against the main queer relationships in the show, attempting to maintain the oppressive status quo of pirate society).

It was bad and irresponsible to have a suicidal character die

Are we forgetting the entire first half of the season where Ed, who was suicidal, kept trying to passively kill himself because he felt he was an unlovable monster, only to be shown that he is in fact loved unconditionally and it gives him the strength to fight for life and triumph against his own self-doubt? The show has spent quite a lot of effort telling viewers that despite feeling damaged or broken you are worthy of love and that you are loved even if it may be hard to see it when you're in a bad place. That you don't need to be fully healed to deserve love and care, and that love and support will help you along your journey. It's incredibly wild to disregard this major plot point and fundamental message of s2 to try and spin this the opposite way for Izzy's character.

Secondly, where are people getting 'Izzy is suicidal' from? Are we going back all the way to episode 2, when he's at his lowest point and fails at his suicide attempt, only to be figuratively reborn after removing the metaphorical rotten leg? By the time of the finale he's shown to be in a good place, thanks to the arc of healing and growth he's gotten, through the support of the Revenge crew and his 'breakup' with Blackbeard allowing him to find his own way in life, realizing he doesn't need a purpose to have value and enjoying his time on the Revenge and the bonds he's made with Stede and the crew. He is, in the words of Ivan, "the most open and available I've ever seen him" by the finale. To take episode 2 as evidence he's suicidal is to erase his whole season of growth, which is an ironic thing to do in the context of these arguments. There's no canon evidence Izzy Hands was suicidal post-'Fun and Games'.

As for 'irresponsible,' once again I say, David Jenkins is not your therapist, he's not 'Dad,' and has no responsibility to tell his story any other way than he intended to tell it. Please find media that gives you what you want or need, and if the death of a fictional character causes you this much distress please seek help. I mean this kindly but seriously.

Killing off Izzy was ableist/bad for disability rep.

I point once again to the rest of the characters, several of which are disabled in varied ways. There are literally multiple other amputee characters specifically. It's not good storytelling to wholly avoid killing off any character that is disabled/queer/poc/female or [insert marginalized group here], especially when a) it makes sense narratively, and b) there's plenty of representation of these groups in the media in question. The answer isn't making such characters invincible and immortal, it's increasing the number of these characters in shows so it's not devastating when some do die in the course of natural storytelling.

OFMD was my comfort show/safe space show, now it's ruined for me

I am not trying to be insensitive here when I say that's a problem that is yours and nobody else's. David Jenkins created this show with a three-season vision and a story in mind, and he is telling that story to the best of his ability the way he wants to. It's already been said that he and the crew did not anticipate the fandom becoming as large and passionate as it has. The plot of the show was never intended to be 'fan service,' and it's ironic that there were people complaining this season that there's been too many fanservice tropes, up until David and the rest of the writers room made a narrative decision they did not like, then the complaints changed to not coddling the fans enough.

We as viewers can derive joy from this show, it can be a comfort to us, it can be important to us. But it was not designed specifically for that purpose, therefore it cannot fail in that respect. We do not have the right to harass writers for not steering the ship in the direction we want - it's their work of art, and we can choose to either come along for the ride or not. It's rare to see creators actually given the chance to tell their story the way they intend (budget cuts aside), so let him do that. He should not cater to fans, or cave and change the story to appease us. Respect his right to create his art, and remember you have the right to create your own. That's what fanfiction is for - write fix-its to your heart's content, but keep these realms separate. David Jenkins and Co hold zero, and I mean zero, responsibility to you. He could not please everyone no matter what he did, it would be fruitless to try, and it would certainly compromise the quality of the story he set out to tell.

You are absolutely allowed to dislike choices made in any show. Curate your media experience. If this show no longer brings you joy, stop watching. But it was never David's purpose nor responsibility to juggle the mental health of millions of fans. Trying to put that on him will only make him less enthusiastic about interacting with fans or continuing to make this show. This isn't rocket science. You're responsible for yourself, not this guy you call 'Dad' that you've developed a parasocial-therapist relationship with.

Izzy should have become captain of the Revenge.

Really?? Firstly, we did actually get that already in s1. He was tyrannical and the crew mutinied. But even if you think 'well after his character arc he'd be better suited to it,' it goes against the point of this arc. He's found value in not having a distinct role or purpose on the ship, decoupling his worth from the job he's expected to perform. He's found his place amongst the crew, not commanding it. There's no narrative reason to put him in charge when he's expressed no further interest in slotting himself back into a role full of pressure and expectations.

Con O'Neill was only told halfway through filming, it's cruel to just kill off the character he loves so much.

Guys, he's an actor. More than that, an actor with a theater background. I think he's used to characters dying. You don't need to look out for him. Con and David spoke one on one about it at length so they were on the same page, and David even said that Con took it well. I'm sure Con had input, just as other members of the cast have influenced their characters' stories, costumes, backstories, etc. Do you really think David Jenkins hurt Con's feelings or something? The writers (remember, it's not just David, it's a whole team of hard-working people coming up with these ideas) gave Con such a chance to shine this season, really developing Izzy beyond what he was given in s1 and letting Con show off his full acting range. Why are you only focusing on the destination rather than the journey? Sure, Con's probably sad to see Izzy go, but please do not project your distress onto him or try and accuse David & Co of being 'cruel' to their cast. That's really ridiculous. It's constantly evident how close they all are.

More importantly, do you actually, seriously think that Con O'Neill would want fans to harass each other or the writers over his character? The man who preaches being kind above all? There is no better way to make an actor uncomfortable about a show and its fanbase than to start treating fictional characters like they're more important than real people. He would not want you to bully people over Izzy Hands, and it's mind-boggling that some of you have convinced yourself otherwise.

Lastly, I just want to talk about the fact that some people are holding OFMD to absurdly high expectations.

Our Flag Means Death has been a pioneer series for its diverse representation, earnest storytelling, and themes of hope, community, and love. It's fine to discuss aspects of the show with a critical eye, but so much of the discourse has truly felt like folks are trying to find fault in a show that is leagues ahead of the average tv series that we still enjoy. How many fan favorites are killed off all the time? How many plotlines are scrapped, or drawn out without closure, or contradicted the very next season? How many shows are indifferent or actively hostile towards their fanbase? How many have any queer characters, or actually do bury them? The bar's so low, and OFMD has risen above to give us so much. Some are holding the show to astronomical expectations, waiting for it to fall from the pedestal it's been placed on. If something you don't like happens in the show, it's not suddenly ruined or demoted to being ~just as bad as those other shows~. Give them some breathing room, have some perspective on how progressive the show is, and that perfection is impossible, especially meeting every single viewer's idea of it. This is basically a repeat of the recent Good Omens drama, with an absurd number of people harassing Neil Gaiman for breaking up Aziraphale and Crowley and leaving the second of three acts on a very predictable cliffhanger. Let stories be told, let them unfold as they may, and you are free to leave anytime. It's so wonderful that more queer love stories are becoming popular and even mainstream, but let's not shoot ourselves in the foot by tearing them down when they don't go exactly the way you want it, which often seems to mean no drama, no character deaths, and therefore no conflict or even plot!

Just, please be civil human beings, and while this seems to be a difficult thing for so many fandoms to do, just keep your fan opinions in the fan space. Never bring your grievances to the writers, never bully them and persecute them for telling a story that you opted into viewing. That's something that goes entirely against everything this show, and this cast and crew, have imparted onto us - the importance of kindness, support, community, and love. I'll say it again because it bears repeating: the fate of a fictional character is never more important than how you treat real people. Just be kind in real life, which includes the internet. Thanks.

Now please, let's work together to ensure we get a season 3. There's so much more story to be told, and if you want to see Izzy back, whether that's as flashbacks, as a ghost haunting the inn, or in the gravy basket, we'll need more episodes! #RenewAsACrew

#our flag means death #ofmd #ofmd s2 #ofmd s2 spoilers #and after this i will speak of it no more ok #now once we're all calmed down i am really looking forward to meta about izzy's role in the narrative #i truly think izzy's one of the most well written characters on not just this show but on tv lately in general #suicide mention tw #I tried to put a read more under the first bullet point but tumblr's formatting basically deleted it #by automatically overriding it with an Expand #so sorry about the length and such

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willowser · 2 years ago

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i've never really put much thought into actual dragon dragon-king bakugou, but — what if —

you meet him for the first time in king todoroki's arena — on what you assume to be the last day of your life. over something menial like stealing a porkbun or something, and now his grace has decided that a trial-by-combat is a fitting punishment for you crimes.

only your opponent is a massive, hulking, fire-red dragon.

and you're not the only one thrown in there; a few other vagrants and miscreants, too, and they — stupidly — rush off to meet their own deaths as they try to strike him down with the blunt swords and dented shields you'd been thrown by the guards before they sealed you to your fate.

the dragon is chained up, of course, like a prized possession for the king. a large collar with inward curving spikes around his neck, which have worn scars into his scales, as well as some metal contraption around his maw to keep it shut. it doesn't hinder him useless, though, and when he tries to fly up and away from the amphitheater, the force of his wings sends you all rolling backward.

despite the fact that he's maiming people with the spines on his tail and bashing them into mush with the weight of his head — you can't help but to feel bad for him, trapped in an arena, put on display for people to taunt and laugh at. the chains look heavy, the muzzle tight; you wonder if his wings could even carry him anymore.

so you decide that the only way for you to live through this, if at all, is if you can manage to get this big boy off the ground.

while the other competitors fight the dragon for their lives, you instead rush for the chains that are nailed into the walls of the arena and smash at them with the rounded end of a shield. every time he jerks his head this way and that, or rears back on his legs, wings flapping wildly, the wall he's nailed to becomes looser and looser, starts to crumble and fall away.

and just as he turns to you — his last foe — it breaks free, and you swear, you swear, those big, red eyes of his narrow, brow furrowing, before he's jerking the chain twice. tugging it noisly, almost to get your attention.

you grab onto it just before he takes to the sky.

the rush of air is so cold and stinging that your eyes water, and you hold onto the lifeline as you're carried up and away from the kingdom, over the entirety of it, far enough that he can land safely without getting charged by the guards.

when you both hit ground, you think you're going to puke, especially as he stands tall and stretches his wings like he hasn't been able to for years — but instead of smashing you, too, to a clump in the grass, he only leans his head down to you, nudges you hard enough that you topple over.

you're still clinging to the shield and you use the edge on the nails of his muzzle, too, twisting them loose so that the iron falls away and he can stretch his jaw. show off his long, very sharp teeth that could easily tear you to bits.

and yet he doesn't. doesn't even try.

it'll be harder to get the collar off his neck, but he watches you with his slit eyes, brow arched menacingly, and nudges you to the long length of his neck. huffs until you're grabbing the spines and hauling yourself up onto him, like some kind of impossibly large horse.

and you continue on like that, for a bit; he finds a field of wild bulls and eats nearly all of them, maiming one for you before setting it aflame; you try to gather little shiny things for him, because you've heard dragons like treasure and you want to keep him, but he doesn't seem too interested; you have no family to return to, having grown up alone on the king's streets, and he becomes all you have.

you begin to feel like some chosen one from the fairytales you've heard spoken by firelight. the dragon bakugou stays with you, and the only reason you can fathom is that, maybe, he feels indebted to you — but you've saved one another, and that's what matters.

the night everything changes is when you're deep in the forest, camped up near the edge of a clear-water spring. the dragon bakugou grows lazy, curled around the perimeter of the water with his long neck and — he's a male dragon, you know, but you've got to wash yourself eventually.

you do feel a bit odd, undressing yourself as he watches, but you assume it's only out of plain and simple curiosity that he does; you assume that's why he does anything, for you, like allowing you to lay near his head when you sleep or huffing in your face until you laugh when you try to wrap your arms around his nose.

you try to pay him — an animal, a creature of fantasy — no mind as you dive below the surface, enjoying the refreshing rush of water over your skin. when you reach the bottom, tangle your hands in the gentle weeds, you feel a pang of sadness, that he might never experience such a feeling.

but when you return to the surface — he's gone.

in place at the water's edge is the collar you've never been able to loosen. rusted and creaking, looking much larger off his neck and alone in the grass, and your stomach lurches with a thousand horrible possibilities of what could have happened until —

"oi."

until you turn around and there is a massive, hulking man, naked as the day he came, with eyes the color of the scales that are dotted along his skin in stray patches. crowned in a mess of ashen hair, scars along his neck and face and arms—one of which is inked in some symbol you may have seen once. on those travellers, from the southern clans.

he, the man bakugou, you realize, has no concept of personal space — or the fact that he's totally naked and so are you — and he wastes no time in crowding into you. even rushing, a little, when you squeal and try to clamber back up the bank for your clothes.

like a stubborn boy, he pushes you into the dirt and even grins, evil and mischievous, with human teeth. you have no idea what to expect of him; men have never been too kind to you, afterall, someone without a home or family and easy to be rid of.

but he, the man bakugou, only nudges his face into yours, huffs against your cheek when you squirm, and you think, you think, you can hear some kind of quiet rumbling purr coming from the deep center of his chest.

#suddenly shy about how rushed this is but !! i had to get it out of my head he he #i love him !!!#you turn around and he's there and you're like ????? !!!!! who the hell are you !!! LOL #he doesnt want any ol' shiny thing 🥺 you are his shiny thing 🥺#okay going goodbye for now !! big kiss big kiss !!!#๑ remember me love: bakugou ๑ #✿ willow writes #✿ thoughts: bakugou

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cbrownjc · 7 months ago

Text

My Long IWTV Season 2 Prediction Post:

So this is a long post containing all my (more or less) final predictions for Season 2 of IWTV. Mostly so I can keep track of everything I've been predicting since Season 1 ended.

I'm breaking this all up between General Predictions and some specific Episode Predictions. And I'll put it all under a spoiler cut due to the length and just in case any of this is correct, which would mean massive spoilers. Because yes, many of these predictions are based on things found in many of the books in the VC, not just IWTV; as well as recent trailers and other press material.

General Predictions:

Louis will attempt to end his life like he did in the book Merrick by the end of the season, likely in EP08: This is something that I've been predicting since EP05 of Season 1 first aired. I think it is pretty much my oldest prediction wrt the show, and one I've never wavered from. Now it's time to see if this prediction is right or not.

Lestat is asleep in a coma somewhere in the Al Shafar Tower, and is the source of The Groan: I first made this prediction back before EP07 of S01 aired. I wasn't too confident about it being proven during Season 1, but I think now is the time. Maybe Lestat's in the penthouse. Maybe he's in the basement. Maybe he is on some floor in between, I don't know. But something like The Groan wasn't spoken about as just some throw-away line. There is a reason it was pointed out. And I think that is because Lestat is the source for the sound and makes it sometimes while he is in his post-Memnoch coma state. And what is going to finally wake him up will be Louis doing what I predicted above in my first prediction.

Armand and Daniel's relationship (ie their past romantic relationship) will be revealed in EP08: I've been predicting this more times than I can count during the hiatus. Simply because, as far as general/causal audiences go, revealing it in the finale always just seemed like the most impactful place to reveal it.

The missing pages of Claudia's diaries will reveal the information about her that we learned in the book Merrick, particularly regarding her feelings toward Louis: Via the link above I made a long meta post about that. I'll say more about it below, but in general, why Louis is going to do what he does by the end of EP08 will be because of what he reads/learns from Claudia's missing diary pages, just like as what happened with book!Louis in Merrick.

Louis will begin to awaken his Fire Gift abilities during the season: There is a quick shot in one of the preview trailers of what looks to be Louis setting one of his photographs on fire, but not with a match or candle or anything, but just by staring at it. I think when Louis first discovers he has the ability to light things on fire like that, he'll not be overly excited about it or anything, and only reluctantly test it out sometimes . . . until he unleashes it in full in the season finale against the theater coven.

--------

Episode Predictions (Spoilers):

Episode One (many people have already seen this episode at the premiere, but there is one thing I was already predicting about it before then that I want to say again):

-- Louis and Claudia will not arrive in Paris until either the end of the episode or the beginning of Episode Two.

-- This episode will be a set up to explain how revenants are created. That they are made if you try to turn a human but don't give them enough blood; OR if you don't scatter the ashes of a vampire that has been reduced to one. This will be done to set up both why Claudia's ashes had to be scattered AND the risks being made to bring Louis back either at the end of Season 2 or the beginning of Season 3.

---

Episode Two:

-- Not much to say really that most don't already know/suspect. Louis and Claudia arrive in Paris, and Armand and Louis first meet. Louis and Claudia meet the whole theater coven.

---

Episode Three:

-- Again, not much to say. Armand's full backstory will be told. This is also the main episode where we'll see Nicki and what his fate was. We will probably also get confirmation from Armand that the backstory that Lestat told Louis and Claudia about Magnus and how Lestat said he was turned was true.

credit: gif by @sheisraging

---

Episode Four:

-- Louis and Armand have sex for the first time (with Dreamstat in Louis' head giving commentary 🤪).

credit: gif by @sheisraging

-- The "banquet" scene, where Armand puts the coven members to sleep and Louis and Santiago have a confrontation (Louis looking like he's going to cut Santiago's tongue out.)

-- We will see the rift between Claudia and Louis continue to grow, as well as Claudia's distrust/dislike of Armand.

credit: gif by @sophsun1

---

Episode Five:

-- "Lestat, Lestat, Lestat, Lestat, Lestat, Lestat, Lestat, Lestat." 😂

credit: gif by @loo-nuh-tik

Yeah. We'll see this moment above in Episode 5. And Louis and Armand will basically deliver all their break-up dialogue from the end of the first book HERE, in Louis' shitty apartment in San Francisco; after Louis has attacked and almost killed Daniel.

This means that yes, Louis will confirm to Armand that he knows what Armand did to Claudia here. (With only heavy illusions made about what her ultimate fate has been.) And then Armand will give his "I thought you'd get over it" monologue.

And while Louis and Armand won't fully go their separate ways as they did in the book after all of this (because Armand will still feel he needs to look after Louis), we will very much understand that these two are not a happy couple at this point in time, and are full-on toxic in their own unique way.

credit: gif by @loo-nuh-tik

-- Along with the FULL 1973 interview, The Chase between Armand and Daniel will be shown almost in full. We'll see a lot of things about The Chase, but we will probably not see fully when, or how, it ended.

---

Episode Six:

-- "I betrayed Louis once in my life and it wasn't in San Francisco." Armand says this to Daniel in Dubai in this episode.

-- Madeleine gets turned in this episode.

-- Louis says goodbye/breaks up with Armand.

credit: gif by @hermit-frog

-- "The Last Supper."

credit: gif by @nalyra-dreaming

-- The episode will end with Louis, Claudia, and Madeleine all being taken by the Theater coven to be put on trial. Armand gives Louis a "Judas kiss" and leaves the three alone at the dinner table right before they are taken.

credit: gif by @ofinkandust

---

Episode Seven:

-- Okay so, back when the Jones Cut trailer first aired, I said that this moment was Rockstar Lestat:

credit: gif by @virginiaisforvampires

Well, I was wrong about that. Why? Well take a look at this:

credit: gif by @sheisraging

Do you see it? Behind Santiago, in the upper left. That is the same key prop on the railing as in the shot with Lestat on the right on the railing. If you squint, you can also kind of make out the musical notes on the railing to the left of the Lestat image on the railing on the right in the Santiago one.

The shot of Lestat isn't Rockstar Lestat, as I first thought it was. It is the real Lestat's first entrance into Season 2. And it's going to be at the trial, in Episode Seven.

-- And because Lestat is making his first entrance in the way I talked about above? This is 100% from Armand's POV with some of Louis' misremembered POV with it. Because Lestat was not in any condition to make THIS kind of entrance on his own.

-- The revisit of Mardi Gras Murder Night from EP07 of Season 1 will happen here, during the trial. And it will be revealed that Claudia alone slit Lestat's throat while Louis stood by passively, while Lestat begged Louis to put him in his coffin. (Matching up to what Claudia wrote, in Lestat's blood, what his last words were.) Giving the full context to this moment we only saw in a flash in EP07 of Season 1:

Which will then lead into . . .

-- The revisit of the Louis-Lestat fight from EP05 of Season 1 will be shown in this episode as well. (And will give viewers, particularly non-book readers, their first hints of Amel.) And because of what happened in that fight, specifically why that fight started in the first place, will tie into . . .

-- Claudia's diaries, which will be read at the trial. Out loud. By Santiago. And more specifically the missing pages, which we see Louis and Armand talk about in this preview, will contain some damning evidence that will all lead to . . .

credit: gif by @mundaneandmagicalcreature

-- Claudia will reveal right there, on stage, to Louis himself, how much she hates him and blames him more for her situation than she does Lestat. Because "It's never been about me." Lestat made her for Louis. If Louis hadn't wanted her, she would never have been turned.

-- This episode will end with Claudia's death. Louis will be rescued from his coffin prison by Armand, and the episode will end with Louis breaking down over her loss -- both in the past and in the present in Dubai now that he remembers everything about Claudia's true feelings towards him right before she died.

---

Episode Eight:

-- Louis goes all Carrie/Firestarter on the Theater coven (after warning Armand to stay away first), unleashing his full Fire Gift powers on them all.

credit: gif by @sam-reid

-- Louis grieving in the park -- the same park where he first met Armand -- in the rain after destroying the theater coven, comforted by Dreamstat. And then Armand arrives . . . because Armand is whom Louis was actually waiting for. Why? Because, as Louis said about it in the book --

Where to go then, if not to die? It was strange how the answer came to me.

credit: gif by @hermit-frog

-- Louis and Armand (and Dreamstat) go to the "Louver" for that moment from the book; which in the show has been replaced with someplace else since, post WWII, the Louver was apparently still closed at that time. It will be revealed that Louis knows of Armand's hand in Claudia's fate, shown via Dreamstat's reaction to everything Armand says about what happened.

-- And this will all now tie everything together into what will be alluded to about Claudia -- and Louis knowing Armand had a hand in it whatever it was -- in Episode 5 . . . and this now reveals why Louis and Armand's relationship has not been a happy one at all over the years, as we will see in Episode 5. And this will all be summed up by Louis probably saying this from the book directly to Armand:

"Yes, that is the crowning evil, that we can even go so far as to love each other, you and I. And who else would show us a particle of love, a particle of compassion or mercy? Who else, knowing us as we know each other, could do anything but destroy us? Yet we can love each other."

-- And the "Louver" scene will be the last scene we see Dreamstat in, as it will be here that Armand will tell Louis that Lestat died in the destruction of the theater. And Louis will believe him.

-- Armand, in the present in Dubai, will reveal the head thing he did to Claudia before she died.

-- Armand will reveal how he threw Lestat off Magnus' tower, even after Lestat was badly burned by Louis setting fire to the theater (but survived).

-- we will find out WHY Louis stopped feeding on humans in the year 2000. And it's probably not something anyone expects.

-- At some point in here it will be revealed that Lestat and Louis do reunite after Paris -- for real -- for a time, in the recent past. As seen by this hug:

credit: gif by @nalyra-dreaming

However, something happened that made Lestat unavailable/incapacitated again (some Memnoch-type event is my guess.) So Lestat is now in a coma and Louis, rather than be alone, chooses to stay with Armand for the same reason he did after losing Claudia in Paris.

-- In Dubai, Louis will try to end his life via sunlight exposure, as he did in the book Merrick (as I noted above). Because, along with finally remembering the truth about how Claudia really felt about him, Louis will also be under the impression that Lestat will never wake from his coma again.

-- The bookcase collapsing around Daniel is a consequence of Lestat waking up from his coma after he stops hearing Louis' heart beating. (I.E. a visual representation of Lestat "shattering the realm" as it is apparently explained in the book Prince Lestat about this moment when he woke up in Merrick.)

-- Armand saves Daniel from getting crushed by the bookcase, which will also come tumbling down after the books and glass do.

-- Somewhere in all of that, Daniel will have a flashback that reveals he and Armand were actually lovers in the past. Daniel will be stunned by the memory. Armand will just be surprised that Daniel finally remembered it.

-- Armand and Daniel won't have time to talk about it though because Armand fears/will realize that Louis has done something that caused the commotion to happen (and likely because he also notices The Groan has stopped).

-- Armand and Daniel find Louis' body, burnt to coal ash. Lestat is either already there with Louis' body or arrives very soon after they do.

-- Whether we see Lestat revive Louis (as he was revived in Merrick) at the end of the episode (with Armand's help) or if we are left on a cliffhanger about it? IDK.

--------

The predictions above are all the ones I feel most confident about right now. There are some others I have, but I'm not very confident about them, so I'm not listing them. I might mention them in individual posts after certain episodes air or not.

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readychilledwine · 1 year ago

Text

Slow Hands

Part Two

A/N - Here's the first post for my "Here's to 100" Celebration week. 💙 I'm starting off with something I've received a few requests and messages about.

Warnings - mentions of abuse/trauma, mentions of child abuse, mentions of scars. Smut smut smut. Anal play, pet/master dom and sub dynamic play. Fingering, oral (m recving)/throat fucking. Minors DNI.

Part One

Lyria leaned closer into her mirror, examining the peachy nude lipstick she was wearing one more time before standing up straight and fixing part of her hair.

She was putting so much effort into her looks for a male. Something her brothers would frown upon since they normally praised her natural beauty. She had curled and braided her hair in places before pulling into a messy yet almost flirty, high ponytail. She had done her makeup. She put on expensive perfume.

She was even wearing a dress, something she had not done since being freed from the mountain. She brushed her hands along the baby blue fabric one more time before moving to look herself over in the full length mirror. The dress was one Rhysand had actually bought for her when he first brought her here. He loved the way the color sat on her golden skin tone, how it brought out the red in her hair. He had told her to save the little number for her first date in his court.

She didn't think he had planned on that date being with his brother. She pulled on her heels and put on the earrings she had picked for the night. A soft knock on her door made her heart beat pick up as she made her way over.

She opened the door, allowing Azriel in. "Hey, you're early." He was silent, staring at her with his mouth slightly parted. "Do I look okay? Rhys told me you had picked somewhere really nice, I can change." He grabbed her arm as she moved to go back to her room.

"You look stunning. I just didn't expect," he studied her again. The way the dress hugged her upper body, cinching at her small waist, before flaring out slightly and ending above her knees. Her long legs highlighted by the heels she was wearing. "Gods, you're beautiful."

She smiled softly at him. "You aren't so bad looking yourself." He was dressed in tighter black trousers, a black button up shirt. He had on several rings and a watch. "Let me grab my purse and we can go."

"You don't need your purse." He offered her his arm. "Let's just go get dinner."

—----------

The restaurant Azriel brought her to was an Inner Circle favorite by the Sindra. Faelights and candles adorned the patio they had opted to sit on to enjoy the beautiful summer evening.

He found himself falling into easy conversation with her. They had spoken about his upbringing, how they met Rhys, about how she got into healing.

There was a couple tense topics Azriel wanted to approach with the Heiress, like the topic of her older brothers, of her fathers, of why Rhysand had brought her here and hid her from all of them until now, but he danced around them waiting for her to make an opening. He was tired of waiting though, and needed answers before he put his plan for tonight into action.

"Do you talk to your brothers?" She looked at him a little shocked and blinked. "If you don't mind me asking." She does, a shadow whispered. Gentle.

Lyria sighed, pushing her pasta around her plate. "I speak with Eris and Lucien. I do not talk to the other males I have the unfortunate pleasure of being related to."

Azriel nodded. "What's Eris actually like? Behind that mask and bullshit self defense mechanism?"

Lyria looked at Azriel and sighed softly. "Ask me what you actually want to ask."

"What happened with Mor? Did you have part in it?"

Lyria shook her head. "I was a child when they were engaged. All I remember from that night was Eris had allowed me to ride with him on a border patrol. We found her, and he begged her to let us help. She refused. He asked if he could at least get her somewhere she'd be safer, and could be found because the Autumn forest isn't a good place for people my father deems unworthy."

Lyria sighed again. "He had me use what little knowledge I had on winnowing to get her to the clearing you found her in. He hardly slept that night. I know there were discussions between the two of them before this all happened, some hushed fighting, but Eris protected me from whatever little things he could that would lead to Beron hurting me or using me. Mor included."

Azriel nodded. Slowly processing the added information. "So he isn't lying?"

"Eris is kind, caring, funny. He would have never purposely hurt her." Lyria pushed her plate away. "And your question on Lu?"

"How much has he told you?"

Lyria shook her head again before beginning to play with her hair. "Not much honestly. He's not thrilled we are here together, but he understands I am grown enough to make my own choices."

Azriel nodded again. "Why did Rhys hide you for so long?"

She shook her head and held up her arm, a small bargain tattoo unveiling itself. "I can't tell you that. Can we go? I feel like some of this is better discussed alone."

—---------

Azriel pulled her closer to him as they sat on her couch. Talking had quickly turned into kissing, and kissing to heavy touching. Her nails were currently dragging down his bare chest, shirt long lost in some corner of her house, as he ran his own hands up her bare thighs.

Azriel lifted her, remembering he had wanted to repay a favor, and began walking her down the hallway to the room they were in last week.

It came alive the second they entered. Candles and faelights began to brighten, the sounds of nature setting in softly in the background. The soft smell of jasmine and honey hit his nose. "Why is it so… sensual smelling in here tonight?"

Lyria threw her head back with a soft moan as Azriel moved his kisses down her throat and neck. "Feyre and Rhys booked a couples massage lesson. I taught them little tips and tricks based in pleasure massage, they had champagne and chocolates, went home to try to make baby number two." Az chuckled softly against her throat. "Don't laugh. Couples in Velaris go crazy for my date night packages!"

Azriel kissed her deeply again, beginning to unlace the dress she was wearing. "And when is the last time someone took care of your body, Lyria?"

She knew it was a coded question. He was asking her two things. "It's been a while." She confessed.

"Let me take care of you, little fox. Get undressed. Lay on the table on your stomach." He kissed her gently before leaving the room to give her privacy to undress.

Lyria heated the table and blanket, sighing happily as she allowed the dress to fall and hung it. She got on the table, giggling as a shadow caressed her hair before covering her with a towel and Azriel entered.

Her approached her slowly, hand gently running her upper thigh to her ankle as he began to hold back anticipation over her newly exposed skin. He ran his hand softly back up the other leg, admiring every freckle on her shoulders before pausing to look at the scarring on her back.

She had been beaten with something, he ran a hand down one, the familiar sensation of a burn scar under his finger tips. Something that was on fire. "Who did this to you?"

Lyria sighed, turning to look at him with a brow raised. "Beron. His favorite method to put me in line with was a 9 tail whip. He liked how thin the scars were. If I was being extra defiant, he'd light the whip on fire after force feeding me faebane." She felt Azriel's grip on the table, his knuckles had turned white. Lyria pulled one of his hands to her head, laying it back down, "Start with the scalp and work down."

Azriel took a few stilling breaths, his hand instantly beginning to scratch and pull at her hair gently from the base. She let out a soft nose that brought him back to her, back to this moment. He didn't speak as he began to try to take care of her. He watched as she shivered slightly as he gripped the hair at the base of her neck. "You are beautiful," he whispered to her. "So beautiful."

Lyria moaned as his hands moved down to her neck and shoulders. He watched her shiver again, signaling to him he had found the right amount of pressure. He worked the tension out slowly before moving lower.

Lyria sighed softly as Azriel's hands ran along her back. He was being so gentle with her even if it was clear he didn't exactly know what he was doing.

She moaned as he applied more pressure to a tighter area, causing the male to grin with satisfaction. "Like that, little fox?"

"Just like that," her voice had become breathy, eyes fluttering shut. He was doing the best he could to remember her motions from the week before, copying them as closely as possible.

Azriel was almost desperate to see her fall apart the way he had. He was desperate to repay that favor. He allowed his shadows to begin exploring. Watching as they played in her hair, down her back, over the perfect ass he'd been dreaming about.

His goal was set as she moaned as he moved to another tight area. Lyria was going to cum for him tonight, and he honestly did not care how.

His methods became more focused, he began softer touches, watching as goosebumps danced across her skin. His shadows had begun to play in her hair. She was catching on to what was happening. "Whatcha doin', Az?" Her tone was playful as she lifted herself to peek over her shoulder at the blushing male.

Azriel smirked at her, a scarred hand going under the towel to touch the bare skin of her ass and squeezing it. "Repaying a favor." He started to use methods he knew worked. He began kissing her back and neck, whispering into her ear. "Do you want me to touch you, Lyria?"

"Cauldron boil me," she moaned softly as he bit her shoulder. He smirked as she arched her back slightly into him. He could smell her. The scent of their arousal mixing in the air as he moved his hand lower and closer to her core. A soft whimper left her throat. "Please."

"Please what, princess?"

"Touch me."

Azriel wasted no time, running his fingers on her already soaked core before pushing two into her. He used his other hand to tangle into her soft hair, pulling it to force her back to arch more. "Such a pretty little thing." She moaned loudly as his finger stretched her open.

"Azriel," her voice had gone completely breathy at this point. "Feels so good."

He smirked. "Just wait, princess. Your pretty cunt will feel so good wrapped around me." He pulled his fingers out of her, quickly turning her over on table and pulling her closer to the ledge. His fingers returned to her again, his thumb now joining in his assault on her by brushing against her clit. She had propped herself up on her elbows, watching as Azriel's fingers sunk in and out of her.

She was moaning his name, moaning praise, gasping softly with each delicious pull and push. "Look at me," he said. "Eyes on mine, princess." She looked into Azriel's hazel eyes. "Good girl. Such a good girl. Do you want to cum on my fingers?"

Lyria nodded, her red hair bouncing slightly at the motion. "Please."

"What do I get?" She whined as he curled his fingers into that perfect spot.

"Anything. You can have anything." Azriel hummed, and sped up his hands movements, groaning to himself as he felt her walls twitching around his fingers, tightening in excitement. Lyria was still following his orders, her beautiful eyes locked on his as her mouth fell open.

Azriel leaned forward, pushing her submission to find out exactly what he was dealing with. He grabbed her chin with his spare hand, holding her jaw open as he maintained eye contact with her, and then spit into her mouth. "Swallow." She did. "Cum, little fox." And she did. Lyria felt that coil snap in her stomach. He forced her to keep eye contact with him as she moaned out his name loudly, her toes curling. Shadows began to play along her breasts, pinching and tweaking her nipples causing more stimulation and prolonging her orgasm.

Azriel smirked as she rode his hand through her high, chest heaving. "On your knees. Take my pants off." He removed his fingers from her, pulling them to his mouth to suck them clean as he stepped back.

Lyria obeyed, getting on her knees in front of him and unlacing the tight material. She pulled them down his thighs and removed them, running her hands back up his thighs as she sat and waited. "Mouth open, hands behind your back. Tap my thigh twice if it's too much." He stroked his cock, watching as she got into position and parted her lips for him. "Gods, you are obedient, aren't you?"

"I just want to be your good girl," the soft confession almost made Azriel feel guilty as he pushed himself into her mouth, gripping the back of her head to hold her in place as the base of him.

"And you are." He began to fuck her throat slowly, watching her face as drool and tears began to form. His hands were laced tight into her hair for control as he growled above her. "Look so beautiful with my cock down your throat. Such a pretty little mess." She gagged softly around him. Play. He commanded his shadows, smirking as she moaned loudly at them beginning to trace over her clit, her nipples, dragging themselves between her folds. He picked up speed, watching as her mascara began to run, moaning as he destroyed her.

A familiar tight feeling started in his abs as his wings began to flare more. Azriel ripped her off of him and up before it could go further than he wanted and bent her over the table. "Are you on the tonic?" She nodded, unable to form words as his shadows continued their assault. "Good." Azriel lined himself up and pushed inside of her, head falling back into his shoulders as they both moaned. He grabbed both of her arms, pulling her slightly off the table and forcing her to use her abs to support herself.

He set a fast pace, filling her in a way no male ever had before. Stretching her more than any male had before. Lyria was quickly a mess, moaning his name and meeting his thrusts. "Is that the only word my beautiful little fox knows now? Have I fucked you so dumb already you can only say my name?" The drag of his cock as he teased her made her whimper and nod. "Fucking perfect. You are fucking perfect." Azriel grabbed both of her wrists in one hand. His other hand was squeezing her ass again as she laid back on the table.

"How far can I push you, Lyria? Where's the line?" Azriel began to tease her other hole. "Should we find out, princess?"

A scream of his name as he found that sensitive spot in her cunt was her only response. He could feel her wetness dripping, he could feel her tightening around his cock. He took the chance and pushed his thumb into her ass, chuckling as she moaned his name again. "Azriel, fuck! Please."

"Flithy fucking whore, aren't you?" Lyria nodded, smiling at the accusation. "Should I fuck your pretty ass next time? Gods, I'm going to fucking keep you. Can I keep you baby girl? Lock you up in my cabin in chains and just use this little body? Ill treat you like such a good little pet baby. You will be so spoiled."

Lyria was lost, pleasure building so tightly in her stomach she was going to explode soon. He felt so good inside of her and each groan and growl he released had her body fluttering in feminine pleasure. "Yes, master." Azriel groaned above her. "You can keep me."

He was smirking behind her again. He began thrusting even harder into the overly sensitive spot, growling as she got impossibly tighter around him. "Good little pet." His thumb was moving in time with his cock, he could feel it dragging, adding stimulation for both of them. Lyria was twitching around him, drooling and whispering in his name as over sensitivity set in. "Are you going to cum with my thumb in your ass, pet?"

A harsh thrust came after the question, making Lyria see stars as her toes began to curl again. "Yes, master. Can I cum? Please?"

Azriel growled again, his own orgasm right within reach. "Cum," he commanded. "Cum on my cock. I want to feel you fall apart on me."

She came with a scream of his name, Azriel roaring behind her as he also fell over the edge with that final stimulation of her walls fluttering around him. "That's it, pet. There you go." The hand holding her wrist dropped them, guiding her soft pushing against his hips to pull him further into her. "Good girl, Lyria." He pulled his other hand out of her, resting it by her waist as he ran the other up and down her back. "Took me so well, baby."

Lyria shuttered at the praise. Her eyes shut as she came down fully. "We should do this again." Azriel nodded in agreement, pulling out of her slowly and grabbing the towel on the table to clean both of them.

Lyria turned as he threw it into the hamper and froze. Azriel looked at her his brows knitted in confusion. "What's wrong? Are you hurt?" Then he felt it. Azriel froze as well as he stared at her. A snap happened between the both of them causing his breath to hitch and hers to still.

The string connecting them was golden and sparkling. He pulled her to him instantly, hand holding the back of her hair as he began to cry happily into her head. "You have no clue how long I've been looking for you." He kissed the top of her head, then her forehead, then each cheek and nose. He finally kissed her lips. Lyria kissed him back, just as eager and smiled as he pulled back, resting his forehead against hers. "Maybe we can do this again in a couple days, but minus the sex? Just spend time together?"

She nodded at his offer, trying to ignore her growing glowing skin. "I'd like that a lot."

"Do you always glow after sex?"

He smiled as she blushed. "No. I glow when I'm happy."

#acotar #acotar x reader #azriel #azriel acotar #azriel x reader #azriel x vanserra!oc #azriel x oc #azriel fic #readychilledwine's heresto100 celebration

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pix-writes · 2 months ago

Note

Uhhhh Stan adopting a teenage runaway who came from an abusive home. (He sees a lot of his past self when he was homeless in them and vows to save them from the life he had)

This is kind of adjacent to an idea for a fic I've already had! But I couldn't resist doing a little bit about this scenario! <3

Stan has already basically adopted Wendy and Soos already, even without fully meaning to with Soos he sees that he needs a father figure in his life and sort-of does the best he can to be that. With Wendy, its different too because it's basically canon that he just lets her get away with stuff because he knows she needs somewhere away from home to relax (even tho he could definitely get another employee who doesn't bunk off so much). Will he admit that's what he's doing though? Of course not!

Despite his exterior/persona, though, Stanley Pines is a kind man who wants to help people who most need it - like you say, he's been in that position enough times himself. I'm sure there's been the occaisonal person who's helped him out in the past, even if they never stuck around. Well, now he's Mr Mystery, he can sort-of be that person for others, not just because he's more stable, but also because he desperatly wants connection, especially after losing his brother in the portal (though that's also a reason to keep everyone at arms length to an extent, so they can never find out about his double life).

Runaway teen & Stan pines (under cut):

I can imagine you ran away from home and come across Gravity Falls, perhaps you had even seen the ads for tourist stops in this area, or maybe you just found the most random small town on your travels and decided to stop there - your travels are erratic so that no one can follow you or suspect you of being a runaway. Not that you really expect your parents to be concerned, at least not for long. That's why you had to get away and stay gone, you had reached your breaking point for what you could handle.

It starts to rain, you go to the local diner but your travel money is fast becoming less and less... you only order coffee, nursing it there for as long as possible, but when business starts to pick up you realise just how small of a town it is, everyone seems to know nearly everybody around here! You've already gotten a few curious glances or greetings put your way and you decide to leave.

Wandering around, you end up on the outskirts of town, there's a fair few campsites around, now lying half empty since its off-season right now, maybe you coud stay on the edge of the forest somewhere? Pinch some tent equipment from somewhere or from someone who doesn't need it? You already had a sleeping bag, water bottle, a torch. You just needed something to keep more of the rain off of you!

That's when you wander into an opening within the forest, notice the wooden signs nailed to the trees. You see a small group of tourists being spoken to by some guy, his voice carrying across the place, gravelly and jovial, and in your surprise you just stare dumbfounded - this place isn't closed? The group is moving and you take in your surroundings and you're so cold and wet and hungry, you're not really thinking ahead when go in, pulling your hoodie down over your face and sneaking in beind the throng of people, unnoticed.

But it turns out that you had been noticed, after the bizarre tour of this overpriced tourist trap, you lurk behind, the rain hasn't let up outside and you're wondering when the place might close, now that the tourists had filtered out the place was pretty dead, which is when a large hand lands on your shoulder making you jump out of your skin and your eyes land on the proprietor.

"Hey! You gonna at least buy anything, kid?"

You apologise and stutter, feeling like you want to bolt but totally caught at the same time. Stan immediately picks up on the fact that you're so twitchy, even for a teen. He eases up on you, switching to a friendlier tone. Wendy asks you where you're staying, curiosity getting the better of her usually nonchalant demeanour. You tell them you just got lost from the campsite and Stan isn't buying it one bit but Wendy has given you the directions and you're out of the door. The interaction doesn't sit right with him. He knows exactly where you're hiding out by the time you've stayed there overnight. Having discovered the pop up tent you 'found' set up in the woods not far away.

He decides to keep an eye on you, he's worried being direct will make startle you, like a deer in headlights, at the diner he doesn't acknowledge you at first just pushes a plate of food subtly towards you, for you to swipe. After that he manages to make small talk, hes still wondering how he can help you, what excuse he can make so it seems like he's offering you something and it be believable instead of suspicious.

Maybe he complains there's no one around to do the stock take now that summer is well and truly over, you perk up, saying you'd like some extra pocket money. You come right on time and the owner of the Mystery Shack introduces himself properly, shows you what you need to do. You take your time, living rough has made you exhausted mentally/physically, and because... you've begun to like the place as kooky as it is. And wouldn't you know it, Mr Pines has made more food than he expected and wouldn't you like some? You come back the next day and its pretty much the same, though you are starting to pick up on where Stan is subtly gaining information on you. He both curses and admires how whip-smart you are, reminds him of himself a lot further into being homeless than you are (reminds him of someone else too...), he worries that night of whether you'll have run off, if you'd get into trouble somewhere else, but you return the following afternoon. This time, Stan levels with you -

"Look kid, I don't know what's going on at home and trust me when I say I get it - but whatever's going on, it's probably not worth staying out in the woods, epseically 'round here, it's dangerous!" He reassures you he's not going to call anyone, though, just asks you to reconsider, think about how much trouble you might get into, if you don't turn up to school how you're going to explain yourself, how are you going to get a job? You swipe frustrated tears from your eyes and thank him for being concerned, though its hollow. How can you return home now? All you're going to get is more abuse, you can only think of how angry they'll all be if you did!

You end up wandering to some other town, using the money Stan gave you to get a bus and find a place to stay, having seen a load of jobs you could apply for. Turns out though, that some of your family had been looking for you and tracked your phone, you end up in a fight with them, receiving a hard slap to the face before running away once more! You pack up your things and head straight to the first place you think of.

Once you get there, its dark, you hesitate before knocking but you've came all this way. When Stan opens the door all of the shock and adrenaline has seemed to have worn off and you see the mix of sadness, surprise and anger on his face at the clear mark on your face from the fight.

"I'm sorry, I didn't know where else to go." Is all you can get out before bursting into tears. He let's you stay, you've been out in the cold and so stressed over this time that when you come in you're shivering, you end up running a nasty fever. You're so exhausted there's nothing left but to accept your fate and Stan feels he must help you. He piles on the blankets and gives you hot drinks and plain food till the fever runs its course.

He still has a bit of trouble with authorities/some family members looking for you in the area, you traded your old phone in for another and Stan was eventually able to brush them off your trail. He couldn't help it, he liked the kid in the small amount of time he knew them and it was clear that you had danger waiting for you at home. You had told him a little after the first night you had stayed at the shack, words tumbling out of your mouth about your trauma, how you couldn't stand your family. His heart sank as he remembered his own life as a young man, a kid technically, homeless and making ends meet and was determined you wouldn't have the same fate. Yet he had to know you were sure.

"You really want to stay here - in this boring ol' town? At the shack?" You were determined you would, as long as he was okay with that, you vowed to work hard, sweep the floors, keep an eye on the gift shop when Wendy couldn't, anything to be useful. But, you didn't want him to get into trouble. Too little too late for that, he thought to himself.

"But, really do ya want to see this ugly mug every day?" He said gesturing to his face. That brought a slight smile to your face, in fact you ended up giggling and he knew he wouldn't be able to get rid of you now (like he ever would've entertained it).

He sighed. "So, do you trust me? Cause I need some kind of story if ya gonna stay here, kiddo."

He needed a lot more than that of course, he ended up getting you a fake ID and if anyone asked, you were family, here to stay for a while. When people asked anything more than that he got cagey, but he liked thinking of you being a Pines, another part of the family. Part of him felt guilty for doing it too, faking that you had the same last name, he still thought you might not want to stick around, you weren't blood family to him, you had no ties to him, but he wanted family so badly, was it so bad to pretend that you were?

He made sure you got to school, he even started to pack you lunches every day, he wasn't so bothered about homework, saying he didn't think much of school when he went anyway, you both had something more important than that (street smarts!), but when you were struggling with your math homework you were surprised that he semmed to know an awful lot, but then again you probably shouldn't be surprised, he did own a business after all. Whilst there wasn't a lot to do around the Mystery Shack all year round, you still found yourself picking up around the house part of the Shack, doing the laundry, washing the dishes, normal chore stuff - isn't that what teens were supposed to do? Stan was surprised to see a teen do chores unprompted and you were nervous that you'd done something wrong, because why else would he be questioning you? He recovered quickly though and just grumbled out something about 'finally, someone who knows how to pick up after themselves/work' but from the expression on his face, you are relieved to know that he is joking with you and he isn't mad. You're picking up on his quirks.

The months roll by and you started to feel safer, the shack became more familiar, you were less frightened and jumpy, people in town were more friendly, familiar faces and if people knew that you weren't actually related, that you were a runaway, they didn't say anything at all. You were starting to be referred to as 'Stan's kid'. No one had said so in front of Stan so far as you knew, it made you feel some residual guilt, even after all that you're family had done, were you really not a burden to Stan? Was it wrong to see him like a parent? What would you do if he no longer wanted you around? But as much as you were scared of being rejected, a situation came up at the Shack at the beginning of your first summer in the falls. A gathering was forming for a tour and some tourist had asked something or assumed he was your parent, something like that. Unbeknownst to you Stan had heard and he freezed, unconsciously waiting on your response.

"Oh, you'll wanna ask my dad, he's the one over there in the fez?" It just slipped out, you should've said Mr Mystery at work, but you couldn't help the feeling in your chest that it was right. Ever since then you had been tentatively saying it (you eventually start to notice how when you knew Stan had heard it he seemed a little emotional) and Stan now proudly referred to you as 'his kid'. You may or may not call him 'dad' to his face, maybe you'll still just call him 'Stan' but it seems like now you officially have a family!

#answered ask #anon ask #pix replies #stanley pines x reader #stan pines x you #stanley pines imagine #gravity falls imagine #platonic relationship #runaway teen reader #me: ok i'll write a little something about this #also me: writes a whole essay about this ask!#I just have a lot of feelings about stan :L #stan isn't who he says he is; updated to - stan and his child #as someone with a stepdad who I wished could've adopted me when I first met him this only feels right in my heart #found family my beloved #Wendy: did you just call Mr Pines dad?#Stan: do you see me as a father figure?#Reader rolling their eyes: no I see you as a bother figure! cuz ur always bothering me!#Soos: Dood show some respect to our dad - I mean your dad! :L #Stan wondering how he ended up adopting all these stray kids: I'd fire you all if I could ;w;

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imagineredwood · 4 months ago

Text

4. First conversations alone

I'm gonna do quick little soft drabbles with which ever character speaks to me from this prompt list. I'm not doing requests for them, just little blurbs to get back into writing more often. Especially that I could just throw together in a few minutes when/if I find downtime at work lol.

Edit: Not this turning into an almost regular length fic 🧍🏻‍♀️

“Mind if I join you?”

EZ stood up straight, droping the random beer can back onto the floor so he could turn around and look at you. He smiled when he recognized you, his head tilting.

"Join me in picking up trash?"

He chuckled but you only shrugged, the shy smile still present on your lips.

"Sure. Why not?"

Your words threw him a bit, not really ever having spoken to you apart from quick small talk, practically yelled over the music in the clubhouse. When he found the time to talk that was, the life of being a prospect not an easy one. He always thought maybe you were just trying to be nice. Perhaps felt bad for him always getting the shit jobs. Maybe that was true, but still, here you were offering to help him long after the rest of the people who hung around had gone home. EZ nodded a few times, a bashful smile on his face that mirrored yours.

"Yeah, ok. But you hold the bag. Don't want you getting your hands dirty."

You obliged and took the garbage bag from his hands, walking around with him, holding it open for him to toss the trash into.

"How much longer do you have to do this? Angel said you're getting close to a year."

EZ threw in a paper plate and nodded.

"Yeah, three months or something like that."

You smiled and shook the bag, letting everything settle.

"That's good. You work hard."

EZ stayed bent over but looked to the side over at you, brows raised. Your shoulders shrugged as you laughed, embarrassed.

"I've just seen how much you run around at the parties. Never really get a break much. But you always have a smile anyway."

He stood upright, both gloved hands holding a cracked solo cup. He walked it over to you and tossed it into your bag, eyes stuck on yours. Your gaze was warm.

"It suits you."

EZ could feel the heat rising to his cheeks and he laughed, casting his eyes down.

"Well thank you."

You smiled softly, tying the bag up with your eyes down too, that warm feeling starting to spread in your chest.

"You're welcome."

General taglist (tagged in all work)

@piccasoe @ateliefloresdaprimavera @woahitslucyylu @everyhowlmarksthedead @glimmerglittergirl @fanaticfangurl21 @encounterthepast @svintsandghosts @starrynite7114 @destynelseclipsa @queenbeered @iamthegraham @emoengelfurleben @all-the-boys-to-the-yard @otomefromtheheart @rosieposie0624 @papa-geralt-of-cirilla @beeroses @weirdosandhopelessromantics @kola95

@cruzwalters @myakai13 l @lyly00 @Zsakaystacks17 @cole-winchester @alexxavicry @savagemickey03 @fanfic-n-tabulous @xbloodyxangelx @carma-fanficaddict @gillysoldlady @choochoo284 @whitetxilwxlf @ravennaortiz @flowercrowns-goodvibes

Mayans MC taglist

@dazzledamazon @briana-mishell24 @wrcn9fvlcver @thesandbeneathmytoes @krysiewithak @appropriate-writers-name @blessedboo @megapeacelovemusic-blog @emoengelfurleben @blowmymbackout @abby-splace @kola95 @redpoodlern @myakai13 @cruzwalters @po3ticb3auty @im-just-a-mississippi-girl @angel-121 @fanfic-n-tabulous @carma-fanficaddict

#mayans mc #mayans imagine #ez reyes #ez reyes x reader #soft!ez

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batsplat · 6 months ago

Note

This line made me sooooo insaneeeeee

BUT ITS TRUE

they did not expect it from each other

You mention that after sepang 2015 that marc refused to take it lying down and retaliated, would you say that one some level vale expected him to just take it?

And also could you please recount events in which marc also waged mind warfare on other people after the divorce™ I think that the psychological aspects of his style are so incredibly interesting like how in le mans, bezzechi kind of crashed out and how viñales mentioned in post race interview how " when he heard marc's bike he knew it was over"

Thank you for your very valuable contributions to motogpblr, you enrich the experiences of all

right. right! following on from this post... fair warning: 'what was valentino's plan in sepang 2015' and 'what mind games has marc cooked up over the years' are two questions that don't exactly lend themselves to concise responses, though I've done my best to edit this down to a somewhat more palpable length. so *cracks knuckles*. let's do this

first off, sepang 2015. yes, marc did very much refuse to lie down and, yes, he did instead very much retaliate. I'm not sure if I'd say valentino expected marc to 'take it' exactly, though the hope would have been that it would a) make him more cautious around valentino, b) throw him off-balance, and c) make him more error prone. I mean, certainly you'd have to assume he didn't expect marc to react like that because.... well. otherwise, why would valentino have done it? yes, he has repeatedly alluded to having wanted race direction or dorna or whoever to step in, but those guys infamously aren't particularly proactive. and, let's just pretend for a second here that marc really had been plotting to ruin valentino's title - what are you going to do about it if you're the ones responsible for enforcing the rules? even after sepang, when it was reasonable to suggest marc had been messing with valentino in that race specifically, there was only so much they could do. sure, the main reason they didn't penalise marc was because he'd crashed and had in essence already been penalised. but if you want a more drastic penalty, then you're going to have to show that marc is doing something emphatically illegal. I mean, it's not like race direction penalised valentino when he was racing jorge in what can only be described as a cheerfully malicious manner in motegi 2010, at a time when jorge was close to sealing that year's title and the two of them were racing for *squints at notes* p3. they can't actually stop you from being a little shit, you know

this line of argument might be ascribing too much rationality to valentino's actions - maybe he was hoping race direction would do something. it's worth pointing out that one of valentino's later comments (from march 2016) to my reading suggests that valentino had already spoken to race direction several races before sepang about marc's behaviour, but they didn't listen to him. the sepang presser then constitutes an attempt to publicly force their hand... except it still wasn't enough. and a part of valentino surely must have already known it was going to go wrong after saturday's qualifying. the incidents during the practise sessions that weekend weren't particularly egregious, but they involved two riders who were both clearly willing to play games with each other (including in some towing-related shenanigans). crucially it's not really the type of thing that would happen if one rider had been spooked so badly they're making sure to ride on eggshells around the other bloke. at the end of the day, valentino thought he could unnerve and disorientate and unsettle marc - and if you're being generous you could say he at least picked the right target. marc had broadly demonstrated he could be unsettled that year, which jorge had very much not

if you're being less generous you could say 'but it's crazy he's doing this to the bloke who isn't even his title rival'. which is the whole problem from valentino's perspective - he simply couldn't engage jorge in direct combat (and again, this does make it more remarkable he even got it to valencia given one of his big big strengths in title fights was being completely neutralised). jorge has been involved in plenty of great battles over the years, but his 2015 title was won purely on raw pace and having just enough tracks where he was fast and it wasn't raining for things to work out in his favour. it was marc who valentino was continually getting into fights with, whether at argentina or assen or silverstone or... well, even phillip island, valentino fights marc a hell of a lot more than he does jorge. which makes for a weird championship in a lot of ways, but also makes it a bit inevitable that valentino ends up disproportionately focused on a bloke who isn't actually his title rival

if you want to be even less generous, you can say it was a rather radical misread of marc's character from a man who (any conspiracy theories aside) has always seemed to understand marc pretty well. like, this is the thing right, obviously hindsight is 20/20 and all that but can you really imagine any universe in which marc hadn't done something roughly along the lines of what he did that weekend? in a way, this is probably the bit that bothers me the most about the whole thing, just feels like it couldn't have ever achieved what valentino intended it to. I can excuse breaking the heart of the kid who hero worships you, but I draw the line at being kind of dumb

the way I'd break it down is by looking at why he was in a headspace in which he wasn't making good choices, and then consider what his actual thought process (however irrational) might have been. so on the one hand, you've got all the contributing factors that explain the poor decision-making process, that explain why he wasn't thinking clearly. on the macro level, you have the arc of his career and what this title meant to him and how it fits into his desire to win on his own terms and prove everyone wrong and all of that. you have the pressures of that specific season and how it had gradually gotten more and more intense post-assen, the influence of the people around him and how they had allowed/contributed to him getting increasingly distracted from the actual riding as the season went on. this factor obviously includes the man who actually presented valentino with the phillip island telemetry and had seemingly been badmouthing marc for more than two years. you have the arc of valentino's relationship with marc, his belief that marc was a sore loser who only played nice with valentino while he was winning and who valentino thought he had been more than generous to in response to marc's lack of composure earlier that season. this eventually coalesced into a mental list of all the times that year valentino felt marc had fought him differently than he would anyone else, from argentina to assen to silverstone to misano to, of course, phillip island. you have the compressed time scale - four days from the race at phillip island to the presser in sepang, at a time at which valentino will have been at his most exhausted and spent after the travails of first motegi and then phillip island at the closing stages of the toughest season of his career. it's this that creates the sense of urgency, the need to do something now to stop the opportunity from slipping away. and then, of course, on the micro level you have the actual details of the supposed conspiracy that relied on the specifics of how the race at phillip island ended up unfolding... of tyre management and seagull murder and fluctuating lap times and suspicious late race pace and a perfect last lap

which, okay, I think it's fairly obvious that valentino wasn't thinking clearly. but he still must have been intending the presser to do something, something that was different from what it actually ended up doing. now, the way this works in my head is that valentino basically did the equivalent of pressing a big red button labelled 'chaos'. if you do what he does in the presser, that's the inevitable outcome, right: you're ensuring this entire weekend is going to be a complete mess. in theory, you're the one person who's had the chance to mentally prepare yourself for that mess, because you're the person who's pressing the button. you're hoping everyone else will be off-balance, distracted... to some extent it's less about wanting to intimidate marc per se (bad idea!) and more about making sure he has other stuff to worry about. maybe you're hoping marc's going to make some mistakes, crash in ways that aren't caused by a movement on your part that looks suspiciously like a kick, be a little out of it all weekend. I mean, marc did have a tendency to hit the deck when under pressure that year. the hope is at the very least he's going to be a little more cautious, so worried about ruining his reputation that he's not going to attack you too hard. basically, hope he does anything other than what he actually ended up doing, aka throwing himself at you again and again in the race in a sort of agonised fury that paid no consideration whatsoever to his reputation, ruined or otherwise

this is where the sepang 2004 parallel is at its most instructive to me. you're giving everyone something to talk about and you know it's going to be the centre of attention that weekend and you just kind of have to hope that the chaos ends up creating an opportunity. and, for a hot second there, it did look like valentino might have been onto something. he qualified on the front row for only the fifth time that season (y'know his qualifying actually got a fair bit better in 2016, presumably because he just wanted to maximise the number of awful vibes pressers) and he outqualified jorge for only the second time that season (again I don't mean to be rude but, jorge, how the fuck did you almost lose that title what were you DOING). it's pretty unfortunate that the very start of the sepang race played out in the exact perfect way to allow dani and jorge to escape while marc and valentino started divebombing each other. this is the thing right, there are lots of ways that race could have unfolded and it basically could not have gone any worse - and it's helped make valentino's initial decision to blow shit up age particularly horrendously

the other underlying explanation is a somewhat more opaque one. people want to feel good about themselves, they want to have a positive sense of identity along several different metrics like self-worth and moral virtue and so on. it doesn't feel good to lose, and it especially doesn't feel good to lose if you've tried really, really, really hard. a lot of sports psychology is about the challenge of managing vulnerability. there is something inherently vulnerable about competing in the public eye: you are trying hard to win but there is always the possibility that you will lose. if you lose with other people watching, you are making your inadequacy public knowledge. this is why athletes search for explanatory mechanisms - maybe they make a public show of how they weren't actually trying hard, about how they don't actually care that much, or maybe there's something they can blame like the machinery or injury or the team not being on their side or whatever. maybe there's someone to blame. a narrative of sabotage allows you to preserve belief in both your own ability and your own self-worth; it is the perfect explanatory mechanism. and to some extent, this type of thing is necessary - you're not going to be able to compete well unless you have high self-belief to the point of delusion, which means you do have to tell yourself all kinds of things to keep the faith. but paradoxically, these explanatory mechanisms are also incredibly dangerous, because you cannot compete to the fullest extent of your ability if you are not throwing yourself into what you are doing in your entirety, without any restraint or self-defence. you have to be open to experiencing the pain of defeat in its rawest form to be at your best. you have to be willing to go to those infamous 'dark places' within yourself to win. the moment you are thinking about how you will explain your defeat, chances are you've already lost

but hey, I've never competed in a motorbike race before, what would I know of the psychology of it all? let's get the words of someone who should know a little more than me:

Looking back, what I said about wanting a bike that could win at Welkom, well, that was a way of boosting morale, an attempt at wishful thinking. You can't demand something like that. And even if you get it, there's no certainty you'll win. But then again, we riders always say all sorts of things. Sometimes we believe what we say, even when it sounds crazy, other times we're just being hopeful and, still at other times, it's all an exercise in self-delusion. We try to convince ourselves of something, because ultimately, every time you step on the track, words don't matter, and it's just you, the bike and your opponents. In fact, that's the only time you really have a clear picture of things. When you're actually on the track, racing against your opponents. That's when you know where you are and where the others stand. You know how your bike is doing and how those of your opponents are faring. That's the moment of clarity. Then, you can say whatever you like to everyone else: your chief mechanic, your mum, your girlfriend, the press... but, deep down, you know the truth and you know it with crystal-clear clarity. You can tell people you fell because the bike didn't follow the trajectory it was supposed to follow, or tell them that you're actually really fast, but the bike simply isn't. Inside you, however, you know the truth. You know you fell off because you made a mistake, or because your opponent is simply faster than you. And the opposite is also true. Deep down, you know whether your victories were deserved. You know if you won races on the turns, when it's down to your ability as a rider, or on the straightaways, when it's all about the power of the engine. You know the others are looking to make excuses when they say you beat them just because the bike was better. I always knew the truth behind each of my victories, and behind each of my defeats, too. I knew exactly why and how I won or lost. And so, at the end of 2003, after winning everything in sight with the Honda, I was certain I could win with another bike. But, of course, until I actually did it, I couldn't be truly certain. Thus, I set off on my journey, in search of that place where certainty meets truth.

(sidebar: I find it funny how the bit about straight line speed reads like just an extremely obvious dig at casey in his ducati days but, published in 2005, your honour he's innocent)

what valentino describes in that passage is the awful, inescapable secret at the heart of all competition: at the end of the day, you do know. you can only do so much to protect yourself from the truth. you have to tell yourself a story, even if it's crazy, engage in all manner of self-delusion to throw yourself into the field of battle again and again and again - where inevitably you are going to lose, again and again and again. any great athlete has to start out at least a little delusional, for there is something inherently insane about thinking you will be one of the very best in the world in your field. eventually, much of that delusion may turn to reality for the chosen few, but the delusion never completely goes away because there is always more to win and always more losing to do along the way. when the delusion stops, so does your career. valentino's endless capacity for storytelling and self-delusion is inherent to his success - he would not have been as good as he was if he had not found all these stories to tell himself, all these reasons to believe, to keep motivating him, to wring special performances out of himself when he needed them most. he told stories that were ridiculous until he turned them into reality. if valentino were anyone other than the person who killed his tenth title in sepang, he would not have won the other nine in the first place

and yet, chances are, valentino already had lost headed into sepang. chances are, he knew as much. chances are, he chose the kindest possible story to make sense of it all. at the very least, what he wanted to do was expose the truth as he saw it - make sure that everyone in the world knew what marc had done to him even if it didn't end up saving his title campaign. but in exposing one truth, at the same time he managed to obscure a different one. because in the end, certainty never did meet truth in 2015, because we'll always have a question mark about what would have happened if valentino hadn't said what he had said in that press conference, what would have happened if marc had reacted differently, what would have happened if race direction hadn't handed out penalty points or if marc hadn't been so hurt and angry he was unwilling to take risks against jorge in valencia. yes, of course it's likely that jorge would have won anyway, but we don't know that. it's 2006 all over again, isn't it? there's a likely winner, there's maybe somebody who should be winning, but there's never any certainty. that's why we line up on sunday, or so the cliche goes. the main lasting success of that press conference is that it has cast a shadow over the whole championship - not just in the sense of making the whole thing unpleasant to think about, but in the more literal sense of concealing the realities of that title fight, of generating ambiguity as to how it all might otherwise have played out under more 'normal' circumstances

except, of course, valentino has told us himself that he does know the truth about all of his victories and defeats. of course he knows jorge was faster than him that year, which is why he wasn't trying to win that title on pace. by any reasonable standard, there's no shame to that, not at that stage of his career and not against that level of opposition. there's plenty of ways in which valentino was the stronger rider that year, still, somehow, and enough sliding doors moments that would have given valentino just enough points and granted him a completely deserved title. but of course it was still frustrating, and it was frustrating to be reminded constantly in the paddock - including by marc - of how jorge was the faster of the two of them. valentino knew he couldn't beat jorge on pace, which is why he never tried to, but it still wasn't easy. it still required him to just... put away his ego, ignore all the snide remarks about his speed, ignore marc's digs and jorge's cockiness, and just devote himself to winning the title in the only way he could. that's the heart of 2015: it's all about valentino suppressing his worse instincts right until the moment he doesn't. it's the pressure, it's all the blows his ego has taken that year...

and of course, it's also marc. at the end of the day, it'll always come back to that - the fact that marc had made himself into someone who had the power to genuinely hurt valentino and how he then managed to make himself a target of valentino's suspicions (topic for another post). going into sepang, valentino already knew that more likely than not he was going to lose the title, and he decided he blamed marc. at the very latest during the race, he knew he was almost certainly going to lose the title, and now he definitely blamed marc. that's how it goes, isn't it... valentino's reasons for saying what he said in the press conference were complicated, but marc's actions then proceeded to simplify everything. any uncertainty, for valentino, was removed by that race. it was stripped away even further, if possible, by how marc approached the valencia race and his decision that he wasn't going to risk anything - not when it could help valentino. their whole tragedy, of course, is that if you had placed valentino in marc's shoes that weekend at sepang, he would have done the exact same thing

which is unfortunately as smooth a transition as I can come up with to stop discussing valentino's psyche and starting discussing marc's. let's talk mind games

the first point that's worth stressing is this: most of the mental pressure that riders exert on each other happens on the track. I think this is where 'mind games' becomes a bit of a tricky term, because inherently the connotation there is that you're doing something a little sneaky, a little underhanded to get under the skin of your opponent. but valentino has said it himself: you need to be performing on-track for any of this to work. and it goes beyond that - the on-track performances are key in determining what kind of psychological pressures you are exerting on your opponent. ideally, this is a symbiotic relationship where, as valentino puts it, the off-track 'work' that makes the opponents 'suffer' is used to... well, just back up what you're doing on the track, to make sure they're getting the message. to just play with them a little in a way that is conducive to bringing about further on-track success

so, in the interest of not getting bogged down in semantic debates about what exactly counts as playing 'mind games', I'm going to throw out the term for now. I think it's interesting in itself that this phrase is how people refer to that kind of behaviour, something about how it comes across as just a little derogatory, a little suspect... but we're going to ignore that. it's completely useless to discuss 'mind games' as this kind of ethereal higher-plane tactic that only happens in press conference rooms and on three hour long podcasts, as if it's somehow disconnected from the reality of what's actually happening on-track. (on-track behaviour is also at times referred to as mind games - but less frequently, and it tends to be used more for behaviour in non-race sessions.) it's also a bit of a sleight of hand: there's not anything inherently more 'honest' or 'straightforward', anything less 'psychological', about deliberately bullying someone on the track versus saying something snide about them to the media. what we are interested in here is the question of mental pressure, how riders exert it on other riders, and how riders go about working on the suppression of their rivals. basically, for a more fun term, think of anything you'd consider to be psychological warfare and go from there (the ask does actually specify mind warfare, which feels like a happy middle ground)

and just to reiterate this, the vast majority of the psychological work valentino himself did on his opponents - including in ways that marc has gone on to emulate - was done on the track. a race like laguna seca 2008, which relies so heavily on tactics and valentino's assessment of casey as a person and what message valentino decided to send casey that day... well, it may have had its effects reinforced off-track, but fundamentally that's still a heavily 'psychological' victory that enraged and unnerved casey through what valentino was doing during the race. and if you're assessing valentino's 'mental game' while leaving out laguna 2008, you really might as well not bother

so what we're looking at here isn't going to be exhaustive, but it's still going to hopefully cover most of the major aspects in a way that gives a sense of that integration between the off- and on-track. now, coming up with a list of examples isn't all that easy, because first of all... man, marc's been around for a long time by now... if we recounted every minor incident with another rider, we'd still be here by the time twenty to thirty years have passed and valentino finally gives marc a call. second of all, marc does undeniably leave less of a paper trail than valentino. partly he has objectively gotten himself involved in fewer feuds (though I'd argue there are also circumstance-related factors there), partly he's also been warier of how he approaches this kind of thing as a direct result of sepang 2015, and partly it's just a question of personal style

valentino tries to suffocate you with the paper trail, leveraging his skills at manipulating the media to make your life unpleasant, to throw distractions in your direction, at times to make sure you are overwhelmed by the frenzy and the noise and the chaos. all this, obviously, he does in addition to making your life on-track as miserable as possible. marc prefers a slightly quieter approach, maybe an indirect dig here or there, a habit of letting you know on the track if he's decided he has a problem with you. which means that a lot of what people consider marc's 'mind games' basically go something like this: a) rider does something to piss marc off (this can just be 'beating him'), b) marc does something dubious to them on-track, c) rider complains about marc, and finally d) marc goes ?? idk why they're saying all that but not really my problem :) and goes along his way

but that does make it a little tougher to actually provide a good overview of what he's doing - because, at the end of the day, I too can only be so certain that he's attempting to fuck with rivals. that's the nice effect of it, right, you get these statements from other riders where they're complaining about marc and broadly speaking I do believe them when they say he's being a little shit again... but it's a little harder to prove that this is his intention. which means they also end up engaging in a form of shadowboxing, where they think he's messing with them and they say he's messing with them but it feels kind of one-sided and silly and like maybe they're simply imagining things. which must be just... incredibly annoying. god

in a way, the best proof we have that marc regularly fucks with his opponents is that everyone in the paddock is more or less agreed in their belief that he is constantly engaging in psychological warfare. you've got other riders saying that marc is continually dabbling in 'mind games', you've got journalists on their podcasts saying that marc is always messing with people and is an awful teammate to everyone who isn't his brother etc etc, and you kind of assume they'd be the ones to know. though, if anything, this can mean they sometimes have a tendency to overshoot, which is how we got endless speculation at the start of this year on whether marc was lying to people or sandbagging or whatever when he was busy adapting to a new bike. sepang isn't irrelevant here - marc became more closed off and private and secretive and circumspect about his real feelings as a direct result of how bad that whole experience was for him. sometimes it feels calculated to unnerve his competitors, and sometimes it does seem more about just protecting himself. but that's the thing, right - if you acquire a reputation for "mind games", then people will think you're fucking with them even when you're not. which can be useful! but, as should be obvious, it demonstrates that just because somebody is accusing marc of engaging in gamesmanship, doesn't mean it's actually true (which is also of course the case for valentino)

^'who's most likely to play mind games in a press conference?' winning here! alex rins hands on hips we will get to you in a bit

all that being said, we do have plenty of fairly clear examples of the ways marc tries to fuck with his opponents, so let's get to those. here are the elements I'll focus on: 1) an explanation of how the on-track exertion of psychological pressure works, in races as well as outside of them, 2) intra-team dynamics, and 3) some specific examples of how the on-track and off-track tactics are integrated. again, far from exhaustive - the examples are supposed to be more akin to illustrating marc's approach rather than definitively listing every instance in which marc has exhibited a particular behaviour. the streamlined approach, if you will

so, let's start with the actual racing. the aspect you bring up in the ask: the intimidation. bez doing his sad little crash out of p2 in the le mans sprint, maverick thinking it's so extremely over the moment marc came too close in the main race. I've edited this section down a lot to avoid getting too into the weeds here, but let's just give the brief sparknotes version of how this intimidation works:

speed: if you are not capable of performances that unnerve your opponents, obviously you will not unnerve your opponents. no shit. marc's sheer pace is terrifying in its own right... it makes you wonder if that cushy gap you have to him is quite as cushy as it looked a lap ago. how often he seems to be able to access something special, how it piles on pressure in the context of a title battle to know that he is fast pretty much everywhere. the speed does a lot of his work for him in the intimidation department, nothing fancy required

circumstance: so, say you've got an alien behind you. not to name any names... but there are some aliens where, if they are having a good weekend, they wouldn't be behind you in the first place. that doesn't mean the alien can't still be plenty scary... but when they're at their best, they're dominating out front and so are less 'threatening' when they're sitting on your rear tyre. when things aren't going their way in a given weekend, you maybe don't have quite so much reason to be worried. marc (similarly to valentino) is a lot more flexible in how he wins his races - which might mean he's looking very ominous from say p5 at the end of the first lap. there's less possibility of respite, less chance that if he qualified badly, he has the decency to still be slow come sunday. if you find yourself on the same bit of track as marc... that's probably not great news for you in any weekend

aggression: the obvious one. marc isn't as afraid to crash as everyone else is, he's willing to go for it if he's given half a chance - which he never fails to remind people of. he said it about half a dozen times at le mans this year, including with his competitors in the same room. convenient when you have such an immutable character trait you couldn't do anything about even if you wanted to, which also just happens to make you terrifying to fight with. sometimes he mixes up this rhetoric a bit - e.g. in 2016 after his messy 2015 he did talk plenty about his newfound maturity. still, not bad if his opponents are constantly reminded of how unyielding he is... which is of course part of the reason why he bangs on about it so much

(on the flip side, while it is obviously in his best interest to barely say a word against hard racing because it would make him come across as a massive hypocrite, marc has this nice little habit of reframing his opponent's moves as just not being particularly sensible in that situation. look at how he talked about the pecco portimao crash this year - sure, it's a racing incident, but it also wasn't "necessary" to fight like this for fifth/sixth place given pecco had a championship to consider. pecco's move was "too optimistic" - and, my favourite bit, he would "learn" from what had happened. which is nicely condescending, and a good way for marc to criticise aggression in a more circumspect manner: don't call your opponent dangerous, call them an idiot instead)

tactics: linked to the second point - part of the reason why valentino instantly recognised himself in marc and has always acknowledged what a clever and tactically astute rider he is. the other aliens to varying degrees tended to prefer the 'start fast and fuck off' approach to winning races. by contrast, it's hard to really pinpoint what an 'average' race win would look like for either valentino or marc. they are capable of the 'dominate out front' victory (marc historically more so than valentino), but they also have a bunch of other ways of winning races that all produce their own psychological effects on their opponents. to give a few brief examples, you've got the 'stalking and studying' approach, closely tailing opponents and gradually ramping up the pressure while you analyse where they're strong and where they're weak before eventually making your move. you've got the 'comeback ride', which is frustrating in how it means the field is basically never guaranteed a break from these assholes - this is all about relentlessness and generating a sense of inevitability. you've also got the 'fucking around before fucking off' approach, where you get involved in a scrap for much of the race and it looks like you and your opponent(s) are on equal footing... before suddenly pulling the pin and disappearing off into the sunset. there might be good reasons for marc and valentino to stick around that don't just amount to 'playing with their food' (though there is that too) like tyre preservation or figuring out grip levels in the wet or whatever. nevertheless, it's intensely demoralising for the competition, because it almost feels like the whole thing was a lie, an illusion of a fair fight... they've been tricked into thinking they had a hope of emerging victorious. obviously, all these different ways of winning are also investments for the future, so that next time your opponents are in xyz situation you generate uncertainty and doubt and preemptive frustration in their minds, as they wonder whether they can really get the better of you this time

now, obviously a lot of this is just about marc's natural strengths as a rider - but the point is that these operate on the psychological level as well... and you can gently encourage this with a little bit of extra off-track 'work'. what you say about your own aggressive riding, what you say about your opponents' aggressive riding, any impression you want to reinforce in the minds of your competitors. there's a lot of long-term reputation management involved here. (a little more about these reputations in the context of argentina 2015 in this post.) most of the 'intimidation' happens on-track, and it's also a result of deliberate riding choices that aren't just about winning any given race. of course, it's helpful if you are particularly adaptable to different race situations, if your flexibility allows you to reinforce the impression that you are always a threat. if successful, you can make sure your opponent is already mentally beaten by the time they know you're coming for them. (I'm not personally massively a fan of the term, but this kind of thing is what generally counts as the 'aura' an athlete has.) ideal, really - to be so intimidating your opponents can't even put up a proper fight

then, of course, there's the stuff that happens outside of races but in practise and qualifying instead. a perfect opportunity to be a dick to others on-track without the stresses of a race. which means... well, look, we can't ignore marc's habit of sitting on other riders' rear tyres when they're attempting to hook together a fast lap. the towing thing radically escalated when the honda was at its least competitive post-2020, but marc was definitely very much already at it before that. (incidentally, one of the cuntiest things he has ever said was when he pointed out in 2019 that he was leading so many laps in the actual races that he wasn't getting much chance to study the other riders there.) nobody really needs me to list every single towing-related controversy marc has involved himself in over the course of his career, but it might be a good idea to get the thoughts of somebody who knows a thing or two about fucking with his rivals. valentino himself has gotten the towing treatment a few times over the years courtesy of marc, and both pre- and post-sepang his stance has generally been 'listen it's a dick move but smart play, gotta hand it to him'. take this from catalunya 2019:

and y'know, he gets to the heart of the whole matter rather nicely -thanks to the local marc marquez understander for logging in years before the discourse about it became such a big thing. marc follows other riders around because it's a great way to study them and he also does it because he knows it's extremely annoying. it's annoying both because you know you're helping out another rider who you don't want to be helping out, and because it is just quite distracting to have someone that close to you, being able to hear their engine, etc etc. one thing that changed after 2019 was how necessary it was for marc to do this... marc went crazy with it at a time when it was often the only way he could put together a decent lap (and also because it played into the strengths of the honda, for a given value of the word 'strengths' - he's spoken a fair few times this year about how he finds it harder to follow other bikes on the ducati) (not for lack of trying). but valentino is also spot on in that marc is excellent at choosing his victims, how marc understands you have to pick someone who needs to put a good lap together and has no choice but to drag you along with them

I mean, think about why he just couldn't seem to leave poor pecco alone for a while there. first of all, pecco is fast, and marc clearly feels quite comfortable following him around. secondly, pecco tended to put himself in positions where he really needed a good lap because he'd gotten himself stranded in q1 or only had one more shot at a lap or whatever. plus he was fighting for championships, so he couldn't afford to fuck marc over out of sheer spite. thirdly, pecco has been fighting for titles for the past few seasons, making him one of the riders to beat. which means that marc was motivated to a) study him, and b) fuck with him - both of which were investments for a future in which he could fight pecco properly. makes complete sense! insanely irritating if you're the victim, which is half the point. also helps that pecco very obviously found the whole thing frustrating and tiring and really hated being asked about it, but also was equally obviously adverse to kicking up too much of a fuss about it for various reasons. the perfect victim

on the flip side, marc has been known in the past to be quite careful about who he is giving a tow, like for instance this from brno 2014 (ironically the first race that year marc did not win):

The two front row slots for the Ducatis were a problem for Rossi, dropping the Movistar Yamaha rider down to seventh, and the start of the third row. Rossi joked darkly about Marquez’s strategy, claiming that he was giving the Ducatis a tow to put them in between him and his main rivals. “For sure he is clever,” Rossi said. “He doesn’t pull Jorge, me or Dani, always a Ducati.” Marquez laughed at the suggestion, admitting only half of Rossi’s accusations. He certainly didn’t look for Ducatis to give a tow, but he would not give one to his rivals, he said. “It’s your decision to close the gas,” Marquez told the press conference. “If it’s Dani, Jorge, or Valentino behind me, for sure I will close the gas, but if it is another rider, it doesn’t matter.” That is in itself an admission of just how little competition Marquez sees. He is prepared to give anyone a tow, except for the other factory Honda and the two factory Yamahas. In effect, he is dismissing the threat from any other riders. Harsh, but fair.

and, y'know, if it were so easy then everyone would do it. you need a certain level of skill to actually pull off the towing bit, which marc is clearly very good at. you also need to have a good feel for picking your moments, who to bully, when to slot in behind them, all that kind of thing. and, lastly, you also need the sheer power of shamelessness on your side. which, that should more or less cover it... there are some real gems like mugello 2019 where marc accused ducati of ordering pirro to shadow him and then played a complicated game of chicken to catch a tow from dovi and snag pole, or mugello 2021 where marc was so determined to follow vinales through q1 that he was even alert enough to dive back into the pits with him as vinales tried to get rid of the small train of guys following him... but overall, I think valentino did a pretty good job at summing up the main points for me, so let's leave the towing discourse at that. returning to catalunya 2019, obviously it is also extremely valentino that he then had a sneaky little look at the honda's dashboard 'just out of curiosity'. truly a meeting of the greats, those two, we'll never find their like again

let's move on to intra-team fuckery - which is all about suppression of rivals. your first job is to beat your teammate, and the first arena of trying to fuck with your opponents is what happens within the team. my general assumption here is that marc's particular approach is less inspired by valentino and more just the result of his natural competitive instincts (which, to be clear I do think is true for much of the tactics described in this post). it's also not something... I know the ask specifies post-2015, but I don't think it's something that changed after sepang, except insofar as marc had won the most important teammate war of his career and didn't need to be quite as aggressive towards dani any more. given the continuity between the intra-team situation pre- and post-2015, I'm not going to make much of a distinction here and just rattle through some details about the intra-team dynamic from the start of marc's time in the premier class

so, the first bit of context that has to be acknowledged: a lot of the dani/marc war wasn't really fought between the two of them directly. both of them had... well, rather drama-happy managers, who a) were willing to do a lot of the mudslinging on the behalf of their charges, and b) were pursuing agendas of their own to establish themselves within the honda hierarchy. I think it's fair to say that not all of what they were getting up to was necessarily just about acting in the best interest of their riders - and it is an internal power struggle that could've had pretty disastrous consequences for marc in particular. here's a longer write up I quite like about the situation within honda in 2013, which came to a bit of a head with the phillip island fiasco (when marc was disqualified as a result of failing to change bikes early enough). just a few excerpts (though again I'd recommend reading the whole thing):

(gabbarini is pecco's crew chief these days by the way, small world.) so obviously a lot of this is kind of dumb, not least because marc came very close to losing that year's title to a yamaha rider as a result of all this behind the scenes bullshit. it also is just the kind of thing that happens when you lock a bunch of big egos into a small space within a competitive environment - and is a nice little insight into the early year machinations that were going on as marc and his team attempted to establish themselves within honda. which they did in part by pushing through key personnel changes that replaced anyone too closely associated with the old regime... and there's also the less pressing but interesting question of whether (as casey believes) marc's team pushed casey out the door because they felt 'threatened'. this sort of backroom manoeuvring is part of the game, albeit an unsavoury one, and great athletes do have a tendency to be ruthless in asserting themselves within team environments

of course, by 2014 marc was asserting himself ever more on the track. dani might not have yet fully accepted the number two status, but he was increasingly pushed into a position where he knew he had to play along, to not kick up too much of a fuss in his own best interest. did that perhaps play a role in how all those 2013 complaints about marc's aggressive riding - not least when it caused dani to crash in aragon and effectively ended his title bid - died down a little in the following years? who's to say! of course, marc has been pretty open in admitting his abrasive approach to the teammate dynamic, which he was kind enough to shed some light on more recently in marc marquez all in. I assume pretty much everyone reading this will have watched marc marquez all in, but for reference I've still included a transcript of the relevant bits of marc marquez all in. here's marc talking about the teammate relationship:

Dani and I, now we get along great, and he's an amazing person. But in 2013, 2014, there was a lot of tension. He was the king, the number one. People listened to what he said in the box. Everyone expected something from him... The team was focused on him. And out of nowhere comes this kid. A kid in his first year after Moto2. And well, first race and... boom. Second race, boom. And it's a hard pill to swallow. [...] I've never been a nice teammate. I've always liked to... You've got to make your teammate's life impossible, if you can.

and dani's take:

Those years there was a lot of tension because we were fighting for the same thing. He knew about my potential. That's why he always tried to stick to me, so I had no space to really take off. [...] He's very competitive. That's his strong suit, how competitive he's always been with everything.

and then at the end of that segment, marc says the following:

It is true that after 2015, 2016, everything calmed down, and we had a good, normal teammates relationship. After a while, I think you learn to accept the situation, right? It happens, and I'm sure it'll eventually happen to me too.

which I suppose is a fairly diplomatic way of saying the relationship got better when marc had won the war and dani had to 'accept' his lot in life. the king is dead long live the king, etc etc. intra-team competition is perfectly natural, but of course that doesn't mean all riders approach that dynamic in the same way. dani's "I had no space to really take off" is a nice way of putting it I feel, how he talks about marc 'sticking' to dani, marc's determination to just continually work away at his teammate... to suppress him, to smother him, to ensure that not only was marc winning the war but he would keep winning the war. marc made that team his own and he ensured that dani's continued presence in that team was happening on marc's terms. a job very well done

marc is also remarkably open in describing one of the specific tactics he utilised to achieve the desired effect in suppressing his teammate. in marc marquez all in, he admits to intentionally giving misleading bike feedback when it could give himself an advantage over dani:

But back then we had a great bike, everyone worked well. So if a replacement piece worked for him, I didn't like it, "This doesn't work. I want this one. I want this replacement piece, since I'm leading it. I want it. Don't give him this." "You want to try it?" "Yeah, sure." But I didn't want to.

now, listen, I'm sure this kind of thing does happen. that being said. marc, come on, not everyone is engaging in this degree of underhanded behaviour wherein you're intentionally hampering your teammate's efforts to improve the bike just to ensure you continue to have an edge over them. let's make a casey stoner comparison, given that I am legally obligated to mention him in most of my posts. he is actually relevant here though, as dani's pre-marc teammate and the bloke who would have more likely than not been marc's teammate if he hadn't retired. casey talks a bit in his autobiography about working with pedrosa at honda, mentioning how it was nice to have a teammate with a similar pace so they could actually develop the bike together. he also says this:

I never felt threatened by a teammate because I have never had one that I felt was consistently quicker than me and throughout my career our biggest competition always came from outside the garage. Still, I have great respect for Dani, our partnership was a fruitful one and I think we worked really well together to help Honda build their best ever bike in the RC213V.

while I do quite like the implication that casey would have felt 'threatened' by any teammate who could match him, I think it's fair to say that this is a pretty different approach from what marc's describing above. of course, casey could be misleading us... but, call me naive or gullible or whatever, I really just don't think casey was pulling that kind of shit on his teammates. I'd go so far as to say that this kind of thing is maybe not quite as widespread as marc portrays it as being. it might also be worth quickly bringing in casey's thoughts on such a combative style of teammate relationship (from 2009):

probably for the best we never got to see how that particular teammate dynamic would have played out! also, luckily enough, we do actually have somebody who can corroborate that casey and marc behaved differently as teammates. let's get the thoughts of dani himself (april 2023, so after marc marquez all in had been released):

“At least in the team we were in, HRC, it was like this: the one who goes the fastest is the number 1, the one who chooses the parts and the one who determines the direction a bit. “When [Marc] arrived, I was in that position and with the races and the championships he took that position and decided in his own way. When I was directing more the evolution of the bike I had the parts first and I never thought in [my] own way. “My way has always been to do the best for the team, and if I have the best parts to make the bike the best, I'm not thinking about my rival right next door, but about Yamaha, Ducati... whoever the rival was, because I consider myself part of the brand. Later he had that other way of doing it. “I don't think I was missing [the same way as Marquez], because my way of being was that one. For example, before Marc came in, with Casey Stoner, he never played that game either."

so, yeah, maybe not completely universal behaviour. I don't know, I do find it kind of charming that marc has this very 'ah well everyone does it' attitude. now quite honestly I personally would not admit to this sort of behaviour even in confessional amazon prime documentaries - and it's fascinating what kinds of things he has a filter about and at what times he just decides to be, uh, very candid. I mean, I suppose this is a nice way of publicly forewarning any teammate who isn't your brother that you're going to try and make their life miserable. so that's something. anyway, marc did obviously win the internal war - which is the kind of thing that does matter if you're trying to impose your will on bike development... even if you're just doing so to fuck with your teammate. so by 2016 you reportedly had a situation where marc's direction was being followed to the extent that it harmed all the other honda riders:

But Pedrosa claims he had no input in the decision, and is now paying the price of having to compete on a bike built around Marquez’s preferences. The 30-year-old also said that he knew he would be in for a difficult time in 2016 as early as the Valencia test last November. "In the end we didn't have many specs [of engines], but out of the ones we had I wouldn't have chosen the current one,” Pedrosa admitted. "When we picked the bike I already knew things would be very hard. I already knew how the bike handled in November. But it is what it is. The choice of bike that we have was [Marquez's], I had nothing to do with it. For the moment, he's ahead and he deserves to be. He likes the bike, he adapts better to it, while I struggle more. That's obvious, you can see it in the results and in the way we ride." Pedrosa said the poor performance of Honda’s satellite bikes this season in comparison to previous years was yet further evidence of how the RC213V has been designed around Marquez’s needs. Cal Crutchlow’s sixth place at Catalunya has been the best result for a Honda rider besides Marquez and Pedrosa of the campaign so far. “You have to think of the team, not only about yourself,” Pedrosa added. “If you look at the rest of the Hondas, they are a lot further behind than two or three years ago, when you had [Stefan] Bradl or [Alvaro] Bautista finishing fourth or fifth. Now they are 10th and further [back]. So we have to try to get the other teams to work too."

obviously, to some extent teams following the lead rider and prioritising their feedback is completely natural and even wise - they're the one who is winning for you. it does also end up being a bit of a self-perpetuating cycle that makes the rider already winning more likely to continue winning, which helps explain why these riders are even so invested in their internal bickering. all that being said, of course it's worth noting that different riders conceptualise that teammate relationship differently, and the extent of intra-team cooperation can vary drastically. marc has a very particular understanding of that relationship when he is paired with anyone who is not his brother - one that is generally speaking pretty far along the combative end of the scale

unfortunately, we never really got to see how bad the whole marc and jorge (also not the easiest of teammates) situation could have gotten. in 2018, their relationship was definitely better than say 2013, but also jorge was still perfectly happy to criticise marc - whether after argentina, or that whole aragon incident they had

(marc did call jorge afterwards to check in on him, which jorge did appreciate.) but jorge never had the pace in his honda days to threaten marc, so nothing really got going between the two of them. if memory serves, the closest we ever got was catalunya 2019, where they had a bit of a coming together in practise - incidentally the first (and in retrospect only) weekend that season where jorge had potentially dangerous pace

But Lorenzo’s apology seemed to clear the air. Marquez explained that once he “was calmer” and the fear of dropping outside the all-important top ten had subsided, he could see the #99’s point of view. Marquez also noted how he was twice penalised in 2018 for similar actions to Lorenzo’s in FP3. He then pointed out how neither his team-mate, nor Joan Mir, who blocked the reigning world champion at one point during the Mugello weekend, were punished. Speaking to Spanish journalists after Saturday’s press conference, Marquez, said, “He [Lorenzo] apologised to me, because he was in the middle of turn three. While people can say it's only free practice, it was the third one, in which the last laps are like qualifying. “I was so angry because I knew that my lap was the one to enter Q2 directly. In the end I finished ninth, the worst classification of the year. It’s clear that last year I was twice in the middle of the track and on both occasions I was penalised. At Mugello I came across [Joan] Mir, we touched and everything and then at the end of FP3 it happened again with Lorenzo. But this happens... When it does everyone has to be judged equally. There is no difference. He simply apologised. Logically [after the session finished] I was calmer and I understood, because no rider waits in the middle of the track – or at least I hope they don’t."

obviously, this isn't like, a big deal, but in the moment it was one of those 'oooh maybe this'll go somewhere' incidents and the eternal drama enthusiasts in the commentary box were talking about it at the start of the race. like I said, that was jorge's first honda weekend where he was showing actual pace, so it felt like this might be building to something. except then, uh, jorge decided to skittle all of marc's rivals in one go in the race itself and somewhat hilariously managed to just miss marc. and then jorge got injured again the next race and it all just kinda fizzled out after that, so we never really got to find out what dramatics could have been possible there

and that's it as far as teammates prime!marc had in the premier class go. childhood rival pol espargaro took on the mantle for two years in 2021-22, at a time in which there was much kerfuffle about honda's development direction and whether they'd followed marc's path for too long. espargaro did attempt to assert himself in that team and they did try to develop the bike in a way that suited all the riders better rather than just marc, which *gestures at honda post-2020* worked insofar as marc also ended up in the trenches. that being said, pol was never a particularly serious threat to marc - aside from that one race to start off 2022, which maybe prompted a little bit of needle from marc (based on what the podcasts™ were saying at the time in any case) but nothing dramatic - so, y'know, that was kind of that. in those two years plus the year where marc had joan mir as his teammate, of course you can go into the weeds and dig out minor disagreements... but apart from the conversations around development direction and how marquez-centric honda should be going forward, it's just a bit of a different vibe when you're beefing for pee one million or who gets to be the leader of that year's crash rankings. of course, if you really want to stop marc from tormenting you, maybe you should just try being his literal brother. pecco, if you want any more useful advice like that: I offer very reasonable rates, just give me a call and we can hash something out

so, we've covered how the on-track stuff works and looked at the intra-team dynamic - what's next? time to explore a little more how marc goes about unsettling his rivals, how he attempts to give himself the decisive edge over his opponents... and also, what purpose this all serves when it comes to his own psychology. intimidating rivals typically has another underlying goal: it's about motivating yourself. it's about proving to your rivals just how far you'll go to beat them while proving as much to yourself in the same breath

again, at times we're a little light in terms of an actual paper trail of this intimidation... given that marc does like to take on the role of the aggressor in on-track disputes, often he doesn't even have to be the one to comment - and instead the onus is on his rivals to voice their dissent. there's also the issue that marc did have a paucity post-2015 in terms of 'serious title threats over the course of multiple seasons' - which, I don't know, this does feel like a thing somehow, you just don't really build feuds in a single season. even valentino, known feud enjoyer, always needed a little longer to really get something going. looking at marc's career, obviously you do have dovi, with whom he had a very cordial rivalry between 2017 to 2019... but the only year in which dovi was a serious title threat was in the first year of that rivalry, in 2017. after dovi's poor results in the first half of 2018, that title bid was essentially dead on arrival, and the 2019 title fight generously lasts until catalunya when jorge skittled the field minus marc. there's a couple marc rivalries with young challengers that looked like they were just about to kick off after 2019... but, well, we'll never find out how those would have played out. and it might be worth pointing out that in his prime, valentino's disagreements with riders who weren't serious threats to him winning titles didn't really go beyond what marc had going on with assorted other riders from 2016 to 2019. it's a bit of an open question if you want to attribute marc's lower number of feuds primarily to his actual personality and how it differs from valentino's, or whether you think it just reflects their respective competitive situations. the boring answer is that it's probably a combination of both of those things

that being said, obviously you can engage in a wee spot of psychological warfare without it escalating to feud level. now, let's get the obvious out of the way: marc and valentino were still very much at it post-2015. of course they continued to be deeply invested in their attempts to undermine and mess with each other. but, let's be honest, they're their own special little thing and it's just going to derail this post if I pay too much attention to them. there's a certain level of feuding where it becomes increasingly detached from any sort of actual competitive calculus and is more about a fraught relationship between two people who have managed to severely hurt each other. that being said, it's worth pointing out that marc was perfectly capable of using that feud to spur himself on. for the easiest evidence of that, just look at some of his misano performances... in 2017, valentino had just nerfed himself out of the title fight, whereas in 2019 he was no longer a serious threat to marc on-track. and yet despite how valentino wasn't the on-track rival marc should be concerning himself with, in both cases marc ended up using his valentino-related rage to find that little bit extra within himself in order to steal the victory

^from the marc (+ dovi) race rec post

there's plenty to be said about the misano 2019 qualifying incident, but let's set aside the specifics for now (though, speaking of towing-related drama, marc had again during fp3 shadowed valentino around the track, which... why are you hounding this man in misano of all places, marc). the whole kerfuffle certainly didn't hurt marc's race performance, and it's fair to say he seemed particularly thrilled with that victory. obviously, these were pretty pointed celebrations, very in your face, big fuck you to the nation of italy and valentino rossi specifically. celebrations like this are important in both what they're signalling to the enemy and what they're signalling to yourself. if there's one thing you can learn from valentino, it's that a celebration is a public message, and can function as a statement of sorts about what the victory 'meant'. what's the story you're telling with your victory? what do you want to take away from this race? what do you want your opponents to take away from it?

misano that year had come after marc's struggles in last lap duels, with the two races directly preceding it featuring last lap losses to dovi and alex rins respectively. now, on the one hand it's not always catastrophic on a psychological level to be constantly losing last lap duels... because in marc's case they did help reinforce just how dangerous he was, where even at his weaker tracks he would hound his rivals until the very end. on the other hand, obviously it's preferable to have a reputation for winning last lap duels as opposed to losing them - not least because it adds to how intimidating you are when you are locked in another last lap duel. valentino of course had a reputation for being lethally effective in that sort of situation, and it's nicely helpful if your enemies assume they're fucked when you're in their postcode with around three laps to go. I discussed this dynamic a little bit in how it relates to the sete rivalry here and here, which links back to the discussion of how you exert psychological pressure on the track. some relevant excerpts, plus some of my race notes:

marc is obviously more than capable of adopting similar tactics in his racing, but the sete rivalry still holds up as a really good demonstration of the kind of rewards you can reap through a steady diet of psychological intimidation. this is why it's so important to keep an edge over your rivals: you want them to be haunted by the ghosts of all your past on-track encounters whenever you're fighting to the point where it's detrimental to their actual riding. anyway, let's quickly check who marc was actually fighting with during the last lap of misano 2019, and whether that might have had anything to do with why marc was so thrilled to get the victory. oh, the rookie revelation of 2019 and the guy marc quickly identified as the big big threat of the future, you say? poor little fabio quartararo who still hadn't won a race yet, but who marc managed to dramatically deny on two separate occasions that year on the final lap? getting in early on the mission of building up some crucial psychological baggage, are we now?

obviously, and pretty tragically, this future investment on marc's part has ended up being completely irrelevant (unless yamaha wants to do something so so crazy for me and build a functioning bike before marc's hair goes grey), but equally obviously none of us knew that at the time. and fabio was able to take away some positives from the misano experience:

“I knew he would try something, but you never know with Marc,” said the Frenchman. “He can overtake and pull away because I really don’t know if he really saved his tyre. “The good thing was I could overtake him back, and this going home gives me a lot of confidence, to say ‘he’s a seven-time world champion, but we can overtake him’. So, he’s a human like us.”

because that's what it's all about, isn't it. giving the opposition the impression that you're not even human - and, even if fabio is saying the experience gave him 'a lot of confidence', imagine how much more confidence he would've gotten if he'd won. also, check out fabio's comment about not knowing whether marc had been saving his tyre. that's why the 'fucking about before fucking off' approach to races is so effective: because of how it generates uncertainty, it generates doubt, it makes your rivals wonder even during races whether there's a chance you're just toying with them

we do have a bit of a sample size issue here when it comes to assessing marc's celebrations, in that his two last lap duels with fabio came a) in valentino's backyard, and b) when marc sealed that year's title. it means that if the celebrations seem excessive, there's still other plausible explanations for why marc was so happy to get one over the rookie that aren't related to trying to bully fabio into submission for as long as he still could. did marc really use them as a way of reminding everyone, including fabio, including himself, of who's really in charge? again, you'll have to draw your own conclusions

I'm doing my best not to cover anything that's happening this year too much, since this is the stuff I'm assuming people reading are basically familiar with. but of course, if we're talking 'pointed celebrations' then there's also a few from this year that stand out. this isn't to say that marc's joy at his ducati successes have been anything other than genuine, that he isn't happy or relieved or revitalised by his current season... but, well, part of being revitalised is also being back in the game where fighting for titles is concerned. take the jerez celebrations, ecstatic in spite of losing a tight battle, openly loved and adored by his home crowd. look at how he's done his thing repeatedly this year of engaging with all these crowds, getting them to celebrate with him specifically. a cynic might say it's a way of reminding his opponents that they might be winning right now... but they should never forget who the crowds have really come to see. which would be charmingly valentino of him. while marc (probably wisely) never went too far in mimicking valentino's unique style of celebrations, he is an avid enough student to understand the importance of the theatre of victory. like in his third ever premier class race (from the jerez post):

racing is one thing, but it's always important to consider how you're reacting in both defeat and victory. like valentino before him, marc prefers not to openly show his rage. like valentino, more often than not he will be publicly magnanimous in defeat. like valentino, he's not adverse to twisting in the blade a little further in victory. like valentino, he's very much aware of when a camera is watching him. with marc, you can also observe how determined he is to appear unaffected and unbothered by the effects of sepang 2015 on his public image (except in displays of very carefully managed vulnerability like marc marquez all in). there's plenty of examples of this, but most relevant here is how marc concerns himself with not being openly affected by fans booing him. take blowing kisses to the misano 2017 crowd after his warm up crash... which, looking at his post-race presser comments, whatever he may say clearly (and understandably) did bother him. likewise, see the glee of the misano 2019 celebrations. with those celebrations, he's trying to tell you that not only does it not bother him that they're booing, but instead he relishes it. the more they do this, the more he will win

one more case study before we wrap this post up, this time using a specific rival to illustrate some of his more common tactics and how the spats he gets himself involved in generally play out. said rival is alex rins, who especially in 2019 had emerged as one of marc's prime challengers. now, before we talk about any disagreements between those two, I do have to mention that rinsy has a bit of history with the marquez family (this from 2016):

in the end, dani stayed on for another year and was replaced by another ageing spaniard marc felt confident he'd have the measure of while rinsy signed for suzuki - so it's very unlikely marc had to play any active role in blocking him from taking the seat. that being said, obviously the main takeaway is the bad blood stemming from alex marquez's moto3 title campaign and how alzamora organised that team around the younger marquez. god knows how rins felt about this by 2019, but I doubt he'd just forgotten about it. there's also this from 2020, which to me reads as a little dismissive about someone who was your teammate in moto3? I don't know, judge for yourself:

anyway, back to marc. the 'biggest' incident between the pair of them was a coming together in qualifying at brno 2019 (one of the all time great qualifying performances from marc by the way, well worth a watch):

During qualifying at Brno, cameras picked up the end of a tense tussle between MotoGP champion Marc Marquez and Suzuki's Alex Rins. The pair were caught putting some close passes on each other before pulling into pit lane, where they continued to 'duel' - until Marquez reached out with his arm to put some space between their machines. Marquez then over swapped to slick tyres and romped to pole position on the drying track, with Rins claiming sixth on the grid. "It's a tricky thing because for sure [Marc] is now one step in front of everybody. He put the slick tyres and he was super-fast. But I think he has no respect for the other riders. He is riding on his way," said Rins. "I will explain to you what happened: On Corner 5, he went a little bit wide and behind him was Miller and me. When he went wide, he looked back and saw Jack and me. Jack passed him, but then he went back onto the line and sincerely he disturbed me. I was pushing. I was not super-fast, but I was pushing. "So on the next left corner I tried to do my line. He opened a little a bit the door and I go in. I touched him, but I think it's his fault; if he is riding slow he needs to open the door and that's it. But anyway, then on the last corner he braked super-hard to overtake me [back]. Then when we were coming into the box I was in front of him and I go straight and he has no space to go by my side. If I was him, I would cut the gas…" "I ran wide at Turn 5 and Jack overtook me because I checked behind and I only saw him, so I tried to follow Jack because I know he had good pace. Then I went a bit too wide and there was a small space, but enough and [Rins] ran into me…" said the Repsol Honda star. “The funny thing was when we entered the box and the tyre wall was there [in front of me] and I didn’t have the space [to get through] because he was going that way. I don’t know if that was intentional or not, but for me it wasn’t important. I lose zero time on these sort of things.” Told Rins had said he had no respect for other riders, Marquez responded: “Of course I don’t agree with this, it is his opinion." "It's not the first time," Rins had explained earlier. "Everybody knows Marquez and everybody knows that he has an incredible talent, but also what happened in FP1 with Vinales was more-or-less the same. Marc loves to play this game and try to get in the head of other riders. But in my case I'm really calm. I just tell the truth and that's it." Asked if he thought he needed to try and get into Marquez's head, Rins responded: "No, I don't think so…. For sure if I'm fighting for the world championship with him I will try to do something, but he's 80 points in front of me - maybe he's scared, I don't know!" Austin winner Rins, who has fallen in the last two races, is fourth in the world championship.

their most significant race clash was in silverstone 2019, where alex got the better of marc in a very dramatic last lap duel. I've heard journalists make vague reference to marc not taking that loss particularly well, though... again. hard to actually pin him down on a lot of this! but we do have more extensive comments rinsy provided in early 2020 to work with, and he at least seems to agree with that assessment:

"Marc is so good at these mental things, he plays a lot with all the riders," Rins told the official MotoGP website. "For example in Brno last year, I was on a fast lap, he looked behind at me and opened the line a little bit, but not too much. I was on the dry line and I touched him. I lost my lap, but I continued pushing. Then in the last chicane he overtook me so closely, we were so close to a crash, and then he went into pit lane. From that moment, I said to myself, Marc is considering me as a rival." Rins - who declared "Marquez has no respect for other riders" immediately after the incident - got his revenge in the form of a thrilling last-corner victory pass on Marquez a few weeks later at Silverstone. "Marc is the man to beat and the rivalry is so high," Rins said. "More in 2019, because I shared more moments on track with him. For sure whenever he finishes just in front of me, I'm a bit angry, I want to beat him. But also for him. I remember when I beat him in Silverstone he was so, so angry." Rins added: "I like this because it means that I'm doing a good job. Marc is an incredible rider, winning a lot of races and championships, and if he thinks of me as a rival, it means I'm there fighting him." Rins took two wins on his way to a best-yet fourth in the 2019 MotoGP standings.

now, yeah... the problem is that this is all very much hearsay (but no more so than plenty of similar comments valentino's rivals made about him!) and rinsy could just be lying about this or misinterpreting it or whatever. we are very low on actual evidence for the stuff he says here. if you watch silverstone 2019 and the aftermath, you will not see a marc who visibly looks angry - of course you won't, because he almost never looks visibly angry. unfortunately, we don't have the chance to grill alex on why exactly he was left with this impression. at the end of the day, like with valentino, when it comes to evaluating the honesty of a lot of these character references you will just have to make up your own mind. like with valentino, some of these men will either be exaggerating the extent of the harm or just straight up making shit up. then again, like with valentino, the number of people who do seem to have the impression marc was fucking with them maybe suggests that there is something to these allegations

just a few things to note here... to highlight some of the common features that tend to crop up in these marc incidents:

there's the accusation of lack of respect towards other riders - valentino is the one who most infamously made that accusation in the aftermath of argentina 2018, but of course he's far, far from alone in making comments along those lines. marc certainly has a tendency towards being... uncompromising in his approach, shall we say, which can at times lean towards treating his competitors mainly as obstacles and inconveniences

the anger that's being attributed to marc. which he doesn't tend to directly express towards his competitors off the track! but if he is angry, it may instead... seep into how he approaches instances where they share space on-track, as well as affect his general demeanour towards them

there's rinsy suggesting marc is known for playing these games, that he does it a lot, and he's also known for being very good at them... which again is often something we only hear about indirectly, but of course it's interesting if that's the general paddock consensus

there's also rinsy's insistence that marc's games don't bother him at all - he's just calmly noting that marc's engaging in them! again, it's quite hard when you're familiar enough with valentino's oeuvre to not be slapped in the face with the similarity in some of the rhetoric their rivals use. doesn't mean all of these different dynamics are directly analogous, but it does speak to how determined the rivals in question tend to be in... y'know. telling themselves that they're above the whole thing. unfortunately, sometimes it is just very, very hard to be unaffected... and sometimes you're already losing by talking about it, because it shows you've been thinking about it

which, check out marc's response. 'oh, obviously I don't agree I lack respect' 'ah, I lose zero time on these things' (for another example of him using similar language, you could of course look to his comments about bez last year in valencia). this is marc's go-to - he generally quite likes to deny the existence of a problem, makes it sound like the whole thing is very one-sided... he keeps his distance and can maintain his poise and this veneer of neutrality, where he is not causing any drama. maybe the other guy's just imagining things! that's really not marc's problem, is it now

lastly, you've got this notion of marc messing with other riders selectively, and specifically doing it when he's identified you as a potential threat. again, maybe you think alex is reading too much into it! but equally, it's worth noting that we have as much evidence for marc messing with rinsy as we do for, say, valentino messing with casey in practise sessions in 2006 (as casey's autobiography claims). it would have been completely competitively reasonable for marc to identify alex rins as one of his primary threats in the future... and it would also not be hugely surprising if marc wanted to maintain a psychological edge over him

incidentally, at 2020 jerez rins and marc had another little run in during a practise session - where alex was left 'visibly frustrated' after marc was slowing down on the racing line while rinsy was completing a flying lap, which he ended up having to back out of. this denied rinsy direct entry into q2 (though marc didn't end up being penalised for it). of course, marc's jerez race reached an unhappy conclusion and rins was too injured to even start it, and after that they've never been even remotely close to fighting for a championship. though there's still a little bit of needle between the pair of them, mainly resulting from how rinsy ended up joining lcr honda in 2023 after suzuki departed the scene. there's marc's reasonably innocent comments in 2022, on a day in which rinsy won another last lap duel for the victory in phillip island:

"I will not give any advice," said Marquez. "For me it is another opponent. It’s good that joining Honda is one world champion [Joan Mir] and one rider that is winning races with another manufacturer. "Like this we will see exactly the level. I’m working really hard for the 2023 project with Honda and they are working really, really hard too. I don’t say I wish [him] the best. Let’s just go and see. He is another opponent, if not it would be fake’."

or here, take this from before mugello 2023, again mostly innocuous:

By contrast, Marquez believes Mugello is one of Rins’ best tracks and he wasn’t surprised to see the COTA winner at the sharp end. “No [I’m not surprised], because Rins, even with Suzuki, had 5-6 circuits where he is very fast and then others where he struggles more. Normally here with Suzuki, he was very fast and very consistent,” said Marquez, whose only premier-class win at Mugello was back in 2014. “He is really good in fast corners so, for example, in Le Mans he was struggling more than me and here he is very fast. It is good for Honda and Honda riders that someone is faster because like this you have more chance to look and compare the things.”

love being told I have "5-6 circuits" where I'm very fast. or take rinsy's innocent surprise that marc didn't end up winning at the sachsenring, and how he suggests it was maybe because of all the pressure marc had been feeling:

"It's hard, it tastes very bad to me because Marc has a fucking talent and it's not being easy at all,” Rins was quoted by DAZN. “But hey, in the end you have to turn the tables, you have to win, you have to build a winning bike. "Damn, I thought that Marc would also win in Germany. What happened? I don't know, I have no idea. Pressure, extra pressure, I have no idea.”

and then, of course, there was always that little hint of tension that came as a result of rinsy being honda's only race winner that year, at marc's beloved cota of all places... which became a bit of a discourse point (not always propagated by rinsy) to say that, hey, maybe the honda wasn't so bad after all... anyway, here's what marc said when rinsy signed for yamaha:

Repsol Honda rider Marquez was asked about Rins’ departure and answered: “I had an interview, they asked me about this rumour. I said ‘I don’t think so’ because Rins won a race and he said ‘it’s a good bike’. “So I didn’t expect this move. But then the day after! I’m happy for him, it’s a good move, he’s moving from a satellite team to a factory team. Yamaha has power and energy from the past.”

marc had said 'surely not' but then the very next day he was left shocked and taken aback! he'd thought rinsy loved the bike so much! he'd thought rinsy felt it was actually a good bike! he'd thought rinsy would never want to leave! how unexpected this whole thing was to him!

(there was also talk about rinsy's unhappiness at how honda treated him and his development feedback - but as there is less than zero evidence marc had anything to do with that, let's leave it there)

did marc really behave differently towards alex rins because he saw him as a threat? probably! possibly? probably! but he hasn't really felt the need to say as much. sometimes, you can fuck with people by staying silent, and sometimes you can fuck with them just because you have a reputation for mind games - which marc, like valentino, has acquired over the years. ideally, your on-track plus off-track presence gets to the point where you don't really need to do anything and can let your opponents engage in shadowboxing while you can spend your time in more useful ways. think of that excellent clip from motogp unlimited where poor joan mir complains about marc's towing, freaks out when he realises the press has said he's complained about marc's towing, and then goes to explain to marc how he hadn't actually complained about marc's towing. and marc, with the air of a man who has been high on painkillers for the past week and hasn't given joan much thought beyond contemplating how well he'd pair with potatoes, graciously accepts this explanation - which joan is painfully, obviously relieved by. marc wasn't playing any 'mind games' in this clip, he was just standing there. but sometimes that's all you've got to do! call it a good return on prior investment. (partly this is also just a result of the status the sheer extent of marc and valentino's successes provides them and, relatedly, their power and influence within the sport.) here, from one of oxley's books:

Once you've established a reputation for trickery, you can confuse people without doing anything. At this year's [2009] German GP Casey Stoner accused Rossi of attempting to confuse his rivals by scrubbing the white sidewall paint from his front slick; the paint denoting Bridgestone's softer compound tyres. In fact Bridgestone had run out of white paint (no, really), but the reality didn't matter because Stoner was sat on the grid, convinced Rossi was playing tricks when he should've been getting himself in the zone, focusing on his race.

that's the ideal, right: you don't even have to do the dirty work yourself because it's the reputation doing the work for you. marc inspires a similar effect on riders, where he just gets them to the point where they're spending way too much time hyper-analysing whatever he's doing at any given moment. which means that he doesn't actually need to be trying to fuck with anyone for the effect to still be the same. free and easy, what's not to love

so, that's it, more or less. all the on-track stuff, from 'how to build up an intimidating presence 101', to just being extremely annoying in non-race sessions, to trying to mess with your teammate, to more generally how you go about handling disputes with other riders. managing your motivation, their motivation, everyone's motivation. of course marc's not quite scaled the heights (yet) of cursing another rider to never win another race again - which, hey, nobody's perfect, but I think he's built together a fairly decent resume for himself! there's plenty more stuff you could get into here, c.f. 'everything that's been going on with ducati internal politics this year'... but this post is more than long enough, and you can follow all that stuff while it's actually happening. a few more related topics I've deigned outside of the scope of this post include how he generally manages perceptions of himself and his performance potential in ways that aren't targeted at any specific rival, for instance how he talks about his injury and has a tendency to change his tune depending on what's convenient at any given time, or how in the past he managed perceptions of the competitiveness of his honda package. likewise, I also haven't discussed the actual success rate of these tactics: let's not forget that trying to fuck with your rivals doesn't... always produce the effects you want it to. (sometimes just in kind of dumb ways, like I get messing with the rookie sensation but please try not to crash when catching a tow, marc. "marc clearly tried to get into fabio's head and I think he hit his head himself quite big." "so, I think it's karma. fabio's on pole and I hope marc is uninjured of course. but he tried to get in his head because he knows fabio is fast." not ideal!) but, hey, the most important thing is he's trying hard and having fun. or something

because that's the thing, right. when you are attempting to exert psychological pressure on your opponents, when you're trying to weaken your rivals, inevitably this also has an effect on you. there are athletes who prefer to completely ignore their opponents and act as if they are essentially competing on their lonesome. neither valentino nor marc fall into this category. as a result, how you behave towards your rivals inevitably also becomes at least in part about motivating yourself. you are attempting to focus your mind in some way - whether it is to see your rival as an enemy or to simply distance yourself from them or otherwise. you may even be minded to treat your rival particularly warmly, knowing they are less likely to give you grief if you have ensured the interpersonal relationship has remained amicable... maybe even looking for a slight psychological edge if they are not sufficiently motivated to beat you. maybe that too is about managing your reputation and drawing a line under past unfriendlier rivalries, to distinguish your most beloathed rival from all the others. you may need to find a way to keep the fire within going, to reinvigorate yourself even in periods of relative competitive tranquillity by giving yourself something to be angry at, a reason to fight and to win out of spite... finding reasons to care, again and again and again. celebrating with exuberance not just because you are genuinely filled with joy but also because you need to be filled with joy - so that you can find it within yourself to keep fighting. there's never just one brain involved in the arena of psychological warfare. to succeed in sports the first person you have to play mind games on, after all, is yourse- *gets taken out by sniper rifle*

#funny editorial choice in marc marquez all in is that two separate bits of footage for the dani/marc segment are from sepang 2015 #plenty of nervous energy from marc that had fuck all to do with dani walking up behind him #tigerbalmpng #also thank you!! that's very kind #idol tag #//#batsplat responds #has to be said my notes for seasons I actually watched live are wayyyyy worse... trying to google half-remembered controversies #if only I'd had the foresight in 2017 or whenever to keep a beef journal. tho I did have a useful ranking of my fave towing-related dramas #btw I find every single thing I put in this post good and fun. it's sports they're supposed to be assholes #'he ruined honda!!!!' good. he finished what valentino started #brr brr

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