#I will not be keeping track of discourse or suggestions

[bringthekaos]

I'm excited for your thoughts on the new season if/when you share them

It has legit taken me 3 days to come to terms with Act 1. Enough to be able to speak about it. Gunna apologize in advance for the wall of text, and I’m hiding it under a break for spoiler reasons. Also prefacing with these are all just my opinions. All are free to disagree with me and RB with discussions/theories etc. just don’t be a dick about it, I’m not engaging in any discourse.

Ok. So. I have mixed feelings, and I’m aware that this is because I don’t have the whole story yet. So this is all contingent on how the rest of the season plays out.

First and foremost, I’m… wildly swinging back and forth between love and disappointment for Viktor’s arc. So first the negative, and I’ll try to keep it brief because a lot of people have already expressed this and I don’t need to be beating that particular dead horse.

Viktor has had his agency, his bodily autonomy, his original ideas and nearly everything that made him Viktor stripped away. Nothing so far has been his choice. And while this could have worked just fine for an original character, he wasn’t. So there is a massive disconnect between what this character was/should have been. In League, it was all his choice (albeit with a healthy dose of mental illness thrown in, but still). AND it was very heavily suggested that many of the augmentations he performed weren’t as extensive as he lead everyone to believe (namely the controlling/dousing of his emotions). But it appears that whatever the Hexcore did to him, it’s real. He is clearly having a difficult time accessing his emotions, and if he can feel anything, it is limited to the point of him being completely stoic. And the thing with stoic characters is that you obliterate any emotional payoff for the audience. It’s very hard to make an audience feel an emotional connection to a character’s story arc when they themselves don’t feel anything (I have a theory about this though, but I’ll address it a little later in this post). And then there is the issue of Blitzcrank. Blitz was Viktor’s whole world, after his exile. How are they going to swing that? Like, I’m not even asking for Blitz to be in Arcane (that would be great, but I really don’t think they have time). But I stg if they take Blitz away from Viktor, make them someone else’s invention (my suspicion is Heimer or he finds the idea in Sky’s journal)… I’m sorry but no. This was Viktor’s idea, Viktor’s genius. I will genuinely be extremely upset if they take that from him too.

Then there is the whole situation with Sky. First, this girl was fridged. She was nothing but a plot device and continues to be just that. It feels hollow and forced, especially now that he’s hallucinating her as some sort of penance for what he did. (I have seen the prevalent theory that it’s the Hexcore using her image and his guilt to manipulate him, given that it “ate” her, and we have seen it “manipulate” him before when it punished him for trying to destroy it). But back to Sky—he barely acknowledged that poor girl. The reason for that can be argued, whether it’s because he’s gay or because he was just so wrapped up in his one-track minded research. But regardless, there just wasn’t enough setup between those two for this whole thing to have as much weight and meaning as I think it’s supposed to. Honestly to me (TO ME) it reeks of comphet. It feels like that random woman they threw at Poe Dameron to No Homo him. I’m not even asking for Jayvik canon. But the creators were well aware of this ship, after all it’s the second most popular ship in this show and it’s been around since 2012 when Jayce was literally created for Viktor. I’m asking for the bare minimum here—that it’s left open-ended as it was in League, open for interpretation.

Last negative I have is the whole Viktor Jesus thing. The first problem is I am pretty violently agnostic, and messiah narratives have never spoken to me. I don’t enjoy them, they feel weak. The whole “ordained by a higher power” thing is just… stale. Especially when this character originally had no higher power, he gave it to himself through his own hard work and ingenuity. Honestly, Viktor’s original arc is about as far from a Jesus allegory as you can possibly get. And I am absolutely terrified that they’re going to end said Jesus arc the way you’d expect—with him dying for it. Which leaves the moral of his story “disabled man should have just accepted that he was going to die despite the fact that it was the oppression and xenophobia of Piltover that left him out to dry, without proper health care, accessibility, equality, or equity that lead to his terminal diagnosis to begin with.” Which is a very oppressor-centric narrative and we do not need another one of those.

Sorry, I know I said I’d keep the negatives brief, and that was… not. My bad. But moving on!

I’m not saying I didn’t enjoy it, I did. I am working to embrace this new Viktor narrative and work it into my brain in a way that doesn’t ruin the ship for me. So without further ado, the positives.

Jayce.

Jayce.

Jayce.

I’d have to go back and time it, but it feels like he got more screen time in this first act than the entirety of the first season combined, and his character shined for it. It humanized him in ways season one never did. He’s caring, he’s devoted, and he loved Viktor! No matter what kind of love you think it is, it proves he loved Viktor without a doubt. He carried Viktor several city blocks to the lab to save him, and then YES, he broke his promise about the Hexcore because he couldn’t stand the thought of losing him!

And he’s funny! (The scene where he picks up the regular sized hammer in the fight against Renni and made that “this is ironic” face?? And then basically the entire interaction with Ekko? The hand me a tome thing, and then when he basically pulled this when Ekko suggested “so this is all your fault cuz you pissed off the Arcane”:

GOD that shit was great. Jayce’s personality just shined, and maybe it’s too much to hope, but maybe this will douse a little of the hate. Because instead of being a subtle hint at all of those things being true about him, it’s now overt. And when people lack media literacy, the hints have to be overt.

And th-the. The h. The HUG SCENE. I don’t think I will ever emotionally recover from that scene. Starting with Viktor who, despite being clearly emotionally—I dunno, vacant I guess—sounded so lost and scared when he said “what am I?” For me, it was whispers of that scene from The Last Unicorn: “what have you done to me?” And my poor sweet Jayce, who clearly hasn’t left this damn lab except to go to Cassandra’s memorial. Sleeping on the desk and bleeding through his bandages because he doesn’t want to spend a moment away from Viktor while he “recovers.” And his euphoric response when he finds Viktor alive, when he realizes he hasn’t lost him. And I OWE HIM AN APOLOGY, goddamn. I said in a post that “Jayce will not understand.” I thought that was how Arcane was gunna start the divorce. But Jayce genuinely did not care, as long as his lover friend was alive. And just… Jayce being so affectionate through this entire scene. The hug obviously, but also blurting things he thought he’d never get to say to Viktor—“I’m resigning from the council, my place was always here in the lab with you.”

And… the hug itself. I know we’re all analyzing it frame by goddamn frame, but I see exactly what everyone else sees—there is a moment where Viktor very subtly smiles. But it’s gone in an instant, and it turns bittersweet. LOOK AT HIM.

There is something there, it’s just buried. Deep beneath the surface. It seems to say “I want this, I have wanted this for so long.” But then he realizes something, something I don’t think we’re meant to understand yet. Maybe that he doesn’t feel anything about it anymore, and he recognizes that this should upset him and it doesn’t. Or perhaps it’s something more along the lines of “it’s too late.” Whatever it is, I think this is the exact moment he knows he has to walk away. Because he knows he’ll cave to the affection, he said it himself. (Which is another thing entirely. His voice changes when he says that. Something in him is reacting to that word. Maybe he’s fighting against it, or maybe he’s fighting to get it back. But something made him almost growl that word.)

Which leads me to my final thought (for this post anyway, cuz it’s turning into a novel); Viktor is still in there. He can still feel things, I just think they’re extremely muted by whatever the Hexcore did/continues to do to him, or he has to fight to express them. Because he also smiled at the hallucination of Sky after he “cured” Huck. And if he feels nothing, he wouldn’t have been “joyous” at the thought of her being proud of him, approving of the good things he’s trying to do in her memory. He wouldn’t crave that validation, that vindication from her. So I’m hopeful that we start to see this shell crack a little, especially if those visions of Sky are the Hexcore manipulating him through guilt. It will start to erode him, no matter how stoic he has become. And literally the only thing I’m clinging to is that Jayce will see this and try to pull him out. “He’s still in there and I have to save him.” And that maybe it’ll start to work.

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

Am I the asshole in this situation??

First of all I'm so sorry for bringing t/b discourse here but this has been so gd annoying I need help. And all this is is on twitter-retro etc.

I'm 100% here for switch please keep in mind. Idc what anyone else likes it's food I'll eat all of it. But this fandom. Oh this fandom. So here's the context, it's a anime show with a really popular almost canon mlm ship, one of them is crazy beautiful and the other one is a big muscular man. Naturally the fandom like the pretty man as bottom and the muscular man as top. Let's call this DC. Not all people tho and it's the problem.

See, there are some creators who hate the above dynamics so much they make the muscular man a woman, sometimes trans which is fine but they always babygirl him, call him wifey, use she/her pronouns, go all out to make the pretty man over the top masculine so he can be top while making the canon masculine man demure little wife. Note that they're both really tall but D has long hair so they always make him wear accessories to feminize him. I made friends with some authors who used to like switch, they wrote DC back then and they were so good. They were all into switch too. Over the years they became really hateful of DC dynamics and started to exclusively write CD, talk about CD only, rt CD art exclusively.

This is still fine, they're like 10 people out of thousands who don't care, and most people don't care. Until one day recently when I said it was better to ship switch. Those people started clowning me, saying it's their right to exclusively like whatever, write whatever, started ignoring how the show portrays them. They wrote literal threads detailing how to how use tags as if no one knows, shaded people who said they didn't care and would use whatever tags they liked. It got to a point I had to ask them to stop, they started saying I was harassing them and accused the fandom of harassing them on anon and ao3. When I said it Doesn't Matter they said it was racist to suggest that, telling me to block if I didn't like their posts. I could not make them understand how fetishistic it was, just because Japanese fans do this doesn't mean it's good or we have to follow? They somehow figured out who I was and blocked me, kicked me out of a server we were in together, so I lost mutuals and some followers too.

Then they started answering my asks unseriously like "I write CD to piss YOU off" "can't project on the twink like yall" and started insulting switch fans calling us hypocrits. There isn't much CD content to begin with how can I share more of those? Whatever is available they make it heteronormative like that. One of them deadass called me an asshole for "harassing" them just because I said it's rude to block people over t/b dynamics when no one is bothering anyone, because these people are always blocking anyone posting DC and making a bubble of CD only fans. This is bound to make them lose track of canon but who cares anymore. They keep complaining about being harassed for liking CD and yes some fans probably send anon hate but that doesn't mean any critic of CD is harassment?

Tell me how I'm the asshole here for suggesting they stop obsessing over t/b this much? How am I the asshole when I'm the one they all blocked and apparently I'm a bad guy because I followed some popular accounts who post DC and said some weird things about D which I didn't even know about.

What are these acronyms?

[bestworstcase]

the perennial Tai Discourse is really interesting to track bc, speaking broadly, the two major camps are just:

those who focus primarily on ruby’s recollection of her childhood and relationship with her dad (and filter what yang says through that lens such that “i had to pick up the pieces and keep things together when i was five” gets diluted into “yang had responsibilities as a child”)

those who focus primarily on yang’s memories and her arc in v4 (and tend to just ignore or minimize the things ruby says that suggest a positive relationship with tai, in particular often just flat out disregarding how excited ruby is to spend time with or receive care packages from him)

when it’s like. yeah that’s. literally the point. that ruby and yang had profoundly different childhoods.

they’re half-sisters in a story about fairytales and only one of them had a decent dad. rwby is unsubtly interrogating the fairytale archetype of the Evil Stepmother/Dead Mother with raven (not dead, but absent) and summer (villain, presumed dead) and that archetype quite literally requires its counterpart archetype of the Neglectful Father who remarries and tacitly participates in the Evil Stepmother’s abuse of his child from his first wife

tai is as much an exploration of the fairytale Neglectful Father as raven is the Dead Mom and summer is the Evil Stepmother. that’s. a core aspect of the narrative surrounding the rose xiao long family.

the Dead Mom often reincarnates as a bird or tree or similar spirit to watch over her child; rwby turns this on its head by reimagining the Dead Mom as an absent one. raven watches over yang in her bird form because she is too afraid to be meaningfully present; she isn’t dead, but her absence in yang’s life is so complete that she might as well have been, and the fairytale tension between the Dead Mom’s death and her lingering presence is explored through these cramped and inadequate half-measures raven takes in trying to have it both ways.

the Evil Stepmother is a vehicle for making the fairytale heroine miserable; she has no identity nor any reason for her monstrous treatment of the child who is not her own. rwby, again, flips this over with the mystery of summer rose. who was she, really? did anyone know? she was a good stepmom—she loved yang like her own daughter—but now she’s gone. she left. she never came back. she lied. she joined salem. why? what expectations did she feel on her shoulders? what broke her? why did she do the things she did?

lastly, the Neglectful Father must either be a love-blind fool or a weak, contemptible man with no love or loyalty to his own blood; he forgets his motherless child at the behest of his new love. rwby turns this on its head too by rendering tai as a human being—messy, flawed, fully-realized. wicked stepsisters exist for the purpose of being spoiled by the Evil Stepmother in juxtaposition with her cruelty to the first child, who is kind and good because she remembers her mother’s lessons. the fairytale children of these archetypes function as repetitions of their mothers. rwby makes that the central conceit of its spin on the Neglectful Father: what if he loved both the Dead Mom and the Evil Stepmother so much and then both of them broke his heart in mirrored ways, leaving him a single father to both of their children? if he sees raven in yang and summer in ruby, how does that color his relationships with both girls? if you take away the Evil Stepmother but not her daughter, does the Neglectful Father remember his first child? or are people more complicated than that?

and with all three, the narrative engages with these one-dimensional archetypes by constructing complicated, multi-faceted characters on top of them; by tossing the simplistic moral didacticism of a fairytale and presuming, first, that everyone is trying their best, that bad choices can be made from good intentions, and that no one gets it right all the time, or even most of the time. love and profound dysfunction can coexist.

ruby and yang had very different childhoods. that’s the narrative foundation the whole rose xiao long family is built on, because they’re a deconstruction of the archetypal fairytale blended family.

[shiroganeryo]

So... I may or may have not made a Dazatsu lovechild a while ago 💦 Decided to show her to the world after seeing some discourse on the neighboring site today 😅

I took inspiration from Yūko Tsushima, Osamu Dazai's daughter and novelist! Her ability is Child of Fortune.

A lot about her is still a WIP, but please check under the read more cut if you're interested in knowing more about her (and also see me exposing myself with the delirious idea that brought her into being)!

Feat. married Dazatsu, which is always good; but this post is looong.

So, how did this happen?

I'm very weak and give lovechildren to my ships often. I was thinking about how cute would be a child of theirs and conveniently found out about Dazai's daughter, who also was a novelist and everything simply fell into place effortlessly.

The actual backstory

Yūko is a byproduct of the Book. The text written into it desired a strong ability that could be easily manipulated to come into being. However, since the Book follows a certain logic, such ability manifested as a singularity; key traits of two abilities it considered powerful if combined merged and came into being as an infant's.

Still following the Book's logic, this weak, vulnerable being appeared in the vicinity of the ones who would protect it from harm.

And now the "serious" part is out of the way, imagine Dazai randomly getting up in the middle of the night for a glass of water and finding a sleeping cat that had broken into their home.

...Except when he touches it to put it back outside, it turns into a child.

This is a case of "instructions too vague, gave a random couple a child" lmao

What happens from there

What else would Dazai do if not wake Atsushi up, who at first doesn't understand why all that fuss just because of a cat that broke in until he sees it for himself. Both are extremely confused.

Then what else would they do if not resort to Kyouka next door because they're at a loss and need a female's feedback here. She's immediately smitten but Atsushi keeps reminding her they can't just keep her like a lost kitten, they need to find her parents.

This results in them deciding to take her to the Agency, they're detectives after all. The three of them walk in, Dazai with the girl in his arms (to prevent her from activating her ability and running off), Atsushi carrying a bag with the improvised provisions they had arranged, and Kyouka with the straightest face ever.

Everyone looks at them in confusion. Ranpo instantly knows what's up. Atsushi says he would love to say they can explain but he honestly has no idea whatsoever.

They tell the others what happened and since Ranpo likes to make things more amusing, he remarks on how similar she looks to both Dazai and Atsushi in appearance, and that her ability also resembles Atsushi's weretiger features. Dazai instantly picks up on the hints.

Kunikida is hellbent on finding the girl's parents before anything else, but Dazai suggests running a DNA test to test a theory of his. Kunikida resists a little because there's just no way you're implying what you're implying, but Dazai insists for the sake of ruling out possibilities.

It's a perfect match with both him and Atsushi.

The next steps

Apparently, they're her parents now. She needs registration documents and whatnot; Ango takes care of the bureaucracies and necessary paperwork to make this happen more smoothly because this is by no means your everyday occurrence, she must be properly recorded in the Special Division's files.

Since Dazai and Atsushi are married, this means they're also both her legal guardians. For safety's sake, her surname is registered as Tsushima (津島) instead of Nakajima (中島) to make her a little harder to track because there's definitely something up with that (or so Dazai thinks, which he tells Ango).

To help cover her identity better, she's also accepted into the Agency as an employee (she went through an entrance exam and all) of sorts, so Fukuzawa's ability takes effect on her. The ID card on her lanyard is her official detective ID.

Currently, she's learning how to read and write and undergoing training to better control her ability.

Ability

Yūko's ability was dubbed Child of Fortune (寵児, Chōji); it's still under observation to determine the full potential of her skills. So far, it's known that much like Atsushi, she's able of transforming fully into a tiger (except it's a tiger cub) or partially, into a weretiger. She supposedly has restoration skills, but they're still not fully developed.

Exceptionally strong claws.

She also has a powerful bite, observed to neutralize the effect of other abilities with the only exception being No Longer Human. The bite leaves a mark that renders the affected person unable of using their ability for a set time.

Some trivia

Since Yūko can't heal herself properly yet, her injuries are kept bandaged. Usually seen on the wrists or ankles. I left this detail to match Dazai's bandages, as a visual representation of the young age the irl author lost her father to suicide.

The reason why her left hand is bandaged in the second drawing though, is because she punched a classmate who was bullying her; she didn't mind the offenses until it sounded like they were badmouthing Atsushi and GOD FORBID she hears anyone say anything bad about any of her dads.

It's fine btw, they're best friends now. Dazai actually talked to the kid and they apologized after that; Yūko only apologized because Atsushi told her to.

I need you to imagine them being called to the school because Yūko got into a fight and Atsushi becoming disconcerted after learning the reason behind it from their daughter while Dazai tried very hard not to laugh because it would upset Atsushi but he was a little too proud of Yūko (defend your cinnamon roll dad!)

She's very easy to deal with, a very calm and obedient child despite having a strong, assertive personality. When she's not in school, she's hanging out in the Agency; she stays in the lounge area of the office and spends her time drawing or trying to write words. Both Atsushi and Dazai take turns checking on her.

Like any child, Yūko has a lot of energy and may tire out her parents, especially if she decides to activate her ability; she outsped Atsushi once and since then they're both surprised and terrified. She always falls for Dazai's trap of calling her by saying "pspsps" with a smile though and fails to understand why she turns back to normal every time.

Her training isn't just to teach her how to control her ability better, but also to teach her how to use it responsibly. Sometimes it looks a lot like gym classes tbh.

Yes, tiger Atsushi does carry tiger cub Yūko around in his mouth and gives her baths.

Yes, Dazai does whine there's yet another cat in his immediate family circle that he can't pet.

And if you read until here, I wish you a wonderful day, please know that I love you and am sending good things vibes your way 🫶

[batsplat]

#this is all incredible cowardice btw obviously i've ranked all the aliens in my notes by basically every imaginable metric#from qualifying to starts to w2w to mixed conditions to wet weather prowess etc etc etc. like i do also do it i just don't stand by it

i would LOVE to hear your rankings if you are willing to share...

sign of faith I'm posting this. please feel free to send me counter-arguments and disagreements but keep it sensible. this is not supposed to be serious, I just enjoy treating athletes like pokemon and love doing a sports discourse, but I'm not making any judgement over how I'd rank these guys overall. also, I've already said how I think basically all of these things are impossible to judge given timeline + machinery differences. it's really not that serious, this is really just an excuse to make radar charts, aka the coolest things to exist

also, obviously these categories are extremely fake and made up. please make alternative suggestions!! the two ones that I would have liked to include but couldn't really figure out how to put numbers to are 'tyre management' and 'adaptability'. with tyre management... that's a broad category and the one where era differences + bike factors really punch you in the face. like, for instance if I were doing this for dovi (which I'm not), by any reasonable standard that's such a massive strength for him - but then how do you account for his 2020 decline being so much about a tyre switch? how about jorge, who was the tyre preservation bloke, mr metronome himself, and then went to ducati and spent like, 1.3 years just darting to the lead early and slowly dropping back? what about valentino, who was seen as the absolute master of riding well once the grip levels were fucked at the end of the race, but then he too eventually got caught out by successive michelin tyre changes when he was like 108 years old? if you look at a lot of these riders' competitive decline, you do end up tracing it back to like... michelin... *shakes fist* but no it literally is about them no longer being able to make the tyres work for them for xyz reason, like that's typically the nail in the coffin, if you will. but obviously it would also feel weird to penalise someone for successfully adapting to one generation of tyres after the next until eventually no longer managing to when they're about 249 years old, y'know? also, tyre management does feel like you need to differentiate more if you're tackling it - like for instance one of dani's big strengths is the lack of tyre wear, plus similarly you have jorge's super smooth riding. whereas with valentino, casey and marc, I'm not saying they're all murdering their tyres, but their real big strength where tyres are concerned is that once the tyres are shredded and the grip is completely fucked, they're still able to be silly good in that situation. like, check out valentino's catalunya record, tyre killer track extraordinaire - you really see how good he is with this stuff in 2004 when he's more on the limit and he looks less in control than he generally does (a bit more like those other two actually). with casey, literally nobody needs me to reiterate the bonkers levels of raw talent he has, it's also not a coincidence he's the only one who's actually managed to beat valentino in one of said 1 vs 1 catalunya battles, the dirt biking thing, the insane natural sensitivity he has to grip levels. ditto with marc (minus beating valentino at catalunya), there's a reason why he's the mixed conditions goat, check out what he's been able to do late in races this year. so, sure, I could try and put numbers on 'tyre management' but.... I'd really struggle to rank them, like this may shock you but managing tyres is kinda important and it does feel the equivalent to having a category asking how 'fast' they are. they're all very good at it!! if in different ways

adaptability... yeah, look, ideally I would like some metric that considers the manufacturer switches + ability to override a poor package. but first of all, there's an obvious sample size issue, and second of all it's just TOO context-dependent. like, yes, brownie points to valentino for the yamaha switch - but how do we compare his failure to adapt to the ducati vs casey? on the one hand, obviously completely different levels of success on that bike. on the other hand, valentino by time of this switch was over thirty and casey when he joined that team was like, a child, with not that much experience of motogp - more of a raw talent who could mould himself to the needs of the bike. also, if you use hayden's results as a rough baseline, you kinda have to say the ducati was worse in 2011, and then if you dig into the numbers you do probably go 'yeah casey would've done better but not THAT much better'? like, he would've won races, not titles. I don't have a number for that from 1-10 either. dani never switched manufacturer, the honda was eventually developed away from him but *squints at the other side of the garage* he was also the only alien who had to deal with a teammate actively attempting to make the bike less rideable for him. jorge's switch to ducati is a bit. well. obviously it's not actually great that his final standings in those years are broadly in line with valentino on,,,, a WAY worse ducati a few years earlier. he gets bailed out a little bit by the three race wins in 2018 lol, dovi does have a littleeeee bit of a point that this man was not signed to win three races. but! he did click with that bike! I'm not sure I entirely buy his line of 'oh I would have won the 2020 title on a ducati' because, with all love, it's a very jorge thing to say and I'm also a bit? well before 2020 if you'd told me that marc gets injured in the first race of the season and someone else is gonna win the title, and then held a gun to my head and told me to predict who was gonna win the title in his absence, I guess I would have gone 'dovi or MAYBE fabio'. ducati wasn't in a super happy place in 2020, the tyres were funky, that could have affected jorge too!! we don't know!! I think it's absolutely a plausible counterfactual but I also haven't seen a convincing case for why the things that caught out dovi wouldn't have caught out dovi too, like come on. anyway, marc gets brownie points for this ducati adaptation, casey gets brownie points for the honda adaptation. honestly, just vibes based I do kinda think of casey as like, the most adaptable rider ever. I maybe rate valentino a bit higher in terms of getting the bike to where he needs it, and also obviously being adaptable - he has the longevity and multiple major riding style changes going for him. also marc is insanely good, and he rode the unrideable honda to places where it should NOT be ridden. it's those three in a cluster, probablyyy casey first, followed by marc then valentino, and then the other two aliens

also quite frankly I'd like to have something to do with bike development, but that's so hard to judge from the outside? obviously, valentino does have a very clear claim to fame here, and the yamaha gig is still... well, that's got to be the biggest impact a rider has had on a manufacturer this century. the other contender is casey at ducati, but the thing is he did basically bag them a title by being the only bloke who could win there, then they got super complacent, bike got worse and he fucked off. now, I'm not saying casey hurt ducati's development because of course that would be silly and unfair, but there is obviously a good half decade between him leaving that project and anyone else being able to consistently do something useful with that piece of shit. (obviously valentino also did not manage to make much short-term change at ducati so maybe we should just be blaming ducati here, but equally obviously the rider who made the single biggest individual difference into making that thing rideable isn't any of these guys but is instead andrea dovizioso lol.) as outsiders, we really can't meaningfully know how much these guys are making a difference behind the scene, all we have are vibes and rumours and surface level results... like basically if I had to rank them I'd probably give valentino the nod just because the yamaha thing deserves a nod, then kinda? idk casey + dani clearly did make an insanely good bike at honda and they should get some of the credit for kinda rescuing honda from its post-2006 slump. I think maybe dani goes second, like I know some have said he's a less useful development rider because he's too short (part of why honda didn't use him as a test rider, as well as obviously *gestures* the puig thing) and thus harder to compare to other riders.... BUT there's pretty universal praise for his work at ktm, and casey's post-motogp stints I don't think you can really say the same. with jorge... idk it's tricky, I remember reading that the vibe from valentino's team in 2013 was kinda 'well this bike is still... the exact same as it was two years ago...?' but obviously those guys also aren't neutrals. and they weren't even saying that in a negative way, there's a bit of an element of if it ain't broke don't fix it given jorge had just won the 2012 title. plus, especially in their second stint as teammates, I get the sense they were always broadly on the same page in terms of feedback? and if anything, yamaha's current malaise can partly be traced back to them not listening to shit they were being told by JORGE (+ valentino at the same time) like this is years and years back... so yeah those three are all in a blob. then comes marc, which. okay sure, super talented so can ride around everything etc etc, he's not the main reason for why honda sucks now, etc etc. but I'm sorry, you do just get marked down on this category if you sabotage bike development to fuck with your teammate. like I respect it, love you for it, but you are getting marked down here. there is no way you can get around this

then there's even more nebulous categories like 'mentality' or 'mind games' or whatever, but how even are you gonna rate this. with perhaps the sole exception of dani, all these other guys have exhibited some spectacular instances of head loss over the courses of their career. but then again with dani, you're probably also not going to point to mentality make the difference as much in a positive sense - like it's good to be even-tempered, but the highs also aren't as high in that regard. you have stuff like mental resilience, ability to bounce back from tough results... and again. I don't know. I don't feel comfortable putting a number on some of these. like say we took casey, then surely I'd have to mark him down for what happened post laguna in 2008 (and yes, I know he wouldn't agree with me on this, yes, I know there are mitigating circumstances, but it is a bit glaring). but then you look at how he got through 2009 and actually eventually got himself to the place where he won another title. how marc bounced back after 2015. whatever tf valentino did after qatar 2004. the 2009 bounce back after le mans/mugello... the 2003 arc and all that. for all of them, various criticisms in the media, hate campaigns from fans etc etc. like idk I don't have a number from 1-10 here. plus, any metric kinda has to have a clear good pole and a clear bad pole if you're putting numbers on that, and with something like mind games you can go either way on whether you think they're good or not? basically, I think we should lock casey and valentino into a room and get them to discuss this. I will provide a piece of paper with talking points and only let them out when I feel like they've had it out to an adequate extent. they're all mentally strong, love them all, let's leave it at that

wow! yay! these are all metrics I didn't even include! aren't you glad you clicked on this read more! there's so much to come after this!

let's get to metrics I did actually include: qualifying, starts, reliability, flexibility, mixed, wet, overtaking ability, defensive ability, cunning, strategy/work process. again, there were a few where I was like.... should there be some kinda basic metric for 'underlying pace' or 'raw talent' (both of which you kinda gesture in the casey + marc direction) but I'm somebody who's very outcome-focused. when you're rating things, you should sometimes just focus on the shit you can actually see. 'talent' is fake, give me results. but this does mean that... obviously not all of these metrics are of equal importance. like, qualifying is more important than how you are in the wet!! and yes, again, there's a million caveats here in terms of era and different bike characteristics and all that shit. even 'effort levels' - valentino's starts generally got better when he moved to yamaha (they were truly abysmal before that), which you can maybe attribute to the yamaha bike being better off the line (not much evidence for this from other riders who made switches back-and-forth around the same time iirc), or you can also attribute it to valentino knowing he couldn't afford quite as much faffing about on a worse bike. again, there's so so many caveats here. also, I found marc and casey REALLY hard to judge because like? it's so much harder if you haven't been able to see them line up next to each other to figure out how they compare? sure, you can use general metrics, you can check how they compare against the same group of riders, but... yeah, idk, for a lot of these categories when I was figuring out who to give a 9 or 10 out of those two I did a sort of *shrug*. I think one of these two I probably did dirty but I'm not sure which one. maybe I did everyone dirty. or maybe they all suck

so. let's go through them

1. qualifying

stuff I considered: outright qualifying performance both in terms of number of poles and average grid position, strength of qualifying opposition, h2h comparisons, adaptability to changing conditions

okay, so, I started with the most basic measure possible and looked at the pole numbers in the premier class as a percentage of number of race starts (and I've even updated the numbers for marc, that's how thorough I am hehe) (I just realised there's a problem here actually for casey because he got pole in valencia 2009 but didn't start the race due to a crash in the warm-up lap, which... well I don't want to take his pole away from him but I'm assuming the race start wasn't included? look, who gives a shit, I've kept the pole)

I also ran these numbers again just by... trimming down the number of seasons and limiting it to the 'competitive' ones, aka one where the finished top five in the championship standings. I'm aware this is super arbitrary, but I'm also not sure if we're really gaining much from including jorge's 2019 or valentino's 2021 or marc's 2023, when for instance you don't have those kinds of dud seasons for casey (though his rookie season did get cut). like, this is just a rough way of not punishing longevity and injuries and bad vibes, who knows what casey's qualifying would have looked like at age 382

doesn't actually change the order, which is nice. still think it's a better reflection of their actual qualifying chops

let's get the obvious out of the way - if you are getting almost 50% pole positions in your competitive seasons, I don't care how good your bike is or the era or whatever else, you are obviously an obscenely good qualifier. like, marc's qualifying numbers make you want to bust out the 12/10's. those are silly numbers that honestly you don't really need to add much too - sure, we can also dive into his average grid positions etc but like. they're all super high. idk what to tell you. marc has the average highest grid position every single year 2013 to 2019, enough said. I think casey over the course of his career was on slightly worse bikes on average than prime!marc, and also he was facing aliens in their prime or late prime literally every year which... yeah, maybe you do want to make a bit of an adjustment for that. like, marc's closest competition on paper in 2017-19 was dovi, who is very much not a gifted qualifier. but marc also got THIRTEEN POLES in 2014!! I know the honda was the best bike on the grid, but not by that much, and dani's hardly a slouch! idk I feel pretty happy with just giving marc the top spot here and letting casey slot into second. like, at a certain point the numbers you're staring at just sort of bludgeon you in the face, and you also have visions of cota 2015 and brno 2019 playing around in your head in a loop

THAT BEING SAID. there is one major caveat we do have to address: in 2013, the entire qualifying system was changed to introduce these 15 minute time slots. this whole q1 and q2 business is a relatively recent invention. now, this is pure speculation, but I think this format would have suited casey 'mr friday' stoner very very well. one of his big strengths was always like, being fast immediately, getting used to what the track was like with zero adaptation process and just putting down a super fast lap at the first attempt. he would have done great here!! also, I think the numbers of some of his opponents might have taken a bit of a dip and... yeah, look, obviously I'm really just talking about valentino here, who hated the new format and never got on particularly well with it. (serious argument to be made that if they hadn't switched the system, he would've taken the 2015 title - like obviously you get into weird butterfly effect territory with that kind of thing but ceteris paribus that will have absolutely cost him more than five points over the course of a full season.) he got better for a while in 2016.... but anyway during the early bits of the alien era, valentino was often qualifying like, really well when you compare it to his mid reputation. and maybe casey would've been able to beat him more under that system. probably

still, overall. idk man. almost 50% pole positions in his prime. obscene. giving it to marc

jorge is a lonely third in this metric. I feel fine with that? like, he's clearly very good, he was very good in his prime, that's how he won the 2015 title (though he did actually have a slightly worse grid position than marc that season, but crucially a lot better than valentino), he's gotten a lot of poles... but also his relative lack of flexibility hurts him here too, like he's not doing a brno 2019 is he. jorge kinda needs everything to be just right to get out the metronome, and that's also reflected in qualifying - he's more likely to be caught out by something being a bit off than either marc or casey. super fast over one lap, clearly insane underlying pace, what can you say

it's on the other end of the spectrum that I ran into my biggest headache, because...? honestly, I was a little bit surprised at valentino having the slight edge in the percentages, either way you measure them. dani has a bit more of a qualifying-centred reputation, whereas with valentino it's a bit... well, people do think he's very good at everything, and if you're looking for flaws in his game then that's one of the big things that jumps out. also, I do reckon there's a fair bit of recency bias at play here - a lot of fans only remember post-prime valentino, where format change this format change that he had just lost his edge over a single lap. some of this is also natural age-based decline? it does seem to be a thing in motorsports that saturday performances can go off before sunday performances, so it is a bit of an issue if everyone's just going 'okay but he was seventh every single week' when he too has racked up some impressive numbers over the course of his career. which isn't just longevity! you don't just longevity your way into 55 pole positions. on the other hand, you look at his honda prime and given the bike he was on, you do kinda go 'okay but I feel like you could've done a bit better here'. like, what are you doing being tied with biaggi on the yamaha in terms of average grid position in 2002... come on. come on. again, there's a teensy bit of an effort question here - I'm not suggesting valentino fluffed his qualifying on purpose to make his sundays more interesting, but I do think he does... you know, just performs differently when he knows he needs to do so. he's getting five pole positions on that 2004 yamaha... like he's clearly not a slouch

I actually think the best way you can make the pro-valentino qualifying argument is probably just by looking at the years when pretty good versions of the aliens were competing against each other on pretty competitive bikes? which is 2007 to 2009 - of course, that's gonna look fairly kind to valentino because he won the titles for two out of three years, but it's a good way to check our priors here and see whether valentino could theoretically keep pace with his fellow aliens. here's the average grid positions:

valentino got seven poles in 2009. idk, best bike, casey missed a few races, but at least against jorge it's a direct h2h (giving jorge a pass for his rookie season, but jorge's not becoming a significantly better qualifier after his sophomore season). like clearly he's fast

and after saying all of that, I ranked him last after dani!! yeah, look. I think it's marginal to me, and maybe this is partly my own bias because I've always thought of dani as a very good qualifier and have ragged on valentino for being mid literal hundreds of times. maybe it's also being swayed by the young talent factor - did you know valentino is the only alien who did not get a pole in his rookie season? these are the youngest pole sitter rankings for the premier class:

yeah, idk. I don't love this argument for philosophical reasons... but also it's kinda fine, it was obviously more important in dani's game than it was in valentino's. the percentages are close enough you can make the argument either way, but what sways me more than anything else is the competitive spread argument. like, all of dani's poles came with one of casey or marc in the field. several of prime valentino's opponents were really good qualifiers, sete in particular did out-qualify valentino over the course of whole seasons, but I'm not gonna make the case they were casey/marc good qualifiers. that's the deciding factor, congrats dani

2. starts

stuff I considered: speed off the line, consistency in starting ability, likelihood of getting holeshot, ability to get to the front from second/third row, wow factor starts from lower down the field

I was debating whether to put dani or casey first here, and I think you can make the argument for either. like, it is very hard to match dani, but I do also remember those kinda... later years, where he was still pretty competitive and winning races and all that but wasn't a rocket off the line in the same way any more, and it was one of those 'is it him or the tyres or the honda' thing. the whole problem with casey is that he retired so early so it's kinda... I mean, he may have had any of these issues too, we just don't know! unfair comparison. but well, I can at least judge the two of them competing, including on equal machinery and... man, dani and the holeshot, name a better love story. silly good. what I think is also important is... sometimes dani gets judged a bit for lack of flexibility in terms of figuring out how to get overtakes done in particular, but I can sort of picture a highlight reel of dani shooting off the line and picking his way through the field to still get the holeshot? like when he was good at this, he was so good - this is a category where the peak sways me I reckon

casey and jorge I'm also fairly content ranking in that order. jorge had to become a better starter, and while he did get very good at it and had so so many races where he just led off the start and then disappeared... idk, in terms of blistering raw speed off the line I still think casey edges him out. jorge does get brownie points for some of his ducati starts, bit more muscling his way through the field before burning out his tyres and falling back. sorry jorge. but yeah nah I'm fine with this order, casey did have the occasional stinker but also I'm blaming that on the ducati.... also jorge automatically loses the tiebreaker just because I remember that COMICAL 2014 cota jump start. then we get to marc and valentino, in that order. starts were a real flaw in marc's game early in his time in the premier class, even in his super dominant 2014, and while it did get better... like, y'know, he was never awful at them, but it also generally speaking wasn't ever one of his big strengths. valentino was 'running gag level of bad' at starting, like basically in his prime wherever he qualified, he was reliably seventh after a few corners. again, this is probably also exaggerated a bit... but also, we're operating at a high level here, somebody has to be at the bottom of the pile, and you cannot make an argument for anyone other than valentino. nobody's saying he's maverick vinales-level bad, but he's clearly no dani pedrosa. as mentioned above, he did get better at his starts when he switched to yamaha, so some of that prime honda stuff was also just him faffing about, and post-prime he really did have some great starts to make up for his poor qualifying but. y'know. balance of the career

which brings us to.... okay, one thing we do obviously have to quickly mention is that both marc and valentino have made some of those 'wow what the fuck' starts from poor qualifying positions. like, I've been insulting valentino a lot in this bit of the post, but qatar 2004 remains some very cool shit. objectively. (I mean the start he made from the back of the grid, not him cursing to sete. obviously. I wouldn't do the other thing.) marc... yeah, look, we've all seen the starts he's been making from pee fifty million this year. the... le mans sprint start, I believe? is still comically cool. doesn't save their positions in this ranking because you don't get that many points for three good starts out of three thousand, but still. did slap. plus, it does showcase they're very good at the bits where you have to like, spot gaps and dart through them, and obviously neither of them have ever been opposed to bit of muscling their ways through the field. they are very good!! still more sluggish off the line than the other three

3. reliability

stuff I considered: conversion rate on executing achievable results, number of unforced errors (anything that isn't 'strategy' like tyre choice or flag to flag handling), crashes - in particular costly ones

gahhhhhh I HATE this metric. I kinda needed a 'how often are you gonna throw away races while leading them' thing, which, to be clear, none of these blokes have done an awful lot of. but it's kinda... look, are you actually converting your maximum achievable results? what's the crash rate looking like? how many unforced errors are you making? and then I started changing my mind several different times because unsurprisingly, I can think of a lot of plenty of errors for all of them that are kinda egregious. like, that's how racing works! also this is a way less 'clean' metric than the two before that, because inevitably you're kinda overlapping with a lot of different categories. like, take making errors in the wet - obviously, that's what you do when you're not a good wet weather racer, but you don't suddenly get a free pass on mistakes just because it's raining. is this a metric that you limit to 'competitive' seasons? inherently, I am biased towards thinking a mistake is 'worse' when there's a lot at stake, but arguably that's something that should be included in the more cerebral categories and all errors should be treated equally. which I don't!! I think it very much matters being reliable under pressure. my last issue was the overlap with the 'flexibility' category because it's kinda... there's one or two riders who have a bit of a tendency to have Perfect Weekends when everything's going well, and then have poorer rides when they're just not quite feeling it. which is mostly covered under flexibility, but surely some of this stuff does also make you unreliable!!

again, they do obviously all have their errors... I think I probably penalise riders a little more severely for crashing out of the lead, which yes, all of them have done. now, I might be missing something obvious, but I think valentino only ever did so twice? donington 2009, which was in the wet (not an excuse!! he did also finish fifth, which, fair play I suppose), and sepang 2018, where he was *gestures* very old. marc... my issue with marc is that obviously he's managed to match that this year but both of those did have mitigating circumstances? his 2019 cota crash I also think had... something else going on. of course you do also have his phillip island crashes, 2014 and 2016 (I've said it before and I've said it again, prime!marc's phillip island record is incredibly funny when you think about it). then 2014 he's also got aragon, which was more about a poor decision to not switch tyres but like, crash is a crash, and argentina 2017. which is like... you know, given how he rides and how many races he was leading, it's not terrible. also I think this is a bit more dubious with early season races because you don't know what might end up costing you, but none of these were particularly important in title fight terms (argentina 2017 could have been!) so. dani... well, he's got sachsenring 2008, which was kinda terrible because he was genuinely seven seconds in the lead, but also it's raining? idk crucially it did basically cost him any hope of fighting for the title, lost the championship lead and bagged himself a wrist injury (which, of course, is also just poor luck - we do not have a sturdiness category). laguna 2010 also isn't great, especially given it just helped jorge run away with the title even more. dani also crashed from the lead at indy 2009, plus brno 2011. jorge ALSO crashed out of the lead at donington 2009 (truly, one of those days), plus brno 2009 (not great at that point in the title fight!!), plus valencia 2012 (I mean, last race of the season, also kinda a weird one since he was lapping someone), plus qatar 2014, and misano 2017. casey crashes out of the lead at... well, back to back races post-laguna 2008, brno and misano, which admittedly apart from anything else isn't great optics. I think the only other time he does it is qatar 2010? which. yeah. not ideal

okay, look, this sample size is so small I don't think you gain much from doing percentages per competitive season or whatever. on the balance of the available evidence, you do have to say that valentino only binning it twice out of the lead is pretty impressive, given he raced for like. fifty million years. and won a lot of races, so by definition gave himself a lot of chances to crash. like, it'd be lovely to have a statistic for 'number of laps led', or even better a spreadsheet with all the numbers for when riders are in certain positions, and then also numbers for how many times they crash out of every position so we could do like. some proper maths on this shit. unfortunately we can't! and it'd still only give us an incomplete picture, because again you do have stuff like 'well marc has ridden some kinda evil bikes' and 'how do we assess wet races' and 'how much pressure were they under in each situation' to assess. I still like it as a rough indicator! I suppose I've been thinking about the concept of 'crashing out of the lead of motogp races' rather a lot these last few years... impossible to guess why that is

also, those aren't the only types of unforced errors to exist. like, marc's not crashing out of the lead in 2015, but *gestures* that season is unforced error central. I also put jorge's weird helmet visor shit in this category, because fundamentally part of reliability is about not putting yourself in a position where dumb shit happens to you. and that could have really cost him!! crash rates in general - again, I don't love just giving raw numbers here. there's some specific series of mistakes that really jump out at you... an obvious one is valencia 2006, and it's also in that weird cota 2019 category of 'right I think there may have been something funky going on with the equipment but also you are calling this an 'error' so I shall call it that'. fight me casey stoner, I guess. there's other late championship errors that are. not great. like jorge phillip island 2009 or dani phillip island 2012. with casey, it's a bit 'eh' because he never was still in a title fight particularly late in a season? like, again, the 'two out of the only three crashes out of the lead in your whole career happened at the height of the title fight in 2008' is one of those things that's always going to raise an eyebrow, and did essentially end the title fight before they even got to the late stage but... yeah, idk, we're lacking in casey's sample size here. you can also look at title decider performance for three of them, and while we can get into the ins and outs of what valentino/marc got up to - never mind all that, you have two absolutely flawless performances from jorge sitting right there

when it comes to crash rate in general, valentino's in quite a happy spot again? I mean, his record in his prime certainly is silly good: three crashes in his rookie season, two right at the start, which, vale gets a little bit of 'the 500cc's were evil' bonus.... after that! one crash in 2001, zero in 2002 (the dnf is mechanical), zero in 2003 (no race off the podium), two in 2004, one in 2005 (that one was a howler mind u), two in 2006 (one he got barrelled into at the first corner and remounted, the other was as best we know an unforced error - but the three dnf's are all mechanical), one in 2007 (two mechanical dnf's), one in 2008 (remounted and finished 11th), three in 2009 (I mean he crashed like fifty times in le mans, then in donington he crashed in the wet and finished fifth which... good salvage work, plus indy which was genuinely dumb as shit). like, again, if we're specifically considering each of the aliens' respective 'primes', that record's hard to argue with. but then again, am I going to penalise casey too much for all his race crashes in 2010, given that valentino can also attest to that bike being, well, shit? also, brownie points of some kind to marc specifically for 2019, given we know what a nightmare that honda was and he only dnf's the one time. also, his 2016!! it's less spectacular in a way but that's a season that's so much about reliability - like so many marc titles are won on the principle of 'show up, don't crash, don't slum it in p13 every other week, win some races'. jorge is mostly fine - I don't want to penalise him too much for his rookie season though I do a bit more 2009, and then post-yamaha it was all a bit. eh. dani's issue is that he didn't crash that much but I swear every time he did, it felt super costly for some reason or another? which is also just bad luck, but

again, there's some stretches you do kinda maybe give a little bit of added weight. for casey, you do kinda have to mention 2012: he was tied on points with jorge leading into sachsenring, was clearly way too much on the edge fighting with dani, really should have settled for second and… binned it. right before the end. I get he's a 'I look at wins and the championships will follow naturally' type guy, but that inherently means he's gonna get a knock in this category. and then he had a mess of a mugello race right after, just multiple unforced errors and almost barrelled over poor bautista and… idk, we don't really talk about it much any more because he injured himself at indy and was definitively taken out of the title fight - but I still reckon the honda was probably on balance the strongest bike that year, and it was kinda his own errors that cost him there. for marc, nobody on this planet needs me to relitigate 2015, but yeah, 2015

also, yes, you can sort of bring in the ugly years for all of them minus casey (who had a very ugly rookie season but we'll give it a pass, and apart from that his ugliest season was 2010 - he didn't stick around long enough for comparable experiences to the others)... jorge skittling the field at catalunya 2019, quite a few dani misadventures... we can talk about valentino's ducati stint and that wet weather collision with casey that prompted the 'ambition outweighed talent' thing, we can talk about marc's silverstone 2021 barrelling into jorge or that aragon 2022 first lap or... whatever the fuck he was doing at portimao last year. clearly, when those two specifically know they're not in the title hunt, when they've been frustrated and annoyed and are hungry for success, their decision-making skills can take a serious hit, but also... okay, look, I'm not saying that injuring other riders like marc in particular did suddenly becomes okay when you're not fighting for a title, but a) clearly they were both riding bikes that were very easy to crash (I mean, again, look at casey's early 2010 crash rate), and b) for better or for worse, they're not doing that shit if they know they're fighting for a title (isolated and glaring cases of head loss for the pair of them set aside). listen, I'm deciding the rules, set aside the whole morality thing - I just care more about mistakes when they have bigger competitive ramifications

so. I do think valentino has to go first in this category and yes, we can get into the whole 'well the yamaha is very rideable thing' but also he did help make it that way so. y'know. at a certain point you just have to look at the headline numbers. he didn't crash a lot, he showed up, he generally maximised the results he could get. there's like, two or three major stains in his record, but then you also think about how he was saving his title bids with sachsenring 2016 type deals where he was working his way to the win from tenth and holding off three ferocious hondas right at the end... like, given how risky a lot of his riding inherently was, you have to say the unforced error count is low. see also laguna 2008 or motegi 2010 type shit, like not making mistakes when deliberately roughing up opponents isn't, y'know, the most morally 'good' way to approach racing but. still. he was constantly putting himself in risky race positions by dint of being such an ass qualifier/starter and his numbers are still like that. I rest my case. and, okay, I'm gonna be a wee bit controversial here and put mr crasquez in second. I don't know, maybe I'm just rewarding 'flexibility' here too and just being swayed too much by how consistently there he was in his prime but, I don't care. part of it is also the valentino situation of 'wow it really feels like you should be crashing more' (in races, I don't feel in general marc should be crashing more funnily enough), and it's also just the 2016 thing. also the 2019 thing. I get the argument with 2015, and I don't think any version of noughties valentino would have a season like that, but *shrugs* he also didn't have a valencia 2006-equivalent so whatever (I mean. he flirted with it in 2017 and that was a pretty poor performance, but crucially I'm an outcome-oriented person and he didn't actually bin it so)

then comes jorge - given his profile as a rider I don't think it reflects great on him that he has crashed out of the lead, including in costly ways, quite a few times. also, unfortunately you don't get a sophomore season freebie when we're comparing aliens, and 2009 did have some real. issues. (so did valentino's to be clear, definitely his messiest title campaign.) also, look, I think calling his ducati seasons not competitive is arguable - because unlike the valentino and marc seasons where you can at least say 'well nobody else on that bike was outperforming them', this is not something you can point to with jorge. his strongest trait is dominating from the front! he's supposed to be mr hammer and butter, he's getting a knock for the unforced errors, yeah. he gets a valencia bonus though. then comes dani - this one also feels quite harsh, and again I think it's slightly punishing lack of flexibility, but it's the really costly errors that stick out and also just... relatively more races than some of his fellow aliens where he's not reliably bringing any result home because he's not in the position he should be running in. and then comes casey, which, small sample size counts against him here. if you have that few seasons to draw from, unfortunately the whole laguna 2008 situation and 2012 sachsenring/mugello stuff do stand out

wow. this got long. I really don't like this category

4. flexibility

stuff I considered: not literal flexibility, more in terms of 'can you be good everywhere'. like, we're looking at the broad profile of a season - I want you to be good both at qatar and at sachsenring, right? have they won/gotten decent results relative to how good the bike/opposition is basically everywhere, do they just feel a bit limited at times, what were they doing at new tracks, etc, can they figure shit out over the course of the weekend

again, there's some serious overlap here with both the reliability category and also the wet/mixed conditions categories, but idk. still treating it on its own. again, there's two fairly straightforward tiers here - you've got valentino, casey and marc, and then jorge and dani. I'm not like, super attached to any particular order here? casey has the distinction that he's won at every single race he's competed at, which none of the others do, but that's also what will happen if you retire at age 27. if vale and marc had retired at that age... okay, yeah, valentino would've been missing laguna, marc would be missing austria (which he still is, actually), but also idk. valentino's laguna record is like, one third place, two visits where his bike is just 'no thank you' and then one of the best races of all time. marc got as close as it is possible to win that bloody race in austria on three separate occasions. also, casey completed the set in 2012 with... well, first of all he needed jerez, which...? who the hell has jerez as their bogey track? he'd literally had one podium there in his entire career before that point, all classes, which is kinda funny. plus, he also needed estoril - and he was really proud to finish the set, helped make his decision to retire. real take, maybe his issue with jerez is that everyone else knew it too well, like ideally he needs everyone (including himself) to be blasted with a mind ray to give them amnesia before they go to each track so he can take full advantage

anyway, look, the point is that all three of them can show up anywhere and broadly expect to be competitive in their primes. they go about this in different ways... casey had this nasty habit of just rocking up on a friday morning and being fast the second he touched the bike, valentino made more of a leisurely crawl towards 'ah well we'll figure it out at 4 am on sunday morning' (marc did a bit of both) - but broadly speaking they did generally get there more often than not. this is reflected in the very strong records they all have when they show up at tracks for the first time, and it's something marc explicitly pointed to last year in india when explaining why him, fabio and joan as the three most recent former world champions were suddenly so competitive there (in contrast to the rest of the season, where they were *checks notes* not having a great time). I don't think it's really just a raw talent thing per se, and especially with valentino he clearly did also have a very good working process (more on that in a moment), but yeah! however they did it, they sure did do it! the gaps in marc's and valentino's resumes, I do also not feel too strongly about... valentino's missing aragon, introduced in 2010, but like. he was fine there, he just wasn't winning that many races anyway after that, and it inherently didn't suit him too well. cota... well, y'know, he had one shot of winning that, won't really hold any of his 2019 performances against him. that also wasn't a particularly strong yamaha track, and again it's not like he was uncompetitive there. he just wasn't like. marc marquez levels competitive. marc has a few like austria, but that was such ducati heartlands and he really did get very close a million times, and stuff like portimao, which, well, only showed up post arm injury, he's still got time

I don't know, with all three of them it's also just so easy to pinpoint special performances at their weakest tracks, it moves me. I actually need to check the order in which I put them, which tells you how close they are in my mind. uh... okay I gave casey full marks, then marc, then valentino. yeah, idk, I guess sometimes my casey problem is that my brain just automatically extrapolates from the bits we got to see and assume he would've adapted to everything to come forevermore. but look, he really was that good!! actually the tiebreaker to me is how in his second ever motogp race he'd been ill, his flight had been delayed, he shows up at the qatar circuit like fifteen minutes before practise starts, and he ends up popping his satellite honda on pole. not knocking marc's cota pole obviously, but he'd already tested there, and we did later find out he is like, a literal deity at that circuit (casey is good at qatar but not that good). idk. that's where I'm at. I'm not actually sure why I'm ranking valentino third, maybe it's just a sort of 'begrudgingly amused annoyance' at how he won his least favourite circuit on the calendar only twice, and both were these massive spite wins (valencia 2003, 2004). like, I get that sports psychology does matter, but I also don't want to have to make an 'effort and mean-spiritedness' adjustment to all your results? obviously it's also super telling his one laguna win came in 2008, like we get it you're a hater, let's move on

oh I was about to move on but I do have to cover the other two. hm. well, look, their 2012 was super impressive and shows they can clearly be fast pretty much everywhere, but... yeah, idk, I don't want to penalise them for what the alien era was like, but maybe a little bit? like yeah they did it at a time when the bike difference was at the most egregious, and I GET that it happens to coincide with their primes, but that is not going to be the only season I look at!! sorry!! the thing about those two was if they weren't clicking with a track, you kinda didn't really expect them to pull a rabbit out of the hat come race day (even casey had a nasty habit of doing that, and acknowledged in his autobiography how extremely helpful it was to psychologically sucker rivals into thinking he wasn't going to be a huge threat). I look at jorge's sepang record, his argentina record, his assen record (and yes, I'm aware of the massive trauma he was dealt by his 2013 crash, that's absolutely a factor in the years after that), even phillip island... I know he won the latter two once in the premier class, but yeah. don't love it!! stinker after stinker at argentina, and that one in particular does raise an eyebrow because, y'know, always a bit of a quirky track with all the various grip issue dramas over the years. 2014-16 when they're teammates again, valentino gets three podiums there (including a win) and jorge just the one, so it's also not just a bike issue. with dani it's quite easy... qatar was a crappy honda track yeah, still not ideal results there, phillip island just too many riders who were better than him there, poor at assen, quite poor at catalunya too? apart from 2008, which it has to be said was a proper class performance. (admittedly who knows what valentino could've done there if he'd considered maybe not fucking his qualifying.) idk, several of these classic high speed tracks... okay, look, I'm not going to spend too much time ragging on their circuit to circuit records here, you get the point,it should be fairly clear that they both struggled more than the other three to tackle adversity weekend by weekend. and a lot of the times when they started a weekend poorly that was basically that

5. mixed conditions

stuff I considered: ... how good they are in mixed conditions. did they crash a lot in them, were they extra super special fast, did they get better when things were sketch, did they adjust quickly to these conditions, how did they manage race situations impacted by changing conditions

okay, look, again the lack of direct comparison does hurt me here, but yeah I was never going to put anyone other than marc first here. I was also never going to put anyone other than casey second, and anyone other than valentino third. all three of them are excellent here, even if it's a different vibe for each. liked, not quite the same thing, but obviously they're all great in low grip anyway, very nice with all the sliding the bike around (especially the first two). marc's got the whole insane saves things going for him even when he does make a misjudgement. there's that ability to just instantly know how to judge and adapt to whatever condition the track is in... well, it's neat! we'll get to this again in a second with wet weather racing, but I still think valentino's a bit more in the... hm. idk. he's obviously GOT a lot of natural feel, he couldn't do what he does otherwise, but he's clearly also big on kinda following other riders around and figuring it out as he goes? like it feels a teensy bit more conscious, like a deliberate thinking process rather than primarily using instinct. but yeah, I mean, you really don't have to get super complicated about that, it's literally been years and years of watching marc gain literal seconds on the field whenever the conditions are a bit sketchy. brno 2019 qualifying. no need to say more. (but if you did want to say more, I do have a misano 2015 to offer u. also like sachsenring 2016?? assen 2014! genuinely so many you could point to with him.) (actually.... I mean, I suppose we do also have to mention argentina 2018, where he was about a minute a lap faster than the rest of the field.) with casey, again, super easy, you've got a phillip island and valencia 2011 there - his last lap of valencia!! one of the best last laps of his career!! that shit was crazy!! mugello 2009!! I get that there's Reasons why valentino played that one cautiously *coughs* le mans fiasco *coughs* but still, casey was the guy who broke the valentino supremacy!! speaking. of. mugello. you want to know another mixed conditions race that happened there... that's right, last few laps of mugello 2004, like they're so fucking good. valentino's last ever race win comes in increasingly kinda sketch conditions in assen 2017, where he is also fighting marc. like, look, I'm not gonna list every single race performance in sketch conditions, and of course they did also have some stinkers... this is a vibes category, sometimes it's truly just about looking at some lap times and going 'oof you guys really are something special here'. but also clear order here, marc is just *gestures* something else yeah

anyway. okay listen at this point I don't REALLY want to rag on the other two, especially since I'll get to it more with wet races. they're just not quite at the same level! I'm not saying they're terrible, but y'know, you can just check their track records and draw your own conclusions. if jorge had lost that 2015 title, misano absolutely would have been top of everyone's list as a big, big factor in that. I've already mentioned argentina, and again it kinda is telling what their records there look like. phillip island. it's just... y'know. it's whatever. with dani, similar story, but shout out to motegi 2015. banger performance, super impressive. jorge also has a few good f2f's. but yeah, we can list every single performance where they were massively outperformed by those other three or we could. not

6. wet

stuff I considered: well. their records when races were wet. did they bin it, how did they perform against their teammates, what can we say about performance variation over time, how understandable were their errors, what was their approach like to them

similar tiers, slightly different order - casey, then vale, then marc. but again, it's super close, and I don't feel as happy with the order here as above. I just have this highlight reel in my head of casey's wet weather performances, donington 2007 and silverstone 2011 are both crazy good in different ways. yes, he didn't win every single race in the wet he competed in, but who does? and yes, his sample size is a teensy bit limited, and yes, he did lose that one le mans 2012 battle against ducati!valentino, which, who does that, but like... listen. when he was on it, he was so on it. on the flip side, and I realise this is again unfair given the sample size issues, I just don't have all these memories of watching casey crash in the wet as I do for each of the other aliens. even his poorer performances like donington 2009... y'know, there was a good explanation there. (indy 2008 is one that I'm quite meh about admittedly.) but like!! overall it just is NOT a lot of races in the wet - I feel the sample size issues with other things more strongly, but here he also just compares positively to other aliens in their primes and it's not as much a w2w thing. just something about him in the wet that I trust..? I feel like sachsenring 2008 is another one that also kinda shows he had a good feel for how much he could push. like, dani disappeared off into the distance, and casey did kinda go. huh. well idk about that but good luck. and then won the race by a mile when dani crashed out. I don't know! given that's not always a trait I massively associate with casey, I do think he was generally pretty sensible in the wet. also... yeah, given it's inherently not that many races you're judging, I do think inevitably this is something where my brain really is pulling together two or three signature performances and judging those. and with casey, I just think those performances slap

that being said. ranking him above valentino here could(?) be controversial, and I did struggle a teensy bit with this one. like, mixed conditions can be a bit dodgy and also, we'll get to this in a moment but valentino's flag to flag record *stares into the middle distance* BUT when it's full wet!! oh yeah. right. let's fucking go. the tiny caveats I have here in my mind are a) he did make some memorable mistakes in those conditions (as casey can attest to), but again, so has pretty much everyone, and b) the wet weather performances after 2015 were kinda dodgy. but that's like.... that is just fundamentally a yamaha problem once the series switched to the michelins, like I don't really see the argument for saying that was a valentino decline? it's become a pretty persistent issue, and even then valentino was generally putting his bike in a hell of a lot more impressive places than his respective teammates (hey, you still have pretty nifty performances even in that era - look at brno 2016). let's set all that aside, and focus on all the other bits: the banger performances. the donington 2005's and silverstone 2015's of this world. let's talk donington, actually, because... idk, I think there's something very valentino in the wet about that race specifically, because for a lot of the race it really doesn't look that great? he wobbles a lot, some very cool marc-y saves but preferably you don't want to HAVE to marc-y save stuff, gets to the lead and loses it and gets back again. like, okay, obviously the conditions are genuinely just atrocious, but crucially he's not just FAST!! it's not just dominant! it's him watching and learning and feeling his way into the race, until eventually he's learned enough and can pull away. obviously, it's always worth remembering there's a shit ton of natural talent here too, cf colin edwards talking about seeing his data and just going 'what tf do you mean he's locking up in every single corner' (I paraphrase), but it's... yeah, he's doing a lot of this with his brain. which I do think is a big part of wet weather racing!! like a lot of it is figuring out how much risk you should be taking at any given moment, what's possible in the moment, how much you can trust what you're feeling etc etc

but yeah, shanghai that year is a dominant one... silverstone 2015 is like, so impressive you have to say, crazy pressure from marc behind him until marc eventually crashed and then late pressure from petrucci. like that race saved his title bid and it could've easily gone wrong. also, one of my favourite things about valentino as a wet weather racer is not just that he used to be bad of it, but he used to be scared of riding in the rain. he didn't want to go out there!! teen!vale told his team boss he didn't want to race in that shit!! it's about the journey... first premier class win in... is that a wet or mixed conditions race? never mind, crucially donington 2000 he is working his way through the field on a track that is very much not try. and somewhere along the line, he did just become a proper excellent wet weather racer, even if he never was a massive fan. indy 2008 is another banger, like basically I reckon he's at his very best in conditions nobody should ever even contemplate racing in? see also what he did in his ducati years. I'm also inherently biased towards people getting better at stuff, so maybe that's part of the picture for me. anyway, with marc I don't massively have much to add to what I already said in the mixed conditions bit? I basically think he's excellent but he doesn't have the same margin over the field when it's full wet rather than 'kinda sketch'. he does also have the misfortune of running into some of the best wet weather races out there during his prime, first valentino and then dovi - who, if I were including him in this exercise, would absolutely be in the conversation for top spot alongside vale/casey. but like, just because he doesn't win them doesn't mean motegi and sepang 2017 aren't very strong, in terms of maximising what was possible on that day. speaking of 2017, misano!!!! he's good at the decision making stuff too, good at maximising his performance when he's not winning races. 2016 is a title bid that is built on a lot of kinda sketch races, most of which marc doesn't win - but he won the championship and that's the bit that matters. and in ducati!valentino style, of course those have also been the situations in which marc's had the chance to be more competitive in the horror honda years.... motegi last year is the obvious example. he's very very good, does chuck it down the road a few times too but that's life

so the thing about jorge and wet weather is that he's like, pretty poor in the lower categories, and the general 2006-07 pattern was that dovi was keeping himself competitive in those title fights in large part through starring performances in wet races while jorge flops. then there's a period in the premier class where he's actually kinda fine? does chuck it a few times, but also really some strong performances in there. jerez 2011, le mans 2012... anyway, if we're talking about assen becoming a real bogey track in jorge's later years, it's probably also worth mentioning that the assen 2013 highside came in the wet and is around the time there was a real downturn in his wet weather performances. he was still competitive in a few wet weather races! but he also... really wasn't in many. at times he was just slow - if he'd lost the 2015 title, people would still be talking about silverstone more, which you have to say he was very lucky to limit the points damage in (and he did come within a whisker of being crashed out on like, three separate instances, which can happen if you're running in a pack in the wet). then, of course, you have 2016 where his title charge completely fell apart in the wet.... as already said with valentino, the yamaha in those years clearly wasn't quite right in the wet, but valentino was still putting together stronger performances. then in 2017 jorge still has that decent sepang race where he challenges dovi for the win, but yeah... that's basically it. it's unfair when people portray him as a poor wet weather racer his whole career, but obviously. y'know. not on the level of the three above. dani...... look, I'm gonna keep this short: I get that his literal size and weight are a massive disadvantage here, but of course there's no way you can't rank him last in this category. he won one wet premier class race in his whole career, there's a lot of big crashes to point to (sachsenring 2008 again is particularly memorable) and also just him being very slow. sepang 2012 was cool though

7. overtaking ability

stuff I considered: race craft, efficiency in overtaking, direct duels, dogfights, comeback rides, creativity, .... being cool

right. look. I'm willing to hear the arguments for the others, but to me it's just got to be valentino here. like, yes, I get it - if you're constantly putting yourself in seventh at the end of every single first lap, you will just be doing a lot of overtakes. if your entire approach to winning races is built around sitting behind other riders for half the race and just vibing, then yes, of course you'll be doing a lot of memorable overtakes for the win. maybe you shouldn't have been in that position in the first place. I hear the case! I acknowledge it! but he was just so damn good at those overtakes! he knew where to place his bike, he knew where to attack, he was so good at making that shit stick, he's usually not being massively aggressive to the point of recklessness when he doesn't need to be... what's the drawback. again, maybe this is being swayed by the highlight reel rather than measuring 'pure' skill, but my god is it a highlight reel. remember how in assen 2018 he just. overtakes other riders ten times at the gt chicane? rinse and repeat, he just knew how to get past people. that's a bit of dominance in a certain track just in terms of sheer race craft that's like, a bit obscene really. there's a reason he's got three overtakes that are still iconic and infamous alike, mix of brutality of jerez 2005 and ruthlessness of laguna 2008 and determination of catalunya 2009. he knew how to judge risks, usually he walked that line very very finely - which is how he was seen as an aggressive rider but also didn't crash a lot - but boy did he know how to send it like the best of him. so you've got the range, right, something as practised as assen 2018 gt chicane, but also the creativity of something like catalunya 2009, of trying a move where others just wouldn't. also, like, FORgET the corkscrew move at laguna 2008, let's talk about that move around the outside of turn 3 ffs. and he was so good at working his way through the field!! I mean, he had to be given what an abysmal qualifier he was at times in the latter half of his career, but like his 2015 title campaign would've been impossible without that kinda qatar and argentina vibe. the man was always tussling, but he sure did do it well. idk, what's the counter argument here.... he's crashed like. at most half a dozen times. while attempting overtakes. idk I'm unmoved, sachsenring 2007 isn't enough to ruin everything else here. 'valentino rossi is good at overtakes', more as we get it

marc. marc. the thing about marc, right, is that sometimes he does stray to the wrong line of the 'aggression or just stupid' divide, but... given his baseline level of aggression, you have to say he mostly did a good job of not pushing it too far. he's extremely adept at working his way through fields... and it really is important he's willing to go for it. like there are riders who just won't! he's very see gap go for gap, as he's happy to remind everyone, and that makes him a very fearsome proposition. I'm not like... I love it for narrative reasons, but to me personally jerez 2013 does push it a teensy bit, and there's been a few too many race craft howlers for my tastes in the last few years. he's just too good to be doing shit like portimao last year. that being said, when he's keeping things sensible, the race craft is obviously elite. incredible bike placement, also just such an innate ability to thrive in those kinda chaotic situations at starts of races, in the middle of dogfights he navigates that stuff so so good..... I don't LOVE rating marc/valentino over the other three aliens on grounds of like 'hard racing' because you then get to tricky philosophical waters, but actually I'm perfectly happy to rate them above the other three for just being very good at this shit. for my money, my favourite overtake of his is still last lap on petrucci in misano 2017, like idk the sheer nerve and daring and skill in the wet!! I moved!! I also had a heart attack but never mind that!! misano 2019 ughhh my beloveddddd... okay admittedly he has a few too many of these epic duels tm he loses which we'll get back to in a moment, but that doesn't erase all the cool moves he makes on the way to moving. also obviously got to mention these comeback rides he's been having - and this kind of thing is also super important in starts!! just very very adept at all this race craft stuff, though a few too many of his overtakes don't stick for my tastes

now. the thing is. casey did most of his racing in an era that, as we have repeatedly established, was kinda ass. also, it's obviously worth pointing out that casey really wasn't trying to win his races in a way that involved a lot of overtaking. and his attitude towards racing did have the potential to hinder him in fights, because he was perhaps maybe possibly at times a teensy bit too concerned with keeping things respectful when certain other riders were willing to push him off a cliff if it could secure them pee four. that being said. limited sample size aside. when I close my eyes, I can see casey overtaking jorge around the outside of turn one at laguna 2011, and it is still the most bonkers downright terrifying thing I've seen in my life, but it is also very very very cool. that's right, he's ranked third because that move is so cool. it's just... he's always going on about risk and danger and all that and racing valentino at laguna was scary etc etc, which, yes, I do have a lot of empathy there, but my brother you are overtaking him around a blind crest. like you literally can't see where you're going. everybody finds turn one at laguna terrifying, it's seen as scarier as the corkscrew. and that's where you overtake him. and it's not an isolated occurrence - some of the laguna 2008 moves on valentino?? dude. it very much takes two to tango, we're talking some scary turn one moves and sketch turn three and turn five encounters like.... like!! phew. plus, valencia 2011 last lap

also, listen, at the end of the day, the reason why I'm putting casey over jorge here is very simple - direct record against valentino. one of them actually won extended battles against him, the other didn't. yes, jorge ran valentino close, but y'know. you don't get extra points for 'close', do you. catalunya 2009, sachsenring 2009, motegi 2010... casey actually beat valentino, he did it at catalunya 2007 and sachsenring 2010, qatar 2007... that sachsenring 2010 last lap move truly slaps!! idc if valentino had just come back from the broken leg, still slaps! now, yes, we do need to point out that jorge has done some great overtaking in his time, and he's also won quite a few close duels against marc specifically - but, well, marc didn't race casey, can't compare it. still, jorge is good wheel-to-wheel generally speaking, the risk assessment is mostly pretty good though sometimes he can be a bit... idk, clumsier on average than the three above him? anyway, still better than dani, who unfortunately did sometimes fall into the category of me going 'PLEASE overtake the guy come on move.... MOVE'. generally a lot of overtakes only happening when there's a massive tyre advantage which is like. it's fine. but it's not quite the same thing. but jerez 2010 brno 2012 for them respectively overall were obviously cool. basically my main thing for this one is that, we're not rating duels here, we're rating overtaking ability. and on the one hand I have the highlight reel in my head and the craft and skill of it all, and on the other hand I have like. if you get stuck in the pack. do I expect you to stay there or do something. and generally it's really marc and valentino where I'm expecting some moving

8. defensive ability

stuff I considered: also race craft, just general quality of defensive rides idk, how much I trust you to keep guys with better pace behind you

yeah valentino again here I fear. this is another factor where I'm really just seeing the highlight reel in my head, just so many class defensive rides (even though usually he'd PREFER to be coming from behind than holding others off). last few laps of sachsenring 2006 are like, gorgeous, what a crazy girl. laguna 2008. assen 2015. some of the late braking in catalunya 2009, like I already have talked about it elsewhere and jorge has spoken about how vale sets up his bike to brake 10m later than everyone else, but. has to be said. he really did gag me with that catalunya 2009 turn one behaviour. phewwwww some of his mugello main straight antics..... he TESTED those brakes. his last podium ride in andalusia 2020... still had it what can you say. also, thing is, there's not really many failures you can point to? his two biggest last lap defeats, he was behind going into them - like yeah still sucked he lost (especially sachsenring 2003 where you CAN kinda argue it was a fuck up in his defence) (jerez 2005 SHOULD have been a major fuck up but he won it so) but overall... oh also sepang 2006 last lap. I mean, I could go on - he's good at picking his lines and being a dickhead and just placing his bike right and also muscling his way around the track... some of his dubious motegi 2010 antics even though he's flirting with the line. also excellent at re-overtaking after being overtaken. straightforward case

so I've switched this twice and then realised I was overthinking this and next it's obviously marc. idk I think you can overthink this and marc does have a few Actual Sketch defensive rides (argentina 2015, silverstone 2019) but also his wheel to wheel record is so strong you've got to let him slot in here. like, again, the decision making isn't always ideal, he sometimes pushes it a bit too far, but the fundamental race craft can be faulted and he does do a lot of really excellent defensive riding, brutal on the brakes and all that. again, this really does jump out during the dogfights, plus also stuff like thailand 2019. he's very good at it!! a nightmare to get past, because he is also NOT just gonna give up the position! then we get into classic casey 'god this sample size is ass' stuff where I think I give him a lot of benefit of the doubt given just the lack of races where he was like... running similar paces to other guys... awful era. but clearly did have some excellent rides where defence played a huge role, catalunya 2007 was really good... assen 2007 he kept valentino behind quite a long time, few races like that where casey really does keep him behind for quite long. phillip island 2009 is a bit tricky because it felt valentino never had the ultimate pace to overtake but, well, casey started ahead, had valentino sitting on his rear tyre for a decent chunk of the race, finished ahead, so points for that. again, just a real sample size issue here but, y'know

jorge.... listen, he definitely can defend. he has done some very, very strong defensive rides. one of the strongest and most important ones of his career was at a little known race called valencia 2015 even if marc maybe wasn't as motivated to overtake jorge as he would have been some other days I'M KIDDING. it's good. lot of good stuff going on. that being said.... man, it's such low hanging fruit, but you have to talk about how jorge was robbed at the final corner first in catalunya 2009 and jerez 2013. now, look, of course people can lose races in final corners, but in both those cases you do have to say... dude. you could have defended that line. in both cases everyone does kinda go... mate. mate. you have to assume those two bastards will go for it. idk obviously this is selection bias because both instances were just so memorable, but inevitably this is the stuff you are judged on. don't do it!! omg! also, with all love to valentino's slightly deranged levels of aggression while both attacking and defending against jorge in motegi 2010, this is another one where you do kinda feel.... yeah, it's not easy when you know the other guy is kinda willing to crash you both out rather than let you win (valentino!! your shoulder!! valentino!!!!) and yeah you kinda still have a championship to think about... still. (that being said, I'm not giving valentino TOO many motegi 2010 points in either category - yes, it worked, yes, it was funny, but was it 'good riding'? eh.) do we give him points off for the sepang 2017 error that let dovi ahead... I suppose he defended very well against dovi at valencia that year lol. but actually, same thing with 2015, I'm not sure you really get many points for defending at valencia? anyway, I feel like the way this is ordered, I'm unfortunately constantly justifying ranking the same blokes last, so again, let's keep this quick. dani: fantastic work at aragon 2015. truly elite performance. wish you had done a little more of that. way too many estoril's and shanghai's and motegi's 2008. but aragon 2015 was lovely

9. cunning

stuff I considered: 'race management', how you navigate different race situations, battle smarts

hm, yeah, another bit of a catch all category like reliability was - just that general sense of... y'know, how good are you at figuring out races. working them out in your head, being smart about when to push and when not to push. decision making skills, how you are at analysing your opponents, at studying their strengths and weaknesses. at the mental side of the on-track game, at intimidation and stealth. cunning. anyway absolutely zero prizes for guessing who slots into number one and two here. all of the things I just described are very closely associated with valentino, and this is basically his category. I'm thinking what he did to sete specifically. I'm thinking how he completely switched it up against casey at laguna 2008. I'm thinking how he did that last corner overtake on casey catalunya 2007, saved it away, then did it for the win against jorge at catalunya 2009 after visualising it the week before that. it's that bloody assen 2015 chicane trick on marc - idc if that was planned or not (all right, I deeply deeply care), but either way what a clever way of stealing a win. it's the success rate in last lap duels... and then, of course, there's all the more general stuff - we've already discussed tyre preservation above, generally speaking prime valentino was excellent at controlling races across very different eras

marc clocks in second - prime marc was again just. ridiculously good at controlling races, especially in the tyre preservation era post 2015. knows when to push, knows when to not... I will yap on forever about how neat I find his 2016 campaign, by far the most cruelly overlooked of his titles just because he didn't 'win' a lot of 'races'. who cares about that, check out the consistency!! elite at race management!! marc does have a brain and he can choose to engage it, and he does prove as much on the track - he's good at a lot of risk/reward judgements, and he'd better be because otherwise with his riding style it'd be far more of a trail of carnage than it already is at times. the head loss to riding style trade off actually isn't too bad with him, relatively speaking. he's been doing some very strong race management this year, if at times from un-ideal starting positions - again, le mans main race says hi. plus, the dogfights man... not the actual fighting bit, the tyre preservation bit. unless you want to get into conspiracy theory territory, which surely nobody would want to, let's just assume that in phillip island 2015 he hadn't actually been planning to just find a bunch of extra tyre on the last lap - but phillip island 2017 and assen 2018 he times it perfectly. that being said. okay. it just has to be acknowledged. marc. we need to work on making more of these overtakes stick. yes, I've made the arguments myself, he tends to be in duels he has no right to be engaged in in the first place, he's on the limit at some of his poorer tracks, it's impressive and intimidating he's there in the first place... and I do believe all of those things! but the thing is when you tell everyone you go for every gap, and then riders are deliberately leaving you a gap knowing you will go for it, and then they get back at you, and then they do it literally seven times in one race... marc, come on. I'm on my knees. I was literally on my knees during aragon 2021. he does this against valentino, against dovi, against pecco, man even against jorge once or twice, and it does drive you a little insane sometimes. too much red mist!! too much red mist. stop being suckered into making the move marc I am so very much on my knees

with the other three, I've already kinda discussed what I'd mention here elsewhere. like, casey... idk it's a tough one because I don't think it's harsh to judge him on a tiny sample size, but if you've engaged in like. ten extended duels in the premier class and you've crashed in two of them, then unfortunately it does make me raise an eyebrow more than if you've crashed out of two from fifty, right? he does get a bit red mist-y, not just when he's punching people in practise sessions, but also like. occasionally in races. he's red mist-y in laguna '08, sachsenring '12, mugello '12... I don't think he's even mad necessarily (well, obviously he is in laguna), just kinda very dog with a bone. (biggest valentino in-race anger-affected errors of judgement are ofc qatar 2004 + sepang 2015, btw. marc I'm not gonna give the obvious and instead throw in a cute jerez 2024 sprint, like dude please stop attempting to murder joan enough.) he's decent at race management in general, though idk my issue with some of these alien wins is that, I get it's unfair, but I'm just not really that impressed with 'managing' a gap of six seconds? like congrats on being fast and not chucking it I guess. jerez 2012 + estoril 2012 are really neat in that regard though, he's proud of them for good reason. also, again, could've easily lost a few valentino fights that he didn't. with jorge... yeah, he's excellent at race management!! also a smart tussler, got those silverstone 2013 and mugello 2016 and austria 2018 wins to go too. think I do slightly hold some of the dovi losses over the course of his career against him lol. I mean, losing to dovi in direct fights does very much happen to the best of them, and this is another category in which dovi would obviously be in contention for top spot. both jorge and dani are very very strong at race managing, in particular when they're at the front, and they're capable of outsmarting opponents... again for dani, aragon + motegi 2015 do stick in the mind. valencia 2017 was suchhhh a good win too, so much going on in that race and he was smart enough to emerge on top. look, the tyre preservation thing was very good for all three of them, they could all manage races, they all had a few rough ones w2w, also you can make casey mad and spook dani. you can make jorge mad too actually

10. strategy + work process

stuff I considered: tendency to get it 'right' with team, from set up to tyre choice to improvement over the course of the weekend. also flag to flag races

easy marc win, and a big part of it really is just how that bloke fucking nailed flag to flag races. like, jesus christ, he had the cheat code to those things. how do you just make right call after right call, truly obscene. if I'm some random midfield rider, I'm telling my team to make me copy whatever he's doing like idc. also, okay, a lot of weekends he started strong, but the ones where he didn't? he ended the weekend fast. like, he's good on fridays, he's excellent on saturdays, but there really were plenty of weekends where his sundays were the strongest of them all. found a bunch of extra pace down the back of the couch overnight. 2016-19 was obviously super big on the tyre preservation and yup, got truly elite at that too - sure, some of that is just raw skill, but some of that is also prep work and knowing what you need to be doing at what stage of the race. valentino clocks in second here, and a lot of these things are broadly true of him too, especially the finding pace overnight thing. most infamous example is of course laguna 2008 - yeah, sure, tactics are great and all, but he needed to make a step to even stick close enough to casey to fuck with him. a lot of his race weekends went like that! the blot in his copybook is... dude. what the fuck is wrong with your flag to flag strategies. like it genuinely is not your inability to ride in those situations because you're clearly fine at THAT bit, but what's going on with the communication and decision-making thing here. it's also sometimes THE most obvious shit??? not to be all armchair expert here but scotty beam me in, send me back to 2006 EYE will fix valentino's f2f. it's so bad!! I don't get how bad it is!! with marc, the biggest blot is phillip island 2013 - which, I don't care he was 20 years old, I get it was his rookie season, but it could have easily cost him the title and it's such a truly abysmal fuck up that it still makes me shake my head to think about. genuinely inexcusable lol, the backstory of the whole thing is also so incredibly stupid. marc's not the main issue here, but this entire component is kinda rated by your entire team so. I mean, look, he's still on top

after that, I'm not massively fussed about the order - though again with casey I do think it's notable he was also pretty strong at the 'finding pace overnight' trick. he was kinda.... you know, he was already so strong on friday, which WAS an advantage but he discusses in his autobiography that it almost made it tricky to know where to go from there lol. but they still figured it out!! just good at figuring out ways to win. jorge did play some proper blinders f2f which I'm giving him brownie points for, some... less ideal decisions. I'm sorry, I'm also gonna dock him a few points for some of the ducati races where he was leading early on burning through his tyres and then dropping back. I think that can happen once, or maybe even twice, but like. too often, eventually u need to maybe change up the strategy and figure out what can work now. dani generally speaking was not doing that, and yeah, a few very strong 'yup you got the approach to tyre preservation exactly right' contenders, but also really did not do well in flag to flag races... tricky one because yeah with him and jorge, they were a bit less likely to find the pace overnight (casey did kinda allude to this in his autobiography lol)

graphs :)

okay. lemme show my video game-y radar charts <3

valentino:

dani:

casey:

jorge:

marc:

and combined, because well if you've read this far I might as well not play coy here:

anyway. look

I don't. love. what I've done to jorge specifically. and there's one massive jorge strong point that I could not figure out how to rank for everyone else, but feel very very strongly he is very very good at: some kind of clutch factor. this is KINDA captured by the reliability metric, but I don't quite think that one's enough... I don't think this specifically shines when he's on the heat of battle, but it does shine when he's late in a season when he needs to maximise those results to keep his title bid in good health. the glaring exception is phillip island 2009, but, well, valentino has a valencia 2006, marc has a... I know it didn't cost him but valencia 2017 was not a good performance. but! apart from that, if you look at jorge's track record from then on late in seasons when it's his own title bid (also excluding 2017 here) on the line... proper good shit. that late 2012 stretch where dani was on a different planet and jorge kept showing up to bag second place. I know I was ragging on 2015 earlier on and I'm not like, massively moved by most of that jorge season, and I still fundamentally think that if you're leading the last lap of phillip island by as much as he was, I don't care if it's literally jesus of nazareth on that motorcycle chasing after you - you should be making it a little bit harder for the guy behind. that being said, sepang was a+ given he really didn't have that much pace (lil bit of luck at the start and then those two bozos behind him did kinda help his cause, but still he did his job), and valencia was straight up excellent. I know he didn't win the title, but late 2013 was probably like. his career best stretch. the valencia 2013 performance is genuinely one of his best races. that's clutch!! that's what he's all about!! he can bring home a title!!

that being said. I had no clue how to compare that to the other four riders, not least because casey literally has not been in a close title fight with a few races to go. just wanted to say it! I also don't think all these categories are equal - like I think I said at the top, being a wet weather rider is nice but it is fundamentally not as important as being a strong qualifier. I just don't love these categories in general? I was trying to think of a way of splitting up qualifying into two different categories, couldn't think of one, tried to think of something for tyre preservation beyond inelegantly including it in strategy, didn't think of anything. easier to come up with this stuff with tennis, and obviously also easier to just like. judge pure performance because you don't have all these extraneous categories. also I kinda think these riders are basically equal on some of these categories, but also if you're doing a ranking then ranking something as equal best is chicken shit

I think generally it's good to have your radar chart arranged in an order where it's not too spiky (listen if you're still reading this post, that's really on you), so that there's a kinda correlation between the bits that are next to each other. broadly most of them do do this in a sort of 'huh dani pedrosa would have benefited from the sprint race format over the course of a full season' way. they're all not too spiky... I kept running into the sample size issue with casey, where it's just like... look, he had a fantastic career, but also in the premier class a lot of the 2007 to 2012 races were very same-y and you kinda need that variety to judge. so a lot of the times with him I'm kinda going off vibes? like I think he's good at certain things, I reckon he'd probably struggle with xyz if he'd had more of a chance to do it, and extrapolate from that. which obviously isn't a great way of doing these things. basically, I massively rate him, I think valentino had the slight edge against him in wheel to wheel but the fact that it was 'slight' given that's valentino's number one selling point tells you enough, and I wish we could have put him into more varied race and championship standings situations to see what he does. like, the overtaking ability ranking clearly is in large part that laguna 2011 overtake just sort of killing my brain

anyway from this it feels like I think marc is the most well-rounded rider, which I probably stand by? the more I dig into valentino's actual qualifying numbers, the more I do feel like I'm maybe being a bit harsh, like yeah age-based decline we get it but during his prime... also, maybe I'm a bit too mean about the starts... but yeah, idk, they're definitely bigger flaws you can point to with valentino's game than any equivalent for marc. also genuinely do think the flag to flag thing was abysmal, I refuse to believe that's not something that wasn't fixable. I still think marc's wheel to wheel is the bit where around silverstone 2019 I was kinda going 'okay love this for you but do you maybe want to WIN one of these' (and then he immediately made baby!fabio miserable). like, again, super cool he's dragging that honda into places it doesn't belong, still need to work on that conversion rate. also, there was a bit of a 'how to fight marc' playbook by then and it's the equivalent of tying a red flag to the side of the motorbike and practically inviting him to have a go. worked a bit too often! that's like, gonna be one of the most interesting aspects of the pecco/marc rivalry because if I did this for PECCO then he would genuinely be in contender for top spot for the defensive riding category (best three defensive riders this century are him, dovi and valentino in no particular order, I really do believe this). that being said, obviously the qualifying thing is bonkers, yeah, as is anything with sketch grip. my laguna 2011 equivalent for marc is that brno 2019 quali lap. mostly I think of a hypothetical casey/marc rivalry more as like. how it would psychologically torture casey. but obviously in terms of the sport itself it would've been very cool to see them face off with that kind of thing

with jorge, again, I don't feel like these specific metrics really capture what made him so good. there's no way to phrase 'unbeatable on his day' as both like, a workable metric and also something that doesn't sound kinda patronising. 'situational dominance', idk. I also wouldn't know how you'd rank the aliens for that, except valentino would be last. my main thing with jorge is always kinda getting annoyed whenever he goes missing, something I suspect would be punished more in today's motogp - but also in 2010 and 2012 specifically, that did happen very rarely. with dani, it was always the wheel to wheel stuff that was just kinda. meh. he's another one who isn't super well served by these categories, like if there's a 'technically very clean' or 'picks very nice lines' category, he'd be on top? idk man. send in alternative suggestions or shout abuse at me for not being kind enough to your favourite alien. in conclusion, I think they're cool. I'm sorry for insulting all of them a lot

[viviennevermillion]

There's actually a huge discourse(?) about twst otome thing last year on twitter and some otome players gave multiple reasons why twst would be even better if it's otome. They said it would focus more of each character and explore them in greater details.

That might be what it would look like to some people, but given Otome game track record there's a high chance they'd have to drastically reduce the size of the main cast. It'd be Yuu and like 4-7 of the boys but not all 21 of them. Also it always depends what aspects of the characters you focus on. We probably wouldn't get that much focus on the interpersonal relationships in the Diasomnia family if romance with MC would be the main aspect of the game and this is also a level of depth to characterization that we shouldn't dismiss. Ofc you could keep it as it is and just add a romance aspect but then it would not classify as an Otome game.

The sad reality is in any alternate reality where Twst is an Otome Game, it would not be a Disney game (which would already drastically alter the story given that it revolves around Disney villains) and in that case there's a high chance it would not stay as sfw as it is now and MC might not stay gender-neutral or might get a sprite or indicators of what they look like. The very definition of Otome Game involves it being targeted towards women. There's a lot of people who would not be affected by this and I feel like those are the ones advocating for Twst as an Otome Game. But I'd wager a lot of men in the fandom and trans, non-binary, ace and aro people would not take the gamble.

Twst as a Disney game with the set-up that it has now and a gender-neutral, faceless MC who has platonic relationships with the main cast allows for literally anyone to be Yuu regardless of age, gender, orientation, ethnicity or level of comfort towards romance and suggestive content, which makes for an inclusive gaming experience and a very diverse fandom that I would never trade for a romance aspect I can always explore in fanfiction.

[samueldays]

Another aside from reading PTHCE and the Honest Plea Charm (TLDR: roll to prove honesty) is thinking about the difficulty of getting lie detection rolls to work in a game system. Insight, Sense Motive, Judge Intentions, or whatever you call it has some issues.

One issue that the GM calling for a roll leaks information, and a player seeing the result of his Insight dice leaks more.

This can be somewhat suppressed by the GM rolling secretly on behalf of the player characters, but that has other issues with agency, especially if the characters have some optional skill buff that the players should be choosing whether to use. (It's also more stuff for the GM to remember, that the players would usually remember better.) If the skill buff costs a resource to use, secretly spending that resource for them is unfortunate interaction, asking whether they want to spend it leaks info again!

Another approach is that players decide when to express doubt and can roll Insight at any NPC statement, which reduces leakage but now you have the problem of depending on player skill which might fail to roll at what was supposed to be an obvious lie that the more-skilled character should catch.

So ordinary rolling seems to me the least bad of several basic options, and can be mitigated somewhat by the GM calling for insight rolls regarding honest statements to reduce the information content of calling for a roll.

Which brings me to my second issue: how much information should the roll reveal about where you are in a 2x2 grid of possible outcomes? The speaker is lying or honest, and the PC rolled well (enough to detect a lie) or badly on the Insight check.

Quadrant 1 (speaker is lying, PC rolled well) should reveal a lie for what it is. What should the GM have in the other quadrants?

The simple option is that all 3 other quadrants are simply "You sense no lies". This seems somewhat uninformative, but I think it sucks the least, and the diagram is going to be a helpful reference for explaining the complexities of why.

Consider this layout of possible comments from the GM.

Each entry makes intuitive sense on its own as spoken, but the combination results in a situation where the utterance from quadrant 4 is the one that carries a meaning of honesty - you do know, because only when listening to an honest person will you hear "you don't know"! Vice versa, the "definitely a reliable guy" utterance is ambiguous.

(Insert discourse on OOC knowledge and metagaming. Even with goodwill, it's hard to play along with pretending to believe lies and keeping track thereof.)

So having GM utterances mean the opposite sucks. What else can we do?

Well, if a player suspects a lie where there is none, what is the bar for rolling well or badly against an honest statement? Maybe we should just have that column be vague for entries 2 and 4, since the roll was grinding at nothing.

Except... what do we now put in (3)? If it's the same thing, we're back to the original plan. If it's something else, then that something else leaks the fact of an attempted lie.

So having 2+3 match doesn't work, and having 2+4 match doesn't work. They can't all differ, or the roll will be pointless. What about having 3+4 match, and quadrant 2 is something else? Rolling well gives true information about lies or honesty, rolling badly gives you "unclear" regardless of the speaker's intent.

This creates a very odd situation where no amount of skilled lying can ever be mistaken for a definitely honest statement inside the mechanics, because a honest statement has a unique possible outcome in quadrant (2) that lies cannot duplicate.

And now we're back to the question of what constitutes "rolling well" on Insight checks against an honest statement. What promotes your outcome from quadrant 4 to quadrant 2?

If it's for example DC 15 in D&D-speak, you roll a 16 and get told "you don't know" because the liar rolled 18 to lie, then you do know where you are: Quadrant 3.

Thus my resigned suggestion that only quadrant 1 should be distinguished from the other three, which are identical.

Honest Plea will be a special case to me, "convincing" people that you are really honest in a way which is mechanically more similar to magical mental influence than to detecting truth/lies.

[eddiediaaz]

The 911 fandom hate attacking Buck and Eddie fans for shipping Tommy and Buck too has destroyed me enjoying peoples edits I haven't been in the tags forever and blogs I follow getting crap for it on my dash and having to explain themselves which just isn't right hasn't anybody ever shipped someone with more than one person before? I thought it was a pretty common thing no? :'(

honestly this whole thing is so ridiculous to me. the 911 fandom is....very puritan. let's just say that. i don't want to get thrown rocks so it's all i'm gonna say lol, but yeah i'm not even surprised that this is happening right now (it tracks, for this fandom). multishipping is fun! and if that's not someone's thing, then it's fine too! it's really not that hard to be respectful and to agree to disagree. shipping and fandom should be fun, i don't understand why people get so angry about characters kissing or not kissing. like it's actually insane to me! it's fucking tumblr lmao!! i can't believe people send anon hate over that. and the bucktommy fans that shit on people who are not into multishipping (but are being respectful about it) are just as bad. don't yuck on someone's yum, etc etc.

anon, what i would suggest is to steer clear of the general tags, they are often filled with rancid takes anyway (sorry but not sorry...), and unfollow people/block tags if you must. i myself blacklist #911 discourse, #911 spec and tags related to that cause i'm just not interested (except from a small handful of people). i only venture in the edit tags sometimes (like #911edit, #buddieedit, etc), never into general tags. this is a huge fandom and it has even more people now that buck is canonically bisexual, so now more than ever it's important to make your dash a safe space. don't be afraid to unfollow, block, blacklist! these assholes shouldn't keep you from enjoying the stuff you wanna enjoy <3

[gildinbainas]

Okay so I'm about to get on my soap box real quick.

Spoiler alert.

Okay so... I've seen a lot of discourse that suggests Rhaenyra was dumb for the stunt she pulled last night. I also saw a lot of posts saying that the scene shouldn't have happened at all. People were dumb fucks. The scene made no sense, ect ect. And I'm channeling my inner Otto Hightower here when I say you guys have no clue what you watched and it shows. Because not only was the scene necessary for Rhaenyra's character, but it also piggy backs off of the struggles Team Black has had from the beginning.

First of all, let's be clear about what the show is about. Because it's not necessarily about Team Black vs Team Green. That's how they sold the show but in reality the show is about two things: How Viserys I didn't stand on business and the confusion within the line of succession. THAT'S what the show is about.

Now what do I mean by this? When I say 'confusion in the line of succession' I mean that there were three valid outcomes as to who could have ruled after Viserys and none of them are inherently wrong.

Path 1 - Viserys never remarried and because h had a brother in Daemon, Viserys dies and Daemon inherits the throne. This would have likely been 100% okay with the Lords of Westeros despite many of them not caring for Daemon personally. But he was a MAN, and that mattered a LOT. So likely could have prevented a civil war here.

Path 2 - Viserys remarries ( which he did ) and had a son ( which also happened ). Because Viserys has a 1st born son now despite Rheanyra being his only child with his first wife, Aegon bumps Daemon back a spot in the line of succession thus making Aegon the rightful heir because: 1) First born son of second wife 2) He's a male which therefore makes his claim stronger in the eyes of the misogynistic lords of Westeros. Misogynistic might be a strong word since that's how things are done in that era. So we'll just say they like men best to rule. This path may have also prevented the kinslaying.

Path 3 - Viserys, despite being advised otherwise, declares his only daughter Rhaenyra the future queen of Westeros despite the crown never having a woman as a ruler. This path was definitely enough to incite a civil war, but not so much until Viserys remarried and had a son. If he doesn't remarry, Rhaenyra could make a decision to pacify the realm by marrying her uncle Daemon anyway and thus him being at her side may have been enough to calm the realm.

But you see the problem here? There's three paths --- none of which are wrong --- that could determine the next ruler. But which path has more weight? Is it the only daughter of the king's first wife? The younger brother? Or is it the child of the second wife? Arguments could be made for either, but Otto Hightower, knowing the lords and their traditions, wasn't exactly wrong when he advised the king about Rhaenyra. We all love our girl, but Viserys refusing to marry her and Damon only made it an uphill battle for her. And then Otto Hightower made moves and once Aegon was born, on could argue Rhaenyra didn't have a chance in hell.

So let's back track to last night's episode. There's the scene where all of the small council on Dragonstone are pushing Rhaenyra to strike with swords and dragons. They keep warning her that the time is now because Aegon's making moves. It's further proven they're actually right this time when her daughter Baela confirms the sighting of Sir Cristoph of the Oranges on his way towards Harrenhal. Despite them screaming about war, it's Rhaenys that reminds the queen that she shouldn't let her advisors bully her into doing what they want to do. She also convinces her to make certain there's no other path towards peace because a war between dragons won't end well. While Rhaenyra was resistant, she also, in good conscience, could not give the order to send dragons out without knowing for a fact that Alicent wouldn't be agreeable to peace.

Essentially, Rhaenyra's not Daemon. She's no expert in throwing on a hoodie and somehow becoming invisible in King's Landing. So what she came up with to seek Alicent worked well enough for the context as well as offered some parallels from their childhood. This meeting did not end how Rhaenyra hoped but it did confirm a few things.

Her father DID mention Aegon on his deathbed. Just not the one Alicent thought. Alicent is made to realize that she helped usurp a throne based on the assumption Viserys meant their son when in reality he was speaking of the prophecy that went absolutely nowhere on Game of Thrones --- The Prince Who Was Promised which definitely aint their Aegon. The look on Alicent's face said as much. She realized her error but also recognized the fact that she can't control the kids in her life. The king wants war and it has already begun. She also mentions that her father is no longer hand. Without Otto in place, Alicent wouldn't have any support to put Rhaenyra on the throne officially anyway. Criston Cole sure as shit's not going to agree to put the girl who wouldn't run off with him on the throne so essentially, this information is more so for Alicent to lose sleep over while their kin kill each other. ( As a side note, i've always wondered, in the context of the show, how people were quick to assume Viserys changed his mind when he dragged his ailing body out of bed to remind everyone that Rhaenyra would be queen. this was right before he died so he suddenly changed his mind hours later? this didn't seem odd to alicent?? )

Rhaenyra gets to see just how much things have changed between them. Now that she knows for a fact that Alicent has no power, she understands what Rhaenys was saying. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter who started the war because it's inevitable now. I also think it's in this moment that Rhaenyra realizes she waited TOO LATE. Had she responded initially while Otto Hightower was still HOTK, MAYBE they could have chatted and got to the bottom of what Viserys said on his deathbed. And this is a big maybe here, but Jaeherys would still be alive. Let's remember: show Aegon didn't want to be king anyway and Otto knew the truth. A lot of things would have had to go right for this to prevent civil war but not impossible.

I say all this to say that last night was to give Rhaenyra peace of mind about what's to come. Her sending her youngest children away means she understands they might not win this war. And to be honest, she has NO REASON to believe they have a chance given how the death of Jaeherys made her look and the fact that Aemond has Vhagar, who was actually Visenya's dragon during Aegon I reign. On the show, they only show his rider Laena, but Vhagar's been around for a while. Even Daemon knows it'll take 2-3 dragons to face that one alone. A suicide mission. Speaking of Daemon, she never knows if Daemon's going to be there for her because he has abandoned her before .And she still resents him for it and he finally feels guilt about it.

So just to see so much dialogue about how stupid it was for her to seek out her ex best friend... Just silly. Both women appear to care deeply for one another despite it all but now Rhaenyra has to swallow the pill that WAR IS HERE.

And...spoiler alert: it ends badly for all of them.

im done now.

[y2kbugs-moved]

I guess I should have a proper pinned

Welcome. You can call me Y2K or Kiki. I used to go by Susie but I don't really feel it anymore.

My pronouns are they/them or .zip (used like they) /.zips (used like them/their) /.zipself (used like themself), although I don't care if people use other pronouns, it's whatever. Just don't call me a man/woman.

I am 24 years old. I do try to tag things as #not sfw when necessary and avoid explicit nsfw images, although jokes/text will be common. I would prefer if no one under 18 followed me, I will softblock you. This isn't personal at all.

I am usually in video game fandoms, so I will jump between video game related things a lot. Very rarely do I get into non-vg media that is any newer than the early 2000s.

Yes, I play League sometimes. I main Caitlyn and Gnar. Viktor is my favorite character in Arcane, but within League his playstyle doesn't suit how I play.

There's some debate about how useful DNI's are but if nothing it's good to keep track of a list of people I Do Not Like:

The usual bigots and douchebags. If you're racist, ableist, a TERF, if you make fun of people for using neopronouns, if you make fun of people whose interests are "cringe", if you make fun of a kid's art quality, if you hate fat people for existing and think they should lose weight "or else", etc etc...I don't know why you're here. I hate you.

Furry haters. I think it's very cool and awesome to love anthropomorphic animals (and yes, including in sexual contexts!) and there is a lot of overlap between furries and the LGBT and neurodivergent communities so I automatically side-eye anyone who hates furries. I suggest going outside, maybe watch A Goofy Movie.

People who let superficial online discourse dictate their lives. No, really, don't you have something better to do?

People who make fun of others for things they cannot control, such as facial features, disability, having a "weird" walk, using mobility aids, weight...You know, most of this is just ableism.

Nazis. It should be illegal for them to be on any social media.

I am also disabled, but I don't feel like I owe the public my laundry list of issues. Just know that I have multiple disabilities and will talk about it and reblog things relating to it.

I also have an OC named Zorko. He is my baby. Thank you.

[arcadequeerz]

.................🌠🌈26 Yrs old🌈🌠 🔆✨Nonhuman - Fictionkin - Otherkin✨🔆 🌈Pronouns here & Find Genderhoard here🌈 🌠🌈Cade / Moss / Rosie / Henry / Happy / Neon🌈🌠 🧁Queer, Femme Bear, Transmasc/Multigender/Hoardfluix🧁

My blogs Icon is drawn by @/thegameartist03​!

Ocs & Characters tag: Cade’s Characterz General Aesthetic Tag: Cadecore My kin tags: 🖤❌🐇, 🐰🎶🎸, 💚🌿🥀 & 🌟🌊🛰️ -----------Sideblogs ----------- Stimblog: @smilestimz Comfort blog: @cozycade Ft Foxy blog: @funtimezfox Fredbear blog: @70steddybear Archive Stimblog: @arcadestimz Werewolfkin blog: @howlinqueerz Photography blog: @lagomorpix Liminal/Horror blog: @liminalqueerz Theme/Pixel Archive blog: @lopbonniez

>Picrew<

*Mogai blogs if you see me Liking a bunch of your posts, It’s to keep track of them so they can later be rbed to my Genderhoard blog!

**Stimblogs if you see me Liking a lot of your gifs, It’s to later possibly use them in a stimboard I’m working on currently! Sorry for the like spam.

⚠️BYF & DNI Listed below⚠️‼️

+ Please note that I call myself ‘Freak’* often and call myself a queer & fag. If that is something you don’t want to see then probably don’t follow my blog. I will not stop calling myself these things if you ask me to, You’ll just be blocked. *look at tags on post.

+ Since I am a Adult myself, I’d rather not have rly young minors following this blog. If you’re younger then 15 Please don’t follow my blog, Thank you! -Note: I won’t be posting outright adult content here, this is just for my own comfortas I am a adult! Suggestive jokes n such may be a thing sometimes but I’ll mark the post as mature.

+ Do not involve me in any sort of community drama or discourse. I do not care about any of it and sending me anything relating to it will just get you blocked. I do not want to know about any of it or put myself around that due to things like that causing me anxiety. Please respect that. If I interact w someone you know is bad, or has done some horrible thing send me a ask explaining things.

If we’re friends/Mutuals I’d appreciate if you could tag: Animal Death/Injury, Any Mention of Child abuse or death, Heavy/Intense Gore/Blood, Rotten/Dirty/Broken teeth, Pictures or videos of cats in dryers, and Furby Hate/Furbies being destroyed. My catchall tag is: Cade No Lookie.

Anywho! Here is my DNI: This is just a list of those I’d rather not follow or interact with my blog. If you’ve read this please send me a 🎊 to let me know you did, thank you!

Please do not follow or Interact with my blog if you are: (or allow interaction from people listed below):

Do not Follow or Interact with my blog if you are a: non-system little blog, cgl, cglre, or ddlg littlespace blog

Age Regression blogs are a okay to interact and follow this blog (So long as you don’t interact/allow interaction from anyone listed here)

Do Not folllow if you are: anti otherkin, anti therian, anti alterhuman or anti fictionkin or if You don’t believe in systems

Do not follow me if you are anti lgbtqia or anti mogai. Or if your anti mspec identities, or anti mspec gays/lesbians We support all good faith lgbtq/mogai identites on this blog.

Do not follow me if you are a Exlusionist, TERF, Radfem, TEHM, Truscum/Transmed, Or Transandrophobe.

Do Not follow me if you’re anti he/him lesbians or she/her gay men. Do not follow or interact w me if you are against lesboys. Do not follow me if your anti neopronouns. Pronouns ≠ Gender

Just don't follow or interact w me if your a exclusionist who thinks they can decide who is or isn't a part of the community. Yes: this includes if you think straight trans people & straight ace or aro people aren't a part of the community.

Do Not follow me if you’re a true crime blog [aka if you romanticize literal murderers fuck off]

Do Not follow me if you’re a pewdiepie stan, Do not follow me if you are a fan of Harry Potter or South Park, Do not follow me if you support/defend Scott Cawthon & Do not follow me if you watch hazbin hotel/helluva boss

Do not Follow me if you're a Zionist or Anti Palestine, Do Not follow me if you’re Anti pro choice & Do not follow me if you are Anti BLM

Do Not follow or Interact with me if you are: Pro harmful para, Transid, Transrace/Trace, Transx, Transabled, a Proshipper, Xenosatanic, Medpunk or Radqueer or support those groups.

[hashtagloveloses]

hi hashtagloveloses,

I'm a new user and saw your post about reblogs. Is there anything else I should pay attention to? Could you tell me if there is a post or guide or something I can consult on how tumblr works? I'm still getting really lost here and have trouble finding anything.

there’s actually an official staff blog with a bunch of good tips called @tips everybody should know about! but off the top of my head also:

1) make sure you have a profile photo. you don’t need a cover photo you can even just turn that off in your blog settings. this is to make sure people don’t think you’re a bot

2) have a different username here than you have other places and don’t share personal information of any kind here (huge mistake i made….). despite what some people say you do not need to share anything about ur sexuality, pronouns, diagnoses, opinions, etc. frankly if i could advise my younger self, i’d say just don’t make original posts or comments at all (if u wanna make commentary in reblog tags maybe?). use a diary or a journal instead of original posts about yourself or your opinions or comments on others’ posts. even if you delete your blog or change your username, the reblogs of things you say live on here forever.

4) reblog instead of like, and tag posts with what they’re about when you post and reblog (this is something i don’t do as much as i should bc im often on mobile and don’t feel like it and only do it for original posts). at least make sure you’re tagging for common content warnings and spoilers. don’t censor words in posts or tags if you’re trying to tag, bc that breaks people’s mute/blocklists. DO censor words/tags if you’re talking about something you don’t want to clog the tag for or attract attention to or something.

5) if you personally want to keep track of original posts, asks, and queued posts, create tags you use for each of those and on mobile manually tag with them every time you do one of those posts, and on desktop you can have an extension do it. in your blog settings you can make like your original post tag one of your “featured tags” if you want easy access, or other people to be able to see, which just means when they hit the search bar on your blog it’s suggested.

6) make sure you go to your dashboard settings and turn OFF “best things first”. i keep on the other algorithmic stuff like showing stuff based on likes as well, and i flip between the various feeds, but most of what you should be doing is following blogs that post or reblog what you like, following the TAGS of things you like, and those will appear chronologically in your regular dash “following” feed.

7) freely block, unfollow, and filter/mute people and topics. do not feel like you have any obligation to anyone. curate your experience on here.

8) turn off submissions on your blog, and turn off anon asks or even asks all together if you don’t want them. you are not obligated to answer every ask or even have an open ask box. you should also take a look at your settings for private messages and replies to set them to what you’re comfortable with.

9) how i use notifications is different than a lot of ppl bc i get a LOT of them but explore how the Activity and notifications page works to your favor, but turn off push notifs and as much as you can. followers, likes, etc, do not matter that much here if you’re not trying to build a following for art or something and you shouldn’t pay attention to it other than just for fun.

10) learn what T*RF, SW*RF, and white supremacist dogwhistles are and how to spot them bc they can still be prevalent on here and you may not realize. a lot of seemingly normal posts about feminism on here can be crypto t*rf shit so you need to learn how to spot it. (those kinds of posts spread to a lot of platforms and people don’t realize….)

11) do not get into discourse on here. of any kind. even if you’re right. some idiot will drain the life out of you arguing with you and people get weird. you’re not gonna convince people online of anything in a discourse fight most of the time and you will only come out of it drained or harassed yourself (frankly this is good advice for anywhere and sometimes even i slip up). in general even on here where engagement is not encouraged as much, every platform has engagement bait and discourse either purposely seeded to piss you off, or if it’s not on purpose it’s still pushed by algorithms.

12) for things like news, etc, this is general online advice but make sure you’re practicing basic media literacy to check how real a headline or a video or something is. what’s the source? how old is it? did they provide sources? etc

13) DO NOT REPOST ART. EITHER FROM HERE OR FROM OTHER WEBSITES. unless the artist says you can repost it (and you need to do so with credit, and look and see if they need to give permission). do not REBLOG reposted art either. you may find it in tags sometimes. do not encourage that behavior.

14) to that same end, do not post AI bullshit here. chatGPT, character AI, voiceover deepfakes, AI videos, etc. don’t do or support those in general but don’t post that shit here

15) in general, and this is something i try to tell people on EVERY platform, remember that what you see people discussing online is often a small minority of what most people think or feel. it may FEEL like everyone is talking about a certain thing, or fighting about a certain thing, but it does not represent the whole. there’s so many discourses where people are like “why do x always say y” and i’m like well they don’t. the very online segment of x often say y bc it gets engagement or bc they are very loud. (this isn’t the case for everything but it happens often for very stupid topics). this isn’t to dismiss important conversations had online by a minority of people that aren’t being discussed wider enough either - bc that also does happen. but that is often for things that are more important than like, the same movie sex scene discourse i see on twitter every 2 weeks.

16) don’t feel any obligation to your “followers”. you are not an influencer you are just here having fun, and your followers follow for the things you reblog, not for you. be FREE.

17) on desktop browser, get the XKit Rewritten extension and go wild with the settings. its a really nice tool and has a lot of good features, like the quick reblog and queue features that give you those auto tags and stuff. (also if you aren’t already using Ublock Origin extension as your adblocker on desktop, get that too).

18) if you have an iphone, apple store limits what they can show you within the app, so if you want to look at more NSFW, the mobile browser version of tumblr is quite decent. but also go to your blog settings on desktop and make sure your settings of what it is showing you on your dash include sensitive content (even if you set it to have a filter over it at first), bc it sometimes autoflags random shit as “sensitive”. also play with your dashboard filters with tags for nsfw content to your comfort - it wont remove it it’ll just put a thing over it so it doesn’t pop up in public accidentally before you click to look at it.

[thecookieverse]

Cayenne Cookie is a mercenary/bounty hunter. Szechuan Cookie was killed by an assailant that got away scot free when she was at a young age. After which she dedicated her life to learn the art of Kung Fu, and using her fiery fighting spirit to further enhance her skills. Then, she was able to track down and bring her mother's killer to justice. 

This feat garnered the attention of those seeking to hire a mercenary and for bounties to be fulfilled. Of course, the bounty hunter work puts her at odds with her thieving cousin Chili Pepper. Though she is on good terms with Red Pepper, who she sometimes spars with as training. 

Lore

Cousin of Chili Pepper and Red Pepper Cookie

She became friends with Black Raspberry Cookie due to being hired by same cookie for the same job, the two still keep in touch even after the job was done. The two later became friends with Broccoli, Seltzer, Choco Milk, and Peppermint Bark Cookie were on a (poorly timed) vacation to the Creme Republic.

Relationship Chart

Chili Pepper Cookie (Family, Cousin): "*Sigh* Why must you be like this?" 

Red Pepper Cookie (Family, Cousin): "My cousin's always fun to spar with!" 

Black Raspberry Cookie (Trust): "Ever since we got hired for the same job, we've been close ever since!"

Broccoli Cookie (Trust): "Not a veggie fan myself, but he's nice company!" 

Seltzer Cookie (Trust): "You're water, I'm fire, and yet...we get along so well!" 

Chocolate Milk Cookie (Trust): "Sweet, if a bit...ditzy...I like him!"

Peppermint Bark Cookie (Trust): "Putting yourself in danger for a loved one's sake, can relate" 

Blood Orange Cookie (Tension): "Woah girl! Whatever happened to civil sibling discourse?!"

Orange Cookie (Friendly): "I suggest having a talk with your sister, or things may get ugly..." 

Peperoncino Cookie (Friendly): "Sorry for your loss, just keep on fighting, I'm sure you'll find them soon."

Habanero Cookie (Friendly): "Woah, slow your roll little buddy! It takes time to reach your full potential."

Appears on Relationship Charts

Chili Pepper Cookie (Family, Cousin): "Get off my back, 'cus!" 

Red Pepper Cookie (Family, Cousin): "Let's see who's spirit is stronger, cousin!"

Black Raspberry Cookie (Trust): "Not just skilled, but a great friend to boot!"

Broccoli Cookie (Trust): " She's got quite the "kick" Ha!" 

Seltzer Cookie (Trust): "For a spicy cookie...I think she's pretty sweet." 

Chocolate Milk Cookie (Trust): "Only she knows the true value of my face! Just, please don't attack so close to me, you'll burn my hair!"

Peppermint Bark Cookie (Trust): "Her dedication to those she loves is astounding" 

Blood Orange Cookie (Tension): "You have NO right to lecture me on family matters!"

[vro0m]

Nope. I disagree. Maybe I should clarify: Any COMPETENT driver would win in the RBR (not a Latifi or Mazepin, mind you). Would they win at the same rate as Max, probably not, but someone in that RBR would win. Remember, all it takes is winning the most points, you don't have to win 97% of the races. You just need to finish higher than everyone else more often, and if you're driving a car that is powerful enough for you to win races by seconds, that will likely happen. RBR has their track record of winners for a reason.

Now, Checo may not be the greatest, but he was still P2 in the standings. We can't hype up Lewis for getting to P3 in the WDC, but then insult Checo in the next breath. And tbh, this discourse is EXACTLY why RBR is keeping Checo in the second seat, not because they believe he's comparable to Max or even the second best driver on the grid. They're perfectly fine with the gap in performance because it supports their narrative and too many of us are falling for it.

F1 is like pro wrestling. Lots of manipulation by the teams and even the governing body to produce certain outcomes. Too many variables beyond the drivers' control to properly judge any one driver's performance. It should be exclusively a team sport.

I agree a bit more with you this time but it's very different than what you said in your previous ask. Of course having a good car means you have better chances of winning, but it's not sufficient to win.

Perez did finish P2 but until very late in the season there was speculation as to whether Lewis could catch up with him (admittedly at the time of the article I linked it was a bit of a stretch), in a car that was far from being on par with the Red Bull. The difference between them was only 49 points at the end of the season, even though the difference in car performance between RBR and Merc was massive. So I'm not saying that Perez necessarily wouldn't win the championship, because he absolutelx would have the advantage in terms of car performance, but I don't think it'd be as clear-cut as you make it out to be. You say "a car that is powerful enough for you to win races by seconds", but Max is winning races by a huge margin, not Perez. Even when you take Max out of the equation. Admittedly he started this year well but in 2023 the last time he was in P2 (so would have won if you ignore Max) was in August in Monza and he was indeed ahead of P3 by 5.1s. He didn't finish in P2 in the next 8 races. What I mean is he does finish ahead by a good margin when he's able to make it to P2 in the first place which really isn't as frequent as one would expect if the driver had a negligible impact on the results compared to the cars like you suggest. I'm also not insulting him : saying that he's not performing as well as Max is factual. Doesn't make him a bad driver. Just not as good as his outlier of a teammate.

The idea of F1 being manipulated like pro-wrestling is absurd. The way the stewarding works is debatable for sure and they've made some gigantic mistakes at times (which had gigantic consequences for the people involved btw) (and also happens in other sports, think about Maradona's hand of God for example, mistakes happen) but I think you're way overestimating what the different parties have the leeway to do without the others 1) knowing or 2) disagreeing. There's a lot of money and brands involved, do you really think they would still be there if it was made up and secretly manipulated behind their backs as much as you think? Do you think they would not look into it and make a big scandal out of it if you were right? Thousands and thousands of people are employed in F1, way more have been employed in F1, and you think they're all either playing along but able to keep the secret somehow or not aware that there's a big conspiracy going on (and that you somehow know better than them)?

Where I agree with you is that there absolutely is too many variables involved to truly be able to purely judge the drivers' performance. Unless we put them all in the exact same cars with the exact same engines operated by the exact same people, all we can do is compare and infer and speculate.

[hiding-under-the-willow]

Uh, hello.

I'm very new to tumblr, and i'm not exactly sure how it works.

i was wondering if you could give me some basic tumblr rules and etiquette?

like how reblogs and stuff work.

I'm just really worried i'm doing something wrong, and i don't want people to get mad at me for it.

I feel like the number one way I can suggest figuring out the social etiquette of tumblr is just to follow blogs you like and observe how they use the site and just like work from there, that's how I figured out the site when I joined at least. Back when I joined there weren't actually a lot of people joining so there wasn't a lot of guidance but the site's been seeing a lot of user migration the last year or two so there are plenty of posts circling around with like tips on how to use the site and the general culture and such if that's the kind of stuff you're looking for though.

Generally, reblogs are appreciated, especially by artists since it's the best way for their work to reach new people. People will try to claim likes do nothing and so you should always reblog, this is generally a lie. Reblogs do more for artists but its not like it's the end of the world if you don't reblog every post you like that's just some weird moral panic bullshit people get on every once in awhile. Usually if someone doesn't want a post reblogged they'll say it explicitly in the post or tags so that's not something you need to be paranoid about. People talk in the tags on reblogs and original posts. If you're reblogging a text post or art op is probably always gonna be chill with you talking about the post in the tag, in fact that's the more common way here to leave praise for art rather than leaving actual comments.

I keep my reblogs and most of my personal posts on a separate blog but that's like a personal organizational thing I like having my art all easily accessible in the same place. If you're a content creator of some kind it's totally chill to have all of your personal work and all of your reblogs on the same blog. Really how much you organize or split up stuff is up to you. Some people have different blogs for every fandom they're in, some people put everything in one place. Some people tag everything thoroughly some people don't tag anything. It's really just up to you what kind of organization you want to have and what stuff you want to keep track of on your blog.

Block people you don't want to interact with. Block tags you don't want to see. Unfollow people whenever where ever for whatever reason and don't feel bad about it. Curate your experience on this site as much as possible. It's one of the best social media sites in terms of personalizing your experience by far and that's something you should absolutely take advantage of. Don't force yourself to engage in discourse you don't care about, don't harass people for anything, don't get pressured into reblogging serious political posts if you don't want to, turn your gaze away from anything you don't want to see. It's the funny fandom site, don't make yourself miserable, curate your space so that it sparks joy.

This is more site function than etiquette but. Tumblr live is a really recent addition to the site, it's stupid, might be a data harvesting scheme, and everyone hates it. No one uses it. There's a place in settings you can turn it off for a week at a time. Everyone does that every week it's a collective in joke basically.

Anyways mostly my point is have fun, curate and organize your space as you see fit, and watch other people to pick up on site etiquette. If anyone else wants to leave tips on this post it's totally welcome. Good luck out there dude o7

[joemuggs]

Albums of 2023 part 2

And so, on from part 1, we continue. This is more dreamy synth-dub that sits perfectly next to the Harrow album: Richard Norris is another artist with an extraordinarily long and illustrious career but who also has never lost the exploratory urge and total delight in sonic finesse.

Honestly Uruguayan-in-Ireland Lila Tirando a Violeta is right up there with the very best of the "deconstructed club" generation - dark, gothic, complex, VERY WEIRD - and this collab with Berliner Sin Maldita is up there with her best. It's really, REALLY intense!

Just impossibly beautiful elegies from ambient harpist Mary Lattimore which builds towards the final track collaboration with Slowdive's Rachel Goswell that is so lovely it will single handedly bring back swooning as a popular pastime.

Officially an EP but there's enough here to cement Nia Archives's place as a heavyweight - add "Off Wiv Ya Headz" and that Jorja Smith remix, and she's had a humdinger of a 2023....

Saw some discourse suggesting that Burna Boy is resting on his laurels here, but I don't hear it. Maybe it's the fact that the cover looks dashed-off? But musically, this bangs: it expertly joins so many dots but keeps his voice and personality right at the heart of it.

I mean come on there was no way a collab between Earl Sweatshirt and The Alchemist was going to be anything but good, right? Just purest essence of deep and dreamy stoner hip hop. Yet another small (27min) but beautifully formed album - definitely a trend there.

Feels kind of (literally) sacrilegious to say I prefer Cleo Sol's more personal, less scriptural records (e.g. Rose in the Dark) - and this is, top to bottom, a gospel album - but the conviction to her performance and the whole realisation of it here is still really magical.

From Coventry via Skopje, man like NOT_MDK's first album in 23 years, and he's zooming into the deep flows that join grime and dubstep into the longer, deeper electronic funk continuum... These tracks are so crisp and crunchy!

She's from Turkey but Ahu's been plugged into the London Plastic People / NTS / etc scene for years - file this with Yazmin Lacey and similar LDN soul-jazz, also it's very Boho and vibesy and incensey, definitely one to light your best candles for.

Can't remember who put me on to this, possibly Radio 3? Anyway if cold wet misty Scottish hillsides are your jam Claire M Singer has you covered - these slower-than-slowly unfolding organ-led pieces practically smell of wet moss, and are extremely beautiful.

He's lent vocals to a who's who of electronic music, but it turns out Paul St Hilaire's own studio craft is the equal of just about any of them - this is just a stunning, ocean-deep album of dub abstraction and subtly potent lyricism.

Icelander Eva Jóhannsdóttir aka EVA808 has already made a name in the dubstep/grime world but this is her really spreading her creative wings. Mad psychedelia, elemental abstraction, movie-theme composition - there's not much she can't do. Big things beckon!

There's still SO much to say about amapiano, and so much incredible UK, SA and wider world stuff last year (this isn't even the only great DJ Maphorisa album - he had THREE out in 2023, including a mini album with Shino Kikai and a 25-track one with fellow originator Kabza De Small!!). Suffice to say this has gorgeous songs, primal grooves, endlessly sophisticated mixdowns and bass that'll take your breath away.

Just gonna link to my review for this one (it's got the music embedded) - but TL;DR Darren J Cunningham aka Actress is the holy prophet of the era of enshittification, yet for all that his music is constantly "off" and made for a world that is "off", he alchemises it into real gold.

Yeah I'm going to be THAT space-jazz hipster and say this is the record I wish Andre3000 (who is on it, and Carlos Niño co-produced his album) had made. It's just a more lavish, free, FUN way to cavort with the five-dimensional fractal machine elves.

Zoning in on the platonic breakbeat mathematics that underly Jersey / B'more club Chicago hip house, UK rave, trip hop etc, Bored Lord could seem arch or retro if her beats weren't so gloriously functional and bumping.

Fed up of generic records? You will never EVER find another one that sounds like IFS MA. Polish abstract slightly Autechre-y footwork / drum'n'bass with Japanese rapper MA sounding like a cyborg beat poet Taliban Trim and I.... 🤯

Every man jack and their dog are doing high bpm retro rave lately but you can trust Meemo Comma to put a fresh and uneasy twist on it. These tracks will get you proper buzzing up loud! I got to DJ for her live performance of this at Spiritland earlier in the year, hearing them on that system was a real treat.

You get a twofer with this one. Phil Kieran's ode to Belfast is gorgeous in studio form here, but he also recorded and released a version with the Ulster Orchestra that single handedly revivifies the idea of electronic music done classical style!

Two true underground troupers teaming up here - Jordan GCZ from Juju & Jordash and David "Move D" Moufang with some otherworldly good-dream ambient, deep house and space-soul jams heavy on the Fender Rhodes, fuzzy reverberation and sensually sweeping portamento.

My musical safe place for so much of this year. Brooklyn "electronic jam band" Purelink somehow burrowed into electronic music history and found the softest, happiest, warmest fur lined chamber and then invited us in. I cannot emphasise enough how LOVELY this record is.

More modular synth grooves from E Ruscha aka Secret Circuits, but no over-indulgence here and the grooves REALLY DO GROOVE. Trippy as a weasel circus and twice as funky.

Talking of trippy, here's Optimo Music's second acid-drenched entry, from the man formerly known as TB Arthur and the mighty Magda trading as Blotter Trax, it's a kind of parallel universe early 80s alt disco where everything gurgles and melts.

More from South Africa - King Mzaiza Sound via the reliably tough Parisian PSSNGR label - not 100% sure what you'd call this though it definitely has some gqom sonics, some trap drums, and some strident rap vocals... It's HARD AS NAILS is what it is.

EVEN HARDER - Nyege Nyege brought us a sampler of this (and I don't use mental health language lightly) FUCKING MENTAL shrieking, raging, solvent-huffing sound from São Paulo stewarded by the young DJ K, and it's extremely funky and scarily thrilling.

OK there we go, part three is here.....