#I HADNT READ THE BOOKS

[aquariusshadow]

so i finished lockwood and co (tv) and...........uh.......apparently....thanks to a friend of mine who promised to tell me what was behind the door after finishing the show........I CORRECTLY GUESSED WHAT'S BEHIND THE DOOR LIKE WTF

[beinspiredbyroses]

the cgi was awful & thats when I checked out. also junior high schl is 12 to 15 yo. which is why I only watched the first movie.

TWILIGHT (2008)

[kimodraw]

more watchmen (and patrician) stuff :) lines r from jungo which im currently reading

[sleepsucks]

[moonshynecybin]

what would you consider essential marc and rosquez watching? i don’t mean races but the stuff happening around it, there seems to be so much and idk where to start 😭

BIG ass question. i think it depends what you want outta this and how you best interact with content slash consume information. for me (not to brag but. winner of multiple historical essay writing competitions in high school. for context on the kind of freak i am bringing to the table here.) the research is kind of the fun part ! like i just started googling shit! i would go to inactive blogs and just search 'marquez' on them to see what would happen ! a lot of the times that works ! but it also takes a lotttt of time lol so i'll chuck some good resources your way, why not...

okay im not sure how basic we're talkin here but um. background. so the documentaries are, i think. the best place to start. theyre entertaining and offer a good amalgamation of clips to provide context for the actual racing. and like i know you de-emphasized racing (which is fine lol who cares) but it really is like the most important thing in the world to these fools and its a pretty visual sport so i think its at least helpful. like yes sepang IS about the press conference, but its also about the conversation they have ON the race track using their motorcycles. which is also somewhat a conversation that they HAVE been having all year long...

i'd start with hitting the apex (2013), its a GREAT introduction to the "characters" that does a lot of legwork to contextualize everything. lays the scene for where vale is at coming into his relationship with marc (both personally, wrt to marco simoncelli, and career-wise concerning his flop at ducati), and also how insane marc's whole deal is in general. the second half is. materially a study on what him entering the premiere class did to the sport as a whole. the introductory chapter in many respects

marc marquez: all in. MY introduction and blissfully free online. marc comma in his own words, with all the implications of that. a self-produced documentary where he is giving feedback about the edit of said documentary straight to camera and no less vulnerable because of it which is very marc imo. revealing both intentionally AND unintentionally about his whole deal with injury, vale, and his image.

motogp unlimited. im gonna be real kind of boring. like i would still watch it ! but do it kind of later, once you know the major players so youre automatically more invested. it doesnt really give you more than marc says himself in all in tbh, and i get the sense him and vale were NAWWWT interested in doing more than the bare minimum for it.

marc's rookie doc. free and subtitled on the youtubes. the first half of this is deadass just him wanting to fuck vale so bad while every comment from vale has me saying GIRL. out loud because the foreshadowing would be genuinely shocking if this was fiction. anyways the laguna seca of it all....

next i would hit up PODCASTS ! i think it makes sense after the documentaries, because these are all podcasts that arent strictly about rosquez (even if they are in many ways the main characters lmao) and personally it helps to put faces to lesser known names that might pop up before i listen to a purely audio product and get lost in the soup of sounds. the paddock pass podcast has two retrospective episodes about the 2015 season that are really good at context, oxley bom pod has a fun recent episode on valentino that i love, again just poke around a lil

videos. these guys have never filmed a lot of content together tragically. what i wouldnt give for someone to make them do an escape room. anyways ranch visit HERE (post explaining the ranch visit here). sepang presscon (sowwy) here. vale unhinged podcast interview the month after marc's documentary came out here. vale retirement interview where he gets asked about marc here. vale talking about asking marc to the ranch here. vale postrace at argentina 2018 here. UCCIO postrace at argentina 2018 here. theres a lot moreeeee just go on my blog archive and filter for rosquez and vids its easier lol

journalism. hello. okay so you should genuinely spend some time reading through mat oxley's stuff he can write (theres a paywall but you can run that shit through wayback machine). he also loves an insane comparison which i do enjoy.... again this is one that can be solved by googling his name and tacking on 'marquez' or 'rossi' or a specific time period or race it will probably reap some dividends. in terms of specific ass articles this one is kind of load bearing in terms of sepang and some of the interpersonal competitive tensions at play. that being said there are manyyyyyy crazy interviews and snippents of articles from other journos floating around motogp tumblr (like literally too many to link) adn its fun to dig around to find them, but mat oxley gets a shoutout because i was reading this article TODAY !

other content. honestly one of the best resources I'VE found for plotting out the arc of their relationship is @kingofthering's everyrosquezpodium series. you can REALLY see it play out lol. also her tagging system rules she very neatly lays out years and races... so if something jumps out at you, CLICK ITTTT ! also all of @ricciardoes fave presscon moments series. insane.

all this to say a small little rpf fandom like this rewards some digging! i would just recommend following narrative threads that interest you ! its also a small fanbase that is pretty research oriented, so if youre ever confused about somethin, just shoot an ask or run a search on someone's blog (@kwisatzworld has endless vale resources and @batsplat is one of the most thorough researchers ive ever seen, for example) like for real theres so much... i also have a primer that i made forever ago that has some links on it so you can peruse that if you so wish. but frankly a lot of it is just using those research muscles and being sufficiently deranged enough to be screenshotting reddit threads at one am so you can post them to tumblr because they mentioned marc and vale in the same sentence and that lit up some of the neurons in your brain

(and i know you said outside of races but i think theyre good benchmarks as turning points soooo you should do some diggin on laguna seca 2013, jerez 2015, argentina 2015, ASSEN 2015, sepang 2015 obvi, argentina 2018, and misano 2019. those are the big tentpoles of insane rosquez relationship drama imo. i mean theres many more but. im limiting myself.)

[the-holy-ghosted]

how do you think things started. Did Bridgens or Peglar make the first move? Was it before or after John began tutoring him?

Brought up in the book, actually! He taught Peglar how to read while they were on their Beagle voyage and when they came home, he sought Bridgens out again for more lessons. At some point after finding him again, Peglar made the first move on him.

From chapter 28, the first of a handful of Peglar POV chapters. Despite the book being... the way it is, I do like how it does these two. If you were to read any part of it, read chapters 28 and 50. My suggestion to you heehee

[creed-of-cats]

Giovanni's Room memes to deal with the pain

[pickled-flowers]

Saw some of the grossest parenting today in the bus

[leonstamatis]

I read your swordcrossed lesbians fic without reading the book at all so I have to ask: tell me more about the lesbians!

oh, you are so brave jbnkjbngkjn. thank you for taking the time to read it and to reach out -- that's so incredibly kind of you! i'm happy to talk about the girls, but i AM gonna put it under a cut so as not to spoil anyone who may want to read the book but hasn't gotten around to it yet.

so uh. swordcrossed is a fantasy romance novel set in a port-side city called glassport. it's vaguely historical, there are other towns and cities and politics and such at play, but none of that matters. the main thrust of the book is that mattinesh jay, the heir to a wool and textiles house, is engaged to sofia cooper, the youngest child of an up and coming house that works in wines and liquors.

matti needs to marry sofia because her family has money that can save his from collapsing entirely. sofia needs to marry matti because his family name carries respect and historical value, as his house is much more established than hers.

the book itself is about mattinesh (matti) and luca piere and their time together as matti attempts to 1) save his family from financial ruin 2) marry himself off 3) actually ruin his own wedding instead. it's a great time! i thoroughly enjoyed it! that being said, i think sofia cooper, as the other side to matti's coin, is INCREDIBLY compelling and i wanted to see SO much more of her than we got to. hence, the fic.

(side note: the jay family, as a house devoted to wool and textiles, follows the rites and rituals of the goddess huna. she oversees such things. the cooper family, working in alcohol, worships maha, the god of wine and agriculture. that's not super important beyond fun worldbuilding, but if you're wondering why those names pop up in the fic, that's why!)

sofia is rumored to be in love with another man, adrean vane. he's a songwriter, and he wrote a song about her that went the ye-olden equivalent of viral called "wildflower under the glass," so everyone -- matti and his family included -- is pretty sure she loves and actually wants to marry adrean, and this whole marriage is against her wishes. (it is not. she fucking hates adrean. he's a tool.)

sofia's story, as far as i've been able to deduce from the book, is: she knew she had to marry someone for her family's sake. she had this guy hanging around who was harassing and, essentially, all but stalking her, and he managed to convince the entire town that they were secretly in love this entire time.

she never, at any point, had the ability to control either her narrative or her future. any opportunity to do so -- whether through falling in love with someone else, pursuing a career that interested her, or literally just telling a guy to fuck off -- was cut off at the pass by needing to remain desirable marriage material. she could do that, and she did it, and it wasn't great for her but she's very stubborn and determined. as long as matti knows where she stands, and as long as she knows where he stands, the two of them can make this damn thing work.

(and then matti goes and falls in love with someone else, and starts sleeping with him while sofia is planning their goddamn wedding, which. man. that one sucks, matti, i have to say. you could've handled the whole thing better.)

anyway. mayanesh is matti's younger sister. she's pretty commonly referred to as the "rose oil" in any situation, because she's great at smoothing ruffled feathers and making people feel comfortable and welcome. matti loves her! they're two years apart, they look very similar, and maya is one of the only people matti actually confides in about anything he's thinking or feeling. which means she is one of the first people to know both that he is not happy about the impending marriage AND that he's falling for someone else.

as the person who is universally recognized as The One Who Makes Everyone Happy, she sees that her brother isn't going to put his whole heart into marrying this beautiful girl. so she goes about helping sofia to plan the wedding instead. it's taking something off matti's very full plate, it's making sofia feel supported and welcomed to the family, win-win!

it is very clear from quite early on that it's not... completely winning, though, because no matter how it shakes out, maya loses. if the wedding is called off, her family enters financial ruin; if it goes ahead, the woman she loves marries someone else. her brother, no less, so they'll be living under the same roof with no way to actually develop the relationship the way she wants. poor girl.

there's another layer here, too, which is that maya quickly becomes a confidant for sofia, as well. so she not only knows that sofia isn't entirely happy with this marriage, she knows that sofia has never had the chance to pick the things that would make her happy. whatever happens to sofia, it's always something she is tied up in, rather than something she wants. so obviously maya isn't going to run up to her and say, "well, i have feelings for you too, so there!" because sofia wouldn't want another person forcing her into the role of the love interest.

except that sofia already knows that she loves maya, and that she can't marry maya, and is so caught up in all the other shit that she has very little idea that maya feels the same way. i don't blame her; she has an obsessive creep following her around AND an unfaithful fiance. one crisis at a time, ykwim?

you might be asking, what does maya get out of this? great q. the book doesn't tell us that much. sofia is beautiful, sure, and sofia is from a wealthy family, and she is smart and she is capable. great. but why does she fit so well with maya?

this is all conjecture. but. i personally think it would be pretty difficult to be the one who is not the heir to the house, whose opinion isn't often consulted, and whose job is primarily to "make everyone happy." that's a ROUGH lot in life. and one of the things we get to see from sofia is that she listens. she asks questions and she learns.

she does pick up the hand signals from maya, and she appreciates maya's skills in planning, attitude management and design. she appreciates maya's knowledge, her creativity, her kindness. after her entire life spent being the one who exists to make other people feel good about themselves, it's probably pretty damn nice to have someone look at you and admire things no one else has even seen before.

anyway. the fic is canon compliant, in so much as it can be. when the wedding comes around, adrean vane challenges for sofia's hand and loses. then, at luca's urging, maya challenges for sofia's hand and. wins!

after some quick clarification, it is confirmed that maya isn't just challenging the marriage to keep it from going forward. she does, in fact, want to take her brother's place. sofia is elated about this, her parents approve, jay house still welcomes her and matti is free to be with someone he actually loves -- and so is sofia! thank fucking god, am i right.

i definitely had to flesh out a lot of sofia's relationships with her own family members, and i had to figure out her dynamic in the day-to-day with maya a little bit more. but the general broad strokes, and the idea behind them falling in love, for me, is that sofia finally found someone who respected her boundaries AND loved her enough to make her happy, no matter what that looked like. and maya found someone who saw her and listened to her and appreciated her, and would give back anything she gave in equal measure. and that's pretty cool.

tl;dr goddamn i loved the girls. they compel me.

[m00ngbin]

I used to get really unreasonably angry with the Erin hunters because before I read a vision of shadows I came up with a warriors self insert named ambermoon and I thought they stole the idea of her from me

[thedarkspiresofkredikshaw]

warbreaker spoilers

holy crap, well. nightblood isnt a fucking shardblade, its an awakened fucking sword. Holy fuck? DESTROY EVIL?

[solaceinfandoms]

Luke Castellan is such a sweetheart, that is going to hurt so baddddddd

The first person, in like all the schools Percy has attended yet, making him feel welcome (excluding grover) Him telling Sally how he finally has friends. ouch

[islesofblest]

I saw a comment on tiktok that Percy's blond hair suits him bc of his golden retriever personality...

[rearranging-deck-chairs]

between "i dont know if i knew i was gay when i was alive" and the anglerfish cult always using girls as sacrifices and the "dont kill him, hes a poet! or her, shes got such a beautiful voice. or that one, shes just too pretty to ruin", carmilla must have had a hell of time coming out to herself

[mostlikelyshutup]

watched a video essay about the hunger games and am now struck by the power of human empathy and kindness

[songofsaraneth]

should i feel bad that my treat-yourself meal after my first weekend working at the aquarium is. sushi.