#I don't think I even did one of these for 2023...

[alacants]

The source of those rumors is a guy from Carlos's family's tennis club who is close to Kiko Navarro & knows some members of Carlos's team & is a regular collaborator with Punto de Break. According to him (he's said this before) Carlos & Juanki had a significant fight towards the end of 2023. But the claim that they nearly split up back then came from someone else who's less reliable.

As for 2025, the first guy says Carlos's dad has apparently not been happy with what Juanki is doing for a while... but it seems like Carlos doesn't agree. If things don't turn around after clay season his family might push for changes to the team.

From my perspective it's hard to understand the coaching strategy sometimes. Like you said Juanki's strength is not tactics but it seems like that's what Carlos really needs. This is just one example but I think it's crazy that he sat on court in silence for three sets without suggesting Carlos change his return position v Djokovic - Carlos eventually figured it out... in the last game of the match. And that was honestly the main factor in him losing. You could argue Juanki wanted him to figure it out himself but why on earth did they not discuss that beforehand when it also cost him massively at the Olympics (which Carlos said he didn't even think about before the match?)

I know Juanki's whole thing is treating team like family but there are a lot top coaches who say that after 5ish years a coach has nothing to give a player anymore & I wonder if their partnership has run its natural course. Carlos doesn't seem any more tactically equipped than he was two years ago & his technicals have mostly not improved either (return... backhand...).

thanks for this background - after replying to some earlier asks i dug around and saw some folks citing punto de break but not any specifics so this is appreciated. this does immediately increase the credibility to me bc i know pdb values their access and would not jeopardize it for nothing lmao. tho if it's like, a guy who sometimes writes for them and is mostly posting on his own time... i guess that's somewhere in the middle. (btw i still haven't seen anything other than reports of reports of reports? if you've got links i would very much appreciate them!)

as usual i think we're looking at two questions here: could carlos benefit from a different coach, and does carlos want a different coach.

i think we are all in agreement that for carlos to continue to develop as a player he needs something he's not getting at the moment, whether we're thinking in terms of incorporating a new addition to the team or making a wholesale switch. and i don't disagree with you at all about the natural lifespan of a coaching relationship. i've cited this before in discussions of juanki's own career (stuck with one guy; was it a mistake?) and of ferru's (split but waited too long; chalked the delay up to personal feelings).

but as long as it's presented to carlos as an all-or-nothing choice i don't think he's there yet and i would not be surprised to find out that his recent post-match declarations were a message. (tbc it very much MIGHT be an all-or-nothing choice, regulars here know i have plenty of thoughts about the academy lmao.)

the thing is that at this point the unknowns are still really, really risky. if you've had the same coach for most of your teen/adult years and you're ready to strike out and try something new, then that's exciting and stimulating and you're in a good place to make the best of it. but if you're dragging your feet? if you feel like you've been pushed? maybe someone else could give you more, but you have to be ready to receive it, you know? if you're an environment that you know enables you overall to perform at a high level (4 grand slams), where you feel overall confident and supported even if you're lacking direction in some big matches, where you get value from your coach's presence above and beyond the specifics of tennis--it is inherently going to be a risk to make a big change and if you're not all in on doing so the risks will be even more likely to find you.

that's why i keep saying is that i don't see it happening unless carlos' results gets much worse than this--or, potentially, unless a voice that holds as much weight with him as juanki's (so, his dad) gets strong enough that he listens to it. that might be where we're headed!

(incidentally i have feinted at this without saying so explicitly, but there is an unbelievable amount of money riding on carlos' success or lack thereof--i don't mean prize money, i mean his brand as a star--and it would be naive to pretend that's not a factor in decision-making. that's one of the reasons i've pointed to a sustained slump, rather than one or two disappointing slams. when the results start to affect the brand.)

just talked this over with friend who compared the ideal set-up to darren/simone for jannik--supervisory coach + tactical/court coach. if so, then the question is whether they come to that same conclusion and get the set-up in place before the decision is out of their hands, so to speak.

[humming-fly]

Bit of a funny year for art! Definitely some feast and famine months in there, with June having basically nothing shifting over to July which was my most prolific artfight season to date haha - a bit more style experimentation this year than in years past which was fun!

[ringaroundaroses]

BIG BIG DISNEY'S 'WISH' SPOILERS!

So. About King Magnifico...

Does anyone else feel like the filmmakers went in two contradictory directions with him? On one hand, he certainly has some issues *prior* to becoming a power-hungry megalomaniac, but on the other hand, him becoming a power-hungry megalomaniac genuinely doesn't seem like his fault? Now, that's not to say Magnifico didn't have issues. He's full of himself. He's a narcissist. Based on what Amaya said at the beginning ('don't you dare ever ask about the wishes, what a sorcerer does isn't your concern'), he may or may not be passive-aggressive to his wife-- and he's definitely passive-aggressive to his would-be apprentices. He's become complacent, he's egocentric, he's everything that would be bad in a leader-- --except Rosas genuinely doesn't seem bad under his rule? Asha only knows differently because she saw what wishes *could've* been granted, and granted, he shouldn't be the sole controller of who can fulfill the wishes, but I do feel like he would've been a lower-stakes political villain if Star didn't rush in and cause him to have a mental breakdown. Consider: Magnifico only got to the point of wanting to use the forbidden magic because Dahlia incited the crowd to annoy him. Significantly. He ignored what his wife said, and was in a bad mental state when he turned to the book. Prior to that, when he was more clear-headed, he *did* listen to Amaya and left the forbidden magic behind. This man is clearly hyped up on forbidden magic drugs and no one seems to be concerned by this? They're all saying he was always bad and all the good in him disappeared? Well yeah, technically true, except all the good melted away a day or two after he touched the no-no book that specifically was a danger to everyone. This reads like a possession/corruption plot point? Not a villain that's purely evil and can't be redeemed at all? He hadn't even *considered* breaking a wish up until touching the book, he was definitely not a good person but he only went comedically, scene-chewing evil after his magic corruption. I don't get the need to make him 'fall' *and* to have him get corrupted by a book, because one of the two makes him significantly less at fault than the other, and blending the two of them while treating him as a total lost cause feels... wrong? In some way? I've seen it done before, but those are usually played as a tragedy, and the tone used with Magnifico feels more like 'revel in how bad he is!' instead of 'he could've recovered from this if he didn't choose the obviously evil route.' Not to mention, he has a tragic backstory that's implied and... never brought up again? What was the point of that? If Disney wanted to do a homage to classical villains, giving them a random tragic backstory and then backtracking to add 'actually he's evil all along and super evil and super bad and not at all hyped on magic green bad juice' is a ... bizarre way to make a throwback villain. I like the performance. I honestly like Magnifico's scenes. I just... don't understand why he was written that way.

[lunarharp]

fwee top 5 things i had fun with this year :-)

[itwoodbeprefect]

happy 1 year anniversary to the election results that were so fucked they had me trying to take my mind off of things by watching what seemed like a toxic chinese queerbait show only to find something far more thoughtful and genuinely queer and interesting than expected and end up watching a bunch more unrelated things that are talked about in vaguely the same realms of the internet and then watch bad buddy twice in a row and fall into an endless bingewatch of thai media (some of which is mediocre, some of which is bad, much of which is simply pretty good, and some of which is genuinely incredible) and go, well, it would be a waste of all this language input i'm accidentally giving myself right now if i didn't at least learn a few words. thus accidentally locking myself into watching even more thai media because now i gain serotonin from hearing a sentence i know i could write

[shikai-the-storyteller]

"I wish I could get my sleep schedule back on track" I say, making notes for yet another animatic I will literally Never Make

[aroaessidhe]

2023 reads

The Girls Are Never Gone

a girl does a summer internship with the historical society cleaning up an old estate where a girl died 30 years ago, so she can investigate it for her ghost-hunting podcast

she’s a skeptic who privately thinks she’ll be able to find evidence of non-supernatural, but weird things start happening to her and the other two girls in the house

spooky lake & creepy dolls

bisexual diabetic MC with a service dog, f/f

[kneworder]

angry at the oscars barbie nominations but in an annoyinger way (i think nominating ryan reynolds makes sense but the best picture and best supporting actress noms are ridiculous)

[maddy-ferguson]

talking to new people again is making me realize that (this is gonna sound dramatic) i haven't lived in five years but what i have done is watch a lot of movies and read a bunch of books and believe it or not that actually makes me an interesting conversationalist in some ways (?)

[shadowjinx626]

Person A, after seeing the Mario movie: Omg, look at all these easter eggs! This movie is so cool!! IT's a masterpiece!!! Person B: I mean the easter eggs were nice, but it made the movie feel like a commercial. Person A: Omg, it's just a kid's movie! Why you gotta take it so seriously? Months later... Person A, after seeing Wish: Omg, this movie is nothing but easter eggs! And they're trying to make a Disney cinematic universe!! This movie is so terrible!!! Person B: The easter eggs are just references and jokes. They're not meant to be taken seriously. Person A: Omg, stop defending Disney you shill!!!

[thekidsare-not-alright]

this blog is not a safe space for:

people who like to think every IOH song is about mikey

thank you good day bye

[honeysuckledreams]

Also since I am being too personal and there is a slim chance one or two members from that old college friend group might see this, in bombshell news Ren and I are no longer friends, and Ren and Fed (now Fae) are divorced. Ren and I ended late December 2022, so it's been 1.5 years and I am finally, finally starting to feel better.

In my version, I couldn't emotionally support Ren through their divorce anymore, and I needed a break from talking about it literally 4x a week. They found out I talked to Fae about the divorce after I set that boundary with them (because that was the third time Fae ever asked for insight about the divorce, and it was still almost too much) and Ren ghosted me! My best friend of seven years ghosted me because I set a boundary and wasn't capable of emotionally supporting them anymore. We literally talked every single day for our whole friendship before that point.

After 2 months of occasionally reaching out to them and getting radio silence, I ended our friendship. The ending was mutual in the last conversation we had.

[you-are-my-neverland]

ok. nano in one week and i have two (2) options:

drafting the post-chosen one wip. obviously this is the choice is should do with it as it is already started, i just kind of dropped off the last couple weeks. unfortunately, i have one glaring problem, which is that the most recent chapter went off the rails and i also reached the stopping point in my plot and now idk how to move forward. i know what's theoretically going to happen later on, but i need to seriously sit down and outline to smoothly draft. will i actually do that in a week? who knows.

start my pirate wip. the option i want because it's my current obsession, but i'm also very much in the creation stages and fleshing out worldbuilding details. so it's all bare bones, and i know starting it might be fun, but i don't have a firm enough grasp on the story itself yet unless i plan like crazy over this week. again, do i have time to do that? who knows.

[fideidefenswhore]

It’s a watchable piece of faux history, but the movie does not know what to do with its own heroine, content to leave her to the clutches of its villain: Henry.

yeah, i don’t think i’m going to be a fan of this one. 

[ohnoitsthebat]

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This kind of shit is exactly why I stopped writing for a bit. I mean, does my writing suck that much? Am i that bad at writing?

[writesailingdreams]

I may be a weirdo but I find Disney remakes with realistic animal characters more hilarious/fun when some percent of the cast are human/human-like. It's like fairy tale times --- but in the real world (but not)

Like yes give me the super realistic crab Sebastian. I love it, no joke.