#I honestly don't know which will win

[mollymauks-tapestry]

Logical side of my brain: Dorym college AU deserves your attention right now. You have so many ideas for it and you need to actually write it.

Monkey brain: Hehoo, AU where Dorym turn evil and are absolutely in love with how evil the other is

[c6jpg]

👍👍👍👍👍

[generalsmemories]

every time i see someone shit on the xianzhou story quest on twitter i die a little bit inside.

[greenerteacups]

hi GT!

Lionheart had me the moment you kicked it off with “it’s a nice day to start again.” Might i ask why you chose that particular line?

And, if you havent already answered to this emoji:

❄️

P.s: you have my eternal gratitude for creating the most brilliant piece of writing i’ll ever read. I shout about it from the rooftops, share it on my socials, requested my spouse to read it so we may discuss it together (in lieu of a present for my 30th birthday), et cetera.

I see from your URL you are a fellow lad of taste.

There's a couple things going on in the epigraph for Book 1. On one level, it's a lyric from the first muggle song I picture Draco listening to on his walkman at the end of the book, so there's a cute full-circle thing there. The second layer is the theme of change and redemption, which, in Lionheart, doesn't so much come from major moments or self-sacrifice, but from the slow, grueling, everyday work of living, and living better. It's a nice day to start again because every day is. You always have the opportunity to start making better choices, no matter what lies behind you. That's the thesis of any Draco redemption arc, right? You have to imagine that he could have chosen to be better.

And then thirdly, there's the audacity of doing a full Hogwarts canon rewrite, a good 30 years after the original books came out, millions upon millions of words of fanfic later, and basically asking everyone to read the same story they did the first time around, only different. So it's a kind of winking entreaty. It's saying to readers, many of whom are understandably wary of doing it over, zeroing out the characters to starting positions, and starting from the beginning with 11-year-olds all over again. It's going: "hey. That was fun, right? Why not do it again?"

[silent-sentinels]

we have gotta actually finish the other account, it has been months and we want to tell revi that we're also plural hgkjgk

[valyrfia]

i understand why charles signed the mega contract with ferrari and why it's important to him to stay and win with ferrari but dammit lestappen rbr would've given us some of the best racing in recent memory

[landoposition]

god why must you give me a lando hater mom 😭😭

[kagedbird]

So everyone in the Airbnb I live in is back from winter break, and my actual downstairs roommate (it's just us two) has decided he lives in the fucking bathroom every time I need it (out of coincidence but still, mate, hurry the fuck up) to the point where I asked the owners if I could just use the upstairs bathroom and it was the first time I've ever gone upstairs before (since we're usually not allowed) and hoLY SHIT THAT WAS TERRIFYING. THOSE STAIRS ARE A DEATH TRAP.

Anyways: here's to getting my first apartment at some point this year because I Cannot take this shit anymore. Please.

[c6jpg]

i should have paid more attention to the first part of the little saurian world quest bc i am now fully invested

[portlandwithyou]

I accidentally finished two different fics for the due south big bang. Which one should I submit? They're both F/K and roughly the same length

[gailynovelry]

When you suddenly become aware of a plot hole that probably 90% of anyone who ever looks at your stuff will not notice, think, or care about, but now it's in your brain and you need to dig up an old story to edit it into submission again.

[itwoodbeprefect]

i always thought there were two ways to rediscover old stories that you don't remember writing and they are 1) oh no i can't look oh no oh no that's embarrassing, and 2) hey? this is pretty cool actually? this sort of really rocks?, but today i've discovered the secret third option. and it's 3) i guess in 2018 i wrote 1500 words of original fiction about thor (the norse god) and the easter bunny (the easter bunny) on a blind first date in a starbucks and it's a little haunting that this reads pretty much the same as most genuine fluffy scenes i've ever written, but littered with egg puns

[volivolition]

what's the theme you're fucking going for here voliiii!!! what are you fucking getting at!!! what are you trying to say, what's the point??

[aberooski]

Okay so, if y'all know me you know I adore tmnt. It was my obsession before I ever watched even the original YGO much less GX. And now I'm watching tmnt 2012 for the first time, I'm about halfway through season 2 and honestly you guys are so lucky I'm not live blogging it because well.... I don't like it 💀

I will say I'm enjoying season 2 more than season 1 so far but still 💀

[leatherbookmark]

hopping around different blogs is fun.

a post on blog 1: i find it a little weird that -- don't get me wrong, the barbie movie looks great with all the doll-like details, i bet the actors had great fun and i'd like to see it myself, but -- people are getting excited about marketing of this movie. they're acting as though mattel's 3985* deals with 837* different companies are something new, exciting and creative instead of... 3985 deals with 837 companies spanning many different areas! this movie is a commercial for a doll! isn't this kinda weird?

*numbers made up

a post on blog 2: i don't think any sane adult doesn't realize that this is a toy commercial! it's rather obvious.

a post on blog 3: boo hoo 'the barbie movie is capitalist propaganda' i don't give a SHIT marx won't fuck you. did you do this for transformers too? do you think only stupid girls who like pink need the reminder?

like, oooooh! things are happening!

[batsplat]

Lin Jarvis does a great interview on the paddock pass podcast, and he talks about getting Jorge Lorenzo as well as vaguely saying that they tried to get Casey but it didn’t work out

yeah, loved that interview! love lin jarvis! and yeah that's the thing... somebody somewhere isn't telling the truth because it's just... tough to piece together what jorge, casey and jarvis have said (plus supplementary reporting from the time AND the timeline of the valentino/f1 flirtations) and come away with an internally consistent narrative. for instance, I do think jarvis isn't like... lying when he said the f1 rumours prompted the succession planning, but also. valentino had confirmed he was staying in motogp by the time jarvis says they signed jorge, so it is a bit disingenuous to make it sound like they only did it because of the f1 thing. nothing wrong with it! succession planning is a good idea and the valentino/jorge pairing was a bit of a headache but ultimately a big W for yamaha! but still, jarvis is over-egging the 'didn't expect valentino to still be there' angle

I think we can be pretty confident that valentino didn't want casey in his team (which, a win for talent spotting) and was willing to express this opinion to yamaha - and we also know that paddock gossip held valentino had blocked the move. I think we can also be pretty confident that in mid 2006, gun to his head, valentino would have preferred casey over jorge as a teammate. first off, in mid 2006 I kinda feel like you bet on jorge's ultimate talent over casey's? idk maybe valentino's talent spotting REALLY came through for him here, but casey does look like a very fast crasher and jorge (well on his way to a first 250cc title) has more hype surrounding him. secondly, valentino was just more kindly disposed towards casey As A Guy than jorge - with jorge you do feel that, any competitive calculus aside, valentino went 'oh god not him'. keeping that in mind... tbh. I reckon yamaha played casey and possibly valentino too

the one time we have actual record of valentino not being too keen on casey in his team was when at sachsenring that year he made a remark along the lines of that it'd be better for casey to stay at honda. which, yes, you'd think would add credence to the 'valentino blocked casey' theory... but if anything, it's the other way round - because lin jarvis says they signed jorge in jarvis' hotel room at laguna 2006, which he remembers because jorge wasn't racing there (only premier class raced at laguna). that's the very next race after sachsenring. it doesn't really make sense for valentino to simultaneously have so much power within yamaha that he could block casey one race and fail to block jorge the next. according to jorge, they signed at motegi 2006, which is a bit later but also not... that much

casey deliberately implied that valentino blocked him at least once and possibly twice from joining yamaha. he said that ''''''somebody inside yamaha''''''''' *wink wink nudge nudge wink nudge* didn't want him there - and was bad-mouthing him to accomplish it. now, listen, this may be true, no evidence either way. we also know from reporting from the time that rumours about casey being in trouble for next year popped up in august 2006 (aka right after laguna). according to news reports, after having been turned down by yamaha, casey was demanding more money than honda was willing to give... and it threatened to leave casey without a seat. interestingly, casey alleges in his autobiography that he was told yamaha was saying he was demanding vast amounts of money from them - which casey denies. from contemporary news articles, casey was in danger of losing that lcr seat to dovi (who ended up only joining motogp in 2008), though casey makes no mention of his lcr seat being in trouble in his autobiography (but has more recently said he was left without a ride, more on that in a moment). there's also reporting he asked for a lot of money from DUCATI. at which point.... well, idk man

who knows how much money he was demanding! who knows if that was a sticking point with one, two or even three factories! or who knows if it was rumours that were deliberately spread to fuck him over. the one thing we can take from this is that valentino can't have been responsible for all these rumours (or, I mean I suppose he could have, but I'm unconvinced he had a vendetta against casey in 2006)

this is what casey has said recent-ish on the topic:

which... yeah, idk. the scapegoat sounds like he's talking more about the 2005 negotiations collapsing than 2006, though I guess the phrasing isn't super conclusive either way. maybe it was a tech3 rider for 2006 who casey thought he was being 'scapegoated' for... maybe not! I still kinda suspect it makes the most sense that they stringed casey along while they were trying to lock jorge down - jorge dates the start of negotiations around march of 2006. (here's a bit of trivia I truly have no idea what to do with: according to jorge's biography, valentino's lawyer was a friend of his manager's dani amatriain and gave them the in at yamaha. now, you may think this makes it sound like valentino did prefer jorge, but the biography ALSO directly refers to the story that valentino blocked casey and discusses the widely held paddock impression that valentino didn't want jorge at yamaha. so. idk man.) we know jorge was in talks with other manufacturers - so it makes sense to either a) have a fallback option and/or b) have another promising talent to try and decrease how much jorge's asking for. in summary: they were definitely negotiating with both casey and jorge at the same time. if valentino's sachsenring comments are anything to go by, then the negotiations with casey were still going on at that point - and if jarvis' comments are to be believed, they went for jorge at laguna. reporting from the time confirms that negotiations with casey had concluded in august. casey makes it sound like they essentially ghosted him

(while it is technically possible they wanted casey as a placeholder in 2007 for jorge in 2008.... that feels quite a lot of hassle, to shake up the team for a kid you're going to bin anyway in a year - and edwards' performances weren't offensively bad enough to warrant that. it's a possibility but not a likely one imo)

so................. uh. again, I don't really know, but is it possible that valentino just chose a spectacularly poor time to suggest casey sticks with honda - and that flamed rumours that valentino had successfully blocked casey? you certainly wouldn't be able to blame casey for drawing that conclusion. maybe valentino really DID actively work to keep casey away from yamaha, but is it that likely he was successful? if so, surely yamaha's heart was set on jorge anyway. idk, for narrative purposes I do like that valentino already had his eye set on casey by mid 2006 and apparently had more faith in his potential than the actual manufacturers did. it's cute! compelling. and I believe that bit! I just don't think any politicking valentino may have done had much effect on yamaha's choice - and it's easy to read too much into the sachsenring comment. maybe this just ended up being awfully convenient for yamaha, where they kinda fucked about with two young talents and then by the end of it both of them thought valentino was responsible. but also. I don't know, that's just my best guess based on the evidence I have, maybe valentino really was involved. idk. that's where we're at