#I may be using this in real life

[that-dumb-blond]

Wow this is… helpful? I didn’t know carter and pryce could do that?

Survival Tip No.196

Characteristics of a good order include clarity, specificity, brevity, and loopholes. You never know how improvisation can impact a scene.

[rystiel]

idk what we’re all calling the concept of fiddlestan working together but i’m calling my version the portal partners AU 🙏🏼

[waystarresourceco]

Kieran Culkin on Roman's playboy image and the way the actors/writers understanding of backstory fits together. (x)

[darkwood-sleddog]

once again i am asking tumblr to hold public polls for users to vote on potential changes. imagine if you were the 'respect our users opinion website'. like that could be us but apparently not.

[felinelord-bowbeforemepeasant]

REREADING TIME

I have some funfact

I don't know if anyone remember this but I was rereading some of the chapter and I see this note

And yup like the note say is was quite ironic for them to be like this

I think other than the two fukus they really should put fukufuku too but it a note so meh

[greenerteacups]

oooh please someday tell us what you think of GOT

oh, no, it's my fatal weakness! it's [checks notes] literally just the bare modicum of temptation! okay you got me.

SO. in order to tell what's wrong with game of thrones you kind of have to have read the books, because the books are the reason the show goes off the rails. i actually blame the showrunners relatively little in proportion to GRRM for how bad the show was (which I'm not gonna rehash here because if you're interested in GOT in any capacity you've already seen that horse flogged to death). people debate when GOT "got bad" in terms of writing, but regardless of when you think it dropped off, everyone agrees the quality declined sharply in season 8, and to a certain extent, season 7. these are the seasons that are more or less entirely spun from whole cloth, because season 7 marks the beginning of what will, if we ever see it, be the Winds of Winter storyline. it's the first part that isn't based on a book by George R.R. Martin. it's said that he gave the showrunners plot outlines, but we don't know how detailed they were, or how much the writers diverged from the blueprint — and honestly, considering the cumulative changes made to the story by that point, some stark divergence would have been required. (there's a reason for this. i'll get there in a sec.)

so far, i'm not saying anything all that original. a lot of people recognized how bad the show got as soon as they ran out of Book to adapt. (I think it's kind of weird that they agreed to make a show about an unfinished series in the first place — did GRRM figure that this was his one shot at a really good HBO adaptation, and forego misgivings about his ability to write two full books in however many years it took to adapt? did he think they would wait for him? did he not care that the series would eventually spoil his magnum opus, which he's spent the last three decades of his life writing? perplexing.) but the more interesting question is why the show got bad once it ran out of Book, because in my mind, that's not a given. a lot of great shows depart from the books they were based on. fanfiction does exactly that, all the time! if you have good writers who understand the characters they're working with, departure means a different story, not a worse one. now, the natural reply would be to say that the writers of GOT just aren't good, or at least aren't good at the things that make for great television, and that's why they needed the books as a structure, but I don't think that's true or fair, either. books and television are very different things. the pacing of a book is totally different from the pacing of a television show, and even an episodic book like ASOIAF is going to need a lot of work before it's remotely watchable as a series. bad writers cannot make great series of television, regardless of how good their source material is. sure, they didn't invent the characters of tyrion lannister and daenerys targaryen, but they sure as hell understood story structure well enough to write a damn compelling season of TV about them!

so but then: what gives? i actually do think it's a problem with the books! the show starts out as very faithful to the early books (namely, A Game of Thrones and A Clash of Kings) to the point that most plotlines are copied beat-for-beat. the story is constructed a little differently, and it's definitely condensed, but the meat is still there. and not surprisingly, the early books in ASOIAF are very tightly written. for how long they are, you wouldn't expect it, but on every page of those books, the plot is racing. you can practically watch george trying to beat the fucking clock. and he does! useful context here is that he originally thought GOT was going to be a trilogy, and so the scope of most threads in the first book or two would have been much smaller. it also helps that the first three books are in some respects self-contained stories. the first book is a mystery, the second and third are espionage and war dramas — and they're kept tight in order to serve those respective plots.

the trouble begins with A Feast for Crows, and arguably A Storm of Swords, because GRRM starts multiplying plotlines and treating the series as a story, rather than each individual book. he also massively underestimated the number of pages it would take him to get through certain plot beats — an assumption whose foundation is unclear, because from a reader's standpoint, there is a fucke tonne of shit in Feast and Dance that's spurious. I'm not talking about Brienne's Riverlands storyline (which I adore thematically but speaking honestly should have been its own novella, not a part of Feast proper). I'm talking about whole chapters where Tyrion is sitting on his ass in the river, just talking to people. (will I eat crow about this if these pay off in hugely satisfying ways in Winds or Dream? oh, totally. my brothers, i will gorge myself on sweet sweet corvid. i will wear a dunce cap in the square, and gleefully, if these turn out to not have been wastes of time. the fact that i am writing this means i am willing to stake a non-negligible amount of pride on the prediction that that will not happen). I'm talking about scenes where the characters stare at each other and talk idly about things that have already happened while the author describes things we already have seen in excruciating detail. i'm talking about threads that, while forgivable in a different novel, are unforgivable in this one, because you are neglecting your main characters and their story. and don't tell me you think that a day-by-day account tyrion's river cruise is necessary to telling his story, because in the count of monte cristo, the main guy disappears for nine years and comes hurtling back into the story as a vengeful aristocrat! and while time jumps like that don't work for everything, they certainly do work if what you're talking about isn't a major story thread!

now put aside whether or not all these meandering, unconcluded threads are enjoyable to read (as, in fairness, they often are!). think about them as if you're a tv showrunner. these bad boys are your worst nightmare. because while you know the author put them in for a reason, you haven't read the conclusion to the arc, so you don't know what that reason is. and even if the author tells you in broad strokes how things are going to end for any particular character (and this is a big "if," because GRRM's whole style is that he lets plots "develop as he goes," so I'm not actually convinced that he does have endings written out for most major characters), that still doesn't help you get them from point A (meandering storyline) to point B (actual conclusion). oh, and by the way, you have under a year to write this full season of television, while GRRM has been thinking about how to end the books for at least 10. all of this means you have to basically call an audible on whether or not certain arcs are going to pay off, and, if they are, whether they make for good television, and hence are worth writing. and you have to do that for every. single. unfinished. story. in the books.

here's an example: in the books, Quentin Martell goes on a quest to marry Daenerys and gain a dragon. many chapters are spent detailing this quest. spoiler alert: he fails, and he gets charbroiled by dragons. GRRM includes this plot to set up the actions of House Martell in Winds, but the problem is that we don't know what House Martell does in Winds, because (see above) the book DNE. So, although we can reliably bet that the showrunners understand (1) Daenerys is coming to Westeros with her 3 fantasy nukes, and (2) at some point they're gonna have to deal with the invasion of frozombies from Canada, that DOESN'T mean they necessarily know exactly what's going to happen to Dorne, or House Martell. i mean, fuck! we don't even know if Martin knows what's going to happen to Dorne or House Martell, because he's said he's the kind of writer who doesn't set shit out beforehand! so for every "Cersei defaults on millions of dragons in loans from the notorious Bank of Nobody Fucks With Us, assumes this will have no repercussions for her reign or Westerosi politics in general" plotline — which might as well have a big glaring THIS WILL BE IMPORTANT stamp on top of the chapter heading — you have Arianne Martell trying to do a coup/parent trap switcheroo with Myrcella, or Euron the Goffick Antichrist, or Faegon Targaryen and JonCon preparing a Blackfyre restoration, or anything else that might pan out — but might not! And while that uncertainty about what's important to the "overall story" might be a realistic way of depicting human beings in a world ruled by chance and not Destiny, it makes for much better reading than viewing, because Game of Thrones as a fantasy television series was based on the first three books, which are much more traditional "there is a plot and main characters and you can generally tell who they are" kind of book. I see Feast and Dance as a kind of soft reboot for the series in this respect, because they recenter the story around a much larger cast and cast a much broader net in terms of which characters "deserve" narrative attention.

but if you're making a season of television, you can't do that, because you've already set up the basic premise and pacing of your story, and you can't suddenly pivot into a long-form tone poem about the horrors of war. so you have to cut something. but what are you gonna cut? bear in mind that you can't just Forget About Dorne, or the Iron Islands, or the Vale, or the North, or pretty much any region of the story, because it's all interconnected, but to fit in everything from the books would require pacing of the sort that no reasonable audience would ever tolerate. and bear in mind that the later books sprout a lot more of these baby-plots that could go somewhere, but also might end up being secondary or tertiary to the "main story," which, at the end of the day, is about dragons and ice zombies and the rot at the heart of the feudal power system glorified in classical fantasy. that's the story that you as the showrunner absolutely must give them an end to, and that's the story that should be your priority 1.

so you do a hack and slash job, and you mortar over whatever you cut out with storylines that you cook up yourself, but you can't go too far afield, because you still need all the characters more or less in place for the final showdown. so you pinch here and push credulity there, and you do your best to put the characters in more or less the same place they would have been if you kept the original, but on a shorter timeframe. and is it as good as the first seasons? of course not! because the material that you have is not suited to TV like the first seasons are. and not only that, but you are now working with source material that is actively fighting your attempt to constrain a linear and well-paced narrative on it. the text that you're working with changed structure when you weren't looking, and now you have to find some way to shanghai this new sprawling behemoth of a Thing into a television show. oh, and by the way, don't think that the (living) author of the source material will be any help with this, because even though he's got years of experience working in television writing, he doesn't actually know how all of these threads will tie together, which is possibly the reason that the next book has taken over 8 years (now 13 and counting) to write. oh and also, your showrunners are sick of this (in fairness, very difficult) job and they want to go write for star wars instead, so they've refused the extra time the studio offered them for pre-production and pushed through a bunch of first-draft scripts, creating a crunch culture of the type that spawns entirely avoidable mistakes, like, say, some poor set designer leaving a starbucks cup in frame.

anyway, that's what I think went wrong with game of thrones.

[rainboneish]

i see some people on tiktok and twitter acting like gojo not getting memorialized is the only logical conclusion to his arc to either

1) symbolize how no one really understood him and/or could reach him or

2) he shouldn’t be an exception and no other sorcerer got a funeral/memorial either, that’s just how sorcerer society is

and while i firmly believe there is no objectively correct way to end a story, the attitude some of those fans are showing trying to act like everyone who wanted something different is less media literate than they are is annoying me so time to bring up reasonable counters to those arguments:

on 1): complete understanding isn’t a prerequisite for affection and/or grief. Multiple characters (Yuji, Yuta and Shoko at the very least) are shown to have some amount of care for him and them wanting to lay his body to rest, or at least offhandedly mentioning that it was done does not contradict their lack of complete understanding of him in any way. Yuji himself says that he will never forget Gojo (Yuji is also arguably the only character really given closure about Gojo’s death in the story through that flashback (with the exception of Satoru Gojo (hehe see what i did there) and the other deceased characters in 236)

In fact, one could argue that them not fully understanding that Gojo wanted everyone to move on from him and “forget” him would have been reinforced by them grieving him

(I don’t personally think that them processing his loss in a healthy way (read, all the studies about how funerary rites are important to a healthy grieving process) would be contradictory to his wish but since people want to argue that that’s why it was done i think it’s fair to bring up the counter)

on 2) this could easily be solved by having the characters honor all of the recently deceased. (Nanami, Yuki, Choso (what better way to mark him accepting his human side like Yuki told him to)) People keep bringing up how none of the sorcerers got a funeral (as well as Todo’s speech in Shibuya about how they live in through their comrades) and while that is correct (in fact, Todo’s speech represents the whole reason why the last couple chapters are named after Gojo’s dream of a reformed jujutsu society, a dream that his students are now carrying out for him, one of the main issues with traditional jujutsu society (and consequently one of the reasons that lead do Geto’s defection and the formation of Gojo’s dream) is the fact that sorcerer lives are treated as expendable, the fact that sorcerers aren’t given the time and support they need to process the trauma they are put through on their missions.

Part of letting the kids experience their youth is also giving them healthy coping mechanisms and while i am not someone who believes that every character needs a “therapy” ending (hence why i’ve been yelling about not wanting Gojo (who is satisfied with his own death and afterlife) to come back to life to un-learn all of his unhealthy coping mechanisms and his (partially self imposed) isolation as the strongest) i do think getting time to acknowledge and process their losses is part of that.

(Looking at Megumi especially, he might have kept distance between himself and Gojo, and fanon portrayal of their relationship often makes it deeper than it is in canon, but Gojo was still the most consistent adult mentor figure he had in his life, and he experienced Sukuna killing him with his body, a letter isn’t gonna cut it i’m afraid… Megumi’s character arc in general is one people are criticizing and i do to some degree agree that while him freeing himself from Tsumiki specifically being his sole motivation is something, him immediately finding new people (Yuji and Hana, the latter for guilt reasons) to base his reason for living on is a bit… but that’s part of characters not needing to have a perfect therapy ending i guess…

people like to bring up that Nanami, who has been dead for a while now, was also never shown getting a funeral but characters were shown processing his death once the fight was over, both through the conversation between Gojo, Shoko and Ijichi and through Ino requesting and using his weapon in the fight against Sukuna. Yaga’s death was also discussed between Gojo and Gakuganji (changing his conservative outlook) as well as as a motivator for Kusakabe

While Yuji was definitely shown processing Gojo’s death (in chapter 265 and 271) the characters i personally would have liked to see processing/commenting on Gojo’s death the most are Yuta and Shoko,

Yuta for “i will share the mantle of becoming a Monster to take some of the load of Gojo-sensei” reasons (all this talk about how concerned everyone was about what it would mean for his humanity to have to take over Gojo’s body and then we don’t get a single panel about how he actually felt about it after the fact)

and Shoko because we get all these glimpses of her caring about him in her own way (most notably the “i was there too, wasn’t i” moment as well as her stress smoking during his fight against Sukuna, and in a way still being his closest and oldest confidant, even if they never connected the way he did with geto (hence why he felt comfortable leaving the letters for Nobara and Megumi to her, as well as being the reason why he was a little miffed at her lack of reaction to the body-switching plan). Shoko isn’t an emotional character, she is very desensitized to the death and injury of people around her, but the scene by Tsumiki’s grave and her comment about Geto’s body confirms that she (to some degree) considers it an honor and a privilege to be able to give them post-mortem care. I never wanted a scene of her crying over his body or anything, but a scene of her standing by his grave (which could have been inserted between the Tsumiki grave scene and the panel of her throwing away her cigarettes) would have done enough for me.

People like to make fun of everyone asking for a funeral by saying “sorry y’all didn’t get a ten page funeral with everyone crying about Gojo”, but personally i would have been happy with a single panel showing his grave/ossuary with an epitaph (possibly the same for Geto so we finally get confirmation that Gojo’s (and the Hasaba twins’) wish of having his body put to rest was fulfilled, especially after those panels in 270 sowed more doubts), maybe a couple extra panels of the characters i mentioned earlier

also not to be extra brain rotten stsg but Gojo being put to rest in a way where he is with suguru (Shoko being the person most likely to make those arrangements for both of them and also being the person who knew how much they meant to eachother the best) or him being memorialized together with everyone else who fell in those past couple months would symbolize that while he might have been lonely in life, he is not lonely in death (just like he wasn’t lonely anymore in the airport scene in 236)

what i haven’t seen people bring up much is that sorcerers as a whole are said not to be religious. Despite the heavy buddhist themes in the story, sorcerer society as a whole is described as secular, something pointed out by the chairman of the star religious group. On the world building front i think it would have been interesting to know how they process their dead, past the general vague description of “shoko handling bodies” and “having to make sure the body can’t be misused/the sorcerer won’t turn into a curse after death”. Maybe that’s my little goth heart but i really would have liked to know, we see people end up in the morgue but no one really knows what happens after that. Maybe everyone (whose body can be recovered) is cremated and disposed of in some unknown location (Greek cemeteries have “bone digesters”, big pits where bones are put if the family doesn’t rent an ossuary/claim the remains after the lease on the grave plot is up, maybe it’s something like that), maybe there are ossuaries like the one pictured in the Shibuya OP (it’s still unclear to me how much input Gege had in those), maybe the cremated remains are given back to the family on a case by case basis (especially for people from non-sorcerer families who might have religious beliefs). Either way, it’s something i think would have been interesting to know, plus lack of big funerary rites doesn’t really mean the characters can’t think of/mention their deceased comrades.

now i’m not saying everyone who has a different opinion on this is wrong, again, that’s not the approach i like to bring to media analysis/commentary, in fact this whole rant is prompted by my distaste for people doing that, but that is what i personally would have liked to see to call this a 10/10 ending for ME

[meringuehearts]

i knew i was gonna revert back to childhood interests eventually but i didn't know we were going back THIS far (PUN VERY INTENDED)

anyways , semi lazy poster redraw of one of my favorite movies forever ^^

[feroluce]

So I went to the wiki page for the henghill Bullet & Brain mission of 2.2 looking for some dialogue I had missed and

a) I found something incredibly tasty that slotted into some other thoughts I'd been having, more on that on another day, and

b) I saw this super fun little trivia at the bottom, which!

I knew Penacony characters like Boothill took a lot of inspirations from old movies, but I didn't realize it was even in his and Dan Heng's relationship, that's so cool!!

It fits them very well, it's such a fun reference. "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" was an old buddy Western film (from 1969- nice) about a pair of outlaws. Butch Cassidy was the leader of a gang, and described as clever, affable, and talkative. Meanwhile, his closest companion, the Sundance Kid, was known as a man of few words.

Cassidy's original birth name was much more plain, but similar to Boothill, he took on a new moniker when he became an outlaw. "Cassidy" had been the last name of his beloved mentor, who taught him how to shoot and ride. And Sundance Kid was known as he was because Sundance was the name of his hometown, and it was the only place that had ever managed to catch and jail him, back when he'd been younger (also similar to Dan Heng, but ouch).

These two stick together like glue throughout the length of the film- through Cassidy's leadership of the gang being challenged, through a train robbery gone wrong, through being pursued by mercenaries, and even through fleeing to Bolivia and trying to start over together.

I don't want to say too much more, since the mission title is referencing one specific movie that I've never seen. I kinda wanna watch it now, though, just to see the inspiration that went into Boothill and Dan Heng and how they get along. I just think it's really sweet that these two were literally made to be the best of bros, how lovely is that. 💕

[sciderman]

As another blog who accidentally got following for funny jokes and content creator by god you summarized how creating content feels on Tumblr nowadays. Like,

No one interacts but at the same time they'll complain that there's no updates, they'll complain that you disappeared but even if you post something no one interacts with. They treat as if people who post things about fandom are just there to be some kind of machine will post something to make them laugh and then reblog in silence.

There's no feedback, there's no community, and it feels weird like some kind of big brother. Where you spend your time and energy making something and then people throw you a like and you're just like blind??? 'Do they still like it?' 'am I doing it wrong?' 'did I lose the flow?' But nope. It seems like every person who makes something in this plataforma feels a different variation of that. And feels so weird talking about it as if you're 'seeking attention' and being too 'hungry' about it. But what are we supposed to do...? Just put our heart and souls by a grand majority that won't take a second to say something and just like and maybe reblog as if you're some advertisement?

Feels weird. I am sorry you feel like that too Sci, your ask-blog is great and you spent a lot of energy co-creating with people and using your creativity. I don't blame you for feeling demotivated. That's a weird era to be in where people don't know how to differentiate that there's someone behind a blog and nor a major corporation that will put something they're interacting or not. Very weird.

it's so very universal, i've seen it all the places, everywhere. i know it's not just a me thing... it's kind of honestly just the way the world operates now. running the blog really did used to give me such an excited feeling to be building this story with other people who were invested and everyone had a hand in pushing wade and peter into all kinds of directions and it was so, so gratifying. and when i left i was still craving that interaction - i wanted to create an interactive instagram account, but i kind of figured it wouldn't work, because the platform just isn't good for it.

something that's largely been absent from my life is community, y'know. it's so difficult to find it, in the city. and i kind of found it through the blog. but online communities feel like something that's dying too. nobody wants to be communal. i've had so many interactions where people are taken aback that i'm just some dumb, tired little human. i'm a tired human who made spider-man comics because it got me friends on the internet. i don't make money doing this. i do it for friends. i... sighs. i miss so many people that used to be around but they're not here anymore. i miss how it used to feel. i don't think i can get it back. i don't know where i can look now, but i don't think i'm going to find whatever i'm looking for here. i guess it's like - i know i have to leave the city because the city makes me feel small and lonely. and maybe i have to leave the internet too. it makes me feel small and lonely.

[dailykugisaki]

Day sixty-three | id in alt

A puppet and a witch.

[thatonecrookedsmile]

"Tombstone Picnic,the infamous 'Lost Ending' Bendy cartoon from the early days of the studio. The ending has not been seen since the cartoon's first run in 1929 and no copies are known to exist."

-Nostalgia-

----- Bendy comes face to face with [REDACTED]!

Another year, another Ink Demonth event. Let's see if I can get past the first 10 days again (I kind of doubt it, but let's not get ahead of ourselves).

Starting with a very interesting topic! As far as in-universe things go, I think the simplest interpretation would be: a look back at simpler times. Before the ink craze, the damn machine and all that. The times when (I presume) the only concern was getting the shorts finished on time. Nostalgia for a bygone era. It was more the metaphorical side that I was aiming for when I was making this drawing.

I don't really like to use this term when I reminisce about things that, in my opinion, are very "recent", but since it's been 7 years (more than half a decade, jeez), I think using "nostalgia" in this case is allowed in my view.

It's not surprising to say that I'm nostalgic for the times of 2017-2018. (In terms of Bendy, of course, not in terms of life in general, lmao) It's been so long... On one hand, similar to the in-universe reason, it was simpler times, I admit. Things weren't so…crazy, so to speak. And on the other hand, it's because of the good memories of that time (again, in terms of this franchise). The wait between chapters, the teasers, the theories, and the in-betweens. And what I wanted to show here, one of my top favorite moments that I remember the most, was the release of the reveal trailer for BATIM Chapter 3.

I was excited that day! I had just gotten home when the trailer dropped and I immediately went to watch it. An actual in-universe Bendy cartoon! Bendy and Boris animated! Mysterious Shadow!?!? and then BOOM, game stuff. Henry running in a hallway, silhouettes of new characters, Bendy statue, Miracle Station? and BOO, the Ink Demon jumping in the station! Alice humming, and OOOHHHHH RELEASING IN SEPTEMBER, LETS GOOO.

It was really cool. I would not only say this is one of my favorite moments, but also that that trailer is my favorite trailer we've had. Yeah, in the end the "gameplay" in the second half of the video was just a cutscene running, and the "scene" that happened in the trailer doesn't actually happen in the game. Hell, the "hallway trailer" wasn't even in the release! But, the cutscene is still pretty cool anyway, plus, even though the scene doesn't literally happen in the game, it still teased elements that were in the game without giving away spoilers, so the trailer wasn't a total lie at the end of the day.

But yeah, nostalgia. A hell of a drug, but at the same time, a nice time machine,I say.

On an unrelated note, hey, prompt for day 1, and I'm not that late! Sure, I'm posting this after midnight, so it's not day 1 anymore, but still, compared to other years, I'm very up to date with the event. After all, 1-2 hours late isn't that late compared to 1 week. But of course, prompt 2 is going to be another story entirely, but in the meantime? I'll enjoy this achievement.

Have a great event this year folks!

[heatsu]

the little hater boy

[itspileofgoodthings]

so many people have said that as you approach your 30’s things start to fall into place but I don’t feel that at all. the closer I get the more it feels that everything is dissolving and falling apart

[batsplat]

omgg i started following you because i loved your motogp posts and i did not expect to get emotionally attacked about my tennis fave like this. you've lit expressed everything ive felt abt tennis lately like daniil's return game has developed so well these last few years if only his shoulders were still functional he wld be soo unstoppable (i remember like last 2 year-ish when his serve suddenly went to shit and i was like wtf is going on?? but then it turned out his shoulders don' work anymore😭😭😭) ngl i did not expect him to make it to the ao finals this yr at all but then he did and i started getting hope again and then well uk what happened next... (i actually went to bed when he was up 2 sets because i alrdy had premonitions for what was abt to happen and i didnt need that experience twice 😭) anyways i finally quit watching the men's tour reguarly middle of this yr-ish because mostly because my biggest opp started winning big tournanments/slams consistently and i cld not take it anymore (part of why i got into motogp ig, i needed a new thing to fill in the hole)

also ur thing being having to be the chosen one in men's tennis is soo true but i wld argue it cld even be broadened down to being in the chosen generation... every 90s born player doomed to be seen as the weak links of the sport, both forever destined to be surpassed by those who came before and those who came after...

anyways mostly i also just wanted to thank you for writing all your super information motogp posts!! not only is ur writing style super informative/consistent, all the topics u've written abt feel super unique like i doubt i wld ever randomly stumble elsewhere. i'm not that good w/ words so idk how to fully express my appreciation, but your posts are the main reason i started delving into more past motogp races and interviews instead of just sticking to current ones which has 1000% made my experience of becoming a motogp fan more enjoyable!

🥺🥺 such a nice ask from a fellow sufferer... I actually tried to sleep in for the ao final and managed for like. maybe a set. it's so funny to have a whole fanbase quite literally begging their player not to go up two sets to love, zero hindsight needed I was HORRIFIED by that second set going his way... especially since I noticed the balance of play in the actual games had changed and meddy wasn't winning any return points anymore, just relying on an earlier break to seal that set iirc. and then I started going for increasingly desperate tactics to distract myself when the inevitable happened in the next three sets (including rewatching marc marquez: all in, it was rough man, like I get what you're saying about getting into motogp to escape because generally I too have fled to this sport whenever tennis has most been pissing me off)

and obviously that final was very trauma flashbacks to my definitive sports trauma, a match I'm STILL not over and at this rate have accepted I'll be miserable about until the day I die. but this time I couldn't even BLAME him because it was an insane effort to even get to the final, he'd done such a fantastic job given his tennis really wasn't there at the start of the tournament, he just kept figuring out ways to win... the hurkacz match where he basically ran out of fuel in the fourth, that crazy semifinal where he just refused to know when he was beaten, and then taking two sets off sinner in that final!! the resilience and the grit but also the tactical acumen, like my god when he blindsided hurkacz by radically altering his return position RIGHT AFTER doing that post-match back-and-forth with courier where he explained in detail why he favoured his regular return position. the cleverness and the bravery he showed in clutch points in that semi, something that zverev is completely incapable of (monte carlo 2023 still lives rent free lol), like the psychology of that match slapped. how he took it so sinner, completely caught him off guard by mixing up his game, and it was WORKING. really managed to change the dynamic of that match up... he lost that match first and foremost in his legs. just so cruel after everything. we had the guy who easily disposed of an admittedly rubbish djokovic in the semis on the ropes. and it still. was. not. fucking. enough. one of the best slam final runs in recent memory and it still wasn't enough!! he's already far outperformed what he SHOULD have been capable of in his career and somehow he keeps developing a game style which should have plateaued ages ago and I have so much respect for the work him and gilles have done post-2022... and he really should have more to show for it

anyway yeah I remember the serve decline in 2022, back when I was really in the weeds with analysing meddy's game. and that was also the year it felt like his legs completely deserted him. his deciding set record that year was horrific after ao, very rarely even got it that far win or lose and when he did so almost always lost (karatsev was cramping, let's not talk about the other third set win)

scorelines from the tour finals genuine miracle i did not throw myself into the sea

only one four set match post-ao and he also lost that, incidentally. and obviously that was partly because his brain was fucked, BUT I also wondered whether it was the aftereffects of the hernia operation that year affecting both the physicality and the serve. and I can't remember if he confirmed that anywhere but the theory's certainly cottoned on to help explain the serve decline, even if his endurance obviously has massively improved again. and then add in the shoulder... it's so brutal because it used to be such a key pillar to his game, like the whole magic was tied together by being able to whizz through his own service games while making his opponent's return games hellish

and like,, the thing I really admire about him is that there was a period in 2022 where it did feel like he'd been 'figured out', like there was increasingly a game plan that could be used against him. serve and volley, etc etc. but to some extent, he's managed to resist just being written off when facing elite competition BECAUSE he keeps coming up with ways to throw his opponents off-balance. what he's been doing this year, for all that it hasn't gotten him great results, has been so much fun to watch - really reminded me of his summer/autumn 2019 stretch where he'd played so much he should've constantly been at risk of keeling over of exhaustion but adapted to it by just becoming a completely different player. wawrinka uso 2019 match still goes crazyyyy, one of his most underrated performances. serve and volley in the uso 2019 final I wanna run to u. it's such a wonderfully unique game that's frankensteining all these unique parts together that all sort of shouldn't work but all sort of do, harnessed and constantly reinvented by (let's face it) the smartest top player currently in the game. and it really does piss me off that he hasn't been rewarded more. he's been the best of the rest since 2019, he's absolutely maximised his game for someone who doesn't have that stratospheric big three-level of talent and I WANT it to actually matter. but men's tennis will always see talent triumphing over guile I fear, and meddy has consistently been a victim of poor timing

and yeah, the generational aspect is true, where the entire ''''''''nextgen''''''''' cohort has essentially been doomed - partly because they just weren't good enough, but partly because they arrived at just the right time window to still be thoroughly traumatised by the big three without getting any kind of a break before the next super talents showed up. until 2022 I really did naively believe we were getting a chaos era of SOME kind until that decrepit spanish ghoul showed up in australia to trample all over my soul and give me depression, and then immediately another bloody spaniard started going at it. how can you not be a little bit bitter that alcaraz got to swan to his first slam title without having to face a single member of the big three? idk man like sometimes it really is the magic of sports that the anointed few don't just have talent on their side, they are also fantastically lucky. you see it with how the big three all secured their first slams... things just seem to work out somehow. infuriating and existentially horrifying

anyway. lol. as you can see I do always have a tennis rant in me. will always be a major part of my life, obviously something I have a far far better understanding of than any other sport, still keep up with the women's game fairly closely... where icl it helps that the players I'm most invested in have dropped off SO badly this year, partly due to injury, that I can merrily ignore their existence. plus, and this bit is crucial, I don't loathe the players who actually win things. so I'm in a happy place where I just enjoy the sport and (if anything) want Certain top players to do better than they currently are... but also don't lose any sleep over the results. like, have I been massively frustrated with iga this year? yes, but it's also not made me stare at a wall for five hours. also, it's just been a way better product than this predictable basher servebot shit from the men. women's wimbledon semi day THE best tennis day of the year, prove me wrong. they've had actual classic matches, which the men have been noticeably short on. just sort of been an odd season for the men, with djokovic shrivelling and alcaraz patchy outside of two slams and sinner doing his whole 'I'm not a cardboard cut out I'm a REAL boy' routine on his way to fifty hard court titles and everyone else irrelevant. as I've already said... it's fine. whatever. hope the sport enjoys fifty thousand alcaraz/sinner slam wins as the earth keeps turning around the sun and eventually we all turn to dust. it's fine

and seriously, thank you for everything in the ask... always happy to hear I've made someone's fan experience like. better. and that I add something a little bit different to the mix lol, also literally no compliment I like to read more than anything to do with my actual writing. because this ask was so lovely, here's my personal favourite moment as a tennis fan this year:

still think that australian open title should be restored to us

[seagull-scribbles]

*Something poetic about the duality of humans or the impact our environment has on our behaviours and lifestyles*