#I overthink a lot tbh

[chevelleneech]

Love this post, and I honestly think the reason is because people went into the show expecting a Sith story, so they assume he is the Sith because he “technically” says it, even though it’s clear he didn’t claim it. He told Sol flat out he has no name, but Jedi would call him Sith. It’s also crazy to me how people are overlooking his credited title literally being “The Stranger” and not “The Sith”. That alone tells us he’s not actually Sith (at least not yet) and is an outlier between the two.

Now, to dig deeper into my theories: I knew the show was coming out, but didn’t know what it was about, so I can’t blame anyone for what they thought. One of the reactors I watched also said two Siths are supposed to make an appearance, so presumably a lot of the reason people maybe aren’t able to see Qimir as anything else, is because we haven’t seen any characters mention the title other than him.

I also don’t know any Sith by name, except Darth Maul and Darth Vader, so I may not be the best person to have this theory, but I think Acolyte will have the first Sith be one of the ones people have been bringing up (Tenerbus or Plaigues or whatever idk know their names lol), then the second one will be either Osha, Sol, or Vernestra.

I’m highly certain it’s not Vernestra though, because she is currently way too easy. Yes, Qimir was an easy guess for The Master, but I’ve seen more than enough people also say it couldn’t be him because it’d be too obvious. But I also think he was a give away on purpose, because one, Manny was in main promo and prior to ep5 he had very little screen time. But also, making him an easy guess allowed them to leave room for an even bigger reveal later.

And that reveal has to be someone key to the plot falling from grace, and Vernestra falling wouldn’t shock anyone. Her having gave Qimir his scar could still fit the story, but wouldn’t be too big a plot twist. Plus, he never said his Jedi Master gave it to him, he just let Osha believe her own assumption. So a good red herring would be learning Vernestra did give him his scar, yet later learning she wasn’t his Jedi Master. She and her field team may have went after him and his people (who very well could have been doing harm, but he was too young to know) for unsanctioned use of the Force, and he — long before turning toward the Dark Side — tried to defend himself.

That wouldn’t redeem him nor make him a good guy now, nor would it mean all of the Jedi are bad. This possibility also ties into Vernestra being secretive, if she is thinking back on decades or an even century ago, to when she encountered a village of Dark Side users. Maybe one of them said something to her (whatever she said on Khofar) and it’s all coming back to her?

Or (this is getting long, I know) my other theory is Qimir ran away from his Master who will be the Sith already named in the lore, and to keep ahead of them he and Osha (who learned what happened on Brendok and chooses to go with Qimir) dip out. Then Sol, believing Osha is being manipulated and abducted yet again, asks Vernestra to sign off on him getting her back, but she won’t because it’ll be too personal. So he makes a deal with the Sith who wants Qimir, thus technically making him Dark Side; aka the second Sith. And Mae is left to work with the Jedi, because she’s the only one Vernestra can trust to keep things a secret from the Senate. Or she dies… rip Mae.

Laslty, my third and final theory is that Osha becomes a Sith, much to Qimir’s dismay. Why she’d side with his potential former Sith Master? I don’t know, but it’d be really interesting and sexy if Osha betrays not only Mae and Sol, but also Qimir by choosing neither of them. By choosing the side that wants all of them dead. By choosing to become the Sith Master’s acolyte.

Not to be the first soldier on the frontless of the woobification of Qimir (he is a villain, we know this, and I love him for it), but the lack of nuance, or rather the one-dimensional angle people who don't like his relationship with Osha have taken with him, irks me so bad. I get it. He is Sith, right. Treachery is their way; and what are the darksiders, if not self-serving?

But I feel like the specific phrasing of "the Jedi like you would call me Sith" implies so much about his own unique characterization, and I don't understand why we are glossing over it. It's not a self-identifier. It shows it isn't as much as a title he'd give himself, but a badge he'll wear since in the black/white viewpoint of the Jedi, he is not allowed to be anything more or less. His almost catty, "semantics" hammers in this fact for me, personally.

He strikes me as one who takes what he wants of the Sith code, and disregards the rest. I don't think it's a mistake that even after his reveal, we don't see him with the signature dark side eyes.

I say all this to say; Qimir's ultimate goal is not power, it is FREEDOM. *That* is what he is driven by. He craves to live outside the confines he deems as constrictive/oppressive, and have by his side, someone who wants the same.

So even while disregarding Leslye's interview; I honestly don't know how with what we've been shown in the show so far, aside from him being a sith, makes people think otherwise.

[rosypenguins]

I think about this a lot.

Like… what do you mean you think you’re annoying? How deep does your self-deprecation run? Did you go home and overthink your previous interaction with Elliot because you overshared due to the excitement of finally being able to talk to someone you’d been wanting to talk to for a while? DOES THE MENTAL HEALTH POSTER IN THE BACKGROUND HAVE SIGNIFICANCE DO YOU HATE YOURSELF??

[batsplat]

i will be in permanent agony next year when marc squeezes pecco like a bug, unless it happens aragón 2021 style, where the unstoppable force (marc) meets an immovable object (passing pecco bagnaia), and marc has to really throw everything at it to come out on top. mostly because marc has a twinkle in his eyes when he looks at pecco, like he sees some sort of a challenge he’d enjoy to take on, and pecco just refuses to look at him 💀

also, martin said pecco plays the most amount of mind games, and i need to see that in 2025 before coming to a conclusion, otherwise it’s just jorge writing fanfiction about bagnaia as the ultimate bad guy of his life (i get it, jorge, next time pecco dnf’s i’ll choose to start stanning you, unlike the ducati bosses)

I think pecco does play mind games! admittedly if you're setting the standard at 'valentino', sure, he's pretty harmless, but pretty much every top level athlete will do a little of this! he does put some thought into how to manage expectations, what he's saying about his own chances and his opponents' chances going into weekends, that kind of thing. generally he might not outright attack his rivals, but he's not opposed to dropping the occasional snide remark. that being said, of course it's quite funny and revealing that jorge zeroed in on pecco as the mind games guy. pecco's very much his personal antagonist... such a good figure to externalise all those knotty feelings of being under-valued and under-appreciated and underrated... it's fairly natural that if you're fighting someone for a title, you get a bit of tunnel vision for them, so it's not that surprising a pick from martin. still fun! I absolutely buy martin's built pecco up a bit too much in his mind, is prone to reading malice into stuff where it probably wasn't intended on pecco's part. sometimes you end up playing mind games on yourself and the other guy doesn't really need to contribute

anyway, about the pecco/marc thing - yeah, look, obviously marc is the favourite in that title battle. that being said, if you look at marc's historical record, I wouldn't be all that surprised if aragon 2021 and jerez this year aren't the outliers. it's completely plausible marc wins that teammate battle quite comfortably but continues to lose in their actual one-on-one duels... because that did often happen during his prime. in 2013, sure, he won that early battle in jerez (which was just kinda building throughout to that one overtake), but he lost the rematch at silverstone. 2014 is the one where he was just kinda winning everything - so this one's kinda the exception, where he might lose some scraps like brno and misano but the extended battles in qatar, mugello, silverstone all go his way. from then on, the most memorable one-on-one duels with his big rivals are pretty often not working out in his favour. 2015 obviously a few with valentino, though he also doesn't win the title there so let's skip that, but 2016? the two duels everyone remembers from that year are mugello and catalunya - both go against him, both are defeats inflicted by his two main title rivals in jorge and valentino respectively, but it doesn't matter because afterwards the rest of the season goes his way. 2017 you've got austria and motegi where he takes on dovi and loses both times - but it doesn't change the momentum of the season and marc still wins in the end. 2018 doesn't really have a title fight, but again he's losing austria to jorge (before winning thailand so that's something). 2019, again not really a title fight, but he loses austria and silverstone before winning a couple of duels against rookie fabio at misano and thailand. in both those seasons, he's not really being challenged for the title - but if you looked just at the duels, you'd think the competition was a lot closer than the reality

none of this is to say that marc is bad at wheel-to-wheel racing, because he very obviously is not. (which by the way you can tell the moment you stop looking just at one-on-one's and include dogfights - sure, he's not won all of them, but pi '15 pi '17 assen '18 are all super memorable for a reason.) it's just an interesting pattern in his career: when he gets himself involved in extended duels with a single rival, he loses quite frequently, but it still doesn't hurt his title campaign. that's excellent mental resilience! it does, however, show that he doesn't really build his title campaigns around those big dramatic victories, around inflicting a dramatic and demoralising defeat on his rival in one-to-one combat. in this sense, he is obviously different from valentino: for instance 2004 is a title campaign that was built entirely around that trio of races early in the season (mugello, catalunya, assen) where he reclaims the championship lead and dulls sete's confidence by winning successive tight one-to-one battles. (also of course 2008/09, but those almost feel too obvious to mention.) when you look at marc's title campaigns, what they really rely on more than anything else is... well, consistency. the fact that he's basically always fast - and that generally speaking, he's finding himself in last lap duels at circuits where he shouldn't be able to contend for the victory at the last lap in the first place. (obviously qatar and austria, but also for instance honda was having a rough one at misano 2019, which is traditionally one of his strongest tracks but can be quite quirky.) (just saying, misano's a really good pecco track too... wouldn't that be fun...) it's relentless, intimidating pace that he's using to win all those titles... if you look at the races that changed the momentum in his various title winning seasons, it's not actually ever one-on-one duels, it's races where he won or was even just on the podium where all his rivals for one reason or another weren't there. maybe jorge and dani are injured, or maybe his rivals are having some horror show flag-to-flag races, or maybe ducati's having an off-weekend, or maybe everyone who isn't marc just refuses to stop crashing, or maybe jorge's decided to skittle the field

with the one-on-one battles themselves, sometimes it's kind of like... 'okay, sure, you won, but the fact I was even there probably isn't great news for you'. this is what jerez this year was about, right - of course, that was an important win for pecco, but also the fact that marc is fighting with him this early into his ducati career on a year old bike is certainly... a concern. obviously marc does want to win those duels, but he does also seem pretty capable of bouncing back after losing them. some of them have bothered him, sure - the worst was probably assen 2015, where there was obviously a lot of other stuff going on... and because it was that bit of the year where he was finding his feet again with that honda and they headed to the sachsenring next, his on-track performances didn't take a hit. you can argue that argentina 2015 did negatively affect his results... but that was also just a bit of the panic of 'I need to make up points now' in response to his first real adversity in the premier class - and anyway, everyone knows that wasn't a perfect marc season, the point is he was a lot better at managing this stuff going forwards. in 2016 and 2017 in particular, he really does do an excellent job of taking these close defeats in his stride

this is a long way of saying, look, I could easily imagine a version of 2025 where pecco wins a dramatic duel against marc at catalunya and then another one at mugello, and yet marc still wins that season pretty comfortably. that's basically the season I'm expecting... I'd quite like to have something different, because honestly I do enjoy it when the on-track battles actually affect title fights a bit more substantially! that being said, marc definitely wants to beat pecco in a one-on-one duel (though I'm sure that lovely le mans last lap pass will have gone a long way towards cheering him up) - and hey, interpersonal emotional stakes are a lot of fun too. hopefully even if there isn't much of a title fight they can still snap at each other a bit... as a treat

[skibasyndrome]

since I didn't really seriously get into the fanfic side of the yr fandom until later in October last year: is kinktober a thing in the fandom?

[florshedworf]

okay ive been thinking about this for a little bit but what sort of dress would thunder wear.

i was thinking perhaps something fancy? like a sleeveless dress or something with some sort of armor? perhaps not something that drags on the floor though

or maybe something a bit more practical? something that isn’t really a dress but you can move more freely/have more protection in (or just generally looks more square/sharp)

[crescentfool]

🎆✨

[kyouka-supremacy]

HE STRAIGHT UP CALLED DAZAI-SAN SENILE

[bunnihearted]

🪿

[morningmask27]

Tonight, right now, not even ten minutes ago, might have been the closest I got to an outright hatecrime

[kwyoz]

what if you wanted to draw, but your drawing ability said 'damn bitch u really suck ass at anatomy wtf'.

[moe-broey]

I'm ngl I'm feeling real self-conscious of tomorrow's entry 🧍

[just-more-trolls]

Does anyone else think about AUs/multi-universal plots and rps or am I the weird one/a holdover from the past? o(-<

[duckiemimi]

when writing ur analyses, do u still make outlines for them? kind of like an essay?

nope! most of the time it’s just stream of consciousness, then i clean up before posting! depending on the topic, i read up on things before forming an opinion and writing a post!

[the-stove-is-divorced]

Op what’s your favorite scene you’ve ever written and why is it your favorite

OOO, this is a hard question! I usually have like 2-3 fics rattling around in my brain and everything else I forget exists for a hot min, and apparently I have (checks notes) a whopping 42 works,,, damn. So, uh, three come to mind! (。。 )ゝ

I think in terms of being descriptive and writing emotion/sensations, the beginning scene of my body's in backwards. Like, I really love how I wrote the kind of agony during the first chapter, as harsh as that sounds adjkskds, stuff like: "Mark feels like his entire body’s just completely crushed and squeezed like a nearly empty tube of toothpaste," feels is pretty solid imagery! It flows well, too! Plus, I reference writing I like to while writing, and that includes my own work sometimes, and this is one of 'em!

In terms of, like, technical ability like metaphor, even if it isn't particularly impressive on a quick glance, the cumulative of step-up in all the time in the world makes me feel proud? It's my first time really trying to go ham with metaphor, so when Bruce actively hugs Alfred on his own in chapter 4, it's like a payoff of like 3-4 chapter's worth of step up lmao. To make a long story short, young Bruce dealing with intense emotions with literal, physical distance (pos=high up, neg=lower, like basements), but by the end of that mini-arc is the one to close the distance between himself and Alfred through closing physical distance via hug he initiates, which is huge! I'm very proud of it.

In terms of emotion the ending bit of i've got no time to live (and i can't say goodbye) ! It was one of my fav pieces for a long while, not so much anymore (waves to above, much more proud above), but I'm still proud of it! The kind of rage and frustration still feels super palpable to me, like "Inky MK throws his true half to the ground, knowing the very conviction making them fight, is the same one his true half refuses to see through, and the same one that makes him want to scream to the heavens, drag them down with bloody claws and demands answers, real answers about his stupid, destructive and powerful, pitiful and terrifying, messed up, tragedy-in-the-making life."

It still feels intense, and therefore I wrote it right, haha! TYSM FOR ASKING!!! ⸜(*ˊᗜˋ*)⸝

[shadow-and-purgatory]

I don’t want to go to “class” and “learn”, I WANT to have whatever gender the ink demons in Lego Monkie Kid S4 have going on. is that really too much to ask

[blujayonthewing]

me: [has a hundred other drawings I want to do or sketches I want to finish]

me: hmm time to draw my bard being aggressively flirty with an npc who's never shown any particular interest in her or in anything at all other than being a big nerd