#I'd have to cheat

[elviraaxen]

"shake shake shake!" ⭐⭐⭐

-- Finished Julie Animation, Hope you like!! --

[eddis-not-eeddis]

How To Stop Killing Conversations

Talking is hard. People are confusing. Making friends is difficult, and interacting with coworkers is tortuous.

You want to make friends, you want to reach out, but it's hard and every time you start a conversation it dies, or limps along until both you and the person you're talking to are looking for excuses to kill it and put it out of it's misery so you can both escape the increasingly awkward situation.

As an introvert who has suffered a lot of social anxiety in my time, let me share a few tricks I've learned over the years going through hundreds and thousands of excruciatingly painful conversations until I found something that works. I've kind of distilled the process.

ALWAYS ASK A QUESTION!!!

The first thing is to always leave your partner an opening. You need to let each other talk for a conversation to get off the ground, but it's more than that, really. You need to actively encourage each other to talk. The best way to do that is to ask questions.

Here are two examples of an introduction: Example A

You: Hello.

Them: Hello.

You: Nice to meet you.

Them: Nice to meet you too.

Example B

Y: Hello, nice to meet you, how are you? T: I’m doing well, yourself?

Y: I've been really well. How are you liking the weather?

T: I'm so happy the weather's finally getting cooler, I'm looking forward to pumpkin spice season. Do you like lattes?

Do you see how in Example A the conversation wasn’t going anywhere? It just kinda died, because there weren’t any openings for new topics, whereas in Example B, there were openings to keep the conversation going.

But what do you do if your conversation partner is as socially inept as you were two minutes ago and doesn't play along? All is not lost.

Example C

Y: Hello, so nice to meet you, how have you been doing?

T: I'm doing well.

Y: That's great, are you enjoying the nice weather, then?

T: Yeah. I'm glad it's finally fall, I'm looking forward to pumpkin spice lattes.

Y: I love pumpkin spice lattes! Pumpkin spice anything, really. I recently got the best pumpkin spice candle at the shop down the road, have you been there?

Even if they don't leave you an opening, you can usually make one. It may be difficult, especially when they don't give you much to work with. This is where having a go-to script is a life-saver--me, I always default to talking about the weather, so when in doubt, you can do that.* The important thing right now is to keep fostering the conversation, so once you bring up the weather, segue into a question. When they answer the question, make a brief comment or observation from your own experience and build off of that comment or observation to ask another question.

"But I don't want to make it about me. Doing that's bad, right?"

This is why that questions are important. If you haven't been asked a question, you kinda have to make it about you, you don't have a choice. But to keep from being an attention hog, follow up your shared experience or anecdote with another question.

Example D

T: I love pumpkin spice lattes

Y: Me too. I had the best pumpkin spice latte the other day at the cafe down the road, have you ever been there?

Now you've circled the conversation back around to them again, and you aren't taking the limelight. Sharing an experience is so important, you're trying to show that you understand, that you sympathize, that you relate.**

This really is the most important element of being a good conversationalist. You have to keep asking questions.

The one other thing I will touch on is introductions. DO NOT get into turn based combat.

Example E

Y: Hello

T: Hello

Y: Nice to meet you

T: Nice to meet you too.

Y: How are you doing?

T: I'm fine. You?

Y: Me too.

This will kill any possibility of continuing a conversation. Instead, get it all out of the way all at once, if at all possible.

Example F

Y: Hi, it's nice to meet you, how are you doing?

This is good, but this is better

Example G

Y: Hi, nice to meet you, how are you liking the weather?

Don't ask how they are doing, or if you do, before they can answer, follow it up with your placeholder (weather etc.) so they have to say some thing like

Example H

T: I'm fine, and I'm really liking the weather.

or

T: Not so great, the weather sucks.

Either of those options are much easier to work with than your basic "I'm fine."

Usually, if you can get past the introduction, you can get a conversation going. And then, even if you don't end up hitting it off with the person you're talking with, you at least don't leave the conversation feeling like you've died a thousand tiny deaths.

In fact, if you get past that introduction, you may have just made yourself a friend.

Remember folks, basically everyone around you is more afraid of you than you are of them, and in this benighted age no one has been taught conversation skills, so we are all pretty much in the same boat. (Unless you were born an extrovert, in which case we are all deeply envious and would probably kill you if we didn't need you in our sad and lonely lives so much.)

Have grace for one another, and for yourselves because talking with people is difficult.

Go forth, and stop killing conversations.

*If you are one of those awful people who likes to brag about how you hate small talk and only want to talk about important and meaningful things, I have one question: Do you ever have a conversation that lasts long enough to become meaningful? I thought not. Small talk is an important skill. Develop it.

**This is how you deal with sad or difficult situations too. When you want to show you sympathize with someone going through a hard time.

Example:

Y: How are you doing?

T: Not very well. My dog died last week.

Y: Oh, I'm so sorry to hear that. My own dog died last year and I still miss her a lot. How are you handling it?

Now you've circled the conversation back around to them again. You aren't making it about you.

If y'all want, next time I can share how to extricate yourself from a conversation.

[bleaksqueak]

Partial hand bank for Elias from my files. Some flats and some finished/lit ones, so good stuff with light differences!

[bethanydelleman]

Why I am NOT an Austen Heroine:

-If I was Anne Elliot, I would have married Charles Musgrove in a heartbeat just to get away from my family

-If I was Elinor Dashwood, I would have ugly cried when Lucy Steele told me she was engaged to Edward until I couldn't breath

-If I was Fanny Price, I would have married Henry Crawford just to get away from Mansfield Park

-If I were Elizabeth Bennet, I would have probably just said yes to Darcy (highly loss adverse and very concerned about my age)

-If I were Emma, I wouldn't have lasted until Box Hill to insult Miss Bates. It would have happened years ago and far more often

-If I were Catherine Morland.... oh... at 17? Oh... yeah, girlies I would totally accuse my crush's dad of murder because I was reading too many Gothic novels...

I AM a Jane Austen Heroine

[starry-bi-sky]

For the Danyal Al Ghul AU: How would Danyal react to other canon events like when Sam wishes she never met Danny, Tucker wishes for powers, the christmas episode, or other DP canon events?

(Also, I assume Danyal's cover is blown by the reality Gaunlet event.)

Ohooho I love this question. So im only gonna respond to the episodes you mentioned, since it's been a while since i actually watched the show and I don't remember all the episodes. And also since I don't remember them fully, I'm gonna get details wrong. I am fine with that, it still gets the gist down lol. I've got the tvtropes recap page pulled up, so i'll be using that to try and hit the major points it mentions.

So, Memory Blank! Man I've thought about that one, and its the one I'm frankly most excited to answer because it gets to show just how much of a positive impact being friends with Sam and Tucker had on Danyal. So where to start? Their fight goes differently than in canon, but I'm going to start from after Sam makes her wish.

Firstly; she and Tucker are friends, but the two of them are not friends with Danny. He's on his own. In this au, the three of them became friends when they were 11 and Danny's been in Amity Park for about a year.

They met in the beginning with Sam trying to befriend him at first because she realized that they shared similar ideals on environmentalism, but he rebuffed her pretty harshly due to a combination of grief over leaving his home, trying to process the fact that he can never return and will never see his brother again or meet his father, and just plain League arrogance lmao. He really hated being in Amity Park just in general because it wasn't his home and it was the city too.

So he was really rather unapproachable in the beginning. People kept a pretty wide berth of him due to Fenton association and his own vibes.

But Danny's still a kid, and they want socialization with their peers. At 11 he didn't have any friends, and was frankly quite lonely. He decided to approach Sam and Tucker after deeming them "acceptable allies", although Sam wasn't really interested at first up until he did the equivalent of apologizing. Tucker warmed up first afterwards, but Sam really wasn't too far behind.

So thats how they became friends, post-wish though? Lets say that Sam didn't accept the apology and rebuffed Danny, and kinda intimidated Tucker into doing the thing. Danyal closed down, backed off, and then never approached them again because he decided right then and there he wasn't going to chase it. Wasn't worth his effort or time.

Then he just. never approached another person after that because he didn't want to get rebuffed again (he wouldn't admit that it hurt a bit), and he could already tell his efforts wouldn't work. He turned his attention to other stuff. In this timeline it wasn't too difficult to find him at events dedicated to combatting climate change, deforestation, light pollution, animal cruelty, etc. the LOA is an environmentalist group, after all. They just also happen to be eco-fascist assassins-for-hire.

In summary, Sam and Tucker helped Danyal realize the flaws in some of the League's beliefs (the fascism) to the point where he could deconstruct it on his own. Being friends with them made him realize that, frankly, genocide was not the answer to environmental equilibrium, and that the people outside of the League had lives worth living. They also helped quell his arrogance, and just in general influenced him to become kinder even if it doesn't look like that all the time to other people. Sam and Tucker make him laugh, and smile, and just happy.

OG Danyal: wears pretty casual teen clothes. More punky-aesthetic. Has multiple ear piercings. These were self-done. Will have a lip piercing by the time he reunites with Damian, mark my words. Can and will wear muscle tees. Makes puns, jokes, is generally sassy with his friends. Can, will, and has climbed shit he shouldn't be because he enjoys the challenge of scaling a building. It's also very funny seeing Tucker and Sam reenact the "Gregory! HOW DID YOU GET UP THERE?!" meme. Still has a questionable moral compass, but like, he's not an eco-fascist.

This Timeline Danyal: dresses much more sophisticated; dark academia vibe. Closed off, cold. Is 2x more likely to kill someone than OG Danyal, who was frankly, pr kosher with murder already but only if he deemed it extremely necessary. Still an eco-fascist.

Danyal without Sam and Tucker? Still believes in the teachings of the League because he has not been really challenged on them. In fact, he has doubled down on it, actually. Living in the city, growing up estranged and ostracized by his peers, has only strengthened his resolve that all of humanity minus the league (and the Fentons) deserves to be wiped out. He is disgusted by the people around him and desperately wants to go home, even more than the last timeline. The only reason he hasn't is for Damian's sake, but he's been checking in with mother whenever she visits and asking to find a way to come home. She's been steadily wearing down on it; her child is miserable here.

This version of Danyal should not have powers, and is, essentially on the fast track of rejoining the league -- doubly so when he hears Damian is living with father. Clearly it's safe enough for him to be with father, if mother allowed it, and father has become safe enough for Damian to live there. Good. With the threat of two heirs being in the League gone, Danny can return with Mother's permission. And. he probably takes Jazz (and the Fenton parents) with him. Forcibly if he has to.

So Sam has her work cut out for her here, a lot more than in canon, because even when she does tell him that they used to be friends in another timeline, and he believes it, he is not going to give a shit. Clearly they were not as good of friends as she thought they were, if she had wished they never met in the first place. Good riddance, then. This Danny is cold, incredibly hurt, and very closed off.

He is a cave wall in comparison to the Danny Sam knew, and talking to him feels like walking into one. Because he is looking at her with just utter disgust and disdain, keeping a distance like he is revolted by her presence and allergic to her and everyone else's touch.

Which really, really fucking hurts when she knows that in their last timeline, he would actively seek out her and Tucker's company and affection. Sam could read her best friend like an open book, and now its like she's trying to read one in another language she barely speaks. This boy used to smile at her, he used to laugh at Tucker's jokes, and he was so passionate about the things he enjoyed. Now he looks at her like he wants nothing more than for her to drop dead on the spot.

It hurts even more knowing that her last words to her Danny were the words, 'some days i wish we never met'; the way he looked at her afterwards haunts her. For a split second, he looked completely crushed and heartbroken, before his entire body language and expression shut off and he totally closed down on her.

Because by this point in his friendship with her and Tucker, he's told them, he has told them, in a very intimate moment of vulnerability, that they are one of the best things that's happened in his life -- right there alongside the day he first met his baby brother. They are very important to him, and he has finally felt comfortable enough with telling them. There's not a day that goes by that he isn't grateful for their friendship.

So to hear Sam say that some days she wishes they never met? well. That breaks his heart. Just- just a little bit. Sam regrets it the moment it leaves her mouth, and she immediately tries to apologize, but Danny immediately spits back; "Well. I hope you get your wish." and then stalks off.

I'm warring with myself here trying to decide whether or not this new timeline Danyal is at a "point of no return", where nothing Sam says is going to make him attempt to reignite that friendship. Clearly that will end badly anyways, if this is the result of that friendship. He's cut all ties from these people; he feels no prerogative to fix things she broke.

Like, the version of Danyal I'm thinking of here has no close bonds with anyone in the city sans Jazz -- and she? has her own life outside of Danny. She is not his keeper, not his caretaker, and certainly not his therapist. (which i have beef about too, considering how she gets boiled down to 'therapist with no life of her own' but im not going into that.) She has some influence on him, but frankly not enough to really make him challenge his beliefs. Danny cares about her that, if he returns to the league, she is coming with him. Or at the very least, will be spared from the League's goals.

Mmmm. I can't make it a total point of no return though. Sam's very stubborn, and she knows Danny. And while this Danny is still very different, he is still Danny. She'll try and befriend him insistently in a way that might annoy him, but at least not push him away further.

(Tucker, meanwhile, is just soo confused about Sam's very random, very abrupt switch up. Cuz girl he thought you hated this guy? Why are you suddenly trying to get all buddy-buddy with the terrifying Fenton kid. Have you been possessed? Is this some kind of crisis?)

(Sam drags Tucker into befriending Danny because he is the only person she knows that can get him to belly laugh. Tucker is mildly terrified but going along with it.)

Anyways this does end with Sam befriending Danny, or at least getting him to like her long enough that he'll pick up a ghost weapon and face off against Desiree. There's no way in hell he's walking into that portal, that last timeline might have been a 1/billionth chance of it happening and he's not dying for the chance to get powers. And frankly with his training -- which he's probably kept up with even more than the old timeline because he had no one to spend his time with -- he doesn't really need them to be good at fighting them. Just show him how to ghost proof a weapon and he'll handle the rest from there.

But Sam does end up undoing the wish and getting back to her own original timeline in the end. It's the morning after her fight, and the literal first thing she does that morning is get her shoes on and fucking sprriiint to the fenton house. Bursts into tears when she sees Danny and apologizes over and over again. She swears she didn't mean any of it, and to please believe her, and Desiree's still loose and they need to stop her, and she's had the worst time.

She does tell him about the other timeline she just went through, and she hopes that, if it still exists, that that Danyal manages to find friends in the Sam and Tucker there after this. And if not them, then anyone.

Danny's still pretty hurt by what she said, it cut really deep, but he forgives her.

-----

Tucker getting his powers! Frankly things gooo... relatively the same as canon, I think? Actually, no. Danny probably figures out the whole Genie "i wish you would go back into your lamp" thing faster than canon danny since he's not a C student lmao. TV.Tropes doesn't give me too much specifics for a recap on the plot, so we're gonna wing it. For the plot I'm going to say that Tucker gets his powers before Danny figures out the "i wish" thing, which happens relatively quickly.

Danny tries to be... rather supportive of his friend getting powers? Especially since, in comparison to Danny, it was rather painless. However, he's also very suspicious. He doesn't trust the source of Tucker's powers, and warns him to be careful and to let Danny know if he feels off in anyway.

Tucker does end up helping Danny a few times, but the quick progression of his powers and Tucker's willingness to use them more often than not worries him. He reminds him a handful of times that Tucker shouldn't rely on his powers to help -- not even Danny does that. He prefers to use his weapons and martial arts to fight instead. Tucker doesn't listen.

And they end up fighting anyways. Things get resolved, everything turns out okay!

------

Christmas episode straight up just. doesn't happen. Danyal doesn't care enough about the Fenton arguing or about Christmas to be upset about said arguing. He thinks its really childish, but he's not a grinch about all of it.

--------

Okay it wasn't explicitly mentioned but i have thought about TUE. And I'm trying to think how that would go because it's the result of Danny getting his hands on the math answers and cheating. Which Danyal would not do.

And someone mentioned in the comments on my ao3 under the oneshots there that TUE might just straight up not happen. Which makes sense, Danyal is so different from canon that things don't have to always happen like it did in canon. So that's something I need to chew about, cuz if it does happen, then I'm going to figure out a different way for it to.

[robo-dino-puppy]

horizon zero dawn (remastered) | erend 4/?

[lianarainfall]

Mog speed killed when he was the imposter and somehow inspired me to draw.

Don't think about how it's like a week after Among Us; I wanted to finish my Wiggler drawing before I did this one.

[shinidamachu]

Can you guys rec me some Inukag fanfics where Kagome is or recently was in a relationship with someone else?

[scramble-crossing]

Never forget what they took from us

[muninnhuginn]

Link Click Fic Recs

This is part two of my gen fic rec list, updated with some more recent stuff. Part one can be found here. I've tried to pick fic that don't get as much focus within the fandom, so there's some twins stuff and noodle lesbians in amongst the regularly scheduled main duo angst.

These are listed in chronological order, with each author restricted to one work only.

the blinding light by jan

Rated Gen, <1k. Snippets of Xiao Li reckoning with the consequences of his denial about Qian Jin. This fic helped me remember that Xiao Li and Qian Jin were actually friends, before it all.

15min by Findarato

Teen, 2k. Post s2 hospital hurt/comfort fic. Lu Guang POV and all that entails. Feels somewhat like being inside during a storm, safe from the worst of everything, but still hearing the rain and wind wailing outside.

butterfly effect by BlurredReflections

Teen, <1k. This is a pretty short fic, focusing on the early days between Qian Jin and the twins. I have it in my notes as "qian jin + parenting = you tried."

run to show that love's worth running to by sunslants

Gen, 2k. Noodle lesbians epilogue set almost immediately after their episode concludes, short and sweet.

pay time's debt by yvesvi

Gen, 5k. Li Tianchen character study. Covers his complicated relationship with Tianxi and his mismatched relationship with Liu Xiao. There's this constant sheen of despair colouring everything but still hints of the warmth that once existed.

sept, oct by Toothpaste_Fresh

Gen, 4k. This is a look at what could have happened the first time around. Best way I can put it is that it's theorising in fic form. Has an ostensibly distanced POV, which somehow makes the emotions creep through the cracks.

howling tides by LadyCrimsonAndBlack

Teen, 2k. Lu Guang POV, following through the loops over and over until the present time. I really like how this fic expands so much on Lu Guang's inner thoughts whilst keeping them so separate from what he actually says to Cheng Xiaoshi.

[fromtheseventhhell]

"It's powerful, it's visceral, it's dark, it's like a Shakespearean tragedy. There’s no Arya — a character everybody's going to love. They're all flawed. They're all human. They do good things. They do bad things. They're driven by lust for power, jealousy, old wounds — just like human beings. Just like I wrote them."

Seeing people debate which grey characters can still be considered "morally good" and somehow Arya never makes the list, so it's the perfect time to bring back this quote from George which shows exactly how he views her character 🫶🏾

[lokisprettygirl]

The hypocrisy and change in stance as long as Daemon is being hurt is astounding, now blatant cheating is going to get justified by the shippers and haters alike. If the leaks are true, i won't be surprised to see people bending backwards to justify adultery, infidelity etc as they have been justifying sexual assault, mental manipulation, violence, jokes being made on his expense because hey It's Daemon afterall so he deserves it.

People of this generation are such a joke in the name of woke. It's not polygamy if one person is being cheated on and getting hurt, it's not bi rights for women if the woman is choosing to ruin the sanctity of the marriage and no Daemon won't feel proud of his wife for smooching his ex. I'm pretty sure those leaks are false but it has brought forward the thinking of some of the folks here who'd condemn a complex character for having a personality but would support their favourite as long as it's a woman.

[softerhaze]

idk if it was the venus retrograde or what, but july 2023 was quite literally the worst month i've ever experienced in my life like.....every single day? awful? worse than the last? it's more likely than u think

[geneeste]

I'm going to make it all the way to TUM! If you can help me get to at least LOL, you'll make my Halloween. XD

[batsplat]

do you have any favorite tennis matches? what's your favorite player and rivalry if you have one?

(note, I will be leaving both agassi + sampras out of this post as they have already been discussed in a fair bit of detail on this blog, though I might at some point make a post specifically about their matches. obviously they'd be pretty high up in all three categories with regards to favourite matches, players, and rivalries)

I have a lot of favourite tennis matches!! I'll throw a few of them under the cut, but honestly give me half a chance and I'll go on forever. my all time favourite tennis match is the 2003 us open semifinal between justine henin and jennifer capriati. it is available in full on youtube and I think you should watch it even if you have only the slightest interest in tennis. this is a match you need to experience for yourself and I will not spoil the result, but it features basically everything you could ask for:

very high stakes, both in terms of being a slam semi and for both players involved. it's an interesting stretch of henin's career, plenty of controversies that season and the potential for a rematch with countrywoman clijsters in the final. capriati during her noughties career revival had FINALLY managed to overcome her issues in late stages of slams and had won three of them... but her home slam at the us open was the one she wanted to win most of all. a history of semifinal choking she was attempting to conquer in front of her home crowd - fighting a woman six years her junior who had already tasted slam success that year

two very different personalities, the cold and calculating henin against the ferocious and passionate capriati... both not strangers to a little bit of gamesmanship, and of course you see that on display in this match too. keep an eye on the poor line judges

two contrasting but similarly engaging playstyles, the boisterous force of capriati coming up against henin's lethally elegant all-court game. henin's one handed backhand better than sex question mark. it's a great stylistic match-up, and produces some excellent tennis across the entire span of the match. just SUCH a great watch, like I really cannot speak highly enough of the level on display

a highly involved crowd who want their home favourite to win SO BADLY and are more than happy to do anything to help her cause. gets a bit wild, like the best us open matches tend to do

some truly insane momentum switches, many prompted by psychology and some prompted by physicality. one player's body starts letting her down in the final set in pretty striking fashion. one player's mind plays havoc with her, possibly even more memorably so. a very dramatic finale

the cruelty of tennis on full display. a match where you suffer for both players, who both want it so badly and are visibly fighting demons on the court. truly, truly brutal for the loser

I love this match so so much. I know it's very on-brand to direct you to a match from over two decades ago, but I promise you. it's worth it. sometimes the old stuff is the best

and do I EVER have a favourite player and rivalry!!!!!!

MY GIRLS. okay, look, they're both extremely retired and had their last match in 2010 BUT it is still my favourite rivalry!!!!!!! here, have another bit of my output for them:

wE hAvE aLwaYs ProTEcTEd tHis iMAge oF friENdShip tHat nEVeR eXistEd istgggggggg NOTHING WAS BROKEN BETWEEN US BECAUSE THERE WAS NOTHING TO BREAK

if you've ever heard someone be extremely annoying about federer's game, you probably can imagine what I sound like talking about henin. she's got my favourite backhand of all time, I genuinely think it is a work of art. I love how she moves, the way she unleashes on balls on the run, I love how she gets into the court in such a lithe and precise manner to pick up the next ball. I love how effective the serve is despite her height (number one commentating cliché for her lol, she's short we get it). the slices, the gorgeous drop volleys, the laser straight forehand... and again, the backhand. when she takes a swing at that thing and fucking pummels it past her opponent, stretches her wings to make the ball soar, it's just truly my favourite shot of all time. there's a specific backhand crosscourt on-the-run pass she hits in that aforementioned us open semifinal where... yeah. what can you even say. better than sex full stop

and well... okay, look, I am AWARE a lot of fans still hate her and I do get that she won't be everyone's cup of tea. but y'know. sometimes you just have to support women's rights and wrongs, and I do think some of the criticism of her is also a bit overblown. she's a cheater, yes, I won't argue with that. but I think sometimes cheating is interesting!! she really really really really needed to win, she was cold and ruthless about it - but also, I'm sorry, people would NOT have hated her quite so much if she were a man. and I'm also not saying a sad life story justifies cheating etc etc, but I do wish people were a bit more interested in why she needed to win so badly. she also has the number one athlete attribute that makes my brain go crazy - a deeply conflicted relationship with the sport itself. always caught between running towards and running away from tennis... yeah. god

the single best resource in tennis is a website called tennisabstract, it really is fantastic, I've contributed a bit to their match coding project before and definitely will again when my schedule's freed up a bit. I have a lot of time for the guy who runs it, I really do. there's this series he did, tennis 128, where he listed the top 128 players of all time according to his metric and wrote a piece for each of them... and I think they're all very interesting, it's a great project. but. there's a good chance henin got the most negative write-up of the lot, in a way I have to admit I take issue with. some excerpts:

well, tough luck. I don't care. the lgbt community has forgiven justine henin. look at what a cute tomboy she was as a teenager:

look at her holding a bird trophy:

wifey

the other half of that rivalry is her fellow belgian clijsters. very much a case of two narratives haunting each other!! do not separate!! anyhow, she's another player with a game I absolutely adore, these big scything groundstrokes but ALSO plenty of variety, like we're not talking a dull baseline basher here. and the movement!! sliding on a hard court is STILL pretty rare in the women's game, so it's very much seen as something associated with clijsters and clijsters alone:

life changing thighs is what I'll say

clijsters was everything henin was not - warm, popular in the locker room and with fans, a cheery outgoing personality who always had plenty of people rooting for her. she was also seen as too nice to win. and there are few things on this planet that get me going more than a choker. than somebody who just... freezes in the most important matches of her life. which for a while there had a nasty habit of involving henin, because of course they did

clijster's another one with a really fascinating career arc, one that is inextricably linked with henin's story - and thing is, she did get her happy ending. she's the feel-good story, proof that even chokers might be able to make it in the end. she conquered her demons... one of the very, very, very few to do so. she changed the narrative of her career completely. now I DO hate how this kinda... low key gets implicitly used as another stick to thwack henin with, this kind of, ooh!! look!! you can be a good person and be successful too!! which! idk. god forbid we root for a flawed athlete now and again. but I think this does a disservice to clijsters - not least because she WAS pretty nasty about henin in a way she wasn't about basically anyone else. henin and clijsters are more than just sinner and saint... don't let tennis fans tell you otherwise

and yeah, the two of them obviously had a bit of an emotionally tortured rivalry. belgium cooked up two insanely good tennis players born exactly one year and one week apart, the only two players of that stature the country has ever produced. they made each other better and they made each other worse. friends and enemies and something in between... and in the end, fundamentally inseparable. citadels have been built on less

anyway tbh I'm not going to pretend like anyone is summoning up that kind of narrative juice these days, but obviously I still have my faves. as regular blog readers may be aware, my favourite current player is this washed string bean who mostly just loses to more talented players and throws tantrums these days. I'll support him until his time runs up though. medvedev's got this fantastically unorthodox game that I could dissect all day, he's the smartest top player, he's funny as shit. his game should never have worked and he has no right to be as successful as he is. I could hold a lecture series on his forehand. I'm very much a pusher-inclined fan... I like counterpunchers, I like players who run around a lot and defend, and I also like tacticians. I was a pretty early adopter because I love a quirky playstyle and weird technique, which was then affirmed with the miami 2018 debacle (iykyk). but there was a moment I knew I would be his fan for life, and if you are a tennis fan you can probably guess what's coming:

"so I want all of you to know, when you sleep tonight, I won because of you" I fell in love

never ever has he let me down on the drama front. his "oops I did it again" basel 2018 instagram post, his "I think I killed someone? my apologies" from us open 2020, "if I die, who'll take responsibility" from olympics 2021, the "it's easier to enjoy life when you have no brain" paris 2021 monologue, the yawn at turin 2021, stomping on the ground davis cup 2021, the "his father can talk every point" ao 2022 rant, "I'm gonna pee as slow as this court" from iw 2023, when he got rid of the singles stick monte carlo 2023 plus the "look at yourself in the mirror" press conference comment, "vamo vamo vamo" from uso 2023... I could keep going. "shut your fuck up" has become a part of my vocabulary icl. I love his press conferences and watch a lot of them, just consistently a very interesting guy to listen to. he is unfortunately sort of hellish to follow as a fan, but y'know. sometimes it's not just trophies that make the journey worth it (cope)

women's tennis, my actual faves have basically disappeared from the scene this year so I'm not even gonna dignify them by mentioning their names. I am pretty ride-or-die for dasha kasatkina, a useless pusher who's also the wta's highest ranked lesbian and makes a vlog with her girlfriend I definitely recommend. I like her tennis a lot in all its horrendous pushing, she's very sweet and fun and produces an obscene number of cute photos with her girlfriend. beyond that, I suppose I am basically a swiatek and sabalenka fan this year, I find both of them highly engaging in different ways, I love how they're like... actually very good but are also seemingly constantly fighting demons. basically the two most compelling players in the game currently TO ME. I'm really really enjoying their rivalry, my main complaint is that I wish they played more (praying iga's new coach fixes her during the off-season). they produced by far the best match this year, madrid final, which I'd also absolutely recommend. but yeah, I generally vibe with all the top players of the women's game, if to differing extents!! really strong era at the minute that also promises to keep getting better. we pray

anyhow. a few more favourite matches - I'm going to try and hold myself back, because I really could go on forever. a lot of the old matches I watch are from noughties wta, but I'll limit myself because I'm aware this really is probably of interest to nobody and give just a further two - sharapova/henin wta finals 2007 and venus/davenport wimbledon 2005. both pretty normie picks, but sometimes the normie picks are normie picks for a reason

for my sins, I do have a few big three matches in fairly regular rotation, typically on in the background when I'm working. main ones are djokovic/federer us open 2011, djokovic/federer wimbledon 2019, djokovic/federer wimbledon 2014, and djokovic/nadal roland garros 2021. I also have a bunch of murray matches in rotation but I tend to mix it up for him more... my other go-to run is all of leylah fernandez's pre-final us open 2021 matches, which are just consistently bonkers in the best possible way. there's a few other recent-ish matches I really like to revisit, like iga/sublanko madrid 2023, fernandez/osorio monterrey 2022, kerber/juvan strasbourg 2022...

and then, of the more recent-ish men's matches, pretty obvious where my biases lie. medvedev/djokovic cincy 2019, med/wawrinka uso 2019, med/nadal atp finals 2020, med/thiem atp finals 2020, med/djokovic uso 2021, med/sinner atp finals 2021 (conceptually hilarious match), med/faa ao 2022 (go-to flight match, this one), med/tsi ao 2022, rune/djokovic paris 2022 (and honestly that whole rune run), med/zverev monte carlo 2023 (don't feel great about including this but I'd be lying if I said I didn't love it), rune/sinner monte carlo 2023, rune/foki madrid 2023, med/alcaraz uso 2023 (I promised I'd sing the american national anthem if he won that match so that's a voice note that still exists out there)... and so on

I could keep going, but I'll cut myself off here. and end things with my personal favourite instagram post tennis has produced. from after the aforementioned rune/foki madrid match:

'personally I hold nothing against the Spanish people' dw king I'll do it for you

[wings-of-flying]

whatever the plot of the minecraft movie is, i bet i could come up with something a hundred times better