#Or appeal the decision

[mooseyspooky]

just

[fantasykiri5]

A pair of birds of prey for days 15 and 16 of @hermitadaymay !!! Definitely not a day and a half (?) late

[essektheylyss]

Matt really said, "Yeah, let's throw the wizard with ninth level force damage spells and a history of crippling guilt into the deeply insecure pvp party to go wandering into a forced pvp zone that preys off of your insecurities, I'm sure this will go well," and he was correct for it 😌

[kirby-the-gorb]

[tritoch]

Something that bugs me a lot in Dawntrail discourse is watching people who think they are defending the expansion argue away its best aspect. Because here's the thing: Wuk Lamat isn't like prior FFXIV characters. She takes up way more space than them. That's good!

A common thread you see in defenses is that people are complaining about things they were fine with earlier in the story. "Oh well actually Lyse was also the main character of Stormblood and people didn't hate her as much!" or "Heavensward is the story of Aymeric and Estinien and Ysayle, and the Warrior of Light doesn't do that much!" or "No one complained when Gaia jumped into the Eden raids, or when Emet showed up during Seat of Sacrifice" with the implied conclusion of "Wuk Lamat's not different from any other previous major character, your complaints have more to do with [sexism/transphobia/your crippling insecurity about not being the main character] than the way she's written." First of all people did hate Lyse. I get what you are saying but they very much did hate Lyse.

But Wuk Lamat is different. She's different because Dawntrail is unapologetically, full-throatedly her story. She is there at the start, she is there at the end, she is there basically all the way through except for a brief interlude. She is the character you talk to the most, she is also the character that talks the most. She has more of a complete arc than anyone else in the expansion. The antagonists develop much stronger direct and personal relationships to her than they ever do with you. Several major characters have relationships to you through her more than they do with you directly. At multiple points in the story you explicitly step back and are like "Go right ahead, queen, do the main character stuff." She 100% takes your role in certain ways. She's literally a new WL to your WoL!

and that's awesome! Like, holy shit! If you had traveled back in time and told me after Endwalker, "Hey, the next expansion will be almost solely and entirely focused on the character journey of a young woman, and she'll be nuanced and complex and allowed to fail but also allowed to succeed wildly, and her characterization will be interesting and her ideals will be very directly challenged, and she'll get to do some real classic 'sorry my noble opponent but I must stop you, even though I sympathize' shit, and the way she is framed won't feel excessively male-gazey, and she won't get stuck in the FFXII Ashe Miniskirt, and she won't just be someone you watch and clap for while the real protagonist and narrator is some random guy in her entourage," I would've been like "haha, okay, I like FFXIV as much as the next guy but I don't think it's shaken its baseline sexism off enough to do an expansion entirely about a woman and her personal growth and what makes her a good leader, especially after Stormblood's mixed reception. And CBU3 definitely doesn't have the guts to make her even more of a main character than any other prior NPC, and you didn't mention this part future time traveler, but I also don't believe they'll be willing to cast a trans woman in the role." And I would have been fucking wrong!

Yes, Wuk Lamat is the main character. Yes, she does get more attention than other NPCs, or even your Warrior of Light. And yes, that's totally fine, and even something to praise!!! You don't have to run from it to accommodate people who are looking for something to complain about!

[emry-stars-art]

Also. Finished them dancing (again) 👑⚔️

[t-u-i-t-c]

make me choose

orange or purple → orange

[violant-apologia]

we seem to be getting profile header options for each new location in firmament (apart from lost naples, actually, but that makes sense as it's not a repeatably-accessable location)

and that begs the question of when they're going to add the other upper river and evolution headers to the roster! right now we've only got the final locations, marigold and irem. i want a burrow header! or a tracklayer's city one at least

[danmeichael]

"shen qingqiu is a liar who is lying about his feelings so we can't ACTUALLY tell how he feels about anything"

so you admit that you can tell he is lying and by extension you can actually discern what his true feelings on the matter are and that he's just unwilling to admit to them.

[amedetoiles]

the untamed leaving netflix in my region oct 24 is an utter travesty. how dare you take away easy access to my unhealthy obsession to my (one half) finely dressed emotionally stunted dumbass brothers??????

[sparky-is-spiders]

Y'know normally I don't feel especially strongly about soulmate aus one way or another but I think Jonsasha and Jonelias are the only times where I think it's genuinely interesting enough to consider or seek out.

[topnotchquark]

In the spirit of this quaint men-on-motorcycles-enthusiast blog I went to watch The Bikeriders and had my heart quietly broken by a slow but softly luminous movie. Something about men's expansive lives and how movement is ultimately the seed from which all freedom grows. When you see Tom Hardy's Johnny slowly strain and crack under the realization that something he created out of simpler desires is now turning into a hydra headed problem he can't seem to solve, you understand something about existing in a world where your need for belonging is a vulnerability that eventually gets you.

When he asks Austin Butler's Benny about taking over the gang from him he's submitting himself to someone he trusts. Their faces slowly coming together, closer and closer, in the dark with just the incandescent glow of the streetlamps on the edge of their faces, like burning paper. How Benny is too stubborn to understand that its not a favor being asked of him, but a declaration of something deeper from Johnny. What a beautiful narrative choice it was to have a woman recollect this entire story of this rag-tag group of men, who herself was affected by the atmosphere she found herself unable to get out of. I love that it works like a non-judgemental narration of how quickly boyhood bluster breaks down when real life circumstances get rough. How difficult it was for Johnny to keep the community together because he didn't expect it to be anything more than a quaint cosplay when he started it to escape boredom. At the end where Benny finally gets the news of Johnny's murder, something done to usurp his frayed authority, and he returns to Chicago and breaks down on Kathy's stoop, I found myself crying alongside him.

The movie was clearly a labour of love from someone who had deep fascination with the lives of these men and with motorcycles. Wild that a two wheeled liquid fuel powered machine has been the site of so many meditations on masculinity and rebellion and anger and power and authority. I don't know if I want to revisit it but I am glad I got to watch it in the time period of my life that my deep fascination with bikes and men's lives makes it so much more valuable to me.

[utilitycaster]

everyone keeps harping on "well Matt only said it may destroy them" and like yeah, that's the truth - it was survivable, demonstrably - but also? I don't eat food that's labeled "may contain traces of peanuts."

[thedupshadove]

A question for those among my followers who were alive and passably politically-aware in the 1980s; was there at all a sense that Reagan might try to stop the 1984 or 1988 elections from taking place?

[coquelicoq]

if you're homeless, or you've been homeless, so much love to you. you don't deserve to be harassed no matter how your harassers justify it. you deserve to be safe. you deserve to have choices and the power to act on them. you deserve to be treated like a human being. you deserve to exist in public. it's not your fault that housed people are so insecure about the possibility of experiencing hardship, and/or feel guilty because they know deep down that they could act in solidarity and show compassion and are choosing not to, that they feel they have to erase you from their view so that they don't have to think about it. that's fucked up. you don't deserve that.

[alianoralacanta]

I expected the FIA to let the Norris/Verstappen decision stand. I half-expected it to say there was insufficient evidence to hear the case.

I did not expect it to be so foolish as to say a stewarding error did not count as sufficient evidence to hear the case.

Part of the agreement that allows the FIA to have a monopoly on European motorsport requires it to abide by the law of the land from which the organisation is run (in the FIA's case, that is France). Governing body error is in fact sufficient evidence for a fresh hearing in cases that aren't in-the-moment on-the-field situations - this is why it's possible to have appeals against penalties for football teams being charged with selling clubs to the wrong people but not against a red card for fielding 12 players on an 11-player-per-side pitch.

If this was a true in-the-moment on-the-field situation, the FIA would not have allowed the appeal at all, it has a regulation for that category. This did not fall under the category, so plainly the FIA believed that this was a matter that should be possible to appeal.

What the decision sets is a precedent that stewarding error is not considered sufficient for a case to be heard. Even deliberate stewarding error, for there is no way to interrogate which is which in a way that allows the call to be amended.

This is against the terms under which the FIA is permitted to run motorsports. It is also against FIA precedent. At the 2001 US Grand Prix (the last time a case I know to be appealed on stewarding error, apart from Abu Dhabi 2021, of which more later), Jarno Trulli was disqualified for the car being underweight. Jordan appealed the case, which initially confused everyone because the weight limit is generally open-and-shut.

However, there was also another open-and-shut element: stewarding decisions were only valid if all stewards were present to sign the decision. Eddie Jordan had got an early plane home to see his family and was rather surprised to find one of the stewards in the same departure lounge. Shouldn't he have been in the stewards' office, given he was getting text messages to say his driver was still having his case discussed? It turned out someone had forged the steward's signature (we will never know who). At that point, the FIA was forced to overturn the case on appeal.

Abu Dhabi 2021 cannot be used as precedent for the stewards' call either. The case got rejected on similarly spurious grounds and Mercedes dissuaded from challenging the governing body's later-admitted misconduct. The FIA's report showed that the only reason the result did not get changed to reflect the reality of the race, was because the FIA didn't want to break its own regulations, despite the misconduct causing it being from the FIA (thus continuing to open the FIA to legal challenge). A sensible governing body would have closed the loophole. The FIA has (apparently deliberately) opened it up further.

The FIA needs to reverse this decision as soon as possible, and will most likely be obliged to simply cancel Norris' penalty (strictly speaking, it would have to give Verstappen a penalty as well - if it wasn't a legitimate defense, then it has to be a wrongful forcing someone off the track - unless the FIA chooses to reconvene a stewarding panel to consider whether this can be considered a racing incident where nobody needs a penalty). Failure to do so leaves it open to legal interrogation in the French courts (not the FIA/Swiss Court of Arbitration ones) for breach of the 2001 settlement that allows the FIA to hold its monopoly, and breach of contract to both McLaren and Red Bull (yes, Red Bull could make money on this even if Verstappen gets a penalty).