#SO pumped to see all of these

[fourtyforever]

Ya homegirl finished her zine day of…..now I just have to figure out what to do with myself till the reveal

[anna-scribbles]

emma dupain cheng on the brain😽🎀

more:

[roseworth]

goodbye brazilian twitter you will be missed dearly 😔

[monkesupreme]

Maybe i SHOULD draft out my ‘Clark is a SuperPlant’ propaganda post

[banjo-butch]

ive only had sex with two mutuals and that feels low but then i remember most people dont have sex with any and Gay Sex Georg @xenasaur is just warping my perception upwards

[nerdymariamania]

As someone who's been a Team Starkid fan since the beginning, since 2009... do the young fans who only know hatchetfield know the old lore?? Do you know about crying in the choir room?? Do you know the door gag? Do you know Liam's got a phone call? Do you know about the iconic accidental sing along SanFran Con appearance? This isn't me being elitist or anything, I genuinely want to know! I just feel so very much older than all of you, all the time. Does anyone remember Tanya and her gay little blonde bob???

[alicenpai]

dunmeshi stuff that came in the mail recently :)

[kaeyachi]

Kaeya had always been an efficient and hard-working individual (he had to be to support Diluc in the background as his brother rose thru the ranks after all).

He has so much free time because he completes all his work way ahead of schedule. And if he still has enough time, he adds more to the workload in secret.

And once all of that was done and over with, he makes time for everyone. He has to. He feels as if every moment has to be given to someone else.

No one knows how he does it. No one has to know.

Every mission has a dozen strategies in line, and every battle plan is made with efficiency in mind. His perfect record will not be tarnished. He can't risk it (even if it baffles others that he would willingly activate a ruin guard just to prevent a failed mission. Jean disagrees with his methods, but Kaeya can say that the results say otherwise)

He needs to be quick.

Efficient.

Perfect.

And so he comes and goes like the wind.

Kaeya values time because he knew every second counted. He can't just stand there as if he were frozen. Time could run out in an instant.

Kaeya had only been late once his entire life.

He'd rather he never be late ever again.

It took one day of being of being imperfect for everything to fall apart. On that tragic day...had he gotten there on time... then maybe...

.

.

.

" Come on, let's get moving, traveler. We're not frozen in place after all. " Kaeya teasingly says. He stiffles a giggle at the traveler's exhasperated sigh.

"Yeah yeah, we've heard enough of you calling us a slacker. Can't you be a bit more patient?" Paimon whines at him.

Kaeya snorts, but acquiesces, hiding the shaking of his hands at the thought of being idle.

He imagines hearing a clock ticking.

Kaeya knows that that is his own problem. He tries his hardest to relax as he waits for the traveler to finish whatever they're making on the alchemy table because, seriously, it is supposed to be a relaxing day. There's nothing major going on, and his schedule is once again empty as intended. What's the hurry?

Kaeya taps his foot on the ground as he waits. He wishes he could take his own damn advice when he tells others to relax.

[marimbles]

i miss carpisuns sometimes </3

[spotaus]

New age Fresh idea????

What if he had all the colors but his clothing is a bunch of scraps put together

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I dunno what the dye situation is but would the amount of colors and the vividness mark him as rich?

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What if he was a fortune teller but it was always like your going to die soon and then they die soon, lacking a soul.

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What if he uses magic from souls to color his clothes

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Idk just some things that are pretty separate but I put them all in the same post just because

My friend, you have done me SUCH a favor by sending this ask, you have no idea- finally I gained motivation to doodle out a Fresh design! (I'm gonna drop it rq then reply to ur individual ideas, haha!)

-

I ADORE the idea of his clothes being a bunch of scraps sm. I Linda decided to translate this into the idea that he has a bunch of really bright cloaks he keeps layered on him in a bard-ish fashion. He's the brightest thing in any given space 🙏

-

The colors DEFINITELY make him seem more powerful/wealthy than he is to anyone who spots him! Unfortunately, he uses it more as a warning sign, same way poison dart frogs and monarch butterflies are super bright? Yeag, I like to think Error (upon Fresh's request) magicked him up some bright clothes, and then Fresh kept finding more along his journeys!

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Oh this is SUCH a cool concept!!! Fresh is actually already planned to be a beast-tamer in this au (the 'parasite' is a different entity which absorbs ambient magic around it, mostly nature but often souls, so Fresh spends his time out in the woods usually, because he fused with the parasite and can't quite control it-) it's very convoluted haha- but I really do need to have him do a bit like this later in the story because it feels right up his alley!

If it piques ur interest, Epic is the one who's planned to be a Fortune Teller of sorts! He's not a main character, but he eventually is a friend of Cross and loosely joins the main cast!

-

Oh this is a fun one... if I can figure out how to work that into the magic system I would love to do that, because the visual of Fresh walking into a town and the absorption of so many different soul traits turning his outfit into a moving kaleidoscope is smth I need to see... my goodness...

[hephaestuscrew]

Fisher's death is a different kind of tragedy to the rest of the original Hephaestus crew, because it genuinely was just a horrible accident. And I think accepting that isn't an easy thing for Lovelace.

When almost everyone in your crew is dead, it's the opposite of a consolation to realise that the only other survivor is responsible for those deaths. But once you know you have been betrayed, once you understand that there was someone in your crew who was willing to sacrifice all of you for his own ends, once you've accepted that someone you used to trust killed people you loved, wouldn't it make a kind of sense to believe he was responsible for every awful thing that happened? Wouldn't there almost be a perverse comfort in the righteous anger of believing that Fisher died not because Hui's predictions were wrong, nor because Lovelace's attempts to save him failed, but because Selberg's sabotage doomed him from the start? Wouldn't it tie up the narrative of Lovelace's trauma more neatly if all of it was Selberg's fault, if he was pulling the strings for that first devastating loss? (Cont. below cut)

I imagine that Hui had a sense of guilt and responsibility for Fisher's death. After all, Fisher was only out in that meteor shower because "Hui's projections were way off". Blaming Selberg/Hilbert for Fisher's death would allow Lovelace to posthumously absolve Hui of that guilt. Whereas to accept that Fisher's death was an accident is to accept that it was the result of decisions which held absolutely no malice or willingness to harm.

In Ep38 Happy Endings, after Hilbert reveals that he infected Fisher with Decima first, he has this exchange with Lovelace:

HILBERT But intention was never for anyone to die. Not unless unavoidable.  LOVELACE (realizing) But Fisher did die.  HILBERT Tragic accident. One which even your addled mind has to realize was not my responsibility.

The 'realizing' dialogue tag could be interpreted in a few different ways, but I think this is the moment Lovelace realises that Fisher's death - to echo Minkowski's description of Eiffel being stranded in deep space - "wasn't anyone's fault. It's horrible, and pointless, and it just happened." I think that's a different kind of pain, for Lovelace to realise that - despite the malicious forces around the crew - there was no one to blame for that first tragedy. 

Fisher was the first of Lovelace's crew to die. Lovelace broke her arm trying unsuccessfully to save him. It was the event that turned the first Hephaestus mission from a series of fairly trivial sources of stress, to something ominous that not everyone would come back from. It would be easy to view it as 'the beginning of the end' of the first Hephaestus mission. The period after Fisher's death was "a very difficult time" (as Lovelace describes it herself in Ep35 Need to Know), to the extent that Lovelace developed an "alarming" "dependence on painkillers" (according to Selberg's medical journal).

And there's something particularly heartbreaking to me about the fact that all of that could have happened on a mission without any of the sinister background that the first Hephaestus mission had.

[batsplat]

I saw the post about assen 2016 and Marc cutting the chicane and was wondering if Marc did that a lot to his competitors like the imitation of mind games. Cause I’ve always thought of Vale as the one who used the mind games more. Did Marc use mind games a lot and was just more subtle?

(assen '16)

if you're interested in reading more about marc marquez mind games, then boy do I have a post for you

anyway, I can't really think of anything that's all that similar to assen 2016 because that's such a specific situation... not every day that you have something as memorable and as easy to visibly imitate and as controversial as cutting the final chicane. of course, if we're talking about imitation, it's pretty hard to avoid mentioning how marc did infamously copy two out of valentino's three most well known career overtakes within half a year of joining the premier class, and was also pretty shameless about the whole thing. but at least there you can say it's all about the race situation marc happened to find himself in - and there will only have been so much premeditation possible with both incidents

more broadly speaking, then, targeted behaviour where he's trying to send a message to one of his competitors during non-race sessions... well, that's fairly common. he loves using non-race sessions to study and stalk and at times deliberately harass his competitors. I'll give a little more details on one specific incident here to demonstrate what I'm talking about. it's related to towing, as it so often is with marc, and I ended up only briefly mentioning it in the post linked above. for context, marc spent a fair bit of time in 2019 trying to mess with the rookie revelation fabio quartararo, sometimes during the races themselves and sometimes outside of them. nothing wrong with hazing your young challengers, right? so one of the more widely discussed incidents took place in sepang 2019 qualifying (tw crash):

big fan of how the article very strongly implies that when marc says the words "honestly speaking", he was not, in fact, honestly speaking. did a single person on this planet believe marc when he said he just happened to end up right behind fabio? who knows, maybe there's someone out there, who knows...

obviously, marc and his team weren't really trying to hide what they were doing, which makes it even funnier that marc just goes for this completely shameless 'oh it was all just a coincidence' routine. and of course, this entire episode ended on a pretty sour note for marc. even though he tried to shrug it off in the moment, this incident did come with consequences for him:

which, yeah. lot's to be said here, lots to be said. but let's return to the actual point of the post, the mind games

in the end marc did do a rather nice salvage job in the race, p11 to p2 - and fabio didn't win the race, which I'm sure was appreciated. here's a nicely in-depth description of the incident that I'm going to liberally steal excerpts from. it's a good bit of extra insight on both the episode itself and what it represented in the broader context of the dynamic between the pair of them

it's part of the established playbook when it comes to dealing with promising young talent: you try to rough them up in the races and you try to rough them up outside of them. you try to make them nervous, maybe you even try to scare them. and so the cycle continues

this is the thing, right, marc really does view all on-track sessions as time to 'work' on his rivals. he's never been focused solely on himself during these sessions - and the towing thing has never just been a matter of practicality for him. 'the race doesn't just happen on sunday' 'great riders, champions, are bullies' 'they don't just want to win, they want to rub the rest of the world's noses in it'... marc has always adopted that philosophy in his racing (and he learnt from the best). he's never been shy in his tactics of intimidation - in his efforts to undermine his rivals' confidence and make them suffer. it's all part of the game

and then, of course, there's the bit of insight we get about how marc was reportedly worried about fabio because of his talent and fearlessness... a rookie who hadn't even won a race yet. and yet marc's "been doing his best to instil fear" into fabio. unfortunately it's not always easy to spook young talent, especially when they're so very brave... it's a tricky line to toe - by marking out your rivals like that, you are also letting them implicitly know you see them as a threat. which if anything can help motivate them and make them more confident. inconvenient

anyway, l'll include some more of the description of the incident, which helps illustrate just how little effort marc was going to in attempting to hide his underhanded behaviour (and how that may have been the whole point):

inherently, right, this 'battle of nerves' is a really important element of the whole towing strategy. it's about your read of the other rider, your analysis of their character, how you think they will play the situation... how much you think they're willing to risk, how much you think they'd be motivated to just fuck you over regardless, how prepared they will be to call your bluff. and in the context of sepang 2019, with that year's title very much sealed up, marc decided that he was prepared to play this game for as long as he had to. marc had won the last five races, fabio was still searching for his first ever win... marc knew young and hungry fabio would blink before he did

which, yeah. less than ideal to engage in mind games in a way that ends up getting you injured. this whole incident does serve as a good illustration of marc's overall approach, but obviously this specific episode wasn't particularly successful or indeed wise from marc's side. all in all, it probably wasn't all that intimidating for fabio when marc crashed behind him

anyway, here's some more bits talking about how marc was perhaps not being 100% honest in his post-qualifying interview:

even though in this specific example marc did admittedly fuck it, a lot of this kind of behaviour isn't bad long-term investment because it's meant to be cumulative, where you're just consistently putting pressure on someone... as it says above, "every ounce of energy spent worrying about you is one which can't be spent on trying to go faster". so you're hoping to distract your opponents, you're hoping that this constant tension will eventually unsettle them - or that you've spent so much time studying and analysing them that you can figure out how to bother them more effectively (*coughs* 2008 *coughs again*). or maybe you just can't help yourself in messing with your opponents and sometimes it is counterproductive because you've shown them how seriously you take them as a rival. maybe sometimes it's a bit of all of those things!

on fabio's reaction:

which is a pretty friendly response, it has to be said! but anyway, of course 'if he wants to follow us we are doing a good job' is probably the most healthy and useful takeaway from the whole thing. that's the thing with bullies, isn't it, you do have to figure out a way to stand up to them. fabio might have been annoyed while marc was picking on him, but he's not picking a fight with marc after the fact. he's just making it clear that he's not been intimidated - and has bagged himself pole in the process while marc started from eleventh place. as fabio says, "it's a little bit part of the game". but it is a game, and it's one that marc has always been more than happy to play

[oceanwithinsblog]

i'm sorry but WHAT THE HELL JUST HAPPENED IN THE WHONIVERSE ??????

THIS EPISODE WAS E V E R Y T H I N G .

MISTER RTD I AM SO SORRY FOR DOUBTING YOU AND YOUR WRITING SKILLS

[namig42]

I cannot understate how far I have fallen into One Piece again over the past two weeks.

I started at the filler arc before Thriller Bark and am already at the Marineford arc. I have watched over a hundred episodes, most of them in the past week, and my brain is so fixated on this dumb anime I stopped watching for ten years because I thought I was too tired for it. Turns out a ten year hiatus makes you miss something way more than you thought you ever would.

Now I can't stop yelling about how much I love Zoro and Nami and Sanji. I cannot express enough how fucking cool and stupid I think Zoro is, and how the Impel Down arc has me SO fucking hyped. I miss the crew, but DAMN are there some good fucking fights. Bon Clay also has me crying because of how great he is, and Ivankov has been WILD.

I'm so invested again, and GODS have I fallen deep into the Zoro x Sanji ship.

No exaggeration, I have had dreams every night for a week and these two idiots have made an appearance in every single one if they weren't the main focus of the dream. I love the ship so much. It gives Shadow'zel vibes, that constant fighting but actually pining for each other the whole time. GOD it's so GOOD.

[theladyofbloodshed]

Since the beginning of May, the amount of money I get per page read on kindle unlimited has dropped significantly. If somebody reads my whole book I now get about 60p / 70 cents :-)

[puppppppppy]

Jitterbug