#There is so much story in sports

[proudnerd]

Additional story from an eagles fan. In 2012 the Philadelphia Eagles drafted Nick Foles. 2012 was an ROUGH year. Eagles went 4-12 and their head coach Andy Reid got fired. Remember Reid, he'll come up again later.

In 2013 under new head coach Chip Kelly, Foles and the Eagles did pretty well. Went 10-6 and made the playoffs...

but in 2014 Kelly traded him to the Rams for a different QB named Sam Bradford. And unfortunately for Foles the Rams head coach at the time was Jeff Fisher the renown QB killer. Like all Qbs under Fisher, Foles did not play well and was actually considering retirement after he was released after 2015.

in 2016 Foles decided to stay in the league after all as a backup QB for the chiefs under, look at that Andy Reid. While all that was going on Chip Kelly also got fired because Foles wasn't the only guy Kelly got rid of and it turns out getting rid of all your core players isn't great roster management especially when the rest of the NFL has figured out your gimmicks. So the eagles end up hiring Doug Pederson a qb coach who was previously working for, look at that! It's Andy Reid again. The eagles also trade Sam Bradford and use the picks to draft qb Carson Wentz in the 2016 draft. Wentz has a meh rookie year but shows potential so folks are hopeful for next season.

Before the 2017 season starts the eagles sign some really good free agents in the offseason. Oh and in relatively minor news they also sign a backup qb who is, guess what Nick Foles! He's back in Philadelphia. And the eagle have a fantastic 2017 season. Until we play the Rams. Who are also having a great year with new head coach Sean McVay. So it's a competitive game Carson Wentz attempts to dive in the end zone for a touchdown and due to a freak tackle Wentz tears his ACL, and the soul is torn out of eagles fans everywhere. Wentz had been eagles fans Superman that year, with him down nobody had any hope. The eagles just barely manage to hold onto the top seed, and nobody really feels overly optimistic going into the playoffs. But then they beat the Falcons. Which while Foles played alright was mostly because of the defense....but then the Vikings game happens, and suddenly Nick Foles is on fire. Eagles win 38-7, and suddenly anything is possible. The eagles go into the Super Bowl with a back up QB against Bill Belichick and Tom Brady! Who happen to be the exact same head coach and QB they played against the last time they went to the Super Bowl and lost. And Nick Foles fucking wins it! In one of the best Super Bowls ever. And for eagles fans who watched all of that develop over the course of five years it was absolutely glorious. And I didn't even get into the decades of history that came before it. Andy Reid was the longest tenured head coach in eagles history he was the head coach when the eagles lost their last Super Bowl there is SO MUCH that I could get into there.

it's kind of sad how people who dismiss sports as like distant from and duller than other forms of entertainment don't understand the narrative nature of anything involving a team or a league or any other kind of shared history. bengie molina was the giants' star catcher for four years; he caught their phenom pitcher tim lincecum to both of his cy young awards (tim would go on the record saying he felt half of each award belonged to bengie). then in 2010 he was abruptly traded to the texas rangers to make room in the giants for rookie catcher buster posey, who ended up being an utter sensation, both behind the plate and beside it; he was recognized as one of the best players in the whole mlb at the time.

the rangers and the giants won their respective leagues in the 2010 postseason to become the two contenders for the world series. molina caught for the rangers. he squatted behind his former teammates and worked to trick them and evade them and take them out. he caught while buster posey batted. he batted while tim lincecum pitched to him

[robbyykeene]

Anyway I wish this show was actually bold enough to give Miguel an arc exploring his feelings of entitlement over the captaincy spot. Throughout the show Johnny has repeatedly told Miguel that Robby is a lost cause but hey, It’s okay because he has Miguel now. That Miguel’s his champion, his Number One Boy. So how could Miguel not feel at least somewhat entitled to the captain spot? How could he not feel insecure about his place in Johnny’s life with Robby not just back in the picture, but now literally taking the number one spot? When Johnny has repeatedly put into both kids heads that when it comes to his love and attention its one vs. the other, how could there be no lingering feelings of resentment and jealousy?

[notbecauseofvictories]

it's a good thing that I've developed a pretty cast-iron sense of self-worth, because otherwise....man, my boss could do a number on me without even really trying.

[hauntingjasper]

Blind as a bat

[teafiend]

[kazzu120]

Finally got around to watching all of Love Live 10 years too late smh...

[game-on-comics]

To all the Mii's:

Do you know who Eteled is? I heard he's pretty nice unless you do a certain thing.....

[altschmerzes]

one day my wife and i are gonna compile our enormous 'this is why this is garbage and everyone who wants to kiss this author's ass should so some serious personal reflection and also read another book im fucking begging you' review of all for the g/ame and then it will be over for all of us

[beedoes-stuff]

oh to be a magical being like a certain southern vampire or a certain light magic user so i could heal my fucking sprained foot and walk again—

[kittyundercover1]

Guess who’s Imagination Movers trading cards finally arrived? 😁😁

[yo-yo-yoshiko]

Getting used to the boy before settling in for some page inking using these old sketches.

[mixelation]

fwiw, JJK does repeat/rephrase explanations as it goes on, and there's a few sections that explicitly talk about what cursed energy is & why sorcerers are rare! But also the official translation straight up translates things wrong

listen, i got 90+ chapters into the manga and was very consistently frustrated by nonsensical explanations the entire way. if i can't figure out how your magic system works without consulting hardcore fans/the wiki then i think maybe it's not "oh they just haven't explained it yet!!" or "oh, don't worry, you'll get another expository monologue!!" reader problem

[thevegetablewhichnoonedaresname]

I'm starting Mission to Zyxx Season 5 now, and I have feelings about that.

First, it generally scares me when people hype anything up at all because there is no guarantee that anyone values the exact same thing I do to the same degree. Even if I trust the creators of a thing to value something and try to do right by it, that doesn't always necessarily mean it will be successful, especially if that involves doing something wildly different than what made it good in the first place (I have been burned this way before). I guess I'm just hoping they continue the format of goofy improv shenanigans for the majority of it with something more planned and emotional in the finale if they want, like they've been doing all along. I'd think they would, and I've heard nothing bad about the ending, but I guess it still makes me nervous because I'm so close to the end and I want it so badly to stick the landing. I'm setting my expectations on the floor so I can be surprised instead of disappointed, but honestly, I don't need it to be better, I just need it to be on par with the rest.

Second, and more briefly, I'm happy it's (hopefully) ending before it has a chance to decline. I am so on board with that philosophy. But on the other hand, finishing a thing that I really, really like and knowing there's not another one out there gives me a special kind of heartache. Like, I know there will be other good media, and stuff that's good and unique in other ways, but I know for a fact that there are no other podcasts out there that have the same mix of a balance of off-the-wall improv and structured narrative, quality comedy, fantastical sci-fi setting and loveable characters, and high quality production. There are other things out there with many of those qualities, but nothing that checks every one of those boxes. It's a lightning-in-a-bottle thing that very much feels like the right people had to be in the right place at the right time to do it. Attempts to do it again would feel hollow because it had to be born out of necessity and passion and the talents of the people involved, so if you switch out the people it loses the reasons it's great, and if the same people tried to do it again it'd feel tired. That makes me so, so grateful it exists, but also so, so sad that it doesn't, and I'm 80% of the way done. When it's over, it's over.

Anyway. Now that that's all out there, I'm just gonna finish listening and have fun. Wish me luck.

[batsplat]

reading your post about vale and marc mind games bc it came up on my dash and thinking about your point about how athletes like vale must convince themselves of certain things but also know the truth. and i guess with vale’s insistence that marc was never a fan of his, that he tricked him, that everything was a lie, when there are videos from marc at age seven naming vale as his hero, videos from him at age nineteen talking about collecting vale’s bikes, etc, things that would appear as “proof” i wonder if there’s some difference between what vale has convinced himself of and the (apparent) reality/truth that exists. obviously there is no way of knowing and it’s imo harder to figure out the “truth” of an emotional and personal situation that both parties were deeply hurt by than a sporting one. but it’s interesting because in 2015 the personal and sport elements were intertwined too

(x) hm yeah, I love the subjectivity of the whole thing, how it's all founded so much around these 'emotional' truths... there's this kind of fun tension where in late 2015/early 2016 both 'sides' are attempting to prove they're right with data, hrc is promising press conferences to present conclusive evidence, everyone's waving around sheets of paper with telemetry and obsessing around helicopter shots... but you won't actually be able to prove anything one way or the other, because this isn't something that can actually be 'proven'. this is about minds and it's about hearts - you can't find conclusive evidence for what's in either of them. that doesn't mean studying the events is pointless... but it can only ever tell you so much. valentino's initial allegation was couched in the language of facts, he wanted his audience to believe that you could read marc's intentions in a few numbers. but even if marc had wanted to sabotage him, you never would have found that in those numbers... and at the end of the day, valentino was using those numbers to tell a much bigger story

this is the difference to, say, qatar 2004, right? because if you're concerning yourself with what 'really' happened at qatar, then you can find a 'truth' of sorts - it should be possible in theory to know whether sete gibernau was involved in valentino's penalty or not. how that penalty came to exist is knowable. you can still do with this information what you want, argue about what sete was attempting to achieve with his actions, argue about what valentino knew or did not know and what he chose to do with that information - but the central 'conspiracy' is one that is based on real events. what marc wanted of valentino that year, the full spectrum of possibilities from completely innocuous to ragingly malicious, is not knowable in a similar way. even marc and valentino themselves won't completely understand their own intentions that year... nobody is knowable even to themselves, right? they've narrativised this to death and back in their own heads, including what happened in the races themselves... marc and valentino both going over the events again and again, in argentina, in assen, in phillip island, in sepang, in valencia... thinking about what they did, what the other did - the level of reflection that can obscure as much as it reveals. even isolated racing events that should be relatively straightforward are still essentially ambiguous, and continue to be enthusiastically debated to this day. the protagonists hold diametrically opposed views, and even there we can only guess at what they really believe

I'll include the autobiography bit again because it really is a bit of a banger

obviously, the context itself is a different one (and if you want to read more about 2003-05 then. well here you go). but it's such a good description... especially this bit

But then again, we riders always say all sorts of things. Sometimes we believe what we say, even when it sounds crazy, other times we’re just being hopeful and, still at other times, it’s all an exercise in self-delusion. We try to convince ourselves of something, because ultimately, every time you step on the track, words don’t matter, and it’s just you, the bike and your opponents.

"at other times, it's all an exercise in self-delusion". you don't say! "we try to convince ourselves of something"... valentino does have a reasonable understanding of his own working process, I think. it's very true what you say about the intertwining of the personal and the sporting processes, and this post contains some speculation about how valentino may have also changed in how he approached interpersonal relationships to his rivals over time. if you buy into this theory, you have a shift to the purely 'professional' rivalries with casey and jorge, where he was fairly conscious and deliberate in manipulating both that dynamic and how he felt within that dynamic. giving himself a target was all well and good, but it's all part of the game, all about attempting to get a competitive edge over his new challengers... it took a bit of a perfect storm for that friendship with marc to even be possible in the first place. maybe marc and valentino would have always ended up enemies - but not in every universe do they start out as friends

of course, the main story valentino ended up telling himself was that marc was out to destroy him. now, this is very much the topic for another post, but it is broadly reasonable to argue that marc approached his rivalry with valentino differently than he did any of his others. it's also not stretching things too far to suggest that marc was perhaps a little more focused on valentino than was competitively reasonable, that he seemed to take defeats to valentino particularly poorly... further into grey areas, was marc deliberately messing with valentino specifically? did he want to beat valentino at all costs, knowing he was pushing things, knowing it might cost valentino the title? where we get into even murkier territory is the question of what marc's preferred outcome for the title that year was, and whether he was really as disinterested as he said he was. it is just around up until this area where you can still more or less get to in a reasonable way, without too much delusion required - where the theory jumps off the cliff edge is by proposing that marc was deliberately orchestrating the phillip island race in order to hand jorge the title. that bit does not work. in a way, though, it's just the conspiratorial scaffolding for an emotional truth. this 'truth' that valentino felt very strongly is that marc had it out for him. once he was convinced of that, he basically just... arranged the facts to suit this narrative, but really the phillip island thing was a lot about having something a bit more 'solid' to grasp onto. it is where he makes the leap from 'malice' to 'conspiracy'. then, he blows shit up at sepang, and obviously from then on you do have marc essentially strengthening this narrative within valentino's mind. that's where we make the step to self-delusion, right...

that being said - the childhood hero thing. "is it true that he’s been my fan? is it true that he had a poster with me in his bedroom? I would like to check." now, in all honesty, I do think valentino knows marc was a fan. this is just my personal read, but to me that line was meant to twist the knife in, rather than being completely literal. the contentious bit, right, isn't that marc at one stage was a valentino fan, it's what this means. what valentino is asserting here is that this stance of marc's, where marc still claims a particular fondness for valentino as a result of how he's always been a fan of valentino, is fundamentally dishonest. valentino knows for a fact that just having a poster of someone in their room isn't enough to stop a rivalry from eventually going sour. let's bring in another autobiography excerpt:

The funny thing is that a few years earlier, when I was fourteen I had had a poster of Biaggi in my room. It was one of many posters on my bedroom wall and it showed Biaggi on the Honda 250. Nothing strange in that: he was Italian and I supported all the Italian riders. Besides, he was an aggressive rider and I always had a lot of respect for those riders who went on the attack. But, back then, I did not know him personally. It was only when I started to listen to his interviews and read what he said in the papers that my opinion changed. With Biaggi, no matter what happened, it never seemed to be his fault, there was always something wrong with the bike or the tyres. I thought he said a lot of things that I believed simply couldn't be true.

the thing is, almost all of these riders are going to have someone on their bedroom wall - and if you're marc's age, there's a pretty good chance that someone is going to be valentino rossi. it's not even valentino's first experience with a feud starting up with someone who had once been his fan... look at casey, who repeatedly said he was a fan of his, had admired him - yes, obviously, completely different degree to marc, but the point is he still publicly said it before that rivalry turned ugly. and jorge who was both a valentino anti-fan and a fan and was kinda actively weird about the whole thing. valentino made reference to this himself in 2010 when those two and him started sniping at each other when he was out with the leg break, saying that at least they were being honest now. like... in blunt terms, if you're valentino rossi, you do kinda expect most people to be a fan of you. so many of these younger riders have some childhood photo of themselves with valentino floating around. marc wasn't particularly special in that regard. the fact that he was a valentino fan isn't why valentino felt so warmly towards him. it wouldn't have been enough in itself for valentino to treat him in any way differently from his other rivals. valentino's been in this game for too long to get sentimental over that - at the end of the day, you need to ensure you're thinking about your rivals in whatever way you need to in order to give yourself the best possible chance to win. the posters weren't the reason why valentino lowered his guard around marc. so, keeping all that in mind, would it really be thar=t hard for valentino to believe that marc was at one stage a fan of his? seriously?

there's also this from uccio in that infamous 2016 interview:

if even uccio implicitly acknowledges the poster bit isn't fake, is valentino really not going to believe that marc had a poster of him at some stage?

now, this isn't the same thing as arguing that valentino had an accurate understanding of how marc felt towards him. it's entirely plausible to say that, yes, he wasn't being entirely literal about the childhood bedroom stuff... but he also didn't get what that hero worship actually meant to marc. you can be a fan of someone and you can be A Fan, and marc was A Fan. this wasn't just a reference point for marc... this was someone he deeply admired. someone he very much idolised. it's not just 'a poster', right - showing valentino marc's childhood bedroom probably doesn't achieve that much. it's something that valentino just interprets differently... to him, this doesn't mean anything in and of itself. which he's broadly right about - except he wasn't entirely aware of what level of fandom marc was actually operating on

so, why does he say it if he's not literally doubting the existence of any posters? first of all, he's just trying to be cruel here. he knows why it stings, right - he's calling the very foundation of their relationship a lie. marc had this pretence up the whole time, and now valentino is finally forcing him to drop it. marc's being dishonest - and how better to argue his case than by saying not even the posters were real? the second reason is that it's an act of erasure. I talk in the sete post about how he does this with that rivalry... most noticeably by excluding sete almost entirely from his autobiography. here, valentino takes a slightly different approach over the years, but as the other feud with deep interpersonal repercussions it's broadly coming from the same playbook. this is the most radical way you can cut ties, right... you can argue the bond never existed in the first place. if it was all just a lie, then the relationship isn't just over - it was never really there. it's the most brutal and complete way you can burn your bridges. marc isn't just denied valentino's friendship... valentino isn't allowing him to be his fan. he's attempting to erase the continuity between them entirely, how marc isn't just his successor in literal terms of his results but also in the more abstract sense of how he modelled himself after valentino. it's this bit that indicates the finality in valentino's decision perhaps better than anything else. this is the end, in all the ways that matter most

[sysba]

well well well, if it isn't the blorbos i have been rambling about for weeks! in other words, hello i have commissioned the most wonderful most talented @gncrezan so i could have the ctos x haikyuu crossover my heart longed for. enjoy angel and rayyan being so very sport-anime-rivals coded<3 they're about to be the most unbeatable pair just you wait!! + bonus teeny tobin who is very worried about the freshman's mental state lol i love jocks so much they're all insane or silly (and angel is both) 🥰

ps. rayyan beloved belongs to collegetennisoriginstory! which btw-- go read because it's the best thing ever

[b4kuch1n]

Your swsh art always makes me want to replay the game because i love it and its my favorite pokemon game and every time i play another pokemon game i think of it how i miss certain elements from swsh. Then i boot up the game and im once again caught in the 1 hour 40 minutes hand held intro and im like ah- now i remember why i have been playing other pokemon games instead of this one. Happy (late?) birthday!

you don't want to listen to hop? you don't want to hear him teach you about type matchups? you don't wanna let him cheer u on...? 🥺 waa....?