#also I googled it and it looks like there are other people that do a shovelware sunday so i would need to pick a different name for it lol

[hidden-but]

This is a bit of a off topic, but I'm gonna talk a bit more about being online in the EU and GDPR and storing user data via cookies:

So, what this means in practice, is that a website can only keep your data in cookies if they are necessary for it's function (like storing items in your eshop cart). If the website wishes to collect any other data via cookies, it has to ask for your permission/consent. Which leads to: the cookie consent pop-ups.

1587 partners???? Holy shit are you okay?

Usually, these days most of european websites either have on only "legitimate interest", or they have a Reject All button, but yeah, sometimes you have to click down the entire list and turn them off one by one:

And yeah, it's kinda annoying, and sometimes i do click Accept All because i'm in a hurry and only need the website for one specific thing or smth, but on the other hearing that cheerful phase "we and our (number over a hundred) partners care about your privacy" really makes me go Nope, you're not getting anything at all.

And like, this pop-up shows up at every website you visit for the first time in your browser (or every time, if you're strict on deleting cookie history). Literally every webpage that you visit is required to ask for consent - which occasionally leads to This Page Cannot Be Displayed In the EU error messages.

Anyways, everything that was said about AO3 above is both true as far as I can tell, and unrelated to this: AO3 only collects necessary cookies, and stores them in the US, where it falls under the relevant laws.

But you know who also stores your data in the US? The webpage GDPR.eu :

But they also promise they can delete your data anytime, if you ask them to, as required under GDPR.

(also fuck google's global monopoly)

So, yeah, this has been a view into how the internet looks like in the EU and how it differs from the US. Kudos to AO3 for trying to be clear about this and to previous people in this post for putting things into a broader context.

I've seen a number of people worried and concerned about this language on Ao3s current "agree to these terms of service" page. The short version is:

Don't worry. This isn't anything bad. Checking that box just means you forgive them for being US American.

Long version: This text makes perfect sense if you're familiar with the issues around GDPR and in particular the uncertainty about Privacy Shield and SCCs after Schrems II. But I suspect most people aren't, so let's get into it, with the caveat that this is a Eurocentric (and in particular EU centric) view of this.

The basic outline is that Europeans in the EU have a right to privacy under the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), an EU directive (let's simplify things and call it an EU law) that regulates how various entities, including companies and the government, may acquire, store and process data about you.

The list of what counts as data about you is enormous. It includes things like your name and birthday, but also your email address, your computers IP address, user names, whatever. If an advertiser could want it, it's on the list.

The general rule is that they can't, unless you give explicit permission, or it's for one of a number of enumerated reasons (not all of which are as clear as would be desirable, but that's another topic). You have a right to request a copy of the data, you have a right to force them to delete their data and so on. It's not quite on the level of constitutional rights, but it is a pretty big deal.

In contrast, the US, home of most of the world's internet companies, has no such right at a federal level. If someone has your data, it is fundamentally theirs. American police, FBI, CIA and so on also have far more rights to request your data than the ones in Europe.

So how can an American website provide services to persons in the EU? Well… Honestly, there's an argument to be made that they can't.

US websites can promise in their terms and conditions that they will keep your data as safe as a European site would. In fact, they have to, unless they start specifically excluding Europeans. The EU even provides Standard Contract Clauses (SCCs) that they can use for this.

However, e.g. Facebook's T&Cs can't bind the US government. Facebook can't promise that it'll keep your data as secure as it is in the EU even if they wanted to (which they absolutely don't), because the US government can get to it easily, and EU citizens can't even sue the US government over it.

Despite the importance that US companies have in Europe, this is not a theoretical concern at all. There have been two successive international agreements between the US and the EU about this, and both were struck down by the EU court as being in violation of EU law, in the Schrems I and Schrems II decisions (named after Max Schrems, an Austrian privacy activist who sued in both cases).

A third international agreement is currently being prepared, and in the meantime the previous agreement (known as "Privacy Shield") remains tentatively in place. The problem is that the US government does not want to offer EU citizens equivalent protection as they have under EU law; they don't even want to offer US citizens these protections. They just love spying on foreigners too much. The previous agreements tried to hide that under flowery language, but couldn't actually solve it. It's unclear and in my opinion unlikely that they'll manage to get a version that survives judicial review this time. Max Schrems is waiting.

So what is a site like Ao3 to do? They're arguably not part of the problem, Max Schrems keeps suing Meta, not the OTW, but they are subject to the rules because they process stuff like your email address.

Their solution is this checkbox. You agree that they can process your data even though they're in the US, and they can't guarantee you that the US government won't spy on you in ways that would be illegal for the government of e.g. Belgium. Is that legal under EU law? …probably as legal as fan fiction in general, I suppose, which is to say let's hope nobody sues to try and find out.

But what's important is that nothing changed, just the language. Ao3 has always stored your user name and email address on servers in the US, subject to whatever the FBI, CIA, NSA and FRA may want to do it. They're just making it more clear now.

[alexanderwales]

One of the things they went over when I took linguistics was the "euphemism treadmill", the tendency of initially-clinical or neutral words to undergo pejoration to the point that someone felt the need to replace the pejorated word with one that was clinical or neutral. And then of course the process of pejoration would start again.

The best example of this were words related to what we now call intellectual disability. In the past, "idiot", "simpleton", "moron", "feeble-minded", and "imbecile" were all relatively clinical terms. (This is one of those things that's often repeated, but if you go looking at newspapers from the 1920s, you do kind of wonder whether the negative connotations were just completely acceptable then, especially when they're talking about the successes of sterilizing the feeble-minded.)

The reason that pejoration happens is that while the word changes, the societal attitude toward the underlying thing most often does not, and so if they change the word and declare that this new word is totally neutral, then society's negative view is just going to keep making those words take on bad connotations. This will happen even with the most anodyne descriptions, like "mentally handicapped", which Google will inform you with a little warning is offensive and dated.

The linguistics class I took in the early 2000s spent a little time on the word "retarded", which by then was well on its way to complete pejoration (federal law was changed in 2010, from "mental retardation" to "intellectual disability"), but had not reached the point when it was "the r-slur". If I recall correctly, this was when "mentally handicapped" was still relatively in vogue, and sitting in that classroom I had thought that "retard" was going to go the way of "moron", a word that was used exclusively in a disparaging way. I thought it would be about as acceptable as calling someone an imbecile, I guess, which is impolite but which doesn't rise to the level of "slur".

But no, I was wrong. The euphemism treadmill will probably continue because we have not done anything about the underlying condition (that people with intellectual disabilities are less valued and looked down on), but "retard" has now become a slur, even if every other fucking word for low intelligence is still in common use as a disparagement.

It's wild how much you can see people dancing around this. I said above that Google gives an "offensive and outdated" tag to the term "mentally handicapped", but they also give that to "retarded". However, if you go to "imbecile" they don't give that tag. To save you the trouble of looking it up:

noun: imbecile; plural noun: imbeciles

a stupid person.

archaic a person of low intelligence.

Ah, lovely. So it's okay, because it just means "a stupid person", it used to mean "a person of low intelligence", but it doesn't mean that any more, so ... not offensive, I guess?

Except hold on, what does "stupid" mean again?

adjective: stupid; comparative adjective: stupider; superlative adjective: stupidest

having or showing a great lack of intelligence or common sense.

Oh, okay, I see. So in the archaic sense "imbecile" meant a person of low intelligence, but now it means a person who has a lack of intelligence. Totally different, very understandable. Nevermind that "imbecile" was pejorated in the same way that "retard" was, and that using a negative word to refer to someone who is lacking intelligence is basically the same thing.

I think if you want to fight against the pejorative use of the word "retard", you should probably be fighting against a lot more words, and you should definitely be fighting against the societal view that people with lower intelligence are lesser. You can fight the language issue all you want, but it's just going to lead to more cycles of pejoration. There's no way that switching over to saying "person with a learning disability" (as it seems the UK bureaucrats now favor) is going to somehow end it.

Personally, I'm the kind of person who just goes with the flow. I think people with intellectual disabilities are just as much people as anyone else, deserving of care and compassion, but I also value intelligence at least as much as my surrounding society does, and while I do make attempts to temper my language, saying that an idea is stupid rather than casting contempt on a person who is stupid, that's a mighty fine line to tow, and ... people just don't care. If I call a politician a moron, no one will bat an eye. I will refrain from saying the r-word, because people get mad at you when you do that. I think if I got hit in the head tomorrow and became intellectually disabled, I would be more or less happy with this.

I don't have a strong principled stance, more a stance of "come on, what are we doing here". Euphemism treadmill goes brrrr, language gonna language, I just wish the whole linguistic and social process didn't feel like some out of control machine that wasn't actually doing anything for anyone, and that people would pay more attention to the underlying mechanisms for how/why pejoration actually works. Changing the word is not going to usher in an era of understanding and equality, we've proven that, haven't we?

[sillylotrpolls]

About Reblog Graphs

Have you ever clicked on the "reblog graph" button of a post? I think they're one of the... well, maybe not greatest features on tumblr ever (polls are probably better), but they're still pretty darn neat.

I want to show some cool patterns I noticed on some recent posts of mine, but first I'll explain how reblog graphs work so you can more easily follow along.

This is pretty long with a bunch of pictures, so click the cut to read more.

How reblog graphs work

If you've never done so before, I invite you to click the notes button on this or any other post and then the icon with four circles. You will then see a bunch of dots connected by lines.

For example, if you click the graph for the "blorbo in Elvish" post, you get something like this:

Now, let's zoom in a bit. You can do this by using the mouse wheel and clicking and dragging around the graph until it's showing what you want. (I don't know how it works on mobile, but presumably it's similar to using Google maps?)

This next screenshot is the bit in the lower right of the graph shown above. However, the graph may not always display in the same way because reblog graphs are re-generated each time you click the "reblog graph" button.

Here you can see that I'm viewing the root post, which is the original post made by me. It's indicated by a circle with a dot inside. You can also see that six people reblogged that post. Each reblog shows as a dot with a line connecting it to the post it was reblogged from.

Now here's a cool thing about reblog graphs: they're interactive! You can click on any dot and see the post it represents and the reblog chain that led to it.

For example, clicking this dot that has several lines emanating out from it shows that it is "2 reblogs deep" and was posted by @cycas.

Got it? Close enough? Cool, now let me show you some neat things I noticed. :D

The Swedish Chef poll and very popular bloggers

My polls tend to average between 500 and 2000 votes, depending on subject matter. The Swedish Chef poll, however, took off and eventually garnered over 22,000 votes. How did that happen? A very popular blog reblogged it about five days in.

Initially, the graph looked like this. (This is the first 200 reblogs.) There's nothing unusual here. You can see that the root post had several reblogs, and that there's another cluster developing around a post by @zagreus. There are also several reblog chains where just one person reblogs someone else's reblog. Some of these chains peter out, while others find their way onto the dash of more popular bloggers, creating clusters.

A quick note about "popularity"

Yes, yes, it's all about "popular." However, it's not just about having a bunch of followers. What's more important is that the "popular" person reblogging your post has followers who are specifically interested in your post.

For instance, if I, @sillylotrpolls, make a poll about LazyTown, it's probably not going to get very many reblogs because my followers aren't here for that. However, if @silly-lazytown-polls reblogs the poll, that reblog might then get quite a lot of reblogs itself. It's not that silly-lazytown-polls has more followers than sillylotrpolls, it's that it has more followers specifically interested in LazyTown content. Make sense?

Back to the Swedish Chef poll

The poll eventually got over 5,000 reblogs. Since you can only add 200 reblogs to the graph at a time, you can roughly see how a post spread over time.

With 600 reblogs loaded, a new cluster bursts onto the scene. This is @bunjywunjy, who reblogged the post from @beecreeper who reblogged it from @soggypotatoes who reblogged the original.

Bunjywunjy didn't add any tags or comments, so I didn't even notice at first because it didn't show in my activity feed. However, I did notice a sudden uptick in notes on the post, which caused me to investigate. It had been five days since I posted the poll, and usually polls that are going to take off do so sooner than that.

By continuing to click the "load more reblogs" button I can see how the post further spread, especially from bunjywunjy's post.

When the post reached @beggars-opera (whose icon I am somewhat proud to announce I identified on sight), they added a screenshot of @stylishanachronism 's tags which said:

# all of these are incorrect it's the 'meat's back on the menu boys!' scene

This would become the dominant version of the post as it further spread. Interestingly, this was the only reblog of stylishanachronism's reblog. Literally thousands of people loved their tags and agreed with them, but they quite plausibly never saw it unless they specifically went looking.

By 3,200 reblogs, you can see even bigger clusters developing. @thebibliosphere shows up 10 reblogs deep, and leads to yet another cluster via @teaboot (12 reblogs deep).

Eventually, with all 5,371 reblogs loaded, the reblog graph looks like this:

Like I said: neat. :D

Cool, but if you've seen one, you've seen them all - right?

So what prompted this (extremely long) post was actually the reblog graph for my poll on inspirational LotR quotes.

Here's the reblog graph with 200 reblogs loaded:

And here's the graph with all 1,890 reblogs loaded:

It's just one big cluster around the root post. I've never seen that before!! Almost everyone reblogging this post saw it either because they follow this blog, saw it in the #lotr tags, or because their non-influencer friend reblogged it. (Or maybe it was in some kind of algorithm/the explore feed, but I have nearly zero experience with those.)

And this wasn't just a small post. This poll got over 15,000 votes and more than 4,000 notes. That puts it in the top 10 polls for this blog.

What does it mean? I have no idea. I would really like to know! But really, I got nothing. If you have a theory for why this particular poll should result in a reblog graph like this, I would very much like to hear it.

Orphan clusters

To round things off, I'd like to show another interesting facet of reblog graphs: orphan clusters.

This blog's current undisputed poll champion is the fmk wheel poll. That's not really a surprise, as it combined sex with a fun game where you just had to tell everyone what you got, which meant either a reply or a reblog. So it spread pretty far.

However, if you look at the graph, there's something odd going on.

This is with just 200 reblogs loaded:

Notice how some of the dots don't connect to the root post? That's because somewhere along the chain, a reblog was deleted.

This cluster in the bottom left got pretty big! This screenshot is at 800 reblogs loaded. The missing link is from a blog called @gendertaliban that doesn't exist anymore, as near as I can tell. That makes it impossible to trace the full path of any of these reblogs.

In conclusion

This concludes today's deep dive into a tumblr feature you probably never paid any attention to. Admittedly, there's not a huge use for it outside of determining which of your mutuals is an "influencer," and they get quite difficult to navigate after loading about 1000 reblogs, but I hope you enjoyed staring at dots and lines with me. :)

[acknowledge-reigns]

Rivals With Benefits | Jey x Black!fem OC (18+)

Description: Roman and Iris' wedding day arrives.

Chapter: 5/5

Face Claim: Ariana Debose.

Warnings: Flirting, Teasing, Daddy Kink, Dom/sub, petnames, praise, possessiveness, p in v.

This is set in an AU in which the og bloodline reunited before wrestlemania 40 and Roman retained. This is the Jey x Jax sequel to Swipe Right. As always my stories are NOT about real people and does not reflect their character. While there is not smut in Chapter 1, there will be in others. This is very much an 18+ BDSM based romance with some comedy thrown in there. This particular story features Jey as a Daddy Dom (Not Mysterio, you fucking nerds 😂) google if necessary and if this isn't for you, please scroll. You have been warned.

Word count: 3,570

My masterlist can be found here.

🏷 Taglist - @xbriexx @acute-crashout-jeyuso @romansvrse @justazzi @vampygomez @mselenalovebug @lov3rla03 @jstarr86 @mindairy @biscochito23 @yana3sworld

As the day of the wedding approached, the anticipation and excitement grew to fever pitch. Everyone was in a whirlwind of preparations, from picking out final details to ensuring everything was perfect for the big day.

And for Jey, it was all happening at a time when his feelings for Jax were reaching a boiling point.

He found himself spending even more time with her, helping with last minute details and basking in her presence.

Every smile, every touch, every laugh was like a dagger to his heart.

But he couldn't help himself. He was drawn to her like a moth to a flame, unable to resist the pull of his growing affection. But she wouldn't want him back. Not truly.

Despite the growing tension between them, Jey did his best to maintain a facade of normalcy.

He tried to hide his true feelings, joking and laughing with the rest of the wedding party as they prepared for the big day.

But every time he caught Jax's eye, he felt a pang in his chest. He was aching to tell her how he truly felt, but the fear of rejection kept him silent.

As the hours ticked by, the time for the wedding drew near.

The venue was decorated beautifully, and the air was thick with excitement and joy.

Jey watched as Jax interacted with guests

He couldn't help but feel a bit of jealousy regarding all this wedding stuff. He was happy for his cousin getting to marry Iris, the love of his life but he also wondered.. when will it be his turn?

As the wedding ceremony began, Jey took his place at the altar, next to Jimmy near Roman.

He tried to focus on the moment, but his eyes kept drifting towards Jax.

She looked absolutely stunning in her bridesmaid dress, and he couldn't help but feel his heart flutter at the sight of her. She was beautiful. She was sweet, kind, soft when she felt safe and comfortable. He was her safe and comfortable and he wanted her more than anything.

The reception was in full swing, with music and laughter filling the air.

Jey sat at the table with his friends and family, trying to enjoy the festivities.

But he couldn't shake the feeling of longing that lingered in his heart.

Every so often, he would catch himself stealing glances at Jax, admiring her from afar.

As the night went on, the dance floor filled up, and the party reached its peak.

Jey sat at the table, watching everyone have fun, feeling a mix of emotions.

As the music played on, Jax spotted Jey sitting alone at the table.

She made her way over to him, a smile on her face. "Hey," she said, her voice soft and sweet. "You're not dancing?"

Jey's heart skipped a beat as he heard her voice. He looked up at her, trying to keep his composure.

"Nah, not really in the mood," he replied, forcing a casual tone.

"Well.. We pulled off a great wedding. Maybe we do make a really good team." Jax smiled, "I might have to take Jimmy's job as your tag team partner." She joked.

Jey couldn't help but chuckle at her joke.

"Yeah, I suppose you do make a good tag team partner," he said, trying to hide the hint of sadness in his voice.

Jax noticed the hidden emotion in his tone, she reached out and touched his hand gently.

"You okay, Jey?" she asked, her voice filled with concern.

Jey's heart fluttered at her touch, and he felt a rush of emotions surge through him.

He wanted to say something, anything, to let her know how he felt. But the fear of rejection kept him silent.

Instead, he just nodded, unable to meet her gaze.

The moment stretched on, and the weight of Jey's unspoken feelings became too much to bear.

He couldn't keep them bottled up any longer.

"Jax, there's something I need to tell you," he said, his voice barely above a whisper.

Jax's heart skipped a beat as she heard the seriousness in his voice.

She sat down next to him, her eyes locked on his face.

"What is it?" she asked, her own voice filled with a mix of anticipation and concern.

Jey took a deep breath, gathering his courage.

"I... I've been feeling things lately," he began, struggling to find the right words. "Feelings I never thought I'd feel."

Jax's heart was pounding in her chest as she listened to Jey's confession.

She could sense the vulnerability in his voice, and it was both thrilling and terrifying at the same time.

"I can't stop thinking about you," Jey continued, his voice trembling slightly. "You're always on my mind, and it's driving me crazy."

Jax's eyes widened in surprise as she heard Jey's words.

She hadn't expected this, and her heart was racing with a mix of emotions.

"Jey, I..." she started to say, but she couldn't find the words.

"I know our first date was a trainwreck, i know we fight like cats and dogs.. But if you just give me one do-over.." Jey says.

Jax was stunned into silence for a moment, her mind reeling from the confession.

She could hardly believe what she was hearing, but the vulnerability and sincerity in Jey's voice was undeniable.

After a moment, she found her voice again.

"One do-over?" she repeated, her eyes locked on his.

Jey nodded, his heart in his throat.

"I want to do things right this time," he said, his voice filled with determination. "I want to take you on a proper date, without the drama and without fighting."

Jax's heart skipped a beat again as she imagined the possibilities.

A proper date, with Jey. No fighting, no tension, just the two of them, enjoying each other's company.

She would have never thought about giving him a second chance before, but now...

"Okay," she said, her voice barely above a whisper.

She was surprised by how quickly she had agreed, but there was no denying the flutter in her chest at the thought of being his.

Jey's eyes lit up with a mix of surprise and hope at her agreement.

"Really?" he asked, unable to hide the excitement in his voice.

Jax bit her lip, feeling a rush of emotions swirling within her.

She knew that she had been denying her feelings for him for a long time, but now that he had confessed his own feelings, it was impossible to keep them hidden any longer.

"Jey," she said, taking a deep breath. "I've been falling for you too."

Jey's heart soared at her confession, and he felt a wave of relief wash over him.

"You have?" he asked, his voice filled with wonder.

He couldn't believe it, but he knew that she wouldn't have said it if it wasn't true.

"I want you. I want you to cuddle, to watch movies with. I want you to take care of me. To be my Daddy Dom. If you'll have me." Jax responds the last part in a whisper. Not that anyone was paying attention to them, or could hear them over the music for that matter.

Jey's heart rate quickened even more at her confession, and his eyes widened in surprise.

He had never imagined that she would say something like that.

But as he looked at her, he could see the vulnerability in her eyes, the desire and longing that mirrored his own.

"I want all of that too," he whispered back, his voice filled with a newfound tenderness.

The tension between them was palpable, the air thick with desire and anticipation.

Jey's eyes darkened as he looked at her, his thoughts running wild with possibilities.

"Are you sure about this?" he asked, his voice low and gravelly.

Jax nodded, her heart racing with excitement and anticipation.

"I've never been more sure of anything in my life," she said, her voice barely above a whisper.

Jey reached out and gently pulled her into his lap, his arms wrapping around her waist possessively.

He looked into her eyes, his gaze intense and full of desire.

"Then I'm all yours," he said, his voice a husky whisper.

➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶

Meanwhile, Lele was walking through the crowded wedding reception when she suddenly collided with someone, causing them to spill a drink all over her.

She looked up, annoyed and irritated, to see Zilla, Roman's younger cousin if she wasn't mistaken.

"Watch where you're going," Lele snapped, looking down at the mess on her dress.

The alcohol was already soaking into the fabric, staining it with a large wet spot.

Zilla, to Lele's irritation, seemed completely unfazed by the incident.

He just shrugged and said, "Damn girl, my bad."

Lele scowled at his nonchalance, feeling even more annoyed that he didn't seem to care about the damage he had caused.

"Your bad? That's all you have to say?" she said, crossing her arms in frustration.

Zilla chuckled and said, "Relax, it's just a dress. I'll buy you a new one."

"I don't need your money. I don't need you to buy me anything! Now if you'll excuse me.." Lele said.

Zilla raised an eyebrow, amused by her rejection.

"Feisty one, aren't you?" he said, his eyes roaming over her body.

"Oh fuck off" Lele rolled her eyes and walked away.

Zilla watched her walk away, a smirk playing on his lips.

He couldn't deny that he was intrigued by her attitude. Yeah, he wanted that...

➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶

The reception was drawing to a close, and Jey and Jax had spent the rest of the evening together, chatting and enjoying each other's company.

They had danced together, laughed together, and stolen countless kisses. It was the most perfect evening they could have imagined. He'd even been able to almost keep up with her durring their dance, despite Jax's years of professional training.

After saying goodbye to their friends and family, Jey and Jax made their way to his car.

The drive to his house was quiet and intimate, the two of them lost in their own thoughts as they reveled in the night's events.

As they arrived at his house, Jey turned to her with a smirk.

"We're finally alone," he said, his voice low and suggestive.

Jax felt a shiver run down her spine at his words, her heart rate quickening in anticipation.

She looked up at him, her eyes filled with desire and longing.

"And what do you plan on doing with that fact?" she asked, her voice sultry.

Jey smirked and leaned in closer, his breath hot against her ear.

"I have a few ideas," he whispered, his hand slowly running up her thigh.

Jax's breath hitched at his touch, her body responding instantly to his gentle caress.

She could feel the heat building between them, the tension in the air growing thicker with each passing moment.

Jey continued to tease her, his hand slowly moving higher up her thigh, his fingers tracing lazy circles on her skin.

He could feel her body trembling beneath his touch, and he knew that she was aching for more.

As they finally entered the house, Jax's patience had reached its limit.

She grabbed Jey by the collar and pulled him into a deep, passionate kiss, unable to wait any longer for what she had been craving all night.

Jey responded eagerly, his arms wrapping around her as he deepened the kiss. He pressed her against the wall, his body pressed tightly against hers as he explored her mouth with his tongue.

The kiss grew more intense, their hands roaming each other's bodies as they both gave in to their desire.

Jey began to trail kisses down her neck, his teeth gently nipping at her skin as he made his way to her collarbone.

Jax tilted her head back, giving him better access to her sensitive skin.

She moaned softly, her fingers tangling in his hair as he continued to tease her with his lips and tongue.

"Go on and strip for Daddy, baby." Jey commanded.

Jax's breath hitched at his command, her eyes widening with excitement.

She looked at him with a mixture of submission and desire, she turns glancing back over her shoulder silently asking him to help with the zipper on her dress.

Jey chuckled at her silent request, his hands moving to the zipper on the back of her dress.

He slowly unzipped it, his fingers grazing her skin as he did so.

As the dress loosened around her body, he could feel her shudder with anticipation.

With the dress now unzipped, Jax stepped out of it, standing before Jey in nothing but her black lace lingerie.

She looked at him with a mix of vulnerability and confidence, knowing that he was completely in control.

Jey's eyes raked over her body, taking in the sight of her lingerie-clad curves.

He let out a low growl of approval, his hands tracing the contours of her body as he pulled her closer.

"You're so beautiful," he murmured, his lips finding her ear once more.

He began to nibble at her earlobe, his hands moving down to her hips as he pulled her flush against him.

Jax felt her body molding against his, their skin pressing together as they held each other tightly.

She could feel the heat radiating off of him, his arousal evident through the fabric of his pants.

Jey's hands moved lower, his fingers tracing the edge of her panties.

He teased her for a moment, running his fingers along the fabric, before he suddenly grabbed her ass and squeezed it firmly.

Jax clung to him, her fingers digging into his shoulders as he continued to touch her in ways that drove her wild.

Jax let out a whimper, her body trembling as he nibbled at her neck.

She wanted him so badly, she was practically aching for him to take her right then and there.

Jey chuckled softly, enjoying the way she was responding to his every touch.

He pulled back slightly, looking at her with a mixture of desire and dominance.

"Bedroom. Now," he commanded, his voice low and authoritative.

Jax didn't hesitate, she followed his command immediately, moving quickly towards the bedroom.

She could feel his eyes on her as she walked, her hips swaying with each step as she knew he was enjoying the view.

Once they reached the bedroom, Jey wasted no time in pulling her close and began to kiss her again, his lips moving against hers in a frenzied pace.

His hands roamed over her body, exploring every inch of her skin as he claimed her mouth with his.

Jax melted into the kiss, surrendering herself completely to his touch.

She wrapped her arms around his neck, pulling him closer as she moaned into his mouth.

Jey broke the kiss, his lips trailing down her jawline to her neck.He began to nibble at her sensitive skin, leaving small marks as he went.

"You're mine," he whispered between kisses, his voice low and possessive.

"All mine," he repeated, his hands roaming down to her thighs as he began to lift her up.

He pinned her against the wall with his body, holding her up as he continued to tease her neck with his lips and tongue.

Jax wrapped her legs around his waist, holding on tightly as he pressed her against the wall.

She let out a soft moan as he nibbled at a particularly sensitive spot on her neck, her body arching into his touch.

Jey broke away from her neck, looking up at her with a smirk. He pulled back slightly, his eyes fixed on her as he sat her on her feet and hooked his fingers into the waistband of her panties. He tugged them down slowly, letting them fall to the floor before his hands moved to her bra.

He unclasped it, letting it fall away to reveal her bare breasts.

Jax stood before him, completely naked and vulnerable.

She felt exposed, yet also empowered by the way he was looking at her, his gaze filled with desire and lust.

Jey's hands returned to her body, caressing her bare skin as he began to explore her curves.

He traced the lines of her hips, the swell of her breasts, and the dip of her waist.

"So perfect," he murmured, his fingers trailing down to her inner thigh.

"Strip me," he commanded.

He leaned back against the wall, his eyes locked on hers as he waited for her to obey his command.

Jax felt a shiver of excitement run down her spine at his command.

She moved quickly, her hands making quick work of his clothes as she removed them piece by piece.

Once he was naked, Jey's eyes raked over her body, his gaze taking in every inch of her skin.

He looked at her with an intense hunger, his desire for her clear as he took in the sight of her standing before him, completely naked and ready for him.

Jey stepped forward and lifted her up effortlessly, carrying her to the bed before laying her down on it.

He climbed on top of her, settling himself between her legs as he began to kiss and nibble at her neck again.

Jax moaned softly as he continued to tease her, her body arching up into his touch yet again.

She could feel his erection pressing against her, a reminder of the pleasure that was about to come.

Jey began to kiss his way down her body, his lips trailing over her skin as he made his way to her chest.

He paused there, taking one of her nipples into his mouth and sucking gently.

"Mm.. Daddy!" Jax let out a gasp as he sucked at her nipple, the sensation sending a wave of pleasure through her body.

She could feel herself growing more aroused with each passing moment, her hips moving instinctively against him.

He released her nipple, continuing his path down her body, leaving a trail of kisses in his wake.

Jey positioned himself between her legs, his gaze locked on hers as he slowly pushed himself inside her.

Jax gasped as he entered her, the sensation of him filling her up completely causing her to arch her back and moan.

She wrapped her legs around his waist, pulling him closer as she adjusted to the feeling of him inside her.

Jey let out a low groan as he began to move, his hips rolling against hers in a slow, steady rhythm.

He looked down at her, watching her face as he moved inside her, enjoying the way her eyes fluttered shut and her lips parted in pleasure.

As they moved together, their bodies entwined, the room filled with the sound of their moans and gasps.

Jax clung to him tightly, her fingers digging into his tatted back as she met each of his thrusts with her own movements.

The pleasure built steadily between them, their bodies growing hotter and more desperate with each passing moment.

Jax could feel herself nearing the edge, her breath coming in short gasps as she clung to the last shreds of her control.

Jey sensed that she was close, and he quickened his pace, driving into her harder and faster.

He leaned down to whisper in her ear, his voice hoarse with desire.

"Let go, babygirl," he urged, his breath hot against her skin. "Come on Daddy's dick."

His words were like a trigger, and with a shuddering gasp, Jax let go.

She arched her back and clenched around him, her body convulsing with pleasure as she cried out his name.

Jey felt her clench around him, the sensation sending him over the edge as well.

He let out a deep groan, burying his face in her neck as he thrust into her one final time, spilling himself inside her.

They both lay there, panting and sweaty, as they came down from their high.

Jey collapsed on top of her, burying his face in the crook of her neck as he tried to catch his breath.

Jax wrapped her arms around him, holding him close as they both lay there in the afterglow.

She ran her fingers through his hair, a contented smile on her face as she savored the feeling of his weight on top of her.

Jey eventually rolled off of her, lying on his back next to her.

He draped an arm around her, pulling her close and holding her against his chest as they both slowly regained their composure.

They lay there in silence for a while, simply enjoying the closeness and the quiet intimacy of the moment.

Jey gently traced his fingers up and down her spine, his touch gentle and soothing.

Jax snuggled closer to him, resting her head on his chest and listening to the steady beat of his heart.

She could feel herself growing sleepy, the combination of their intense lovemaking and the warmth of his embrace lulling her into a peaceful state of relaxation.

"So..." Jax said

"So..." Jey echoed, his voice still a little hoarse from their earlier activities.

He caressed her, his touch affectionate and possessive.

"That was quite the main event, Jey Uso.." She smirked

Jey chuckled softly, a smirk spreading across his face as well.

"I aim to please," he said, his voice dripping with satisfaction.

Previous Chapter

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Coming Soon!

[covid-safer-hotties]

Also preserved in our archive

I have no clue how this guy hasn't divorced his wife. If my partner looked at me with disgust about anything that wasn't literally disgusting, I'd be googling "divorce lawyer."

by Sam Williams

A week ago, my wife and I went to John Lewis to look at air fryers. As we entered the store, I put on an FFP3 mask because of Covid. My wife looked at me in disgust and said, “Oh, you’re wearing a mask?” I replied, “Yes. There’s a lot of Covid around, and I don’t want it. Do you?”

She responded, “Well, the trouble is, I’m not wearing a mask”.

I said, “Yes, I can see that. I wish you would. The trouble is, every time I’ve caught Covid, it’s been from you. I’m disabled with long COVID, and every time I get reinfected, it makes me really, really ill”.

So here’s my question: does my wife not care?

I want to use this piece to spark a debate about who we are as people. Are we kind and virtuous, or are we selfish and indifferent? Writing an article about what stops people from wearing masks, while I live with the pain caused by my wife not masking, feels like an oddly meta activity.

That’s right, folks: it was probably my wife who gave me Covid in the first place. Although, to be fair, neither of us knew about masking or long Covid back then.

The case for masks amid rising Covid I need people to wear masks or ensure clean air so it’s safe for me to go out—especially in healthcare settings. Yet, most people refuse. I asked my wife why she doesn’t wear a mask, and she said, “There’s no point, because nobody else does.”

I understand the futility in her statement. Many people don’t wear masks simply because they don’t care or because they think Covid is over.

If my wife were a cruel or unkind person, it would be easier to accept her refusal to wear a mask. But in my experience, even many kind people—even those on the political Left—can be cruel when it comes to disabled individuals.

Although my wife has struggled with my disability, she is generally a kind person. In my autistic brain, it seems perfectly logical that she should wear a mask to protect me from airborne viruses. Yet, logic loses when it comes to personal choices and disability.

Misconceptions about Covid and masks People think Covid is “just a cold.” Some even believe masks themselves make you ill. I think people don’t mask because of ableism and because they’ve been conditioned to associate masks with the pandemic itself.

It’s the same conditioning that leads them to blame lockdowns and vaccines for Covid, rather than recognising these measures were designed to mitigate its spread.

When people see me in a mask, they’re reminded of the acute phase of the pandemic. My presence confronts them with an uncomfortable truth: their refusal to mask contributes to the deaths and disabling of others. It reveals they may not be as caring as they like to think.

I wish more people would remember the Covid dead and choose to wear a mask to prevent further loss of life.

Why people don’t mask The biggest reason, I believe, is a failure of public health communication over wearing a mask. The government declared Covid “over,” and most people still trust what they’re told. Many would resume masking if asked, but the government is too afraid of the right-wing media and too indifferent to disability to make that request.

Then there’s the pervasive idea of “health supremacy”:

The belief that only people with pre-existing conditions get long Covid.

The notion that a “healthy” immune system can fight off the virus.

The argument that we don’t need vaccines or other preventative measures.

Some even suggest that “living your best life” and going out for brunch are more important than protecting loved ones. The low mortality rate of Covid is used as justification, with a dismissive attitude towards the elderly and those with long Covid.

Many fail to consider the quality of life endured by those with long Covid or the rising number of children affected. Parents, it seems, don’t care enough about their kids, or they’re unaware that long COVID in children has doubled in the past year.

There’s also peer pressure and groupthink. No one wants to stand out by wearing a mask. “If it were really unsafe, wouldn’t everyone else wear one? Wouldn’t the authorities tell us to mask up?”

When I do convince others to wear masks, it’s usually a flimsy surgical one—barely adequate protection.

The personal cost of not wearing a Covid mask If we continue as we are, everyone will eventually develop long Covid. Those who still mask are only delaying the inevitable because we’re so outnumbered.

I know people who’ve lost friendships and family connections over masking. Others restrict their contact with loved ones to stay safe. Some have even been lied to by family members about masking.

And all because people must have brunch.

It feels grossly unfair to be forced to choose between family and health. For me, it’s not just about Covid. With a weakened immune system, other airborne viruses are just as harmful. Every cold or similar illness sets me back by months.

The fatalist in me whispers: stop masking. If no one else is wearing a mask, why fight it – just let long Covid take me. Every reinfection only worsens my condition.

A systemic failure The government—New Labour or otherwise—has shown little interest in preventing the spread of Covid or developing treatments for long Covid. The societal denial of this reality is overwhelming.

Until we build a society and government centred on community and care instead of selfish individualism, we’re doomed. Is thinking of others really too much to ask?

If only long Covid weren’t an invisible disability. If it caused something visible—like the loss of a limb—perhaps people would be forced to act.

The point of wearing a mask: not just for Covid Here’s why masking matters:

It reduces your viral load if you get infected.

It sets a good example for others.

It shows courage and strength.

It protects vulnerable people, including the disabled, chronically ill, and immunosuppressed.

It proves you have empathy and intelligence.

[inkskinned]

it is all chaos and entropy. the thing is that the chaos and entropy make it beautiful and lovely.

yes, it's true that nature and the universe are uncaring and unspecific, and that is terrifying. i have lived through some of the unfairness - i got born like this, with my body caving into itself, with this ironic love of dance when i sometimes can't stand up for longer than 15 minutes. i am a poet with hands that are slowly shutting down - i can't hold a pen some days. recently i found a dead bird on our front porch. she had no visible injuries. she had just died, the way things die sometimes.

it is also true that nature and the universe are uncaring and unspecific, and that is wonderful. the sheer happenstance that makes rain turn into a rainbow. the impossible coincidence of finding your best friend. i have made so many mistakes and i have let myself down and i have harmed other people by accident. nature moves anyway. on the worst day of my life she delivers me an orange juice sunset, as if she is saying try again tomorrow.

how vast and unknowing the universe! how small we are! isn't that lovely. the universe has given us flowers and harp strings and the shape of clouds. how massive our lives are in comparison to a grasshopper. the world so bright, still undiscovered. even after 30 years of being on this earth, i learned about a new type of animal today: the dhole.

chance echoing in my life like a harmony between two people talking. do you think you and i, living in different worlds but connected through the internet - do you think we've ever seen the same butterfly? they migrate thousands of miles. it's possible, right?

how beautiful the ways we fill the vastness of space. i love that when large amounts of people are applauding in a room, they all start clapping at the same time. i love that the ocean reminds us of our mother's heartbeat. i love that out of all the colors, chlorophyll chose green. i love the coincidences. i love the places where science says i don't know, but it just happens.

"the universe doesn't care about you!" oh, i know. that's okay. i care about the universe. i will put my big stupid heart out into it and watch the universe feast on it. it is not painful. it is strange - the more love you pour into the unfeeling world, the more it feels the world loves you in return. i know it's confirmation bias. i think i'm okay if my proof of kindness is just my own body and my own spirit.

i buried the bird from our porch deep in the woods. that same day, an old friend reaches out to me and says i miss you. wherever you go, no matter how bad it gets - you try to do good.

[kawarikisaki]

A page 2 of this, because I can;

And a bonus drawing too:

[necromancelena]

Oh for fuck's sake! Well initially I had an idea for a little themed stream that was going to be called shovelware sunday where people pick out shovelware games for me but I'm not even sure this counts as shovelware! this came out years before the Hobbit movies and decades after the book so I think this just constitutes a shitty adaptation. I guess it came out right after the Peter Jackson LOTR movies. It says "The prelude to the Lord of the Rings" right behind my tits and Halberd there. so it's at least a little bit shoveled. Anyway Chicory picked out the game for me and then made a stream promo so there's no arguing with it at this point.

sooo uhhh. Streaming The Hobbit for the Nintendo Gamecube today at 4:00 PM EST/ 1:00PM PST!

You can watch the stream Here!

[batsplat]

#this is all incredible cowardice btw obviously i've ranked all the aliens in my notes by basically every imaginable metric#from qualifying to starts to w2w to mixed conditions to wet weather prowess etc etc etc. like i do also do it i just don't stand by it

i would LOVE to hear your rankings if you are willing to share...

sign of faith I'm posting this. please feel free to send me counter-arguments and disagreements but keep it sensible. this is not supposed to be serious, I just enjoy treating athletes like pokemon and love doing a sports discourse, but I'm not making any judgement over how I'd rank these guys overall. also, I've already said how I think basically all of these things are impossible to judge given timeline + machinery differences. it's really not that serious, this is really just an excuse to make radar charts, aka the coolest things to exist

also, obviously these categories are extremely fake and made up. please make alternative suggestions!! the two ones that I would have liked to include but couldn't really figure out how to put numbers to are 'tyre management' and 'adaptability'. with tyre management... that's a broad category and the one where era differences + bike factors really punch you in the face. like, for instance if I were doing this for dovi (which I'm not), by any reasonable standard that's such a massive strength for him - but then how do you account for his 2020 decline being so much about a tyre switch? how about jorge, who was the tyre preservation bloke, mr metronome himself, and then went to ducati and spent like, 1.3 years just darting to the lead early and slowly dropping back? what about valentino, who was seen as the absolute master of riding well once the grip levels were fucked at the end of the race, but then he too eventually got caught out by successive michelin tyre changes when he was like 108 years old? if you look at a lot of these riders' competitive decline, you do end up tracing it back to like... michelin... *shakes fist* but no it literally is about them no longer being able to make the tyres work for them for xyz reason, like that's typically the nail in the coffin, if you will. but obviously it would also feel weird to penalise someone for successfully adapting to one generation of tyres after the next until eventually no longer managing to when they're about 249 years old, y'know? also, tyre management does feel like you need to differentiate more if you're tackling it - like for instance one of dani's big strengths is the lack of tyre wear, plus similarly you have jorge's super smooth riding. whereas with valentino, casey and marc, I'm not saying they're all murdering their tyres, but their real big strength where tyres are concerned is that once the tyres are shredded and the grip is completely fucked, they're still able to be silly good in that situation. like, check out valentino's catalunya record, tyre killer track extraordinaire - you really see how good he is with this stuff in 2004 when he's more on the limit and he looks less in control than he generally does (a bit more like those other two actually). with casey, literally nobody needs me to reiterate the bonkers levels of raw talent he has, it's also not a coincidence he's the only one who's actually managed to beat valentino in one of said 1 vs 1 catalunya battles, the dirt biking thing, the insane natural sensitivity he has to grip levels. ditto with marc (minus beating valentino at catalunya), there's a reason why he's the mixed conditions goat, check out what he's been able to do late in races this year. so, sure, I could try and put numbers on 'tyre management' but.... I'd really struggle to rank them, like this may shock you but managing tyres is kinda important and it does feel the equivalent to having a category asking how 'fast' they are. they're all very good at it!! if in different ways

adaptability... yeah, look, ideally I would like some metric that considers the manufacturer switches + ability to override a poor package. but first of all, there's an obvious sample size issue, and second of all it's just TOO context-dependent. like, yes, brownie points to valentino for the yamaha switch - but how do we compare his failure to adapt to the ducati vs casey? on the one hand, obviously completely different levels of success on that bike. on the other hand, valentino by time of this switch was over thirty and casey when he joined that team was like, a child, with not that much experience of motogp - more of a raw talent who could mould himself to the needs of the bike. also, if you use hayden's results as a rough baseline, you kinda have to say the ducati was worse in 2011, and then if you dig into the numbers you do probably go 'yeah casey would've done better but not THAT much better'? like, he would've won races, not titles. I don't have a number for that from 1-10 either. dani never switched manufacturer, the honda was eventually developed away from him but *squints at the other side of the garage* he was also the only alien who had to deal with a teammate actively attempting to make the bike less rideable for him. jorge's switch to ducati is a bit. well. obviously it's not actually great that his final standings in those years are broadly in line with valentino on,,,, a WAY worse ducati a few years earlier. he gets bailed out a little bit by the three race wins in 2018 lol, dovi does have a littleeeee bit of a point that this man was not signed to win three races. but! he did click with that bike! I'm not sure I entirely buy his line of 'oh I would have won the 2020 title on a ducati' because, with all love, it's a very jorge thing to say and I'm also a bit? well before 2020 if you'd told me that marc gets injured in the first race of the season and someone else is gonna win the title, and then held a gun to my head and told me to predict who was gonna win the title in his absence, I guess I would have gone 'dovi or MAYBE fabio'. ducati wasn't in a super happy place in 2020, the tyres were funky, that could have affected jorge too!! we don't know!! I think it's absolutely a plausible counterfactual but I also haven't seen a convincing case for why the things that caught out dovi wouldn't have caught out dovi too, like come on. anyway, marc gets brownie points for this ducati adaptation, casey gets brownie points for the honda adaptation. honestly, just vibes based I do kinda think of casey as like, the most adaptable rider ever. I maybe rate valentino a bit higher in terms of getting the bike to where he needs it, and also obviously being adaptable - he has the longevity and multiple major riding style changes going for him. also marc is insanely good, and he rode the unrideable honda to places where it should NOT be ridden. it's those three in a cluster, probablyyy casey first, followed by marc then valentino, and then the other two aliens

also quite frankly I'd like to have something to do with bike development, but that's so hard to judge from the outside? obviously, valentino does have a very clear claim to fame here, and the yamaha gig is still... well, that's got to be the biggest impact a rider has had on a manufacturer this century. the other contender is casey at ducati, but the thing is he did basically bag them a title by being the only bloke who could win there, then they got super complacent, bike got worse and he fucked off. now, I'm not saying casey hurt ducati's development because of course that would be silly and unfair, but there is obviously a good half decade between him leaving that project and anyone else being able to consistently do something useful with that piece of shit. (obviously valentino also did not manage to make much short-term change at ducati so maybe we should just be blaming ducati here, but equally obviously the rider who made the single biggest individual difference into making that thing rideable isn't any of these guys but is instead andrea dovizioso lol.) as outsiders, we really can't meaningfully know how much these guys are making a difference behind the scene, all we have are vibes and rumours and surface level results... like basically if I had to rank them I'd probably give valentino the nod just because the yamaha thing deserves a nod, then kinda? idk casey + dani clearly did make an insanely good bike at honda and they should get some of the credit for kinda rescuing honda from its post-2006 slump. I think maybe dani goes second, like I know some have said he's a less useful development rider because he's too short (part of why honda didn't use him as a test rider, as well as obviously *gestures* the puig thing) and thus harder to compare to other riders.... BUT there's pretty universal praise for his work at ktm, and casey's post-motogp stints I don't think you can really say the same. with jorge... idk it's tricky, I remember reading that the vibe from valentino's team in 2013 was kinda 'well this bike is still... the exact same as it was two years ago...?' but obviously those guys also aren't neutrals. and they weren't even saying that in a negative way, there's a bit of an element of if it ain't broke don't fix it given jorge had just won the 2012 title. plus, especially in their second stint as teammates, I get the sense they were always broadly on the same page in terms of feedback? and if anything, yamaha's current malaise can partly be traced back to them not listening to shit they were being told by JORGE (+ valentino at the same time) like this is years and years back... so yeah those three are all in a blob. then comes marc, which. okay sure, super talented so can ride around everything etc etc, he's not the main reason for why honda sucks now, etc etc. but I'm sorry, you do just get marked down on this category if you sabotage bike development to fuck with your teammate. like I respect it, love you for it, but you are getting marked down here. there is no way you can get around this

then there's even more nebulous categories like 'mentality' or 'mind games' or whatever, but how even are you gonna rate this. with perhaps the sole exception of dani, all these other guys have exhibited some spectacular instances of head loss over the courses of their career. but then again with dani, you're probably also not going to point to mentality make the difference as much in a positive sense - like it's good to be even-tempered, but the highs also aren't as high in that regard. you have stuff like mental resilience, ability to bounce back from tough results... and again. I don't know. I don't feel comfortable putting a number on some of these. like say we took casey, then surely I'd have to mark him down for what happened post laguna in 2008 (and yes, I know he wouldn't agree with me on this, yes, I know there are mitigating circumstances, but it is a bit glaring). but then you look at how he got through 2009 and actually eventually got himself to the place where he won another title. how marc bounced back after 2015. whatever tf valentino did after qatar 2004. the 2009 bounce back after le mans/mugello... the 2003 arc and all that. for all of them, various criticisms in the media, hate campaigns from fans etc etc. like idk I don't have a number from 1-10 here. plus, any metric kinda has to have a clear good pole and a clear bad pole if you're putting numbers on that, and with something like mind games you can go either way on whether you think they're good or not? basically, I think we should lock casey and valentino into a room and get them to discuss this. I will provide a piece of paper with talking points and only let them out when I feel like they've had it out to an adequate extent. they're all mentally strong, love them all, let's leave it at that

wow! yay! these are all metrics I didn't even include! aren't you glad you clicked on this read more! there's so much to come after this!

let's get to metrics I did actually include: qualifying, starts, reliability, flexibility, mixed, wet, overtaking ability, defensive ability, cunning, strategy/work process. again, there were a few where I was like.... should there be some kinda basic metric for 'underlying pace' or 'raw talent' (both of which you kinda gesture in the casey + marc direction) but I'm somebody who's very outcome-focused. when you're rating things, you should sometimes just focus on the shit you can actually see. 'talent' is fake, give me results. but this does mean that... obviously not all of these metrics are of equal importance. like, qualifying is more important than how you are in the wet!! and yes, again, there's a million caveats here in terms of era and different bike characteristics and all that shit. even 'effort levels' - valentino's starts generally got better when he moved to yamaha (they were truly abysmal before that), which you can maybe attribute to the yamaha bike being better off the line (not much evidence for this from other riders who made switches back-and-forth around the same time iirc), or you can also attribute it to valentino knowing he couldn't afford quite as much faffing about on a worse bike. again, there's so so many caveats here. also, I found marc and casey REALLY hard to judge because like? it's so much harder if you haven't been able to see them line up next to each other to figure out how they compare? sure, you can use general metrics, you can check how they compare against the same group of riders, but... yeah, idk, for a lot of these categories when I was figuring out who to give a 9 or 10 out of those two I did a sort of *shrug*. I think one of these two I probably did dirty but I'm not sure which one. maybe I did everyone dirty. or maybe they all suck

so. let's go through them

1. qualifying

stuff I considered: outright qualifying performance both in terms of number of poles and average grid position, strength of qualifying opposition, h2h comparisons, adaptability to changing conditions

okay, so, I started with the most basic measure possible and looked at the pole numbers in the premier class as a percentage of number of race starts (and I've even updated the numbers for marc, that's how thorough I am hehe) (I just realised there's a problem here actually for casey because he got pole in valencia 2009 but didn't start the race due to a crash in the warm-up lap, which... well I don't want to take his pole away from him but I'm assuming the race start wasn't included? look, who gives a shit, I've kept the pole)

I also ran these numbers again just by... trimming down the number of seasons and limiting it to the 'competitive' ones, aka one where the finished top five in the championship standings. I'm aware this is super arbitrary, but I'm also not sure if we're really gaining much from including jorge's 2019 or valentino's 2021 or marc's 2023, when for instance you don't have those kinds of dud seasons for casey (though his rookie season did get cut). like, this is just a rough way of not punishing longevity and injuries and bad vibes, who knows what casey's qualifying would have looked like at age 382

doesn't actually change the order, which is nice. still think it's a better reflection of their actual qualifying chops

let's get the obvious out of the way - if you are getting almost 50% pole positions in your competitive seasons, I don't care how good your bike is or the era or whatever else, you are obviously an obscenely good qualifier. like, marc's qualifying numbers make you want to bust out the 12/10's. those are silly numbers that honestly you don't really need to add much too - sure, we can also dive into his average grid positions etc but like. they're all super high. idk what to tell you. marc has the average highest grid position every single year 2013 to 2019, enough said. I think casey over the course of his career was on slightly worse bikes on average than prime!marc, and also he was facing aliens in their prime or late prime literally every year which... yeah, maybe you do want to make a bit of an adjustment for that. like, marc's closest competition on paper in 2017-19 was dovi, who is very much not a gifted qualifier. but marc also got THIRTEEN POLES in 2014!! I know the honda was the best bike on the grid, but not by that much, and dani's hardly a slouch! idk I feel pretty happy with just giving marc the top spot here and letting casey slot into second. like, at a certain point the numbers you're staring at just sort of bludgeon you in the face, and you also have visions of cota 2015 and brno 2019 playing around in your head in a loop

THAT BEING SAID. there is one major caveat we do have to address: in 2013, the entire qualifying system was changed to introduce these 15 minute time slots. this whole q1 and q2 business is a relatively recent invention. now, this is pure speculation, but I think this format would have suited casey 'mr friday' stoner very very well. one of his big strengths was always like, being fast immediately, getting used to what the track was like with zero adaptation process and just putting down a super fast lap at the first attempt. he would have done great here!! also, I think the numbers of some of his opponents might have taken a bit of a dip and... yeah, look, obviously I'm really just talking about valentino here, who hated the new format and never got on particularly well with it. (serious argument to be made that if they hadn't switched the system, he would've taken the 2015 title - like obviously you get into weird butterfly effect territory with that kind of thing but ceteris paribus that will have absolutely cost him more than five points over the course of a full season.) he got better for a while in 2016.... but anyway during the early bits of the alien era, valentino was often qualifying like, really well when you compare it to his mid reputation. and maybe casey would've been able to beat him more under that system. probably

still, overall. idk man. almost 50% pole positions in his prime. obscene. giving it to marc

jorge is a lonely third in this metric. I feel fine with that? like, he's clearly very good, he was very good in his prime, that's how he won the 2015 title (though he did actually have a slightly worse grid position than marc that season, but crucially a lot better than valentino), he's gotten a lot of poles... but also his relative lack of flexibility hurts him here too, like he's not doing a brno 2019 is he. jorge kinda needs everything to be just right to get out the metronome, and that's also reflected in qualifying - he's more likely to be caught out by something being a bit off than either marc or casey. super fast over one lap, clearly insane underlying pace, what can you say

it's on the other end of the spectrum that I ran into my biggest headache, because...? honestly, I was a little bit surprised at valentino having the slight edge in the percentages, either way you measure them. dani has a bit more of a qualifying-centred reputation, whereas with valentino it's a bit... well, people do think he's very good at everything, and if you're looking for flaws in his game then that's one of the big things that jumps out. also, I do reckon there's a fair bit of recency bias at play here - a lot of fans only remember post-prime valentino, where format change this format change that he had just lost his edge over a single lap. some of this is also natural age-based decline? it does seem to be a thing in motorsports that saturday performances can go off before sunday performances, so it is a bit of an issue if everyone's just going 'okay but he was seventh every single week' when he too has racked up some impressive numbers over the course of his career. which isn't just longevity! you don't just longevity your way into 55 pole positions. on the other hand, you look at his honda prime and given the bike he was on, you do kinda go 'okay but I feel like you could've done a bit better here'. like, what are you doing being tied with biaggi on the yamaha in terms of average grid position in 2002... come on. come on. again, there's a teensy bit of an effort question here - I'm not suggesting valentino fluffed his qualifying on purpose to make his sundays more interesting, but I do think he does... you know, just performs differently when he knows he needs to do so. he's getting five pole positions on that 2004 yamaha... like he's clearly not a slouch

I actually think the best way you can make the pro-valentino qualifying argument is probably just by looking at the years when pretty good versions of the aliens were competing against each other on pretty competitive bikes? which is 2007 to 2009 - of course, that's gonna look fairly kind to valentino because he won the titles for two out of three years, but it's a good way to check our priors here and see whether valentino could theoretically keep pace with his fellow aliens. here's the average grid positions:

valentino got seven poles in 2009. idk, best bike, casey missed a few races, but at least against jorge it's a direct h2h (giving jorge a pass for his rookie season, but jorge's not becoming a significantly better qualifier after his sophomore season). like clearly he's fast

and after saying all of that, I ranked him last after dani!! yeah, look. I think it's marginal to me, and maybe this is partly my own bias because I've always thought of dani as a very good qualifier and have ragged on valentino for being mid literal hundreds of times. maybe it's also being swayed by the young talent factor - did you know valentino is the only alien who did not get a pole in his rookie season? these are the youngest pole sitter rankings for the premier class:

yeah, idk. I don't love this argument for philosophical reasons... but also it's kinda fine, it was obviously more important in dani's game than it was in valentino's. the percentages are close enough you can make the argument either way, but what sways me more than anything else is the competitive spread argument. like, all of dani's poles came with one of casey or marc in the field. several of prime valentino's opponents were really good qualifiers, sete in particular did out-qualify valentino over the course of whole seasons, but I'm not gonna make the case they were casey/marc good qualifiers. that's the deciding factor, congrats dani

2. starts

stuff I considered: speed off the line, consistency in starting ability, likelihood of getting holeshot, ability to get to the front from second/third row, wow factor starts from lower down the field

I was debating whether to put dani or casey first here, and I think you can make the argument for either. like, it is very hard to match dani, but I do also remember those kinda... later years, where he was still pretty competitive and winning races and all that but wasn't a rocket off the line in the same way any more, and it was one of those 'is it him or the tyres or the honda' thing. the whole problem with casey is that he retired so early so it's kinda... I mean, he may have had any of these issues too, we just don't know! unfair comparison. but well, I can at least judge the two of them competing, including on equal machinery and... man, dani and the holeshot, name a better love story. silly good. what I think is also important is... sometimes dani gets judged a bit for lack of flexibility in terms of figuring out how to get overtakes done in particular, but I can sort of picture a highlight reel of dani shooting off the line and picking his way through the field to still get the holeshot? like when he was good at this, he was so good - this is a category where the peak sways me I reckon

casey and jorge I'm also fairly content ranking in that order. jorge had to become a better starter, and while he did get very good at it and had so so many races where he just led off the start and then disappeared... idk, in terms of blistering raw speed off the line I still think casey edges him out. jorge does get brownie points for some of his ducati starts, bit more muscling his way through the field before burning out his tyres and falling back. sorry jorge. but yeah nah I'm fine with this order, casey did have the occasional stinker but also I'm blaming that on the ducati.... also jorge automatically loses the tiebreaker just because I remember that COMICAL 2014 cota jump start. then we get to marc and valentino, in that order. starts were a real flaw in marc's game early in his time in the premier class, even in his super dominant 2014, and while it did get better... like, y'know, he was never awful at them, but it also generally speaking wasn't ever one of his big strengths. valentino was 'running gag level of bad' at starting, like basically in his prime wherever he qualified, he was reliably seventh after a few corners. again, this is probably also exaggerated a bit... but also, we're operating at a high level here, somebody has to be at the bottom of the pile, and you cannot make an argument for anyone other than valentino. nobody's saying he's maverick vinales-level bad, but he's clearly no dani pedrosa. as mentioned above, he did get better at his starts when he switched to yamaha, so some of that prime honda stuff was also just him faffing about, and post-prime he really did have some great starts to make up for his poor qualifying but. y'know. balance of the career

which brings us to.... okay, one thing we do obviously have to quickly mention is that both marc and valentino have made some of those 'wow what the fuck' starts from poor qualifying positions. like, I've been insulting valentino a lot in this bit of the post, but qatar 2004 remains some very cool shit. objectively. (I mean the start he made from the back of the grid, not him cursing to sete. obviously. I wouldn't do the other thing.) marc... yeah, look, we've all seen the starts he's been making from pee fifty million this year. the... le mans sprint start, I believe? is still comically cool. doesn't save their positions in this ranking because you don't get that many points for three good starts out of three thousand, but still. did slap. plus, it does showcase they're very good at the bits where you have to like, spot gaps and dart through them, and obviously neither of them have ever been opposed to bit of muscling their ways through the field. they are very good!! still more sluggish off the line than the other three

3. reliability

stuff I considered: conversion rate on executing achievable results, number of unforced errors (anything that isn't 'strategy' like tyre choice or flag to flag handling), crashes - in particular costly ones

gahhhhhh I HATE this metric. I kinda needed a 'how often are you gonna throw away races while leading them' thing, which, to be clear, none of these blokes have done an awful lot of. but it's kinda... look, are you actually converting your maximum achievable results? what's the crash rate looking like? how many unforced errors are you making? and then I started changing my mind several different times because unsurprisingly, I can think of a lot of plenty of errors for all of them that are kinda egregious. like, that's how racing works! also this is a way less 'clean' metric than the two before that, because inevitably you're kinda overlapping with a lot of different categories. like, take making errors in the wet - obviously, that's what you do when you're not a good wet weather racer, but you don't suddenly get a free pass on mistakes just because it's raining. is this a metric that you limit to 'competitive' seasons? inherently, I am biased towards thinking a mistake is 'worse' when there's a lot at stake, but arguably that's something that should be included in the more cerebral categories and all errors should be treated equally. which I don't!! I think it very much matters being reliable under pressure. my last issue was the overlap with the 'flexibility' category because it's kinda... there's one or two riders who have a bit of a tendency to have Perfect Weekends when everything's going well, and then have poorer rides when they're just not quite feeling it. which is mostly covered under flexibility, but surely some of this stuff does also make you unreliable!!

again, they do obviously all have their errors... I think I probably penalise riders a little more severely for crashing out of the lead, which yes, all of them have done. now, I might be missing something obvious, but I think valentino only ever did so twice? donington 2009, which was in the wet (not an excuse!! he did also finish fifth, which, fair play I suppose), and sepang 2018, where he was *gestures* very old. marc... my issue with marc is that obviously he's managed to match that this year but both of those did have mitigating circumstances? his 2019 cota crash I also think had... something else going on. of course you do also have his phillip island crashes, 2014 and 2016 (I've said it before and I've said it again, prime!marc's phillip island record is incredibly funny when you think about it). then 2014 he's also got aragon, which was more about a poor decision to not switch tyres but like, crash is a crash, and argentina 2017. which is like... you know, given how he rides and how many races he was leading, it's not terrible. also I think this is a bit more dubious with early season races because you don't know what might end up costing you, but none of these were particularly important in title fight terms (argentina 2017 could have been!) so. dani... well, he's got sachsenring 2008, which was kinda terrible because he was genuinely seven seconds in the lead, but also it's raining? idk crucially it did basically cost him any hope of fighting for the title, lost the championship lead and bagged himself a wrist injury (which, of course, is also just poor luck - we do not have a sturdiness category). laguna 2010 also isn't great, especially given it just helped jorge run away with the title even more. dani also crashed from the lead at indy 2009, plus brno 2011. jorge ALSO crashed out of the lead at donington 2009 (truly, one of those days), plus brno 2009 (not great at that point in the title fight!!), plus valencia 2012 (I mean, last race of the season, also kinda a weird one since he was lapping someone), plus qatar 2014, and misano 2017. casey crashes out of the lead at... well, back to back races post-laguna 2008, brno and misano, which admittedly apart from anything else isn't great optics. I think the only other time he does it is qatar 2010? which. yeah. not ideal

okay, look, this sample size is so small I don't think you gain much from doing percentages per competitive season or whatever. on the balance of the available evidence, you do have to say that valentino only binning it twice out of the lead is pretty impressive, given he raced for like. fifty million years. and won a lot of races, so by definition gave himself a lot of chances to crash. like, it'd be lovely to have a statistic for 'number of laps led', or even better a spreadsheet with all the numbers for when riders are in certain positions, and then also numbers for how many times they crash out of every position so we could do like. some proper maths on this shit. unfortunately we can't! and it'd still only give us an incomplete picture, because again you do have stuff like 'well marc has ridden some kinda evil bikes' and 'how do we assess wet races' and 'how much pressure were they under in each situation' to assess. I still like it as a rough indicator! I suppose I've been thinking about the concept of 'crashing out of the lead of motogp races' rather a lot these last few years... impossible to guess why that is

also, those aren't the only types of unforced errors to exist. like, marc's not crashing out of the lead in 2015, but *gestures* that season is unforced error central. I also put jorge's weird helmet visor shit in this category, because fundamentally part of reliability is about not putting yourself in a position where dumb shit happens to you. and that could have really cost him!! crash rates in general - again, I don't love just giving raw numbers here. there's some specific series of mistakes that really jump out at you... an obvious one is valencia 2006, and it's also in that weird cota 2019 category of 'right I think there may have been something funky going on with the equipment but also you are calling this an 'error' so I shall call it that'. fight me casey stoner, I guess. there's other late championship errors that are. not great. like jorge phillip island 2009 or dani phillip island 2012. with casey, it's a bit 'eh' because he never was still in a title fight particularly late in a season? like, again, the 'two out of the only three crashes out of the lead in your whole career happened at the height of the title fight in 2008' is one of those things that's always going to raise an eyebrow, and did essentially end the title fight before they even got to the late stage but... yeah, idk, we're lacking in casey's sample size here. you can also look at title decider performance for three of them, and while we can get into the ins and outs of what valentino/marc got up to - never mind all that, you have two absolutely flawless performances from jorge sitting right there

when it comes to crash rate in general, valentino's in quite a happy spot again? I mean, his record in his prime certainly is silly good: three crashes in his rookie season, two right at the start, which, vale gets a little bit of 'the 500cc's were evil' bonus.... after that! one crash in 2001, zero in 2002 (the dnf is mechanical), zero in 2003 (no race off the podium), two in 2004, one in 2005 (that one was a howler mind u), two in 2006 (one he got barrelled into at the first corner and remounted, the other was as best we know an unforced error - but the three dnf's are all mechanical), one in 2007 (two mechanical dnf's), one in 2008 (remounted and finished 11th), three in 2009 (I mean he crashed like fifty times in le mans, then in donington he crashed in the wet and finished fifth which... good salvage work, plus indy which was genuinely dumb as shit). like, again, if we're specifically considering each of the aliens' respective 'primes', that record's hard to argue with. but then again, am I going to penalise casey too much for all his race crashes in 2010, given that valentino can also attest to that bike being, well, shit? also, brownie points of some kind to marc specifically for 2019, given we know what a nightmare that honda was and he only dnf's the one time. also, his 2016!! it's less spectacular in a way but that's a season that's so much about reliability - like so many marc titles are won on the principle of 'show up, don't crash, don't slum it in p13 every other week, win some races'. jorge is mostly fine - I don't want to penalise him too much for his rookie season though I do a bit more 2009, and then post-yamaha it was all a bit. eh. dani's issue is that he didn't crash that much but I swear every time he did, it felt super costly for some reason or another? which is also just bad luck, but

again, there's some stretches you do kinda maybe give a little bit of added weight. for casey, you do kinda have to mention 2012: he was tied on points with jorge leading into sachsenring, was clearly way too much on the edge fighting with dani, really should have settled for second and… binned it. right before the end. I get he's a 'I look at wins and the championships will follow naturally' type guy, but that inherently means he's gonna get a knock in this category. and then he had a mess of a mugello race right after, just multiple unforced errors and almost barrelled over poor bautista and… idk, we don't really talk about it much any more because he injured himself at indy and was definitively taken out of the title fight - but I still reckon the honda was probably on balance the strongest bike that year, and it was kinda his own errors that cost him there. for marc, nobody on this planet needs me to relitigate 2015, but yeah, 2015

also, yes, you can sort of bring in the ugly years for all of them minus casey (who had a very ugly rookie season but we'll give it a pass, and apart from that his ugliest season was 2010 - he didn't stick around long enough for comparable experiences to the others)... jorge skittling the field at catalunya 2019, quite a few dani misadventures... we can talk about valentino's ducati stint and that wet weather collision with casey that prompted the 'ambition outweighed talent' thing, we can talk about marc's silverstone 2021 barrelling into jorge or that aragon 2022 first lap or... whatever the fuck he was doing at portimao last year. clearly, when those two specifically know they're not in the title hunt, when they've been frustrated and annoyed and are hungry for success, their decision-making skills can take a serious hit, but also... okay, look, I'm not saying that injuring other riders like marc in particular did suddenly becomes okay when you're not fighting for a title, but a) clearly they were both riding bikes that were very easy to crash (I mean, again, look at casey's early 2010 crash rate), and b) for better or for worse, they're not doing that shit if they know they're fighting for a title (isolated and glaring cases of head loss for the pair of them set aside). listen, I'm deciding the rules, set aside the whole morality thing - I just care more about mistakes when they have bigger competitive ramifications

so. I do think valentino has to go first in this category and yes, we can get into the whole 'well the yamaha is very rideable thing' but also he did help make it that way so. y'know. at a certain point you just have to look at the headline numbers. he didn't crash a lot, he showed up, he generally maximised the results he could get. there's like, two or three major stains in his record, but then you also think about how he was saving his title bids with sachsenring 2016 type deals where he was working his way to the win from tenth and holding off three ferocious hondas right at the end... like, given how risky a lot of his riding inherently was, you have to say the unforced error count is low. see also laguna 2008 or motegi 2010 type shit, like not making mistakes when deliberately roughing up opponents isn't, y'know, the most morally 'good' way to approach racing but. still. he was constantly putting himself in risky race positions by dint of being such an ass qualifier/starter and his numbers are still like that. I rest my case. and, okay, I'm gonna be a wee bit controversial here and put mr crasquez in second. I don't know, maybe I'm just rewarding 'flexibility' here too and just being swayed too much by how consistently there he was in his prime but, I don't care. part of it is also the valentino situation of 'wow it really feels like you should be crashing more' (in races, I don't feel in general marc should be crashing more funnily enough), and it's also just the 2016 thing. also the 2019 thing. I get the argument with 2015, and I don't think any version of noughties valentino would have a season like that, but *shrugs* he also didn't have a valencia 2006-equivalent so whatever (I mean. he flirted with it in 2017 and that was a pretty poor performance, but crucially I'm an outcome-oriented person and he didn't actually bin it so)

then comes jorge - given his profile as a rider I don't think it reflects great on him that he has crashed out of the lead, including in costly ways, quite a few times. also, unfortunately you don't get a sophomore season freebie when we're comparing aliens, and 2009 did have some real. issues. (so did valentino's to be clear, definitely his messiest title campaign.) also, look, I think calling his ducati seasons not competitive is arguable - because unlike the valentino and marc seasons where you can at least say 'well nobody else on that bike was outperforming them', this is not something you can point to with jorge. his strongest trait is dominating from the front! he's supposed to be mr hammer and butter, he's getting a knock for the unforced errors, yeah. he gets a valencia bonus though. then comes dani - this one also feels quite harsh, and again I think it's slightly punishing lack of flexibility, but it's the really costly errors that stick out and also just... relatively more races than some of his fellow aliens where he's not reliably bringing any result home because he's not in the position he should be running in. and then comes casey, which, small sample size counts against him here. if you have that few seasons to draw from, unfortunately the whole laguna 2008 situation and 2012 sachsenring/mugello stuff do stand out

wow. this got long. I really don't like this category

4. flexibility

stuff I considered: not literal flexibility, more in terms of 'can you be good everywhere'. like, we're looking at the broad profile of a season - I want you to be good both at qatar and at sachsenring, right? have they won/gotten decent results relative to how good the bike/opposition is basically everywhere, do they just feel a bit limited at times, what were they doing at new tracks, etc, can they figure shit out over the course of the weekend

again, there's some serious overlap here with both the reliability category and also the wet/mixed conditions categories, but idk. still treating it on its own. again, there's two fairly straightforward tiers here - you've got valentino, casey and marc, and then jorge and dani. I'm not like, super attached to any particular order here? casey has the distinction that he's won at every single race he's competed at, which none of the others do, but that's also what will happen if you retire at age 27. if vale and marc had retired at that age... okay, yeah, valentino would've been missing laguna, marc would be missing austria (which he still is, actually), but also idk. valentino's laguna record is like, one third place, two visits where his bike is just 'no thank you' and then one of the best races of all time. marc got as close as it is possible to win that bloody race in austria on three separate occasions. also, casey completed the set in 2012 with... well, first of all he needed jerez, which...? who the hell has jerez as their bogey track? he'd literally had one podium there in his entire career before that point, all classes, which is kinda funny. plus, he also needed estoril - and he was really proud to finish the set, helped make his decision to retire. real take, maybe his issue with jerez is that everyone else knew it too well, like ideally he needs everyone (including himself) to be blasted with a mind ray to give them amnesia before they go to each track so he can take full advantage

anyway, look, the point is that all three of them can show up anywhere and broadly expect to be competitive in their primes. they go about this in different ways... casey had this nasty habit of just rocking up on a friday morning and being fast the second he touched the bike, valentino made more of a leisurely crawl towards 'ah well we'll figure it out at 4 am on sunday morning' (marc did a bit of both) - but broadly speaking they did generally get there more often than not. this is reflected in the very strong records they all have when they show up at tracks for the first time, and it's something marc explicitly pointed to last year in india when explaining why him, fabio and joan as the three most recent former world champions were suddenly so competitive there (in contrast to the rest of the season, where they were *checks notes* not having a great time). I don't think it's really just a raw talent thing per se, and especially with valentino he clearly did also have a very good working process (more on that in a moment), but yeah! however they did it, they sure did do it! the gaps in marc's and valentino's resumes, I do also not feel too strongly about... valentino's missing aragon, introduced in 2010, but like. he was fine there, he just wasn't winning that many races anyway after that, and it inherently didn't suit him too well. cota... well, y'know, he had one shot of winning that, won't really hold any of his 2019 performances against him. that also wasn't a particularly strong yamaha track, and again it's not like he was uncompetitive there. he just wasn't like. marc marquez levels competitive. marc has a few like austria, but that was such ducati heartlands and he really did get very close a million times, and stuff like portimao, which, well, only showed up post arm injury, he's still got time

I don't know, with all three of them it's also just so easy to pinpoint special performances at their weakest tracks, it moves me. I actually need to check the order in which I put them, which tells you how close they are in my mind. uh... okay I gave casey full marks, then marc, then valentino. yeah, idk, I guess sometimes my casey problem is that my brain just automatically extrapolates from the bits we got to see and assume he would've adapted to everything to come forevermore. but look, he really was that good!! actually the tiebreaker to me is how in his second ever motogp race he'd been ill, his flight had been delayed, he shows up at the qatar circuit like fifteen minutes before practise starts, and he ends up popping his satellite honda on pole. not knocking marc's cota pole obviously, but he'd already tested there, and we did later find out he is like, a literal deity at that circuit (casey is good at qatar but not that good). idk. that's where I'm at. I'm not actually sure why I'm ranking valentino third, maybe it's just a sort of 'begrudgingly amused annoyance' at how he won his least favourite circuit on the calendar only twice, and both were these massive spite wins (valencia 2003, 2004). like, I get that sports psychology does matter, but I also don't want to have to make an 'effort and mean-spiritedness' adjustment to all your results? obviously it's also super telling his one laguna win came in 2008, like we get it you're a hater, let's move on

oh I was about to move on but I do have to cover the other two. hm. well, look, their 2012 was super impressive and shows they can clearly be fast pretty much everywhere, but... yeah, idk, I don't want to penalise them for what the alien era was like, but maybe a little bit? like yeah they did it at a time when the bike difference was at the most egregious, and I GET that it happens to coincide with their primes, but that is not going to be the only season I look at!! sorry!! the thing about those two was if they weren't clicking with a track, you kinda didn't really expect them to pull a rabbit out of the hat come race day (even casey had a nasty habit of doing that, and acknowledged in his autobiography how extremely helpful it was to psychologically sucker rivals into thinking he wasn't going to be a huge threat). I look at jorge's sepang record, his argentina record, his assen record (and yes, I'm aware of the massive trauma he was dealt by his 2013 crash, that's absolutely a factor in the years after that), even phillip island... I know he won the latter two once in the premier class, but yeah. don't love it!! stinker after stinker at argentina, and that one in particular does raise an eyebrow because, y'know, always a bit of a quirky track with all the various grip issue dramas over the years. 2014-16 when they're teammates again, valentino gets three podiums there (including a win) and jorge just the one, so it's also not just a bike issue. with dani it's quite easy... qatar was a crappy honda track yeah, still not ideal results there, phillip island just too many riders who were better than him there, poor at assen, quite poor at catalunya too? apart from 2008, which it has to be said was a proper class performance. (admittedly who knows what valentino could've done there if he'd considered maybe not fucking his qualifying.) idk, several of these classic high speed tracks... okay, look, I'm not going to spend too much time ragging on their circuit to circuit records here, you get the point,it should be fairly clear that they both struggled more than the other three to tackle adversity weekend by weekend. and a lot of the times when they started a weekend poorly that was basically that

5. mixed conditions

stuff I considered: ... how good they are in mixed conditions. did they crash a lot in them, were they extra super special fast, did they get better when things were sketch, did they adjust quickly to these conditions, how did they manage race situations impacted by changing conditions

okay, look, again the lack of direct comparison does hurt me here, but yeah I was never going to put anyone other than marc first here. I was also never going to put anyone other than casey second, and anyone other than valentino third. all three of them are excellent here, even if it's a different vibe for each. liked, not quite the same thing, but obviously they're all great in low grip anyway, very nice with all the sliding the bike around (especially the first two). marc's got the whole insane saves things going for him even when he does make a misjudgement. there's that ability to just instantly know how to judge and adapt to whatever condition the track is in... well, it's neat! we'll get to this again in a second with wet weather racing, but I still think valentino's a bit more in the... hm. idk. he's obviously GOT a lot of natural feel, he couldn't do what he does otherwise, but he's clearly also big on kinda following other riders around and figuring it out as he goes? like it feels a teensy bit more conscious, like a deliberate thinking process rather than primarily using instinct. but yeah, I mean, you really don't have to get super complicated about that, it's literally been years and years of watching marc gain literal seconds on the field whenever the conditions are a bit sketchy. brno 2019 qualifying. no need to say more. (but if you did want to say more, I do have a misano 2015 to offer u. also like sachsenring 2016?? assen 2014! genuinely so many you could point to with him.) (actually.... I mean, I suppose we do also have to mention argentina 2018, where he was about a minute a lap faster than the rest of the field.) with casey, again, super easy, you've got a phillip island and valencia 2011 there - his last lap of valencia!! one of the best last laps of his career!! that shit was crazy!! mugello 2009!! I get that there's Reasons why valentino played that one cautiously *coughs* le mans fiasco *coughs* but still, casey was the guy who broke the valentino supremacy!! speaking. of. mugello. you want to know another mixed conditions race that happened there... that's right, last few laps of mugello 2004, like they're so fucking good. valentino's last ever race win comes in increasingly kinda sketch conditions in assen 2017, where he is also fighting marc. like, look, I'm not gonna list every single race performance in sketch conditions, and of course they did also have some stinkers... this is a vibes category, sometimes it's truly just about looking at some lap times and going 'oof you guys really are something special here'. but also clear order here, marc is just *gestures* something else yeah

anyway. okay listen at this point I don't REALLY want to rag on the other two, especially since I'll get to it more with wet races. they're just not quite at the same level! I'm not saying they're terrible, but y'know, you can just check their track records and draw your own conclusions. if jorge had lost that 2015 title, misano absolutely would have been top of everyone's list as a big, big factor in that. I've already mentioned argentina, and again it kinda is telling what their records there look like. phillip island. it's just... y'know. it's whatever. with dani, similar story, but shout out to motegi 2015. banger performance, super impressive. jorge also has a few good f2f's. but yeah, we can list every single performance where they were massively outperformed by those other three or we could. not

6. wet

stuff I considered: well. their records when races were wet. did they bin it, how did they perform against their teammates, what can we say about performance variation over time, how understandable were their errors, what was their approach like to them

similar tiers, slightly different order - casey, then vale, then marc. but again, it's super close, and I don't feel as happy with the order here as above. I just have this highlight reel in my head of casey's wet weather performances, donington 2007 and silverstone 2011 are both crazy good in different ways. yes, he didn't win every single race in the wet he competed in, but who does? and yes, his sample size is a teensy bit limited, and yes, he did lose that one le mans 2012 battle against ducati!valentino, which, who does that, but like... listen. when he was on it, he was so on it. on the flip side, and I realise this is again unfair given the sample size issues, I just don't have all these memories of watching casey crash in the wet as I do for each of the other aliens. even his poorer performances like donington 2009... y'know, there was a good explanation there. (indy 2008 is one that I'm quite meh about admittedly.) but like!! overall it just is NOT a lot of races in the wet - I feel the sample size issues with other things more strongly, but here he also just compares positively to other aliens in their primes and it's not as much a w2w thing. just something about him in the wet that I trust..? I feel like sachsenring 2008 is another one that also kinda shows he had a good feel for how much he could push. like, dani disappeared off into the distance, and casey did kinda go. huh. well idk about that but good luck. and then won the race by a mile when dani crashed out. I don't know! given that's not always a trait I massively associate with casey, I do think he was generally pretty sensible in the wet. also... yeah, given it's inherently not that many races you're judging, I do think inevitably this is something where my brain really is pulling together two or three signature performances and judging those. and with casey, I just think those performances slap

that being said. ranking him above valentino here could(?) be controversial, and I did struggle a teensy bit with this one. like, mixed conditions can be a bit dodgy and also, we'll get to this in a moment but valentino's flag to flag record *stares into the middle distance* BUT when it's full wet!! oh yeah. right. let's fucking go. the tiny caveats I have here in my mind are a) he did make some memorable mistakes in those conditions (as casey can attest to), but again, so has pretty much everyone, and b) the wet weather performances after 2015 were kinda dodgy. but that's like.... that is just fundamentally a yamaha problem once the series switched to the michelins, like I don't really see the argument for saying that was a valentino decline? it's become a pretty persistent issue, and even then valentino was generally putting his bike in a hell of a lot more impressive places than his respective teammates (hey, you still have pretty nifty performances even in that era - look at brno 2016). let's set all that aside, and focus on all the other bits: the banger performances. the donington 2005's and silverstone 2015's of this world. let's talk donington, actually, because... idk, I think there's something very valentino in the wet about that race specifically, because for a lot of the race it really doesn't look that great? he wobbles a lot, some very cool marc-y saves but preferably you don't want to HAVE to marc-y save stuff, gets to the lead and loses it and gets back again. like, okay, obviously the conditions are genuinely just atrocious, but crucially he's not just FAST!! it's not just dominant! it's him watching and learning and feeling his way into the race, until eventually he's learned enough and can pull away. obviously, it's always worth remembering there's a shit ton of natural talent here too, cf colin edwards talking about seeing his data and just going 'what tf do you mean he's locking up in every single corner' (I paraphrase), but it's... yeah, he's doing a lot of this with his brain. which I do think is a big part of wet weather racing!! like a lot of it is figuring out how much risk you should be taking at any given moment, what's possible in the moment, how much you can trust what you're feeling etc etc

but yeah, shanghai that year is a dominant one... silverstone 2015 is like, so impressive you have to say, crazy pressure from marc behind him until marc eventually crashed and then late pressure from petrucci. like that race saved his title bid and it could've easily gone wrong. also, one of my favourite things about valentino as a wet weather racer is not just that he used to be bad of it, but he used to be scared of riding in the rain. he didn't want to go out there!! teen!vale told his team boss he didn't want to race in that shit!! it's about the journey... first premier class win in... is that a wet or mixed conditions race? never mind, crucially donington 2000 he is working his way through the field on a track that is very much not try. and somewhere along the line, he did just become a proper excellent wet weather racer, even if he never was a massive fan. indy 2008 is another banger, like basically I reckon he's at his very best in conditions nobody should ever even contemplate racing in? see also what he did in his ducati years. I'm also inherently biased towards people getting better at stuff, so maybe that's part of the picture for me. anyway, with marc I don't massively have much to add to what I already said in the mixed conditions bit? I basically think he's excellent but he doesn't have the same margin over the field when it's full wet rather than 'kinda sketch'. he does also have the misfortune of running into some of the best wet weather races out there during his prime, first valentino and then dovi - who, if I were including him in this exercise, would absolutely be in the conversation for top spot alongside vale/casey. but like, just because he doesn't win them doesn't mean motegi and sepang 2017 aren't very strong, in terms of maximising what was possible on that day. speaking of 2017, misano!!!! he's good at the decision making stuff too, good at maximising his performance when he's not winning races. 2016 is a title bid that is built on a lot of kinda sketch races, most of which marc doesn't win - but he won the championship and that's the bit that matters. and in ducati!valentino style, of course those have also been the situations in which marc's had the chance to be more competitive in the horror honda years.... motegi last year is the obvious example. he's very very good, does chuck it down the road a few times too but that's life

so the thing about jorge and wet weather is that he's like, pretty poor in the lower categories, and the general 2006-07 pattern was that dovi was keeping himself competitive in those title fights in large part through starring performances in wet races while jorge flops. then there's a period in the premier class where he's actually kinda fine? does chuck it a few times, but also really some strong performances in there. jerez 2011, le mans 2012... anyway, if we're talking about assen becoming a real bogey track in jorge's later years, it's probably also worth mentioning that the assen 2013 highside came in the wet and is around the time there was a real downturn in his wet weather performances. he was still competitive in a few wet weather races! but he also... really wasn't in many. at times he was just slow - if he'd lost the 2015 title, people would still be talking about silverstone more, which you have to say he was very lucky to limit the points damage in (and he did come within a whisker of being crashed out on like, three separate instances, which can happen if you're running in a pack in the wet). then, of course, you have 2016 where his title charge completely fell apart in the wet.... as already said with valentino, the yamaha in those years clearly wasn't quite right in the wet, but valentino was still putting together stronger performances. then in 2017 jorge still has that decent sepang race where he challenges dovi for the win, but yeah... that's basically it. it's unfair when people portray him as a poor wet weather racer his whole career, but obviously. y'know. not on the level of the three above. dani...... look, I'm gonna keep this short: I get that his literal size and weight are a massive disadvantage here, but of course there's no way you can't rank him last in this category. he won one wet premier class race in his whole career, there's a lot of big crashes to point to (sachsenring 2008 again is particularly memorable) and also just him being very slow. sepang 2012 was cool though

7. overtaking ability

stuff I considered: race craft, efficiency in overtaking, direct duels, dogfights, comeback rides, creativity, .... being cool

right. look. I'm willing to hear the arguments for the others, but to me it's just got to be valentino here. like, yes, I get it - if you're constantly putting yourself in seventh at the end of every single first lap, you will just be doing a lot of overtakes. if your entire approach to winning races is built around sitting behind other riders for half the race and just vibing, then yes, of course you'll be doing a lot of memorable overtakes for the win. maybe you shouldn't have been in that position in the first place. I hear the case! I acknowledge it! but he was just so damn good at those overtakes! he knew where to place his bike, he knew where to attack, he was so good at making that shit stick, he's usually not being massively aggressive to the point of recklessness when he doesn't need to be... what's the drawback. again, maybe this is being swayed by the highlight reel rather than measuring 'pure' skill, but my god is it a highlight reel. remember how in assen 2018 he just. overtakes other riders ten times at the gt chicane? rinse and repeat, he just knew how to get past people. that's a bit of dominance in a certain track just in terms of sheer race craft that's like, a bit obscene really. there's a reason he's got three overtakes that are still iconic and infamous alike, mix of brutality of jerez 2005 and ruthlessness of laguna 2008 and determination of catalunya 2009. he knew how to judge risks, usually he walked that line very very finely - which is how he was seen as an aggressive rider but also didn't crash a lot - but boy did he know how to send it like the best of him. so you've got the range, right, something as practised as assen 2018 gt chicane, but also the creativity of something like catalunya 2009, of trying a move where others just wouldn't. also, like, FORgET the corkscrew move at laguna 2008, let's talk about that move around the outside of turn 3 ffs. and he was so good at working his way through the field!! I mean, he had to be given what an abysmal qualifier he was at times in the latter half of his career, but like his 2015 title campaign would've been impossible without that kinda qatar and argentina vibe. the man was always tussling, but he sure did do it well. idk, what's the counter argument here.... he's crashed like. at most half a dozen times. while attempting overtakes. idk I'm unmoved, sachsenring 2007 isn't enough to ruin everything else here. 'valentino rossi is good at overtakes', more as we get it

marc. marc. the thing about marc, right, is that sometimes he does stray to the wrong line of the 'aggression or just stupid' divide, but... given his baseline level of aggression, you have to say he mostly did a good job of not pushing it too far. he's extremely adept at working his way through fields... and it really is important he's willing to go for it. like there are riders who just won't! he's very see gap go for gap, as he's happy to remind everyone, and that makes him a very fearsome proposition. I'm not like... I love it for narrative reasons, but to me personally jerez 2013 does push it a teensy bit, and there's been a few too many race craft howlers for my tastes in the last few years. he's just too good to be doing shit like portimao last year. that being said, when he's keeping things sensible, the race craft is obviously elite. incredible bike placement, also just such an innate ability to thrive in those kinda chaotic situations at starts of races, in the middle of dogfights he navigates that stuff so so good..... I don't LOVE rating marc/valentino over the other three aliens on grounds of like 'hard racing' because you then get to tricky philosophical waters, but actually I'm perfectly happy to rate them above the other three for just being very good at this shit. for my money, my favourite overtake of his is still last lap on petrucci in misano 2017, like idk the sheer nerve and daring and skill in the wet!! I moved!! I also had a heart attack but never mind that!! misano 2019 ughhh my beloveddddd... okay admittedly he has a few too many of these epic duels tm he loses which we'll get back to in a moment, but that doesn't erase all the cool moves he makes on the way to moving. also obviously got to mention these comeback rides he's been having - and this kind of thing is also super important in starts!! just very very adept at all this race craft stuff, though a few too many of his overtakes don't stick for my tastes

now. the thing is. casey did most of his racing in an era that, as we have repeatedly established, was kinda ass. also, it's obviously worth pointing out that casey really wasn't trying to win his races in a way that involved a lot of overtaking. and his attitude towards racing did have the potential to hinder him in fights, because he was perhaps maybe possibly at times a teensy bit too concerned with keeping things respectful when certain other riders were willing to push him off a cliff if it could secure them pee four. that being said. limited sample size aside. when I close my eyes, I can see casey overtaking jorge around the outside of turn one at laguna 2011, and it is still the most bonkers downright terrifying thing I've seen in my life, but it is also very very very cool. that's right, he's ranked third because that move is so cool. it's just... he's always going on about risk and danger and all that and racing valentino at laguna was scary etc etc, which, yes, I do have a lot of empathy there, but my brother you are overtaking him around a blind crest. like you literally can't see where you're going. everybody finds turn one at laguna terrifying, it's seen as scarier as the corkscrew. and that's where you overtake him. and it's not an isolated occurrence - some of the laguna 2008 moves on valentino?? dude. it very much takes two to tango, we're talking some scary turn one moves and sketch turn three and turn five encounters like.... like!! phew. plus, valencia 2011 last lap

also, listen, at the end of the day, the reason why I'm putting casey over jorge here is very simple - direct record against valentino. one of them actually won extended battles against him, the other didn't. yes, jorge ran valentino close, but y'know. you don't get extra points for 'close', do you. catalunya 2009, sachsenring 2009, motegi 2010... casey actually beat valentino, he did it at catalunya 2007 and sachsenring 2010, qatar 2007... that sachsenring 2010 last lap move truly slaps!! idc if valentino had just come back from the broken leg, still slaps! now, yes, we do need to point out that jorge has done some great overtaking in his time, and he's also won quite a few close duels against marc specifically - but, well, marc didn't race casey, can't compare it. still, jorge is good wheel-to-wheel generally speaking, the risk assessment is mostly pretty good though sometimes he can be a bit... idk, clumsier on average than the three above him? anyway, still better than dani, who unfortunately did sometimes fall into the category of me going 'PLEASE overtake the guy come on move.... MOVE'. generally a lot of overtakes only happening when there's a massive tyre advantage which is like. it's fine. but it's not quite the same thing. but jerez 2010 brno 2012 for them respectively overall were obviously cool. basically my main thing for this one is that, we're not rating duels here, we're rating overtaking ability. and on the one hand I have the highlight reel in my head and the craft and skill of it all, and on the other hand I have like. if you get stuck in the pack. do I expect you to stay there or do something. and generally it's really marc and valentino where I'm expecting some moving

8. defensive ability

stuff I considered: also race craft, just general quality of defensive rides idk, how much I trust you to keep guys with better pace behind you

yeah valentino again here I fear. this is another factor where I'm really just seeing the highlight reel in my head, just so many class defensive rides (even though usually he'd PREFER to be coming from behind than holding others off). last few laps of sachsenring 2006 are like, gorgeous, what a crazy girl. laguna 2008. assen 2015. some of the late braking in catalunya 2009, like I already have talked about it elsewhere and jorge has spoken about how vale sets up his bike to brake 10m later than everyone else, but. has to be said. he really did gag me with that catalunya 2009 turn one behaviour. phewwwww some of his mugello main straight antics..... he TESTED those brakes. his last podium ride in andalusia 2020... still had it what can you say. also, thing is, there's not really many failures you can point to? his two biggest last lap defeats, he was behind going into them - like yeah still sucked he lost (especially sachsenring 2003 where you CAN kinda argue it was a fuck up in his defence) (jerez 2005 SHOULD have been a major fuck up but he won it so) but overall... oh also sepang 2006 last lap. I mean, I could go on - he's good at picking his lines and being a dickhead and just placing his bike right and also muscling his way around the track... some of his dubious motegi 2010 antics even though he's flirting with the line. also excellent at re-overtaking after being overtaken. straightforward case

so I've switched this twice and then realised I was overthinking this and next it's obviously marc. idk I think you can overthink this and marc does have a few Actual Sketch defensive rides (argentina 2015, silverstone 2019) but also his wheel to wheel record is so strong you've got to let him slot in here. like, again, the decision making isn't always ideal, he sometimes pushes it a bit too far, but the fundamental race craft can be faulted and he does do a lot of really excellent defensive riding, brutal on the brakes and all that. again, this really does jump out during the dogfights, plus also stuff like thailand 2019. he's very good at it!! a nightmare to get past, because he is also NOT just gonna give up the position! then we get into classic casey 'god this sample size is ass' stuff where I think I give him a lot of benefit of the doubt given just the lack of races where he was like... running similar paces to other guys... awful era. but clearly did have some excellent rides where defence played a huge role, catalunya 2007 was really good... assen 2007 he kept valentino behind quite a long time, few races like that where casey really does keep him behind for quite long. phillip island 2009 is a bit tricky because it felt valentino never had the ultimate pace to overtake but, well, casey started ahead, had valentino sitting on his rear tyre for a decent chunk of the race, finished ahead, so points for that. again, just a real sample size issue here but, y'know

jorge.... listen, he definitely can defend. he has done some very, very strong defensive rides. one of the strongest and most important ones of his career was at a little known race called valencia 2015 even if marc maybe wasn't as motivated to overtake jorge as he would have been some other days I'M KIDDING. it's good. lot of good stuff going on. that being said.... man, it's such low hanging fruit, but you have to talk about how jorge was robbed at the final corner first in catalunya 2009 and jerez 2013. now, look, of course people can lose races in final corners, but in both those cases you do have to say... dude. you could have defended that line. in both cases everyone does kinda go... mate. mate. you have to assume those two bastards will go for it. idk obviously this is selection bias because both instances were just so memorable, but inevitably this is the stuff you are judged on. don't do it!! omg! also, with all love to valentino's slightly deranged levels of aggression while both attacking and defending against jorge in motegi 2010, this is another one where you do kinda feel.... yeah, it's not easy when you know the other guy is kinda willing to crash you both out rather than let you win (valentino!! your shoulder!! valentino!!!!) and yeah you kinda still have a championship to think about... still. (that being said, I'm not giving valentino TOO many motegi 2010 points in either category - yes, it worked, yes, it was funny, but was it 'good riding'? eh.) do we give him points off for the sepang 2017 error that let dovi ahead... I suppose he defended very well against dovi at valencia that year lol. but actually, same thing with 2015, I'm not sure you really get many points for defending at valencia? anyway, I feel like the way this is ordered, I'm unfortunately constantly justifying ranking the same blokes last, so again, let's keep this quick. dani: fantastic work at aragon 2015. truly elite performance. wish you had done a little more of that. way too many estoril's and shanghai's and motegi's 2008. but aragon 2015 was lovely

9. cunning

stuff I considered: 'race management', how you navigate different race situations, battle smarts

hm, yeah, another bit of a catch all category like reliability was - just that general sense of... y'know, how good are you at figuring out races. working them out in your head, being smart about when to push and when not to push. decision making skills, how you are at analysing your opponents, at studying their strengths and weaknesses. at the mental side of the on-track game, at intimidation and stealth. cunning. anyway absolutely zero prizes for guessing who slots into number one and two here. all of the things I just described are very closely associated with valentino, and this is basically his category. I'm thinking what he did to sete specifically. I'm thinking how he completely switched it up against casey at laguna 2008. I'm thinking how he did that last corner overtake on casey catalunya 2007, saved it away, then did it for the win against jorge at catalunya 2009 after visualising it the week before that. it's that bloody assen 2015 chicane trick on marc - idc if that was planned or not (all right, I deeply deeply care), but either way what a clever way of stealing a win. it's the success rate in last lap duels... and then, of course, there's all the more general stuff - we've already discussed tyre preservation above, generally speaking prime valentino was excellent at controlling races across very different eras

marc clocks in second - prime marc was again just. ridiculously good at controlling races, especially in the tyre preservation era post 2015. knows when to push, knows when to not... I will yap on forever about how neat I find his 2016 campaign, by far the most cruelly overlooked of his titles just because he didn't 'win' a lot of 'races'. who cares about that, check out the consistency!! elite at race management!! marc does have a brain and he can choose to engage it, and he does prove as much on the track - he's good at a lot of risk/reward judgements, and he'd better be because otherwise with his riding style it'd be far more of a trail of carnage than it already is at times. the head loss to riding style trade off actually isn't too bad with him, relatively speaking. he's been doing some very strong race management this year, if at times from un-ideal starting positions - again, le mans main race says hi. plus, the dogfights man... not the actual fighting bit, the tyre preservation bit. unless you want to get into conspiracy theory territory, which surely nobody would want to, let's just assume that in phillip island 2015 he hadn't actually been planning to just find a bunch of extra tyre on the last lap - but phillip island 2017 and assen 2018 he times it perfectly. that being said. okay. it just has to be acknowledged. marc. we need to work on making more of these overtakes stick. yes, I've made the arguments myself, he tends to be in duels he has no right to be engaged in in the first place, he's on the limit at some of his poorer tracks, it's impressive and intimidating he's there in the first place... and I do believe all of those things! but the thing is when you tell everyone you go for every gap, and then riders are deliberately leaving you a gap knowing you will go for it, and then they get back at you, and then they do it literally seven times in one race... marc, come on. I'm on my knees. I was literally on my knees during aragon 2021. he does this against valentino, against dovi, against pecco, man even against jorge once or twice, and it does drive you a little insane sometimes. too much red mist!! too much red mist. stop being suckered into making the move marc I am so very much on my knees

with the other three, I've already kinda discussed what I'd mention here elsewhere. like, casey... idk it's a tough one because I don't think it's harsh to judge him on a tiny sample size, but if you've engaged in like. ten extended duels in the premier class and you've crashed in two of them, then unfortunately it does make me raise an eyebrow more than if you've crashed out of two from fifty, right? he does get a bit red mist-y, not just when he's punching people in practise sessions, but also like. occasionally in races. he's red mist-y in laguna '08, sachsenring '12, mugello '12... I don't think he's even mad necessarily (well, obviously he is in laguna), just kinda very dog with a bone. (biggest valentino in-race anger-affected errors of judgement are ofc qatar 2004 + sepang 2015, btw. marc I'm not gonna give the obvious and instead throw in a cute jerez 2024 sprint, like dude please stop attempting to murder joan enough.) he's decent at race management in general, though idk my issue with some of these alien wins is that, I get it's unfair, but I'm just not really that impressed with 'managing' a gap of six seconds? like congrats on being fast and not chucking it I guess. jerez 2012 + estoril 2012 are really neat in that regard though, he's proud of them for good reason. also, again, could've easily lost a few valentino fights that he didn't. with jorge... yeah, he's excellent at race management!! also a smart tussler, got those silverstone 2013 and mugello 2016 and austria 2018 wins to go too. think I do slightly hold some of the dovi losses over the course of his career against him lol. I mean, losing to dovi in direct fights does very much happen to the best of them, and this is another category in which dovi would obviously be in contention for top spot. both jorge and dani are very very strong at race managing, in particular when they're at the front, and they're capable of outsmarting opponents... again for dani, aragon + motegi 2015 do stick in the mind. valencia 2017 was suchhhh a good win too, so much going on in that race and he was smart enough to emerge on top. look, the tyre preservation thing was very good for all three of them, they could all manage races, they all had a few rough ones w2w, also you can make casey mad and spook dani. you can make jorge mad too actually

10. strategy + work process

stuff I considered: tendency to get it 'right' with team, from set up to tyre choice to improvement over the course of the weekend. also flag to flag races

easy marc win, and a big part of it really is just how that bloke fucking nailed flag to flag races. like, jesus christ, he had the cheat code to those things. how do you just make right call after right call, truly obscene. if I'm some random midfield rider, I'm telling my team to make me copy whatever he's doing like idc. also, okay, a lot of weekends he started strong, but the ones where he didn't? he ended the weekend fast. like, he's good on fridays, he's excellent on saturdays, but there really were plenty of weekends where his sundays were the strongest of them all. found a bunch of extra pace down the back of the couch overnight. 2016-19 was obviously super big on the tyre preservation and yup, got truly elite at that too - sure, some of that is just raw skill, but some of that is also prep work and knowing what you need to be doing at what stage of the race. valentino clocks in second here, and a lot of these things are broadly true of him too, especially the finding pace overnight thing. most infamous example is of course laguna 2008 - yeah, sure, tactics are great and all, but he needed to make a step to even stick close enough to casey to fuck with him. a lot of his race weekends went like that! the blot in his copybook is... dude. what the fuck is wrong with your flag to flag strategies. like it genuinely is not your inability to ride in those situations because you're clearly fine at THAT bit, but what's going on with the communication and decision-making thing here. it's also sometimes THE most obvious shit??? not to be all armchair expert here but scotty beam me in, send me back to 2006 EYE will fix valentino's f2f. it's so bad!! I don't get how bad it is!! with marc, the biggest blot is phillip island 2013 - which, I don't care he was 20 years old, I get it was his rookie season, but it could have easily cost him the title and it's such a truly abysmal fuck up that it still makes me shake my head to think about. genuinely inexcusable lol, the backstory of the whole thing is also so incredibly stupid. marc's not the main issue here, but this entire component is kinda rated by your entire team so. I mean, look, he's still on top

after that, I'm not massively fussed about the order - though again with casey I do think it's notable he was also pretty strong at the 'finding pace overnight' trick. he was kinda.... you know, he was already so strong on friday, which WAS an advantage but he discusses in his autobiography that it almost made it tricky to know where to go from there lol. but they still figured it out!! just good at figuring out ways to win. jorge did play some proper blinders f2f which I'm giving him brownie points for, some... less ideal decisions. I'm sorry, I'm also gonna dock him a few points for some of the ducati races where he was leading early on burning through his tyres and then dropping back. I think that can happen once, or maybe even twice, but like. too often, eventually u need to maybe change up the strategy and figure out what can work now. dani generally speaking was not doing that, and yeah, a few very strong 'yup you got the approach to tyre preservation exactly right' contenders, but also really did not do well in flag to flag races... tricky one because yeah with him and jorge, they were a bit less likely to find the pace overnight (casey did kinda allude to this in his autobiography lol)

graphs :)

okay. lemme show my video game-y radar charts <3

valentino:

dani:

casey:

jorge:

marc:

and combined, because well if you've read this far I might as well not play coy here:

anyway. look

I don't. love. what I've done to jorge specifically. and there's one massive jorge strong point that I could not figure out how to rank for everyone else, but feel very very strongly he is very very good at: some kind of clutch factor. this is KINDA captured by the reliability metric, but I don't quite think that one's enough... I don't think this specifically shines when he's on the heat of battle, but it does shine when he's late in a season when he needs to maximise those results to keep his title bid in good health. the glaring exception is phillip island 2009, but, well, valentino has a valencia 2006, marc has a... I know it didn't cost him but valencia 2017 was not a good performance. but! apart from that, if you look at jorge's track record from then on late in seasons when it's his own title bid (also excluding 2017 here) on the line... proper good shit. that late 2012 stretch where dani was on a different planet and jorge kept showing up to bag second place. I know I was ragging on 2015 earlier on and I'm not like, massively moved by most of that jorge season, and I still fundamentally think that if you're leading the last lap of phillip island by as much as he was, I don't care if it's literally jesus of nazareth on that motorcycle chasing after you - you should be making it a little bit harder for the guy behind. that being said, sepang was a+ given he really didn't have that much pace (lil bit of luck at the start and then those two bozos behind him did kinda help his cause, but still he did his job), and valencia was straight up excellent. I know he didn't win the title, but late 2013 was probably like. his career best stretch. the valencia 2013 performance is genuinely one of his best races. that's clutch!! that's what he's all about!! he can bring home a title!!

that being said. I had no clue how to compare that to the other four riders, not least because casey literally has not been in a close title fight with a few races to go. just wanted to say it! I also don't think all these categories are equal - like I think I said at the top, being a wet weather rider is nice but it is fundamentally not as important as being a strong qualifier. I just don't love these categories in general? I was trying to think of a way of splitting up qualifying into two different categories, couldn't think of one, tried to think of something for tyre preservation beyond inelegantly including it in strategy, didn't think of anything. easier to come up with this stuff with tennis, and obviously also easier to just like. judge pure performance because you don't have all these extraneous categories. also I kinda think these riders are basically equal on some of these categories, but also if you're doing a ranking then ranking something as equal best is chicken shit

I think generally it's good to have your radar chart arranged in an order where it's not too spiky (listen if you're still reading this post, that's really on you), so that there's a kinda correlation between the bits that are next to each other. broadly most of them do do this in a sort of 'huh dani pedrosa would have benefited from the sprint race format over the course of a full season' way. they're all not too spiky... I kept running into the sample size issue with casey, where it's just like... look, he had a fantastic career, but also in the premier class a lot of the 2007 to 2012 races were very same-y and you kinda need that variety to judge. so a lot of the times with him I'm kinda going off vibes? like I think he's good at certain things, I reckon he'd probably struggle with xyz if he'd had more of a chance to do it, and extrapolate from that. which obviously isn't a great way of doing these things. basically, I massively rate him, I think valentino had the slight edge against him in wheel to wheel but the fact that it was 'slight' given that's valentino's number one selling point tells you enough, and I wish we could have put him into more varied race and championship standings situations to see what he does. like, the overtaking ability ranking clearly is in large part that laguna 2011 overtake just sort of killing my brain

anyway from this it feels like I think marc is the most well-rounded rider, which I probably stand by? the more I dig into valentino's actual qualifying numbers, the more I do feel like I'm maybe being a bit harsh, like yeah age-based decline we get it but during his prime... also, maybe I'm a bit too mean about the starts... but yeah, idk, they're definitely bigger flaws you can point to with valentino's game than any equivalent for marc. also genuinely do think the flag to flag thing was abysmal, I refuse to believe that's not something that wasn't fixable. I still think marc's wheel to wheel is the bit where around silverstone 2019 I was kinda going 'okay love this for you but do you maybe want to WIN one of these' (and then he immediately made baby!fabio miserable). like, again, super cool he's dragging that honda into places it doesn't belong, still need to work on that conversion rate. also, there was a bit of a 'how to fight marc' playbook by then and it's the equivalent of tying a red flag to the side of the motorbike and practically inviting him to have a go. worked a bit too often! that's like, gonna be one of the most interesting aspects of the pecco/marc rivalry because if I did this for PECCO then he would genuinely be in contender for top spot for the defensive riding category (best three defensive riders this century are him, dovi and valentino in no particular order, I really do believe this). that being said, obviously the qualifying thing is bonkers, yeah, as is anything with sketch grip. my laguna 2011 equivalent for marc is that brno 2019 quali lap. mostly I think of a hypothetical casey/marc rivalry more as like. how it would psychologically torture casey. but obviously in terms of the sport itself it would've been very cool to see them face off with that kind of thing

with jorge, again, I don't feel like these specific metrics really capture what made him so good. there's no way to phrase 'unbeatable on his day' as both like, a workable metric and also something that doesn't sound kinda patronising. 'situational dominance', idk. I also wouldn't know how you'd rank the aliens for that, except valentino would be last. my main thing with jorge is always kinda getting annoyed whenever he goes missing, something I suspect would be punished more in today's motogp - but also in 2010 and 2012 specifically, that did happen very rarely. with dani, it was always the wheel to wheel stuff that was just kinda. meh. he's another one who isn't super well served by these categories, like if there's a 'technically very clean' or 'picks very nice lines' category, he'd be on top? idk man. send in alternative suggestions or shout abuse at me for not being kind enough to your favourite alien. in conclusion, I think they're cool. I'm sorry for insulting all of them a lot

[sailorsleepymoon]

How we feeling about the Tim walz vp pick gang

[ink-the-artist]

i’m afraid there can only be one colored pencil artist on tumblr at a time. we’ll have to take away your credentials.

i think its the fucked up creature art ppl are upset about, ive gotten that reaction on some pantyhose sculptures I did that were inspired by completely different artists lol

[moeblob]

So I saw a screenshot of Ralph without his hat (for his wedding outfit + I think a DLC outfit didn't have it?) and honestly. There's a reason he wears it. It's unfair if he doesn't. Olive Town really is just "hot bisexuals in your area" and they would thrive if they advertised it as such.

[mbat]

still surprised that the people behind world of warcraft actually really released a race where the women can have beards, and not even just small or subtle beards, but ones just as big and grand as the men have. i dont really ever expect much from blizzard when it comes to anything progressive really, so its always a surprise if they do have anything like this.

and when ive mentioned it before, people have told me that women dwarves (the earthen arent even actually dwarves(?), they just look A LOT like them for whatever reason) usually have beards?? but ive never seen that before this whole thing, and even then, this is blizzard were talking about. its actually just a shock they did something like this at all.

i try not to publically praise them too much for a few reasons, but i just have to say that i like it, and yes i gave my earthen woman a grand beard.

[vvossy]

Just googled and found out another CC creator already posted phalloplasty scar cc earlier this month

I'm no longer the first like I thought I was, but the more phallo cc options there are in the world, the better it is

Great minds think alike

(¯▿¯) 🤝 ( ˙▿˙ )

[elftwink]

one major difference i have found between service industry work (in my case food service but this is widely applicable to similar jobs) and other public-facing positions is that the job itself is often very similar because people is the same, it's just in service everyone approaches you already thinking they're right and you're a fucking idiot and its their god given right to disrespect you, where in other positions even if they are not nice to you they usually acknowledge that you know more than them on issues pertaining to your job. like the difference in behaviour from people who see you as serving them vs helping them is unreal. i am doing literally the exact same things. customer is always right mentality did irreparable damage to the fabric of society

[tankgotstuckinthecircusgate]

this but carlo & moretti😔🤨 thats all thank you