#and suddenly there is a bit of pressure

[izayoichan]

Emil nodded, they had thought it might happen at some point, but these two, they had just stayed the best of friends and nothing seemed to change that. On the ice though, they had a chemistry that was undeniable, but they both said the same thing when asked every time they competed, that they were just friends.

With school starting for everyone, life settled into what was the kid's normal routine, school, homework often done in the training rink while Ye-Min and Rylan were practicing, and then of course helping them get through it as well. Liam had been asked if he wanted to train some more with the barista they had worked with in the summer, so they all kept busy in many ways, yet still found time to help out at the shelters as well.

By the next spring, the biggest talk was Ams graduating as he was some years older than them, and that Rylan and Ye-Min had qualified for the nationals which again could see them go even further with their skating. As they were still young, the talk of the sports news was if they would enter the youth world championships if they won their nationals.

Tyvan: Nervous? Rylan: A little, it suddenly feels so big and serious.

Tyvan smiled as they sat down next to their twin outside. Tomorrow was the start of the nationals weekend, and he could see how his twin would feel that way. 

Beginning - Previous - Next

[aroaessidhe]

2024 reads / storygraph

The Sapling Cage

YA fantasy, start of a trilogy

a trans girl and her friend swap places so she can join the coven of witches who wander the land instead of becoming a knight

as they travel and she starts to learn from them, while hoping she’s not found out , they uncover a corrupt magical blight that threatens to become a civil war

bi demi MC

[cosmik-homo]

i KNOW blakes 7 does not mean what it Says about vila and kleptomania seriously, which is precisely why i must take it as such. makin your funny neurotic guy actually neurotic 👍

[batsplat]

so i’m kinda new to motogp, i started watching it from this season and your account has been very helpful. i have a question, i’ve seen a post on insta where they were comparing marc and pedro results from the first race to the fifth races (i think?) in their rookie year. and a lot of people in the comments where talking about the fact that you cannot compare their results because they’re two whole different situations. but are they? ‘cause at the start of the season everybody was calling pedro the next marquez and a lot of motogp legends were talking about how talented he’s. which i’m not entitled to discuss. but if you compare the results, i wouldn’t say pedro’s season is disappointing (because it’s still early and he has two podiums), but i think it’s pehraps underwhelming compared to marc’s. so what i’m trying to understand is why are their situations considered different and why some people kind of “discredit” marc rookie season when they compare it to acosta’s? (like i thought that winning a title in you rookie year was the most impressive thing you could do)

welcome to the sport, and that's really nice to hear!!

so, I did do my 'comparing between eras is impossible' thing here, but obviously this isn't particularly useful. I'll get over myself and give you a proper answer, but fwiw I still believe that direct parallels can only ever be of limited use. here's a few things to keep in mind when comparing the two:

factory vs satellite: factory teams will always have at least a little bit of an advantage over the satellite squads. even if it's not in equipment... it's also just about the amount of resources that are being mobilised to help you get your results, the experience of your team, etc etc. now, I put this first because I don't think this is a massive factor here. ktm's whole thing is that they want to essentially run four factory bikes, see the rebrand next year, and obviously they're very motivated to help pedro out. I'm sure he's getting a lot of backing - in terms of historical comparisons, it's a bit more valentino 2000 than it is casey 2006

bike quality: the honda in 2013 was the best bike on the grid. pedro's ktm is... well it's certainly not in the top four. after that, the pecking order does get a little tricky, but it's certainly not decisively clear of either the aprilias or the gp23's. we do know pedro basically has equal machinery to the other ktm's. now, those are the first riders he has to beat... and he's beating them! going into this year, binder was getting top three rider on the grid shouts and pretty much everyone thought he'd be outscoring acosta at least in the first year (not me tho <3). I think these acosta performances have sparked a bit of a debate over 'was the ktm better than we thought all along and the riders were just being overrated, or is acosta just that good'... makes it kinda easy to forget how people talked about binder last year. but crucially even people who rated pedro very highly generally didn't think he'd have the upper hand this soon. pedro is p5 in the standings (behind three gp24's and marc marquez), versus the other ktm's at p7, p...16? jesus. and p17. marc's teammate in 2013 was p3. now, yes, nobody is saying binder is as good as dani pedrosa and he's been having a very rocky season - but at least some of binder's issues seem to be bike-related... definitely a bike that seems to have some serious gremlins and pedro needs to be credited for mitigating those. also, this is an era in which the bikes are more complicated than ever and generally considered to be even trickier to adapt to than in times past, which makes pedro's immediate consistent pace pretty much everywhere, every session particularly noteworthy

spread of field: related to the previous point - not only is pedro's bike worse, but the field as a whole is more competitive. in 2013, if you weren't on one of four bikes, it was going to be really hard for you to fight for wins. in 2024, there are a lot of bikes capable of fighting for wins, and you see that in how mixed up the order is race to race. it's just a different era... from around 2007 to 2015, there was a clear disparity between a few bikes and the rest, enabled both through technical regulations and other external factors (e.g. the impact of the financial crisis and smaller teams struggling as a result). the average level of the field is also higher nowadays, there's a lot of very strong riders - which means if you're having a slightly rougher weekend, your floor is considerably lower and you will have to accept you might not be in the podium fight at all. the margins are smaller now in both qualifying and in races... small swings of performance in both bike and rider can have way more dramatic repercussions

the eye test: for obvious reasons this one's a bit harder to put words to. but... pedro just passes it, with flying colours. it's the way he throws himself around on the bike, the obscene amounts of lean angle, the ridiculously late braking and the way he somehow still gets the bike turned, how he keeps taking lines that nobody else is taking, how it's allowing him to fight his way through the field (notoriously tough in motogp these days)... in the same way in which marc in 2013 was clearly just riding differently to all the other riders that preceded him, you see this stuff with pedro, you see he's the next step. you can tell he's just got that special something that allows him to do stuff with his bike that nobody else can. also, this isn't quite the same as rating his rookie season, but obviously everyone already knew what a hyped prospect pedro was headed into this year. he hasn't shown any sign whatsoever of succumbing to the hype/pressure and letting it get to him, which is also a great sign for the future

how good his results are: so, obviously he hasn't won a race yet - even though he's now secured multiple podiums. but again, unlike with marc''s 2013 there is no single weekend in which the ktm has been the strongest bike. sometimes it's been a bit closer and sometimes it's a little further away... yes, pedro has started making a couple of mistakes, but also that may just be the result of putting the bike in places it doesn't really belong. marc only had one race crash in the rookie season, but he also knew he couldn't afford to make mistakes - he was in the title fight. pedro is playing around with a worse bike and if he thinks he has the pace to win, it makes sense for him to just push that little bit extra, come what may. it's now been quite a few weekends since pedro hasn't decisively been the best ktm on pace - and, really, what more can you ask for? unless binder's suddenly forgotten how to ride a bike, it's reasonably likely that the ktm is at least a little worse than it was last year, which makes these results even more impressive

the rookie title question: yes, a rookie title is uniquely impressive! it's a particularly tricky situation to deal with... marc really had to be operating on a very high very consistent level that entire year, and in no way should it be diminished what kind of performances he had to put in week to week to claim that title. (though, of course, marc did get a little bit lucky that year, in particular with his rivals' injuries.) the thing is, we'll never know if pedro would manage the pressures and travails and ebbs and flows of a title fight in his rookie season as well as marc did... because he hasn't had the opportunity to fight for it. we just don't know! which makes it a bit hard to penalise pedro for not being able to match that... you just have to find a happy middle ground where you acknowledge how impressive marc's title was, while also allowing that on pure performance pedro might be shaping up as every bit as impressive

marc is very marmite in most online motogp fan spaces, whether those detractors are partisan valentino fans or think he's too aggressive for their tastes or don't particularly fondly remember his dominance or just don't like his vibe... so I'm sure there's plenty of people on instagram who would like to discredit him!! but I don't think calling pedro's rookie season comparable should in any way be used to discredit marc - the only point is that if you look at his current performances, it's completely plausible to believe he can match/surpass marc in the future. what he's doing right now is really impressive! it's not quite the same headline numbers, but there's weekends where he's quite plausibly on. like. the joint 12th best bike or something. so it really is all very tight and he is doing very well! but also you can't compare eras and all of these comparisons easily break down and sometimes you can just treat two things as separately impressive without attempting to definitively determine which is 'better', especially in motorsports where so much isn't determined by the actual athlete themselves and instead by factors they have zero control over

[itspileofgoodthings]

.

[buttercupshands]

I just managed to get off mha hyperfixation

And now it's happening again... Oh no

Helps with upcoming MHUI LoV event tho, it was a long time since last one happened I wonder what would happen in a new filler story part

Basically this and couple of pages of mid-final arc chapters + recent episode and next one being The Dabi episode was just too much not to get excited again

But! Important thing - I need to reread the last arc before I make anything new, if possible without finishing it to the 419 chapter and everything after, it took 2 months to really recover from the damage that chapter did

Anyway am I ready for the new event? Kinda! Do I have enough gems to get new Tomura? No! I'm not sure he'll even show up this time, because other ones were and still are really stubborn

Also Steampunk recruit took like 120 pulls in a step-up recruit and in the usual one combined

Not the best time to get LoV involved, it's cruel even

Also that one part of the page I added at the beginning was so interesting to look at and them I joked about 236 being similar. The only good thing with final arc being over is that I can say that Izuku didn't draw the parallel of seeing everyone hurt and seeing Tenko react on Mon's death

Understandable why, but it's funny to just look at them and be like, "wow Horikoshi traumatized them both"

[egg-emperor]

ideal lifestyle would be to be mind controlled by Eggman and exist only to be his blissfully mindless slave forever or as long as he'll have me... sighhh 💜💘💕

I don't wanna think about a single thing other than him, or feel a single thing other than love for him, or exist for any reason other than serving him lol

[trainingdummyrabbit]

days since last : 0

[choccymilkblehhh]

hewo i’m back

[columblorbo]

.

[imflyingfish]

I gotta be less hard on myself. Annoyingly i know that my best work comes from when i am hard on myself. But i keep stopping myself from doing things i want to due to perfectionism. Annoying.

[amitsuma]

insert whining about needing to buy SAI already as i stretch the trial period to it’s absolute limit bc i’m picky about pen pressure 

anyway atropa is very pretty 

[yoojinluv]

[hopefullystillliving]

I fucking hate being long-term temporarily disabled in such a way that you *know* what the treatment is, you are hypothetically able to access the treatment, but you just aren't well enough to have the fucking treatment done.

[jonbinary-archive]

possibly going to finally come out* to my extended family tmrw 4 Pride Moth which should be deeply funny. i say as thus bc many of my cousins already know im gay and/or some flavor of transgender but ive been on T for over a year and literally just never mentioned it LOLLL . honestly i just never think about it

[blujayonthewing]

one problem with dnd is that, to some extent, you kinda have to do Getting A Good Grade In Therapy conversations sometimes because you don't get to control the entire narrative or anyone else's characters, so if you want people to know what your character is really thinking or feeling then eventually you kinda just have to say it out loud, and the problem with that is that sometimes you're playing a character who is really not very good at even knowing what they are thinking or feeling themselves in the first place