#at least in the season he wins

[thebardscipher]

Me: The Sword Suit terrifies me. Whenever a Sword card shows up in a reading I'm filled with dread. To me, Swords are MUCH more terrifying than The Tower, and definitely more terrifying than Death or The Devil. Like if a movie wants me to fear for the characters, they'll reveal a Sword card, not The Death card.

Also me: This character is This Sword card and this character is This Sword card. And this character fits this Sword card to a T! This character right here is the EPITAMY of This Sword card, I've never seen a character more THIS Sword card than this character in my life....

[maalidoesart]

the gays win

[vaguely-concerned]

there are a lot of daddy issues to go around on DS9 in general, but odo, bashir and garak are really in their own special little fucked up 'what am I but wrought in my father's image' club

[gayferrari]

Trying to catch up with old charles lore. Could you explain to me the singapore 2019 drama, like why ferrari let seb pit first and not tell charles?

[I typed this long-ass answer my browser ATE IT then I RETYPED IT AGAIN heroically. the things I do for sebchal drama...]

omg Singapore 2019!! OK SO. I rewatched that race not too long ago and off the top of my head, I can't remember the strategy decision being that outrageous at the time. Both during race comm and in the aftermath there wasn't noise about it. I might me wrong here, but I don't think it was a strategy screw-up, per se — iirc, Seb and Max (who was just behind him) pitted on the same lap, so it might have been that it was more convenient to pit Seb because he had a clearer window, or to offset RBR strategy moves, or it might have been that Charles's tyres could hold longer. I don't think pitting Seb first was a big deal, by itself. ofc, usually when that happens between teammates, the one ahead is ordered to give back position, barring special circumstances. Seb wasn't ordered to give the position to Charles.

My two cents: if it had been the other way around — Seb starting on pole and getting undercut by his teammate who started P3 — Ferrari would have made them switch back. But in that situation, ordering Seb to switch with Charles would have been more trouble than it was worth it. Ferrari started the season with Seb as their clear #1, and by Singapore he hadn't won a race in a year and Charles was on track for his third win in a row. Like... ordering your veteran driver / multi wdc to yield a race win to his much junior teammate would have caused a bigger mess than not just keeping the race order stand. Just imagine the headlines (FERRARI HAVE LOST CONFIDENCE IN VETTEL??? etc etc etc). They're damned if he does, damned if he doesn't. (And I'm not sure Seb would have, honestly.) I mostly remember the aftermath of Singapore 2019, at the time, as being a big relief to Ferrari fans and Seb fans. It was very "He's still got it, he's still here, we are so back" kinda vibe. Ferrari got their 1-2 and their third win in a row, and neither of their drivers was in serious contention for wdc by then so the individual points mattered less, but that individual win meant A LOT to Seb (who, at that point, Ferrari meant to retain! His renewal negotiations fell apart over 6 months later)

tldr, I would say the team thought that letting Seb win even if it meant Charles got done dirty was less poisonous in the long term than the other way. I don't think it was deliberate. I also don't think it was glaring incompetence as far as Binotto-era strategy choices go. Reminder that this was before Ferrari got nerfed for the illegal engine, they had absolutely no idea they wouldn't win a race again until 2022. They were fully expecting to challenge for wins again soon enough, u know?

ALSO I found this very cool picture on google AND this very fun (in hindsight) reddit comment while searching for said picture

158 upvotes.......

Anyway typing this out made me want a rancid sebchal fic where Seb is ordered to let Charles pass :)))) and who knows what happens then

[batsplat]

pecco rant please please

*spins wheel on possible topics* absurdly underrated but in a dumb way. you'd think you can stumble your way into two premier class titles. I don't care he's on the best bike - let's be honest, how often this century have the title winners not been on the best bike? 2004 and to a lesser extent 2005 you can say clearly weaker bike, 2007 late 2010s 2021 there's a clear enough disparity with anyone else riding the bike that you can say clearly the rider is making the difference/it's an unrideable wreck one guy is making respectable, then there's a few seasons where it's at least very close whose machinery is best or they're fighting with people on equal equipment, which pecco has done! but generally speaking, good/promising riders end up on good bikes and then they win. that's how the game works!

the thing about 2022 is that it had such a massive mid-season swing that overhauling a ninety something point margin cannot come down to any single factor. is it fair to say fabio lost that title? on balance, it's a bit harsh - yes, there were a few too many errors post-sachsenring, yes, some were driven by desperation, but also you can't really expect anyone to ride a flawless season. but pecco did win that title as much as yamaha lost it. I don't care if you're riding a literal rocketship with two wheels, you can't win four races in a row if you're not extremely good at what you do! if we're saying that title was worth less because the yamaha turned to shit in the second half of the season, then let's keep going. let's put an asterisk next to 2013 because jorge and dani both got injured (let's not even get into the 'if marc hadn't been injured' asterisks because that's where you get into truly silly territory). is 2006 not a legit title because of all the bad luck valentino faced that year? let's say all titles between 2007 to 2015 were worth less because at any one time only 4-6 bikes had a realistic chance of winning races. throw out any title before 2009 because they were constantly fucking about with the tyres and there wasn't a level playing field. if you're motivated enough, you can play this game with basically anything, but it's dumb and pointless because that's not how sports works! you can only win against whoever you're facing. it has always been thus and it will always be thus

it's narratively fun and juicy that pecco has these insecurities himself - but within the context of everyone else doing discourse over it, the whole thing is massively overblown! linked to some of the worst sports discourse about how much people love to disparage late bloomers, because they need every single successful athlete to fit the same mould of the ultra-talented wunderkind, apparently. it's more interesting when it's not always the most 'talented' (whatever tf that means), naturally gifted, *fast the second he touches a bike* bloke who wins. sometimes they have to work hard for it, sometimes they have to improve themselves year on year and be smart about how they do it, sometimes they have to be in the right place and right time, sometimes they have to be very lucky. sports is all about competition, and competition is all about contrast. it's a contrast that can be generated in a whole lot of ways, and in fairness to motogp they have come up with a bunch of interesting narratively tense contests that don't rely on a massive fundamental 'talent' differential - but at the end of the day, that's one of the best ones you can have! the more ways you can have to win in any given sport, the better, both in the literal sense of how you go about the actual process of winning and how you even become a winner. none of this means that pecco isn't very very good, it means he got there in a different way than every other multiple champ this century has. it fundamentally flattens the sport if you want every top-level competitor to be an alien-level talent... one of the best things about this current era is that it has given us something new and exciting in that regard, where you well and truly believe some very different blokes might have what it takes to eventually be champion

anyway, pecco is absurdly adept at digging himself into holes and absurdly adept at digging himself out of them. he's one of the worst frontrunners imaginable in every sense, biologically incapable of dominating without at least a perpetual hint of jeopardy, both in the context of a race and a season. but when his back is against the wall, somehow he keeps finding performances you never imagined he was capable of. his mixed up and slightly odd skillset, his strengths and weaknesses, how he's better and worse than he has any right to be... all of it lends itself to perpetual momentum shifts and thrilling seasons - because you never quite know what you're going to get. love him or hate him, he's a gift to the overall competitive landscape! god knows the racing hasn't been much to write home about these last few years (though, yes, we did have a good little run this season), but somehow he's managed to get himself involved in two out of the six title deciders this century back-to-back. is that not the dream for the viewer, to have a bloke at the top of the sport with a little self-combust chip in his head every time he builds too much of an advantage? build a hundred of those guys! throw a marc marquez at him and see what he does! I can't wait to see what he'll come up with next

[ctrl-alt-em]

Wyrdwood team: We could always just knock Robin out. He’s not really useful :/

Me, opening a word doc: he’s now the only one of you that can cook a decent meal for the group 😤

[alicentwhore]

Criston leaving King’s Landing 2nd most powerful guy, getting more and more arrogant and comfortable in his power as he’s out on the field and now he’s coming back to King’s Landing after that shitshow of a battle to Alicent super extra mad at him, Larys on the Small Council, Aemond going public in his power grab, and Aegon half-dead and definitely not trusting him now.

[skitskatdacat63]

2009 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix - Sebastian Vettel

[gregoftom]

speak! good boy!

[repsolhonda]

i know there are more people running #1 than #93 which makes the #93 even more iconic but i sometimes wish marc ran with a #1 plate during 2016-2019 at least once

[3416]

Leafs vs Rangers | 4.13.23

[u5an5]

I know ultimate sacrifice is dying in fight for what matters the most and in 100% cases it was reversed by kissing headcanon is strong, but what if your existence was erased from the universe and only I remember about you now instead, huh?

[dreamless-daydreamer]

Manifesting Echos return tomorrow.

[tricoufamily]

no ok we finished episode 2 what they have done to katara is unforgivable. they have completed zapped every ounce of her personality away. why. why. look how they massacred my girl

[yoihino]

I can't wait for Grian to turn yellow and go into his madman era. He deserves it, as a treat, after the mess that were the last few episodes

[batsplat]

sometimes pecco pops his pussy so hard that i’m like wow you really are 3 time world champion! other times he decides to go play in the gravel when leading and i remember that he scored 0 points in his moto3 rookie season

when the commentary during the sprint was like 'you know, he could have been on five consecutive race wins now if he hadn't crashed out of the catalunya sprint on the last lap', I had to laugh because that's the pecco bagnaia experience right there isn't it. even when he's winning four races in a row, a part of your brain is still remembering the disaster that directly preceded it. when he got that track limit warning, I was convinced he was gonna mess it up. not because it's something he usually messes up, because it isn't - just because you're always waiting for something to go wrong and that seemed as good an opening as any. but no, apparently he's just in the bit of the season where he wins stuff. for whatever reason. or maybe he'll crash on sunday. who knows