#bike competition

[batsplat]

random throwback to fabio's response to casey saying he should've been black flagged for the whole open leathers situation

[moonshynecybin]

swan lake au where marc is normal during the nighttime until the sun comes up and he turns into the m1 at the end of vale’s bed

unironically this would fix them.

[imasexypotato]

Curt: Look , watch this

Crosby: ...?

Curt: THE FLOOR IS LAVA

Rosie: *helps Kenny onto the table*

Gale: *kicks John off the sofa*

Curt: As you can see, there are two types of boyfriends

[prosperdesignx]

[boygeniusgirlidiot]

at least he won something this year! 😕😕

[astranauticus]

Rolling With Difficulty as texts I have saved on my computer for some reason

(i drew every day for like a month straight and burnt out so have this nonsense instead)

[laeana]

Anyway I hate Ducati (as always).

All the drama just made me say… bring back Fabio world champion, that was my peak era of happiness 🫠

[topnotchquark]

i don't know about motogp and i wonder why people cant write reader× about them 🫣 are they angry people for such a thing

Hahahaha. No! These guys wouldn't get angry about romantic rpfs written about them, on the contrary I think a couple of them might even get a little chuffed.

See the thing is MotoGP is technically an international premier level sporting event, but it's also, a scrappy little sport that features a bunch of dudes that have spent their lives covered in grease from their family's mechanical workshop businesses. It's the little leagues because all these boys grew up knowing each other almost always from the same two countries (Italy, Spain) and there also isn't a big push to make the sport slick and commercialised at an international scale.

Imo from what little I have seen of x reader stories they are meant to serve a particular fantasy. This particular fantasy features the male love interest with a specific type of wealth and lifestyle, and usually the male interest is expected to be a doting partner to the reader in question.

I don't think the MotoGP boys, that are miles away from any proper PR training and spend their their entire time surrounded by the same bunch of mechanics and riders make for the prince charming, swoop you off your feet kind of romance? They are visibly incompatible with that specific type of female fantasy required in these stories.

Also sorry this post was your initiation into MotoGP lol, it's a fun fucking sport with crazy men on bikes that go over 300kmph and put everything on the line, including their bodies, to win. Try it out if that sounds fun!

[orcelito]

On the last part for this essay exam, and I have an hour and a half to write it. Unfortunately, it is about Sports... :/ specifically gender equality in sports, which is more interesting than sports alone, but it's still sports. And I have never been a sports person.

[dutifulsilence]

ooc ; i am not promising anything tonight. i got maybe 3 hours of sleep last night and am Feeling It, lads.

[clockworkreapers]

hey how do u draw so good i am an beginning artist and i need 2 be good can u pls tell me!!!

also i like ur webcomic aleph null my friend got me into it recently she loves all things homestuck since we were little

Firstly thank you both, everyone who lends a hand on it works very hard on it, we know its not for everyone but hey as long as you are enjoying the story that's perfect!

As for the art stuff- I can't exactly tell you how to be “good” cuz “good" is subjective especially with art, can give you tips for improving what you already have though. 

1: Baseline never compare yourself to others just as a rule of thumb, be inspired sure but don't compare cuz everyone is on their own path and develops on their own time comparing will only get you frustrated with yourself. 

2: If you are stuck don't be afraid to ask for help/crit, a second pair of eyes might be able to see things you can't, not everyone is great at GIVING crit but usually if you ask other artists they can give you some tools to help. 

3: Find something you really like and just keep drawing it, draw as much of it as you want for as long as you want, eventually you will improve but you have to keep going. Art is like a muscle- it's literally built off muscle memory- gotta work it out for it to get stronger.

4: Do studies! Lots of studies! If there is a texture you want to master, find a bunch of images of that texture and try to replicate it. If there is a pose or body type you want to learn how to draw, find a bunch of references and break it down into stuff like simple shapes and lines. Study your fave artists style, see what their line weight is like, what brushes they use, what shapes and colors they enjoy, how they shade, lil quirks of their style and then practice by trying to draw your own character with all those aspects. 

Pretty much all artists get inspired by others, all styles are a mix of something an artist likes and wants to incorporate into their own work. We are kinda like lil magpies that see something shiny and go ohhh I like that I'm gonna nab this one part and do my own spin on it. Sooner or later you get a blend of every piece of inspo with your own personal flair cuz every style is unique in its own way. The more you draw all of these blended things the more you settle into your OWN style. 

[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

[moonshynecybin]

thoughts on pedro’s first season?

i’m not a pedro hater per say i enjoy that he has a personality and a reckless sort of. frank tenacity that makes him fun (honestly i got converted watching him hang off the bike in cota it was a different, more exaggerated riding style that was SO cool), but i think anyone (specific journalists.) trying to say his rookie season has been like. better than marc or fabio is straight up huffing paint fumes

[leguin]

so so curious to know what he'll be like in 50 years

[itsbeenclaireified]

So at the end of July I did RAGBRAI, Register’s Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa. And it took a while for me to like…mentally recover from this one? Which was then like tough/disappointing to feel like I had to?

So what happened was on the very first day my dad and I crashed our tandem recumbent bike 3 times. We spend like 4-5 hours just trying to get the patch to hold and get rolling, but it just wasn’t working. And on the last crash we both got injured (dad some road rash and muscle soreness, me landed hard on me knee).

So we limped into camp (me literally limping) and my mom graciously drove several hours down to us with her bike and my dad’s bike. So we biked the rest of the week on those.

And that’s how I learned that I didn’t know a lot of stuff about long distance biking. I’ve always biked these long repetitive distances on a recumbent bike. But like day 3 on the upright bike I was experiencing a level of chafing I had never experienced before because I’m an idiot and didn’t know you shouldn’t have cotton underwear under your bike shorts.

So that chafing day I biked 45 miles and then my bike popped its tire, and that freaked me out and my whole body hurt and my knee was better but not great (it did okay on the bike but not walking around). So I bailed, and I’m both glad I did and also was like wow weak of you.

Which is rude of me to think??? Like I had biked 85 miles 4500vertical the previous day, but I thought I was like just not mentally tough enough to get thru it??

And the second to last day I also just decided to not bike because my hands were staying numb, and I just needed a break. And I had a great day recovering, but lord the ol noggin was like “are you listening to your body? Or are you a baby backed bitch giving up?”

And I think I was listening to by body, because here I am 5 weeks later and my fingers are finally not tingly anymore. And I’ve been to PT consult now and he thinks I have a bone contusion and that I didn’t fuck up my meniscus. Which is what I was hoping to hear, because I don’t want to fuck up my knee joint if I can avoid it. But also like …lol, what a weird vibe to HOPE for a bone contusion. And my knee still sort of aches but it’s still getting better.

So yeah there were good times, but mostly this Ragbrai was a fucking slog and was hard and then I was sad/disappointed that I didn’t have like a transformative happy experience. And a podcast I listened to used a phrase of “putting a ceiling on your suffering” where you can just…stop. Like you can be like my body is hurting and I don’t have to keep pushing. And I guess I’m glad I have learned that lesson. But it was tough.

And then I turned 32 and I was like dude my body and I did that together and it was scary that things could have been worse. Or like that could have been an injury that gives me a trick knee for the rest of my life, and so I’m thankful to past me that has done a bunch of pre-hab strengthening work to keep my acl protected etc.

Anyway, I avoided posting about Ragbrai because I had such complex feelings about it. But now I’m more ready to celebrate the accomplishment that it still was.

[shitty-check-please-aus]

okay 54 books already sounded like so many but then you casually mentioned that you'd mostly been reading via audiobook and all of a sudden it was an absurd number! that's so many hours of audio!! so so glad to hear that your brain fog has lifted to that degree; I hope it continues to improve 💕

this is so nice! I was actually a little nervous to admit that I'm mostly an audiobook user, because sometimes people will try to be like "that's not actually reading" for whatever reason. I feel like sometimes it's a little more challenging (I just finished Gideon the Ninth and for that one I definitely couldn't listen at 1.25x-2x speed) but for whatever reason it's been really working for me.

I will say that I think my spotify wrapped data will be like "uh you barely listened to any music this year" because I've been spending so much of my listening time over in the Libby app