#but I've got a game plan now. :)

[astoldbychae]

List 5 facts about a favorite sim of yours, and send this to 10 simblrs whose sims you adore ♥♥♥

Hmmm...Let's see...It's been a minute since I've been able to check in on my bookie, so lemme go with TJ! She's just *bites knuckles* *swoons*

She's Melo's cousin. They're literally inseparable (they're besties for real), so He's more like the older brother she's always wanted but never had. He's the reason she loves Basketball so much!

She's a shooting guard for the Del Sol Valley Suns (WSBA)

She's (secretly) engaged to/madly in love with Deijah (aka Bleu) BUT before that she had a lil something-something going on with Anya...🙃 [we'll get more of the inside scoop in the LoveStruck gameplay]

She has a gold fish names Pinto Bean (No comment 🤣)

Sushi is her favorite food (and Mt. Komorebi is her fave place to vacation because of it!)

Thanks for the tag honey bun! 💛

[sysig]

Finally made a Parapluesch OC, introducing Mama Oz ♥ (Patreon)

[duskgryphon-png]

6.5.24

7.5.24

coil sketches and planning for a painting,,,

[molar-bear-sims]

very slick, bea... 🤨

[xolbor-art-creator]

HI... i love kazumi pov fics & i'm a sucker for timeloops... what're you cooking up boss!

I'M ACTUALLY REALLY GLAD YOU ASKED ABOUT WHAT I'M COOKING!!! I love Kazumi pov fics AND I'm a sucker for timeloops too, so here's a short explanation to some of the things regarding this AU

So it starts off like canon, Mishima gains three votes in the pink room, and as he gained the most votes his collar starts to burn just as expected, his head tilts backwards off his neck, and Kazumi Expires. Except, Mishima has an odd dream where he talks to a certain suspicious looking fellow, suddenly Mishima wakes up again.

Now Mishima's got to find out how to get his student and hopefully everyone else out of the Killing Game somehow, but also has to deal with the loss of certain things he didn't even realize he had to worry about losing, and the possible cost of the Loops and also a certain friendly 'policeman'.

I'm considering making this an ask blog or an actual full fic with multiple chapters if I ever get out of writers block, but I might just keep it as just an AU I post art about sometimes.

[batsplat]

from the stuff i’ve heard marc’s former honda teammates (dani jorge and pol in their media careers but joan also i guess) say about him now that they’re racing is generally quite positive, both on a professional/riding level but also seemingly on a personal level? i’m wondering what you make of that given that, yeah, marc doesn’t seem like a very good teammate (unless you’re alex who i’ve left off this list). like MARC wants to separate on and off track stuff and it seems like all of these guys are willing too at least in retrospect, so he can’t have truly burned bridges with them. do you have any thoughts on that

(x, x) most riders are quite good at not burning bridges with each other! it's not like marc's competitors don't know that this stuff is kinda part of the game. I mean, all of marc's past teammates were also trying to assert themselves within the internal hierarchy... you can say that certain teammates engage in 'worse' behaviour than others, but, like, these people do understand they're supposed to be fighting each other! a baseline degree of nastiness is factored in and will be accepted to a greater or lesser extent by your rivals - especially when it comes to asserting yourself in intra-team power struggles. you might hate the other guy in the moment, but generally speaking once the active part of the rivalry is done with... you will probably get over it. marc's fellow riders are aware of how ultra-competitive marc is - and to a certain point they do respect it, not least because they're aware that this is part of the reason why marc has ended up with all those titles. it's like dani said, right, it's marc's strong suit. and in general, you do have to say that there's relatively few teammate pairings that devolve to the level of toxicity that it completely destroys the interpersonal relationship. you might need some level of preexisting animosity... most of the purely competitive sins can be healed with a little time

on the 'separating on-track and off-track' thing... well. this is kind of a question of how you define these things, you can say that marc generally speaking isn't going to massively hold grudges over isolated on-track incidents or whatever... but he doesn't just leave his fighting to the track, and personally I've also never felt he can entirely separate these things out in his mind. can you really say his professional and private relationships with other riders are completely detached from one another? mostly, he's opted to be pretty disengaged from his fellow riders as a collective, and obviously that's a good way to not take things too personally... it's all part of the game, isn't it? sometimes it's good to go with the straightforward approach: marc tells you he will make your life hell, he does indeed make your life hell, and then you both move on with your lives and can maybe actually have a pretty amiable relationship with him in years to come. he's not really defying your expectations at any point here, is he now? it's still a question for each of them as individuals as to whether they think that kind of behaviour is above board and acceptable or not... but everyone by now knows that marc plays these games, so it's not like they're going in blind

and it's not like other former teammates are constantly badmouthing each other. I mean... look, let's just cut to the chase here and bring in valentino as our reference point (as he is for the sport as a whole, which by the way does also help create a certain baseline of acceptability for marc's antics - maybe goated riders are just supposed to be dicks who knows). vale's premier class teammates were 1) nobody (2000-01), 2) tohru ukawa (2002), 3) nicky hayden (2003; 2011-12), 4) carlos checa (2004), 5) colin edwards (2005-2007), 6) jorge lorenzo (2008-10; 2013-16), 7) maverick vinales (2017-20), 8) franco morbidelli (2021), and 9) andrea dovizioso (2021). of these eight men (let's just exclude 'nobody' for now), do you know how many had serious complaints at any point about valentino as a teammate? that's right, it's one guy. one. some of valentino's other teammates, like hayden, checa and edwards, were even quite actively positive about their whole experience. this is the thing - you do need some specific circumstances for teammate rivalries to escalate from 'being kinda bitchy every other month' to 'actively fantasising about stabbing each other'. not accounting for natural interpersonal animosity, let's list some circumstantial factors that you need to get a bridge-burning-worthy level of feud:

you need a competitive bike. it is possible to beef about development direction when you're in the trenches (cf late 2010's yamaha, 2020's honda)... but generally speaking this is going to be quite low-level petty stuff, not actual war

you also need something that approaches competitiveness between teammates. if one teammate is unquestionably stronger than the other one, then it is very unlikely that you are going to get any open hostilities. the tension comes when the two sides are close enough to each other for the internal hierarchy to actually be a contentious issue (this is also basic self preservation... if you're the far weaker teammate then you do not want to make the situation troublesome, because then you will be the one to be fired)

following on from those first two things... well, it doesn't hurt to have a title fight in the mix. there are also other ways you can generate competitive stakes, like, for instance, if you and your teammate know that one of you will be out of a job soon. basically, it helps to have something to squabble over

it is maybe easy to forget how rare it is this century for teammates to be fighting directly for a title, let alone over the course of multiple seasons. only two 1-2's since the year 2000 and they're both for the factory yamaha's (though 2006, 2011-13 and 2017 did all prominently feature two factory hondas). which means that for valentino, the prerequisites were met just the once in his premier class career... and yes, the results were pretty memorable, but (topic! for! another! post!) it's worth pointing out that even that relationship was pretty much 'fine' whenever there was a sizeable disparity between the two of them performance-wise (2008 and 2013 are the most clear cut examples). I think the way I'd frame it with marc is that he has a bunch of mildly dubious strategies up his sleeve to assert himself within the team, which don't really deviate that far from what you'd expect from a rider of marc's calibre and only need to be escalated under specific circumstances. that doesn't mean he doesn't have the potential to be ruthless, but up until now it's mostly been a fairly 'acceptable' level of ruthlessness on the intra-team level... and not something that is likely to make other riders actually hate him

taking marc's teammates one by one... dani was the closest to meeting the bridge-burning prerequisites, though he was only a title rival in marc's rookie season. and marc did go further with him than he did with anyone else, and dani has made some pointed comments about marc's style as a teammate... but yes, he is fonder of marc these days. partly I'd just emphasise again that this is a fairly natural progression when you've stopped directly competing for long enough, and partly it's also just a question of individual personality - dani's not massively into holding grudges. then there's jorge, who... I mean, they might as well not have been teammates, given that jorge was either too slow or too injured to even be sharing any track space with marc. you have to put that one down primarily to circumstance, seeing as jorge's own track record on the teammate front isn't exactly spotless. marc and jorge beefing in 2019 would have been pretty dumb and also a massive waste of everyone's time in a year in which marc singlehandedly won the team's championship. even those two needed more to get things going

moving on to the dark years, pol and marc had an extremely stop-and-start partnership on a honda that was generally pretty uncompetitive... so the only stuff they could get ever so mildly irritable about were riveting incidents like 'marc saying pol wasn't the biggest championship threat' (neither of them were) or 'pol saying he'd copy marc's set up' (which proved entirely useless). not exactly title decider territory, is it now, and marc very much had pol covered as a challenger throughout their partnership. also, those two do have a longer history! they've known each other since they were kids and hold a pretty significant place in each other's careers. now that pol's more or less retired, it's natural there'll be quite a lot of sentimentality there - which will paper over any small cracks that appeared during those two years. and joan was a one year teammate at a time in which the bike was consistently close to offing them both. they only managed to start a sunday race together as teammates on thirteen occasions. it would take some serious effort to engineer a feud with that little opportunity, and, really, why on earth would you bother. maybe if honda had gone for rinsy rather than joan for the factory seat, it could've been a bit more prickly, but it's unlikely that it would have escalated beyond that

this is the thing, right, the only one of these partnerships that would have been worth burning bridges over was dani, and even there marc pretty much had him handled after the first season. in general, marc has been pretty clear on how he's not interested in making friends with the other side of the garage while the teammate relationship is ongoing... which is fine! there's some prominent-ish teammate pairings that are actually good friends, some teammate pairings where one of them is actively helping out and advising the other one, but some riders prefer to just keep their distance. it would have been a little silly of marc to start a feud with a teammate who is galaxies away from being a competitive threat, let alone a title rival, but generally it is possible to toe the line between 'attempting to suppress your internal rivals enough to stop them from becoming a problem for you' and 'taking radical enough action to make your internal rivals despise you'

especially in the post-dani era, marc never really had any need to push things too far... and, let's face it, how many of your teammate relationships end up with burnt bridges is also quite frankly a question of luck and circumstance. do you want to guess which top rider on paper has the worst track record this century with premier class teammate feuds, in terms of a) how many they've had, and b) how little public reconciliation there has been since the end of the rivalry?

yes, that's right, it's the first name that comes to mind when you're thinking of toxic and conflict-prone riders: andrea dovizioso. that old devil, constantly causing trouble. just couldn't stop undermining his poor, innocent teammates. can somebody please stop this ruthless bully before it's too late

I think you get the point. I would personally suggest that dovi is not in fact the worst teammate it is possible to have in a motogp top team. he just happened to find himself in a situation where he was teammates with two separate guys he did not click with at all, in situations that involved a pairing of riders who were (or had the potential to be) competitive with each other, as well as some proper stakes attached to the rivalry. in general, situational factors are going to determine this stuff more than anything else... and marc more often than not does have a reasonably good feel for picking his battles. he's flirted with the line, but he's mostly avoided crossing it. he hasn't had to

[oveliagirlhaditright]

Things that sillily make me happy: the fact that in the official Buffy chess set they released, Buffy and Angel are queen and king chess pieces.

And, I mean, it just makes sense that they would do this, of course. As it looks like this set was based on early season two, as Spike and Drusilla are the king and queen pieces for black.

But Buffy and Angel being king and queen pieces works so well, since they're paired together, of course. And equal to each other... and a battle couple. And more than anything, this is great because the queen's the most powerful piece on the board and Buffy's the most powerful character in the series, of course. And her being more powerful than Angel just tracks. Because she canonically is. And this makes me think of the many times where she saved him and he was the damsel.

Anyway...

[grimfolks]

We're back for a quick trip in Shang Simla! This time my goal was to hopefully max out the martial arts skill for Finley and advance a bit his sparring tournament rank which I managed to do in the span of 4 days :)

[duckapus]

Improper Disposal AU

Post-Canon Epic Mickey story idea where Wapeach (the actual scrapped version from the Nintendo Archive Leaks (at least I think she was part of that whole deal. could be misremembering)) somehow becomes a resident of Wasteland despite not being in any way connected to Disney, and this sets events into motion that will change Wasteland forever.

She ends up landing on the far side of Mickeyjunk Mountain instead of whatever the equivalent to Disneyland's main entrance is like everyone else, probably due to the whole "actually from Nintendo" thing. Oswald's Card Guards alert him about the situation and he heads over to greet her and bring her over to Wasteland Proper, both because he makes sure to give every newly arrived Forgotten Toon a warm welcome (and an explanation of what's happened to them) and because there's no way he's letting a kid wander around lost in a literal pile of garbage any longer than he has to.

Of course, when he actually gets there he has to contend with a short-tempered, egotistical brat with an axe almost as big as her superiority complex. Doesn't change the goals but it does change the gameplan.

He does eventually calm her down enough to explain to her exactly where she is and why she's there, teach her how to use the Projector Screen portals (luckily since she was supposed to be a Mario character she picks up the platforming quick), and give her a tour of Ostown and Mean Street. Then they try to figure out where she's going to live now that she's there, but with her rather unpleasant personality and a sort of Off-ness about her compared to everyone else due to the whole "from a different company" thing, it doesn't exactly go well.

Eventually she blows her top, causes some property damage, declares that she'll make everyone sorry for rejecting her (technically they haven't (well, most of them), but she's a kid and she's been scrapped twice. she really doesn't take it well when she thinks she's being rejected or ignored), and runs back to Mickeyjunk to hide from Oswald (who is understandably worried about her) and find a good spot to build an Evil Lair.

So now Wasteland has a preteen D-list supervillain. Joy.

Anyway, a few misadventures later she's got this nagging feeling that something's missing (you know, besides all the obvious stuff) and ends up remembering that she was supposed to be teamed up with Wario and Waluigi. Obviously, the real deals aren't an option, so she gets inspiration from Oswald's Animatronic versions of Mickey's friends, hunts down and dismantles some of the local Beetleworx so she can reverse-engineer them (both Wario and Waluigi are pretty good with machines, I thought it would make sense if she was too). The result is robotic versions of Wario and Waluigi she calls "Nontendroids." Nontendroid Wario's main "not quite Wario) features are that he has a big tire instead of legs and big hydraulic forearms, while Nontendroid Waluigi's are a blunt claw for a left hand and an extra pair of long retractable bare-metal appendages that stick out of his back and can have pretty much any tool you can think of attached to the ends. Just like the Animatronics, they act pretty much exactly like their real-life templates (though with some added behaviors based on their status as robots and the new abilities that provides).

Anyway, this is all leading to a Big Event, the kind of Big Event that Mickey would come back over to help with, but this is what you get for now because it's 5 am and I'm tired.

[monst]

I have a confession to make that may result in my cancellation but I must speak my truth after years of silence:

I think Arkhamverse Tim is fine as fuck.

[thunderboltfire]

I've tried to run BG2 again (I need to finish my modded playthrough) and my laptop is in such a bad state it prectically lags BG2. BG2, which could be run on a determined microwave, on a laptop that has 8GB of RAM! It is heavily used and it has a lot of apps, but I've uninstalled everything I didn't use and cleaned the registry awhile ago. I suspected the antivirus, but the system manager shows it actually doesn't consume a lot of resources. It's not the disk space, since it's got plenty. It turns out it uses 100% of its disk all the time, and the main culprits seems to be.... *drum roll* system and Windows telemetry service! I now have to spend the evening elbows deep in frankly confusing system settings to find a way to turn the telemetry service off, and it may or may not improve the situation.

Once I finish this playthough, I'm definitely switching the laptop to Unix.

[entropii]

Saturday Morning Yuzu ☀️

[cosmogenous]

you guys im so fucking excited I could cry... i gotta call a bunch of ppl idek who to call next

[goldkirk]

trying a beta blocker again before anything else. I'm supposed to go back to the doctor if it doesn't help with the blood pressure symptoms enough or if it gives me negative side effects, because last time I was on it I was in the worst POTS period of my life and my resting heart rate was higher than it is now that I'm able to do cardio regularly (and religiously)

[theha1r]

so ... besties. the draft count is currently at 80. my goal today is to get that number down somewhat, HOWEVER!!! instead of playing the "let me force myself to do every single thing in order of what i owe" game, i will simply just be going through & do what i actually wanna do, where the muse is calling to me. because that makes me so much happier & doesn't kill my want to be here as easily. & i REFUSE to have the want to be here/have muse/etc on this blog specifically when as i've said multiple times, i am the happiest i've been on this blog than i've been on any rp blog in a long time & i simply will not let that be taken away from me!!!

so yeah! that's the goal for today. i also tbh have a few things in here that are from pre-july (when i got active on this blog again), like from the beginning of the year when i started this blog - & i might do/reply to those first bc drafting them & seeing them again after so long had me very !!! (i did delete a few things but the ones i saved i am eye emoji-ing so hard rn)

but anyways, yes. i'm around rn & idk how long it will be until i head to bed but i def plan to be here for a while, hmu in the ims/disco/y'know the drill

[longroadstonowhere]

the hardest thing about mass effect 2 is i always wanna recruit legion as soon as possible, but his recruit mission starts the ticking clock for the endgame, so i can't actually recruit him until i've done like ninety percent of the rest of the game