#change over switch manufacturer

[cheriladycl01]

Goodbye NewYork - Grid and Daniel Ricciardo x Sunshine Driver! Reader

Plot: Y/N constantly jokes about the fact that she would take a bullet for any of the guys on the grid... however in 2026 when the FIA decide to make a New York track, with it not being policed as well as they have in the past Y/N turns those jokes into a reality.

A/N: Yes i know its dramatic ... but that's why you all are here! You love the fluff and the angst and the drama.

Warnings: Violence w/ Guns

2017 Rookie season Interview Age 22:

Interviewer - So, how has it been driving for Mclaren Honda alongside a world champion like Fernando Alonso.

Y/N - Oh wow its been a fever dream. He's taught me so much, and excited not only to be racing with him next year but with Renault as our engine manufacturer!

Interviewer - And who would you say have you become friends with this year?

Y/N - I think obviously i would consider Nando and I very close, you know we've travelled together and he even invited me back to Spain with him in the summer break. Other than that I've found myself close to Pierre, Daniel and Carlos, I've known Pierre for a long time back since karting days, same with Max and Charles who will be joining us next year in Sauber.

Interviewer - Thank you Y/N we really loved watching you drive this year and we can wait for next year!

2018 First Full Season Interview Age 23:

Interviewer - Hello again Y/N how are you!

Y/N - I am good and yourself?

Interviewer - Yes, obviously you've had a great year in Mclaren but they've decided against continuing with you and Fernando next year. This leaves you moving to Toro Rosso alongside Rookie Alex Albon. You said at the end of last year you'd made fast friends with him, Carlos and Daniel. Do they still stand where Carlos is taking over the Mclaren seat.

Y/N - Of course I'm really happy for Carlos, I performed well in Mclaren this year, but i think Lando Norris is a promising rookie and Carlos is an excellent driver. It didn't shock me when the Red Bull Junior team reached out to me as I was a junior driver for Red Bull. Obviously I'm gutted I wont be racing with Pierre this year but I've met Alex and we get on well!

Interviewer - Any new friends?

Y/N - Erm not really new no. Charles joined us this year and has driven fantastically and is going to Ferrari next year. I cannot wait to see what he can bring in a competitive car

Interviewer - Still friends with Daniel?

Y/N - Of course, the honey badger and i are closer than ever, he had some big decisions to make going in 2019 and he needed someone to support him. He's just a ball of sunshine and I'm not being dramatic when i say i would die for that man

Interviewer - Ah your so funny Y/N its always a pleasure to talk to you. Well i wish you all the best for this year to come and hopefully 2019 we can see a P1 finish!

2019 Season Interview Age 24:

Interviewer - Ah and here we have my absolute fave to interview at the end of the year it is Y/N Y/L/N!

Y/N - Hello!

Interviewer - Woah may i say what a year its been for you, this time last year and we will roll the clip here, you said you were gutted to not be racing alongside Pierre but here we are at the end of the 2019 season and you've raced the last half of the season with him when Red Bull switched out drivers

Y/N - Alex is a very promising driver, you know he proved that he was a good driver in Toro Rosso and i think he is proving that in Red Bull, its a shame that Pierre had to go because i think he was just getting used to a car that is clearly built for Max's driving technique which is very different from the rest of ours. The pressure isn't easy to be the second driver in Red Bull

Interviewer - Is that why you turned down Christians offer to take Pierre's place and they went with Alex?

Y/N - Not completely no, I think I've pushed my car to the limit this year and we've learnt a lot as a team so we will come back bigger and better next year with some major changes to the team. I think I would do well in Red Bull but I want to prove myself first

Interviewer - Incredible, really and your friends how's that going?

Y/N - It's amazing, each year i get closer and closer to these guys and i genuinely can call most of them my friends, I've enjoyed getting to know the rookies over this year I'm really close to Alex, Lando and George. You know me and Lewis have shared some really funny moments this year, me and Seb went fishing in March... its been a fantastic year both on and off track.

Interviewer - How important are these boys to you.

Y/N - Oh they are most important to me, my whole heart goes out to them.

2020 Season Interview Age 25:

Interviewer - What a year its been with this pandemic, but we are finally here back in Abu Dhabi, and weve just completed the last race of the 2020 season and there's some exciting changes for you next year!

Y/N - Yes it was sooner than i was hoping for, but I was told that my seat was being taken by Yuki Tsunoda who will be a rookie on the 2021 Season. Where it was so late in the year, i wouldnt have had a seat and I think as a woman i would have struggled to get that seat back. So i grabbed at the Red Bull offer.

Interviewer - That's amazing news for you, has it however affected any of your friendships?

Y/N - Everyone, even Alex told me i would be stupid not to go for it so i did. I'm very thankful to Christian for this opportunity. I know there were other people who were thinking it would be there seat, but I'm in F1 to win.

Interview - There's also been some... rumors about you and a certain Australian going around the paddock.

Y/N - Yes Daniel and i started dating this year, it was actually really funny. I joke to him how I'm only dating him due to my Stockholm Syndrome of being in lockdown with him.

Interviewer - You were with Daniel throughout lockdown?

Y/N - Yes we were at the Australian GP when we heard about it, my flight got cancelled and then they shut down all air control and i was basically stuck in Australia, with the risk as well it wasn't worth it so i got tested and then Daniel offered me to stay with him. Obviously was longer than expected but yeah we came out as a couple.

Interviewer - Amazing honestly, who do you see having a good come back next year?

Y/N - Oh i think Mercedes will be strong, same with AlphaTauri, I think Ferrari also have a fantastic line up with Carlos Sainz moving there. Obviously my boyfriend is going to Mclaren and i couldn't be happier that he's keeping his seat and working with someone as great a driver as Lando

Interviewer - And how does that work, tension wise with him being ex Red Bull and you now being a driver in what was his seat only 3 seasons prior

Y/N - Obviously i know that with Max Verstappen being as good a driver as he is the pressure is insane in that second Red Bull seat and you are very much that ... a second. So I've talked to the team and said that you know, if I'm the stronger car and the better driver that I don't want Golden Boy to be prioritized. He really helped me make my decision in the end.

Interviewer - Amazing thank you for your time Y/N.

2021 Interview Age 26:

Y/N - Hello lovely people its so nice to see you without masks on!

Interviewer - Yes we agree! Congrats on some fantastic driving this year it really showed how quickly you can learn a car. You really rivalled Max Verstappen and Hamilton this year. 2022 will be your year. It's amazing how you helped steal that Constructors title from Mercedes. I bet Christian is very happy with your performance i mean we can tell he is from that long 2024 contract extension...

Y/N - Yeah its been a really amazing year of racing. Max has been an amazing team mate, you know he's really supported by move to Red Bull and we've had an amazing year with a really good lineup, a really good car and i cant wait for next year.

Interviewer - So, to the questions we really have to ask, obviously you and Daniel have been dating for 2 years now, and someone found a clip from when you were friends jokingly saying you'd die for him. Is that still the case now that he's progressed to boyfriend.

Y/N - Honestly i wasn't joking I would lay my life down on the tarmac and let someone run we over at 300mph if it meant anyone on the current grid was happy. They have each given me something so special and so close to my heart, whether that be a gift, or a life lesson, or a hug, or advise... they honestly most of them have saved me on my darkest days when i considered leaving the sport.

Interviewer - And how do you feel about Albon's return as he joins Williams Racing in 2022

Y/N - I mean i kept in contact with Alex for the whole season, I invited him to some of the races with my passes and yeah we've hung out with Lily his girlfriend who i get on with really well. So I'm extremely happy to be racing against him again.

2022 Season Interview Age 27:

Y/N - I'm really sorry but I'm gonna have to make this quick, because my plane will leave soon and I have to grab my things from the hotel.

Interviewer - Of course no problem. It's been a fabulous year with you coming Third in the Drivers Championship, just a few points behind Charles Leclerc... and having the second win for Constructors... how do you feel.

Y/N - Yeah there was some really close moments where it could have been me, Max or Charles. We started of the season a little rocky and some miscommunication but then Ferrari's strategy got worse while ours improved which meant Max and I were getting those crucial points.

Interviewer - Leaning away from the racing ... how are you and Danny Ricciardo now that he wont be in the 2023 season...

Y/N - We've come to an agreement with Red Bull that he will come to every race with me to be my race engineer ...

Y/N - I'm kidding but he will still be attending with me as he's gonna be a reserve driver so he'll be a quick standby option.

Interviewer - Amazing thank you for your time

2023 Season Interview Age 28:

Interviewer - Another win from Max Y/N, he's a three time World Champ now and you were close coming in second again. How are you feeling confident for 2024, or worried you loose your seat.

Y/N - Holy shit, you sound so cryptic and me and Christian have already been talking about a contract extension. I'm happy in Red Bull and he believes I'm driving on par with Max and I'd like to see a lengthy future with them.

Interview - So are we hearing 2024 will be your year?

Y/N - Yes i think working with Max has led me to learn the way he drives very well, I'm able to anticipate what he's going to do, and I can out maneuver him easier than most. I'm excited to see what 2024 will bring us.

Interviewer - And of course, I have to ask now that you've been with Mr Ricciardo for 4 years now, going strong and you have some amazing bonds with your fellow drivers on the grid are we going to see and F1 wedding anytime soon?

Y/N - Oooo i mean Y/N Ricciardo does sound nice, I think where he is coming back onto the grid this year, the timing wouldn't make sense but ... you know I think anything can happen.

Interviewer - Oh she's so cheeky with that wink ... Hello Charles how are you feeling.

2024 Season Interview Age 29:

Interviewer - Oh Y/N what an awful year this has been, i bet you and Max cant wait to say goodbye to this car. P4 in the constructers... what happened.

Y/N - I think Max and I struggled driving this car, which was both a skill issue on our half and a team issue of Red Bull's half, we had lost of changes of team members throughout the year, lots of miscommunication but I promise 2025 we will come back bigger and better. I'm so happy for Charles getting his World Championship finally and I'm incredibly proud of two of my sons getting their Maiden race wins... Lando and Oscar congrats. And on my other son, for getting his first Maiden podium and proving everyone wrong and having an amazing second season in Williams, well done Logan. Well done to Ferrari, Mclaren and Mercedes for Constructors Top 3, but watch out for us next year.

Interviewer - Amazing, its so nice to see how proud and close you are too the other drivers.

Y/N - Yes, i would change none of that.

2025 Season Interview Age 30:

Interviewer - And here we are with the first ever Female World Champion of Formula One, Y/N you've hit some amazing achievements this year. You've become a WDC, you got engaged to you soulmate, you hit 30 years old, you had such a great car and great races. How are you feeling.

Y/N - I have no words for this year, you know I was starting to think maybe my time is up. But my contract in Red Bull lasts till 2028 to match Max contract and you know I'm happy, still driving well clearly and yeah I've loved every moment of this year.

Interviewer - And do you think 2028 would be your retirement year?

Y/N - Oh i don't know about that ... I love racing and you know, Daniel and I are happy and obviously the F1 wedding will be soon. We've said we are happy to wait a while for kids, so we'll see how it goes...

Halfway through the 2026 Season.

BBC News:

And we bring some shocking news to you tonight. F1 Driver Y/N Ricciardo is in critical condition after being shot on race weekend here in New York City. It was reported that the drivers were all celebrating her recent wedding to fellow F1 Driver Daniel Riccardo last month in Australia. The race according to the FIA and surrounding authorities wasn't well protected and put a lot of the drivers in danger. Y/N celebrated a first place podium the same day she was shot, with fellow drivers Charles Leclerc and Oscar Piastri. More Updates will be shared at 10 tonight.

F1 Instagram:

Y/N Ricciardo, in critical condition after altercation at New York Grand Prix.

We are sending our thoughts to her family and the people affected at this time...

Comments -

landorizlover02 - omg this is so scary, the videos on twitter of them all celebrating in the paddock and then the screams

f149 - sources say Y/N actually saw the person before anyone else and pushed Daniel, Lando and Oscar out the way before stepping closer to the man so he would aim for her and not the others. Talk about fight or flight!

kimiisfoine - she is literally a hero ... I'm in shock.

carloschili - I've seen the video, and her face when she realizes something isn't right and then she literally pulls Lando behind her and pushes Daniel and Oscar away.

The drivers tweets -

@PierreGASLY - I'm deeply upset by the lack of protection at the New York GP, I hope that this teaches, the FIA when we are on street circuits like this extra security measures are needed. I wish Y/N a full recovery <3

@Charles_Leclerc - Y/N saved my life tonight and I will never forget that. Alex and I are sat here shaking in shock, i wish for her full recovery and send my prayers to Daniel and her family.

@RGrosjean - Y/N was one of the best people I've ever met on the grid, having scary crashes is part of the job. Never did i think that this would ever be possible. Wishing Y/N to get better!

@KevinMagnuessen - I wasn't there, but hearing the panic and lockdown annoucement is never something I want to experience again. #dobetterf1

@Carlossainz55 - Y/N is one of my best friends and the fact that his has happened to such a happy and bright individual is so sad. I hope to see Y/N soon and am staying in New York until i no longer can in hopes to see her.

@LandoNorris - I never thought I'd be standing behind someone who has acted like my older sister in this sport, who has become a true friend as she takes a bullet to save me from an evil individual. I am in the hospital with Daniel now, awaiting news on her.

@LewisHamilton - Y/N has been an exceptional individual both on and off track, I hope the FIA do better in the future to protect us as drivers.

@OscarPiastri - I have no words for what occurred tonight... no words.

.... more loading

"Y/N baby please" Daniel says as he looks at you, you'd just got out of surgery to remove the bullets. The doctors said that you were lucky that Max and the Mclaren pitstop worker had acted as quickly as possible to get the gun away from the man. Daniel held you as you fell to the ground from the pian holding the wound that was bleeding out.

"How is she?" Lando asks coming into the room with two coffees. Handing one over to Daniel.

"There was a lots of strain on her body, so they don't know if she'll wake up..." Daniel breathes slowly.

"When she wakes up, man... When. She's the strongest person I know" Lando sighs tears in his eyes.

"I fucking froze, I watched a she pulled me behind her after she pushed you and Osc away..." Lando cries a little.

"And I do it again Lan" a course and strained voice breathes out.

"Y/N! Hunny oh my god" Daniel cries smiling at you.

"Hey darling" you smile a little strained.

"I'll go get the doctor!" Lando says rushing out to grab a nurse.

"I love you so much, you are without a doubt the strongest woman I know!" he says kissing your forehead and cheek.

"I love you to baby"

"When do you recon i can race again" you ask after a silent moment making him cry out a laugh tears still falling from his eyes wondering how you can be thinking about that already.

"My little racer, huh" he sighs looking over at you.

"I love you, never ever do that again!" he says.

"I'd do it a million times over if it means you are sat where you are right now..."

A/N: This feels borderline social media au... and i kinda want to get into it... but I love writing out the angst and tumblr still confuses me with picture sizing and stuff so I'm not sure...

Taglist:

@littlesatanicassholebitch @hockey-racing-fubol @laura-naruto-fan1998 @22yuki @simxican @sinofwriting @lewisroscoelove @cmleitora @stupidandunnecessary @clayra-g @daemyratwst @honey-belden @moonypixel @lauralarsen @vader-is-hot @ironcowboycopnickel @itsjustkhaos @the-untamed-soul @beebo86 @happylittlereader @ziejustme @lou-larcher5 @thewulf @purplephantomwolf @chasing-liberosis @chillyleclerc @chanthereader @annoyingmoonballoon @summissss @evieepepi08 @havaneseoger08 @celesteblack08 @gulphulp @fandom1ruined2me @celebstories @starfusionsworld @jspitwall @sierruhh @georgeparisole @dakotatankbig @youcannotcancelquidditch @zzonsbeek @tallbrownhairsarcastic @mellowarcadefun @ourteenagetragedy @otako5811 @countingstacksandpanicattacks @peachiicherries @formulas-bitch @cherry-piee @hopexcroc @mirrorball-6 @spilled-coffee-cup @mehrmonga @bigsimperika @blueberry64857959 @eiraethh @lilypadlover @curseofhecate @alliwantisadonut @the-fem1n1ne-urge @21stcenturytaegi @dark-night-sky-99 @spideybv28 @i-wish-this-was-me @tallrock35 @butterfly-lover @barnestatic @landossainz @darleneslane @barcelonaloverf1life @r0nnsblog @ilove-tswizzle

[qwertzze]

I don't know what I'm doing,,

Design notes under cut

Four design notes because you know I love those;

Lesser than sign (<) on his tail, I've been using it in other sketches, but it often just looks like a whimsical devil tail. Four makes a lot of issues around being lesser in value than others (in comparison to other algebraliens,) so I started adding it in the same vein as the plus (+) I give Two

As to who would have the (>), I think Ten would. I'm not sure how I'll incorporate it into his design, but I'll try. Why Ten would have this, he values himself! And he's seen as better than the others, overall a great guy.

I also realize I have a bit of an association with hosts and giving them math symbols. (Four - BFB, Two - TPOT, Ten - BFPTM10 by proxy)

Notes on other things now!

Sonas - Someone told me that if I was an object, I would be a cardboard box, and it was the first answer other than "quartz," so I took it. Clipboard is my own personal idea, I've been using it as my main objectsona. Might make a 360 ref for it bc I have an idea for how the limbs and face work

Penny & Dime! I'm trying to flesh them out more, so I've been exaggerating Dime's emotions. Also, they get hobbies now! Penny gets to sing, and Dime gets fun times w trains. Stereotypical autism thing, I know, but how he interacts with trains is working mechanics genuine trains

Ships... I like Gooring, and there isn't a lot of content for it, so Gooring bite/hug was made. Nickel and Clover may or may not be a ship. Honestly, I just wanted to draw Clover

Cameo of Gigi reading off cardboard manufacturing details! If you get that reference, lovely!!

ASAOP stuff! Several ideas I haven't sketched out before, and bee-haw

Caddy used to have Beans, as well as limbs. RIP

Got the CC design down better, which is always good, AND I get to talk about the idea of Gigi getting a bite taken out! I think Gigi can naturally regenerate gum over time, but it takes longer than the kill/recover trick.

Swiss FINALLY gets use of tools other than knife! I think switching out different tools just changes mood, which is partially inspired by Pitcher OSO(?). Swiss gets dizzy and overstimulated with too many tools out, AND she has more limbs tucked in there.

Gum x S.A.K. because I LOVE SHIPPING !!! I LIVE AND BREATHE SHIPPING !!!!!

[impishcupid]

{BEGIN ID)

A video with the caption “Wow that was powerful! Never thought a ‘boycott Israel’ advert would move me to tears”

The video starts with a man grabbing a can of Pepsi from a cooler in a store, and placing it on the counter. He asks the price, to which the cashier tells him it costs two dinar. The shot then shows 13 versions of this interaction at once, where he hands over the 2 dinar and takes the can of pepsi, equalling 26 dinar.

After the product is scanned, we return to one shot and the cashier is counting his money. It then switches to show the pepsi delivery driver being handed the wad of money while delivering the stores supplies. This part of the video features many rapid transitions. The first transition is to the pepsi driver using a money counting machine to count his money, then we see many rapid cuts that interchange close up shots of the “100” on hundred dollar bills and images of stock market prices rising and falling, likely representative of that money changing between economies and countries.

It then transitions to a businessman counting money, which he places in a briefcase and leaves his office. He presents the briefcase to a colleague, which transitions as the case is opened to the colleague opening the case to show a weapons manufacturer. The weapons manufacturer then begins building with a variety of hammering, sawing, and ends with spray painting. He then presents his creation: a bomb. The person being presented to comments that it’s perfect.

It cuts to a plane flying through the rain on a darkened night, to which someone says to the pilot “do you have eyes on the target?”

The pilot responds “yes, i have visuals.”

The pilot then says “Sir, are you sure about the coordinates? I see civilians nearby.”

The camera then pans to a little girl, looking between 10 and 13, walking with an older man, either her brother or father. He is trailing behind her, and as she turns to look at him, she also looks up to see the plane.

While she is looking at the plane, an audio overlay of the pilot being told “do it.”

The shot then shows a close up of the bomb being dropped and it’s trajectory through the air, as it gets closer and closer to the ground. As we reach the ground, the camera actually zooms in on the innocent child’s eye, the tip of the bomb still in frame and clearly about to land on her face.

The moment in time freezes as the older man hugs her tightly, and she stares at the bomb. The shot cuts between a full body of her being embraced, the man hugging her with his back attempting to shield her from the bomb, and her face close up, staring at it. The moment in time resumes in extreme slow motion, as a pulsating ring is heard getting louder and louder as the nose of the bomb gets closer to impact. Right before the bomb lands, the screen cuts to black, with white text saying “Boycott.”

{END ID}

I posted this under ten minutes ago (it’s 4:29 EST 03-02-2024) and i’ve already gotten more notes then most posts I post.

That’s good.

Be vocal, be loud, never stand down

[mayakern]

Do you plan on keeping the polyester blend long term for the skirts?

I’ve been a big fan of your skirts for years (they’re literally all I wear!) but didn’t realize you’d made the switch in materials. My skirts from years ago still look brand new, but my month old skirts have little snags and pill where my seatbelt sits. They’re thinner and feel lower quality and don’t drape as well, and I won’t be able to wear them without leggings in the winter but sweat horribly in them now in the summer. 😭 they’re absolutely beautiful but I can’t justify buying more with this blend because they aren’t as comfortable and aren’t going to last nearly as long and I had to save for months for them.

I don’t mean to be unkind, I just wanted to provide feedback and let you know because I genuinely and loudly love your work and want to be able to support you—I have like 10 of your skirts and want so badly to buy more but probably won’t if they continue to be produced this way.

the all-over printed skirt fabric will not be changed

there are a lot of reasons for this, including:

we changed manufacturers at the beginning of 2023

the fabric our new manufacturer sent as a "match" to the old fabric was oily and weird and the oily texture didn't come off after being washed

the sublimation printing process requires polyester to work. the old skirts were polyester as well, they were just a different weave

we try to keep changes to our core garments to a minimum because there are always unforeseen issues. any changes made to the all-over printed skirts will be sizing related

in case you missed it, we changed factories due to a steep decline in quality from our old factory. we'd been working with them for several years and suddenly skirts were coming in with fabric that was already worn through, pilling, and in some cases torn and horrifically stained. we tried coming to an agreement with that factory but were unable to. here's some examples:

we know many people don't like the new all-over printed skirt fabric, and that's fine! we're focusing on expanding our other product lines (ie the viscose solid skirts, shirts, and maybe sometime soon printed viscose apparel 👀). however, this dislike is usually due to preference and not a quality issue. i'm sorry to hear you don't like them as much, and i hope we have something else you do like soon!

but i'm worried about the snags from your seatbelts. maya wears the skirts near-daily, including in the car, and she doesn't have any damage to the fabric on skirts she's owned for over a year. i'm concerned you may have received a defective skirt (a 1-2% defect rate is normal and expected in apparel production). when you have a moment please reach out to ash at hello@mayakern.com with your order number and photos, and if there's any other information (i.e. high temperatures, sun exposure, strong detergent) that you may think is relevant

[wasyago]

what .. happened to cleo…

( sorry, took a while to answer, i was busy n tired )

nothing happened! don't worry!! or, well, i guess cleo happened?

see, cleo has a bit of a... i wouldn't call it an obsession, but maybe a fascination, a liking to prosthetics. the whole deal behind it, how it works, how it connects to the body, how it functions the same or differently to what a human can do, it's all incredibly interesting to her. that's why cleo became a prosthetics neurologist (name is a work in progress, but basically that's a doctor or a specialist who connects the human nerves to the sensors on prosthetics. very fiddly and complicated job so it must be done by a human and not a robot).

that's also why cleo's body is like that, it's sort of an experiment? an art project? of how far can one push the limits of mechanization and at what point does it become impossible to install any more parts. so the entirety of their body is various prosthetics that they've slowly over the course of many years installed / changed / switched and all that other stuff. their profession pays a lot and they have good contacts to a bunch of prosthetic manufacturers, so they can easily afford something like that.

right now (on the reference) the only flesh part that is left of cleo is the brain, because obviously you can't change that for a prosthetic. and uhhhh technically cleo is just a brain piloting a mech? which is a little disturbing to think about tbh.... but that also means that cleo is kind of done with their project, there's no room to push it any further, so all that's left is refining the body, changing prosthetics for the more comfortable / unique ones, etc. she can basically do whatever she wants with her body now which is pretty cool actually!

[adnauseum11]

Operational Risk Management (John Price x Reader)

Kate calls with some bad news.

1k words

CW: swearing, military inaccuracies

This work is part of the S.N.A.F.U. series, master list also pinned to my blog.

Masterlist

Ao3

John’s phone lights up in the center console with an incoming call just as you are returning to the flat. Two hefty shopping bags of new glitter-less decorations are safely secured in the back seat. His patience ran out about half-way back from your excursion, locked in a snarl of holiday traffic. When he began to grumble about the lack of common sense on display, you reminded him that he wanted to tag along with you. The look he gave you afterwards was dark, but you didn’t let it faze you, used as you are to his intermittent grumpiness. Still, you’re happy to claim your spoils and clear off so he can take his phone call in peace, his annoyance doing nothing to dampen your spirit. 

“Hello?” 

John’s tone is curt. The familiar sound of chopper blades swells and then he can hear Kate over the staticky line, immediately picturing her cupping her hand over the bottom of the phone as she clears the rotors. 

“John? Got some news, you aren’t going to like it. Can you talk?” 

She’s moving, likely just landed. John’s brain is leaping ahead, trying to fill in the gaps. 

“Yeah. What happened? Gaz alright?”

Kate cuts straight to the chase, apparently no time to waste on pleasantries. 

“The commander Gaz is working under is a younger brother to man killed in Las Almas - belonged to Shadow Company. He’s leveraged his position with Norris to start knocking on doors to find out what happened to his brother and he’s managed to get enough intel to hold the 141 responsible.”

“Jesus Christ Laswell.”

John’s palm comes down with a slap on the steering wheel, his mood worsening. He can feel his blood pressure rising as Kate’s terse voice washes over him.

“I suspect Norris is feeding him information. We’re going to keep working on that end, see if we can confirm anything. When you turned down the contract and that photo popped up, he tried a different path. The commander did basic training with your girl’s would-be-assailant years ago, before the dishonourable discharge. We think he’s currently switching tack again. Gaz is obviously compromised, and they’re about to ship out.”

“Ah hell Kate.” 

John’s violently pushing his fingers through his hair, the implications of Gaz being in the thick of this commander’s operation making his stomach turn to lead. 

“I didn’t know John, didn’t think Norris’ men needed further vetting. Lesson learned. I’ve got a potential intercept point. Right now, we’re handling some rendezvous communications for them as we’ve got friendlies in the field, Gaz being one. They’re going to be sent to recon a chemical manufacture plant in Lithuania for a potential raid.”

Kate’s tone suggests she’s well aware of her fuck up, and John respects her enough to leave it there, satisfied with her acknowledgement.

“There’s got to be a vulnerability we can exploit to get Gaz to safety.”

John’s instinct is to plan, even without any intel yet.

“Ghost is planning an avenue of approach for the potential intercept point before whatever the commander is up to comes to fruition out there. We urgently could use an extra set of hands in the know, Captain. Timing is critical here. Gaz’s assigned taskforce won’t be expecting us. If we do this correctly, we can bury this for good with no one the wiser.”

John looks up at the flat, can almost picture you flitting around, rearranging items to account for your new prizes. His heart sinks as he makes the only decision his conscience will allow. 

“Yeah, my bag is mostly packed. I can be at the base in a few hours for pick up if you can arrange liaison.”

Kate asks the question he’s been dreading since this conversation started. He can guess at the outcome and is in no hurry to be proven right. 

“Your girl going to be ok with the last-minute change of holiday plans?”

At the mention of you, John’s brain immediately pulls the image of you naked in the shower, flushed from the orgasm he’d just given you, admitting you’re in love. The center of his chest aches at the thought of leaving you alone during the holiday you’re so obviously excited to share with him. At one point, early on, he was confident that he knew exactly what he was doing. His emotions lately tended to be out of control and headlong, almost impossible to moderate. After years of relentlessly telling himself it was better to keep his distance, to stay platonic, he’s finally getting what he’s coveted after all this time. And still, he can’t stop his greedy heart from wanting more. He fights back the uncharacteristic swell of emotion and clears his throat, refocusing on the conversation at hand.

“I’ll handle it. Not leaving anything this volatile for someone else to clean up. I want assurance it’s over.” 

“If you’re sure. You’ve been moving fast with this woman John. I’m assuming you know what you’re doing here.”

His laugh is dark, the sound of a man whose best laid plans are unravelling in front of his eyes. 

“Gaz would do the same. I’ll sort it out on my end, set up the liaison for 19:00.”

John is all business, putting any indecision firmly to rest in short order.

“We appreciate the assist; I’ll debrief you further once you’re on route. And John?”

“Yeah?” 

He’s preoccupied, already trying to work out how to explain what’s about to happen to the woman he loves.

“Good luck, hope you bought her something nice.”

Kate’s tone is a mix of gentle teasing and honest concern. John’s foul mood refuses to rise to the occasion.

“Piss off Laswell.”

John grates out before hanging up the call and sighing deeply, gripping the steering wheel tightly. He shouts a handful of curses into the empty car, grateful for a mostly vacant street to witness his outburst. He takes several deep breaths to gather himself again before stepping out of the car to rejoin you in the flat and break the news.

Next Chapter

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[aihoshiino]

chapter 140 thoughts!

Reminder: because of the content of this arc in genera and this chapter in particular I will unavoidably have to discuss CSA and topics related to it, including grooming, emotional abuse and sexual assault. I do not discuss them in great detail, but if you very understandably just aren't in the headspace for that, no hard feelings - look after yourself and I'll see you next time.

So a lot of stuff goes on in this chapter but weirdly, I feel like I don't have a lot of stuff to say about it compared to the last few. Partially because it speaks so strongly for itself but mostly because, sort of similarly to 137, this is just clarification and reiteration of some themes and information that's been floating around loosely for however many chapters and we are just now actually pinning it all down into something more coherent.

Or at least, 15 Year Lie is pinning this all down into something more coherent. We're definitely playing a bit more with like, presentation and diegesis in these sections of the movie than we were with previous scenes. With the B-Komachi scenes, we very rarely fully entered the in-universe diegesis of the movie and the scenes being filmed quite firmly remain scenes being filmed by actors who are having their own thoughts, feelings and character arcs both about and separate from the material.

By contrast, both this and last chapter lean more into presenting these scenes as full flashbacks, fully immersing us in the material that the movie's diegesis essentially overtakes and becomes the manga's diegesis. It not only creates a sense of immediacy but also one of authenticity - by removing all the reminders that this is something being manufactured, a piece of in-universe dramatized fiction, the reader is invited to accept it uncritically as fact.

And honestly? I think this is a very clever trick. While I do think the broad emotional arc and relationship beats we're being presented with here are probably more or less true, there's a big question still hanging over the movie's presentation of things: how much of this is true and why is it being shown to us? This is a movie about Ai's life supposedly, right? So if this is the case, what's with this sudden POV switch to Kamiki… and how exactly did Aqua (and the rest of his 15YL collaborators in general) get this level of insight into 'Boy A'?

But I'm getting ahead of myself a bit…

Like I said up top, I think a lot of this chapter kind of speaks for itself, so all I'm gonna say is that this did a huge amount to really endear me to the HKAI dynamic, at least as 15YL is portraying things. It's just such a nice change to see Ai bouncing off someone her own age, squabbling and getting along and butting heads like a regular kid. It does a lot to really get across just what it was about this relationship that drew the two of them to each other. They have a good rapport and some cute chemistry and I'm finding myself rooting for them even in spite of knowing how it all ends.

The scene of them at the restaurant was honestly just a complete and total delight. It's been so fucking long since we got any content of Ai just being her likable goobery self so getting to see that again (and her and Hikaru's shocked and appalled reactions to the bill) was just so good.

The short exchange that follows is also so, so important, I think. Similarly to an early AQKN moment, we are shown Ai from Hikaru's POV - in which she wears a lovely smile and stands framed as the focal point of not one but two panels of brilliant light. This feels like a sort of answer to something I noted last chapter where HKAI's relationship seemed to be in the process of echoing both the AQAK and AQKN relationships - in Hikaru, Ai sees someone who has the potential to understand her. In Ai, Hikaru sees light. I'm interested to see if this will keep getting reiterated on as we get more scenes of them together.

god the more details we get about Airi's abuse of Hikaru, the more vile she becomes. The money she gives him rings eerily true to the way real life abusers of this nature really do use money and material gifts as a method of control over their victims. And it's also not hard for me to see her as using this to frame things as somehow transactional - to pretend Hikaru has any power in this entirely unbalanced dynamic.

I continue to be impressed with how OnK is portraying Kamiki's abuse. As I mentioned last time, I often find that manga is pretty tasteless and sometimes even downright exploitative and offensive in its portrayals of sexual abuse, framing it in a titillating way for the viewer to gawk at. By contrast, not only is OnK's portrayal a layer removed from the actual events, being in-universe fiction, but it gives us no lurid details to gawk it. We are forced to look only at Hikaru's pain and the emotional reality of the horror and exploitation he's experiencing and the story dares us to flinch and look away. Just like plenty of people do.

I also really appreciate that the story leaves absolutely no room for plausible deniability and just outright calls Airi exactly what she is: a pedophile. I was a little worried with last chapter that there was going to be an element of like 'oh Hikaru is just so cute even an adult woman can't help herself' but once again, the story pulls no punches in calling this abuse what it is and the perpetrator what she is. Harrowing as the material is, I'm glad that it's being handled well thus far and I hope Akasaka doesn't flub it.

that said i have to ask. where in god's name is the intimacy coordinator on this set.

The scene that follows is also very interesting for all the reasons I mentioned above. For Oshi no Ko as a manga, it's clear this material is here to challenge the reader and ask us to see Kamiki as human, to try and empathize with him despite his reprehensible actions. What purpose this monologue serves for the in-universe 15 Year Lie movie is less clear. But in both circumstances, I still have to ask: to what end, exactly?

After all, isn't this a movie overflowing with spite and hate? A script written for Aqua's revenge that will allow him to kill his father? If so, why are we being challenged to empathize with Kamiki? Why did Aqua write a script that portrays his father as a victim? And how, exactly, did he come to such a deep and nuanced understanding of this man he hates so much when it took Ruby three and a half mental breakdowns to start understanding her beloved mother?

This all raises a whole lot of questions about exactly what the final movie is going to turn out like and exactly what purposes it really serves and I'm tentatively excited to get some answers. I'm definitely still more than a little fatigued with the movie arc as a whole and a lot of my biggest issues with it have yet to really be resolved but I'm at least more interested than I have been before about where things are going to go.

Holy crap, no break next week… are we beating the biweekly allegations, gang???

[wooahaeruby]

Chapter 13: Sky Walking

Chapter Word Count: 5,435

TW

1) Mouse has Trauma 2) Use of drugs. Smoke weed everyday. Leafblower Special. 3) Mouse disassociates for a while 4) Mentions of ODing / Childhood Trauma / Cops suck in this story. (read at your own discretion) 5) Mouse and Someone else in SVT trauma bond. 6) At the beginning, Mouse goes through the numb depression motions.

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You didn’t get a single moment of rest. Each time you closed your eyes, the feeling of dried blood that you knew wasn’t there clung to your hands and the image of Mingyu’s body on the table as you gave him CPR flashed. The continuous beating line on the heart monitor gave you reassurance as the time passed. 

Just as Jeonghan said, Jihoon and him switched off duties of coming to check on Mingyu and change out bags of saline when the previous one was finished. At some point you gave up counting how often they came, staying curled up in your seat, glad to have the blanket wrapped around you in the cold room. Both had asked if you needed anything and each time you shook your head, falling deeper and deeper into your thoughts. 

He was going to be okay, you had a good feeling in your chest about it. He’d wake up and try to play everything off and act like he was fine when he was in a lot of pain. He’d complain that everyone’s cooking was subpar compared to his but would eat every last piece of it to make them happy. Maybe he’d let you cook for him and show off what you thought were pretty good cooking skills to give him well rounded meals during his recovery. Mingyu would need all the rest he could get before even stepping foot out of the house, knowing they’d take him back to the house to recover comfortably in his own bed. 

When the door opened next, you turned, thinking you’d see Jeonghan since Jihoon had checked in last, but Seungcheol stood at the doorway with a paper bag in one hand and a tray with two coffee cups in the other. He had changed from the suit he had on last night into dark jeans and an oversized gray sweater. Sitting up, you gave him a curious look but didn’t voice any question. He lumbered his way to the seats still across the bed from you and slid into one, placing the items he brought on one of the other chairs. 

“It’s six in the morning.” His deep voice was full of fatigue, the bags under his eyes dark. He didn’t look like he slept. “Seokmin grabbed your coffee order and a bagel.” Seungcheol lifted the paper bag and pulled one bagel out before handing the bag to you. Once the bag was in your hand, he took the coffee cup and passed it over. Hesitantly, you released Mingyu’s hand, you didn’t let go of it once throughout the night since you sat down. 

The hot cup felt amazing against your cold fingers. Taking a quick sip, it burned your mouth but it was too good to stop. The warmth spread through your limbs and your shoulders relaxed. 

“Seokmin put in that you both were sick and needed a few days off. Wonwoo manufactured some doctor’s notes.” 

“Thank you.” 

He grunted in response, drinking his own cup, letting his eyes land on Mingyu. “Anything?” 

With a quick shake of your head, you pulled your knees to your chest, using one hand to move the blanket around you. “Nothing. He’s breathing fine, he took two units of blood in total, heart rate hasn’t faltered all night.” 

“Did you get any sleep?” 

Pausing, you were going to answer but closed your mouth, chewing on your bottom lip. “I could ask the same of you.” 

“Touche…”

“Did anyone else?” You asked, sipping from your cup once more. 

Seungcheol sighed out a heavy breath. “Most of them passed out from exhaustion. Seokmin fell asleep in a chair, Soonyoung was curled up on the floor with all the couch pillows with Chan knocked out last I checked. Vernon took Seungkwan back to the penthouse once they left so hopefully they got some sleep. Joshua, Jeonghan, Wonwoo, and Jihoon are all passed out on the couches we have up in the office. I think Minghao and Junhui went back to the penthouse too, but I doubt they got any sleep.” 

“Does this…” You didn’t know how to word it. “Does stuff like this happen often?” 

“What, getting shot? We try not to make it a constant thing.” A smidge of humor was in his tired words. “Last one was Jihoon about a year ago. He was helping break up a fight in Ruby and the asshole had a gun and it misfired in the struggle.”  

Forcing out a breath, you nodded, shaking the mental image away. You thought of Jihoon in a similar situation as Mingyu last night and your already lost appetite was gone tenfold. Trying your best to mask the discomfort, you drank the coffee and focused back on Mingyu’s breathing. It seemed Seungcheol was doing the same, nibbling on a piece of the bagel he got and sipping his coffee. It wasn’t often you two ended up in the same place alone, usually someone was accompanying you at the house. 

“Oh-” You just remember that he literally had you brought over last night to speak with him. Seungcheol perked up. “Why was I needed last night?” 

Blinking a few times, his face contorted, mouth slightly agape, eyebrows furrowed together, and a confused look on his face. “Uh- Oh! Right, I was going to inform you about the Gala. It’s in a month. Jeonghan said he had some things planned and would handle everything before you were brought to the house to get dressed before we all leave.” 

“I feel like I should be scared of whatever he has planned.” You snort out a quiet laugh. 

“Personally, I would be scared.” 

You both shared a short laugh that mellowed into silence again. Though you never touched the bagel, you continued with the coffee, hoping it would keep you awake as long as possible. 

Many of the guys visited throughout the day. Seungcheol had left, saying he had a few things to get done upstairs and to call if you needed anything. Jeonghan only came in once to change a saline bag and push a few vitamins to aid in the healing process. He said he’d be back later and ruffled your hair like he did the previous night. 

First it was Chan and Wonwoo who mostly sat with you and brought up stories that Mingyu was in. Chan spoke about him like he was part superhero and Wonwoo played along, making the story out bigger than it probably was. They stayed for a good hour and you enjoyed the company to fill the void that was building inside of you. Chan had given Mingyu’s hand a big squeeze and smiled, but his voice wavered when he asked for him to wake up soon, that it was getting too quiet without his loud, boisterous personality awake. Wonwoo had kept any comments to himself, but you saw him bow his head in prayer before leaving with Chan. 

Seungkwan and Vernon only stopped in for a bit, clearly exhausted but dressed for whatever they needed to get done for the day. These two were relatively quiet in their visit, asking if you got any sleep which you brushed off and they didn’t give that straight of an answer when you asked in return. Vernon made a comment that they’d visit once they were done later in the day. Both had asked you to give them a call if anything was to change regarding Mingyu’s condition, which you easily agreed to. 

The largest horde was Soonyoung barging in in the afternoon, followed by Seokmin, Minghao, Junhui, and Jihoon, but the last man was really coming in for his given task. Junhui had made food for everyone earlier and brought extra for you, saying he heard from Chan that you were staying until Mingyu was awake. Though you took the container of food, you only placed it aside, letting it join the bagel bag from earlier, saying that you’d eat it later when you got hungry. It was the best white lie you could tell at this time, not wanting to worry them too much. Many of them were dressed in what you assumed was their ‘ dark side’ attire, thick boots, dark clothes, all the works.

Seokmin was eyeing you a good majority of the time he was there but he didn’t say anything if you looked bad. You more than likely did look disheveled, your lip was bitten to the point it bled earlier but it dried over and hurt. He only said he’d come back later to keep you company, giving you a side hug before they slipped out one by one. 

Then it was quiet again. You were left alone again to your own devices and thoughts. Truthfully you couldn’t think straight, images and memories bounced around your mind, they were close to sending you into a downward spiral but you willed away the mental torment to the best of your abilities. You didn’t feel hungry, at this point you didn’t even feel tired. Your limbs were numb and no matter if you tucked further in the blanket, you were still cold. 

You didn’t even realize Jeonghan was in the room until he placed his hand on your shoulder and you snapped back to reality, flinching at his touch. 

“Ay- Wow, it’s just me, Mouse.” He pulled his hand back and slid a chair up beside you. “Did you not hear me come in? I said hi.” 

“Sorry- Sorry…” Sighing, you placed a hand over your chest, feeling the fast pace of your heart. “I was zoning out- I- Sorry.” 

Jeonghan leaned in, tucking some strands of hair behind your ear to get a better look at your face. His fingers were warm against your cool skin and you couldn’t help but lean into the feeling. Gently he held your face, watching as your eyes fluttered closed and you sighed out a soft breath.

“You should get some sleep, Mouse. He isn’t going to be gone when you wake up.” 

Those words had your eyes snapping open and you straightened up, shaking your head. “I can’t- No. I can’t fall asleep.” You pushed the words to come out, digging your nails into your palms. You couldn’t fall asleep. You wouldn’t let yourself rest until he was awake and coherent enough to understand what was going on. 

Jeonghan sagged in his seat, stretching his arm over your shoulders to bring you close to his side. “Will you at least eat then? Just a little? I think ‘Gyu would be a little mad knowing that you didn’t eat because you wanted to wait up for him.” 

You whined and rested your head on his shoulder, a pout on your lips. “How dare you use manipulation and guilt tripping on me.” 

“Ah~ But are you going to eat? Junhui makes really good spicy noodles. Even lowered the heat intensity since he doesn’t know your tolerance.” 

“...Fine.” 

Reaching for the container, you pulled it into your lap, glad he provided some utensils, and under Jeonghan’s watch, you ate. It was good, really good and the spice was able to warm your frigid body enough. You let Jeonghan hold onto you, sapping the warmth he provided and listened to his quiet humming. Though at some points it was hard to eat, you swallowed enough down to satisfy the man beside you before closing it and placing the rest aside for later. 

It was nice having Jeonghan beside you. He provided a peaceful lull in the ache in your chest and settled the unruly thoughts that plagued your mind. He didn’t seem like one to judge you, maybe only when teasing you did he feel the need. Though annoying at times, his presence was enjoyable and always entertaining at the end of the day. He was already ready to listen when you complained over text and seemed like a shoulder to cry on when needed. Weird to think, but he was one of the people that felt like home along with Seokmin. 

The two of you sat, side by side, Jeonghan kept you close, letting himself take moments to rest his eyes. For what felt like hours, no one disturbed the stillness here. All that was heard was the sound of Mingyu and Jeonghan’s breathing and the occasional beep from a machine. Jeongahn was definitely asleep on your shoulder - not that you minded, he worked hard last night – and your eyes were getting irritated from no reset. 

Your eyes were focused on a pulled thread from the blanket Mingyu was tucked in with. Pulling it was a dumb idea, but the itch under your skin begged you to just tug it and rip it off. For a second you thought you were going to lose it, it had been too long since you stayed up all night, you weren’t a teenager anymore. 

While staring, you swore you saw Mingyu’s hand twitch. Refocusing your attention on the man, relief flooded through you when you saw his eyebrow twitch. Quickly you started to pat at Jeonghan’s leg, brushing his arm off your shoulder to stand and lean over the bed. Jeonghan was quick to react, bleary eyes blinking away any sleep that he could in case it was an emergency. He groggily voiced some concern but you didn’t hear anything. 

Mingyu’s eyes were starting to peel open, grimacing at the harsh lights of the room bleeding in through his cracked open eyes. You took his hand in both of your own, your heart beating so fast it might have you pass out. 

“Hey…hey, bud…” You said so softly, brushing some hair from his face when he turned his head. Tears were threatening to pour out of your eyes. A sound grumbled out of him and you cooed at him, a wobbly smile spreading across your lips. “It’s okay, ‘Gyu…”

He cursed when he tried to move some more but you quickly soothed him, placing one hand on his clothed chest to settle him. When his eyes fully opened, he took in his surroundings properly, sighing out a complaint of pain through his nose. Jeonghan had gotten up to round the bed and view Mingyu from the other side. 

“What-” His voice was hoarse and he tried to clear his throat but it didn’t help much. “How long have I been out?” 

“Almost twenty-four hours,” Jeonghan’s voice was just as soft when answering, a tight lipped smile was holding back the emotions he wouldn’t let spill over. “You scared us all half to death.” 

“ ‘M sorry.” He murmured out, but you only laughed, pushing his hair back. 

“No need to apologize, as long as you were here, that’s all that matters.” 

You stayed until he was coherent enough to ask for food and complained that beer was the best medicine. Both you and Jeonghan called everyone and they dropped everything they were doing to rush to Mingyu’s bedside. When he was in loving, safe hands, you asked Seungcheol for someone to drive you home, preferably not any of the guys since they wanted to be beside their brother. 

When you entered your apartment, you crashed hard. You couldn’t be bothered to change before crawling into the confines of your blankets and passed out. It was one of the best-worst sleeps of your life, you were happy to be asleep but terrified of the ongoing thoughts that haunt your dreams. You slept for twelve hours, it startled you when you saw the time on your phone. Seokmin and Jeonghan had sent text messages that only increased in volume the longer you didn’t reply. As you stared confused at your phone, a call came in from Jeonghan and you swiped to answer. 

“Hello?” 

“ Jesus, did you just wake up? You left over twelve hours ago, I was worried something happened.” 

Rubbing your eyes with one hand, you curled up on your side, yawning. “Yeah, I passed out once my head hit the pillow. I guess I was more tired than I felt.” 

“ Hmm, well Mingyu wants you back here to keep him company. If nothing changes by tomorrow night, he is begging to go home so we might take him back up to the house.” 

You nodded but remembered he couldn’t see you, and verbalized your ‘ okay’. He went on to say he’d be there in half an hour to pick you up and said goodbye. 

Jeonghan was true to his words in allowing Mingyu to go home. You were thankful he was alright despite the tremendous pain and eager to sleep in his own bed that was big enough for him and his long limbs. That’s how you found yourself seated in the back of Minghao’s SUV with Mingyu’s head on your lap. Seokmin had called shotgun and now it was the four of you hearing the injured man complain each time there was a pothole or bump in the road. Many of the others had work to tend to and would meet up back at the house later. You messaged Wonwoo to let him know you guys were on the way so he was prepared to help lug Mingyu to his room upon arrival. 

Really, getting him into the car was easy somehow, but getting him out of the car? He was whining like a baby and protesting whenever someone moved too fast. It was his stupid idea to lay across the backseats, it would have been easier to drop the backseats and lay him flat in the back with some pillows and padding to make it easier to get him out. When he was finally standing and huffing out tired breaths to compensate for the spent energy, it took Seokmin and Wonwoo to slowly walk him through the house and get him into bed. 

You trailed behind with a bag full of his things slung over your shoulder that another member brought yesterday. Wonwoo pushed Mingyu’s door open and you stopped at the threshold, not wanting to break the barrier of personal quarters. Jeonghan’s room was the only other place outside of the office in the house that was a more private space. The interior was a mix of black and white, medium-light colored wood as accents to the scheme. His bed was huge, probably a King-bed of some type, it wouldn’t surprise you if it was custom made exactly for him. He had a gaming set up in the corner, a few monitors and you would have laughed at the bright blue dog-ear headset. 

“Mouse, you can come in.” Mingyu called from where he sat on his bed, taking a moment before moving any more. 

“Uh- right. Yeah.” Shifting from foot to foot for a moment, you stepped inside and placed his bag at the foot of his bed. “Do you need anything?” 

With a shake of his head, he smiled and his shoulders shook as he laughed silently. “I’ll be okay. And thanks for everything, guys.” He said to Seokmin, Wonwoo, and Minghao but his eyes landed on you once more. “And thank you, Mouse. You helped a lot from what Jihoon and Vernon told me.” 

Mingyu got into bed with more ease than getting him up from the bed back at the warehouse. Wonwoo pulled the covers over him but you fussed a bit, making sure his phone was placed on his nightstand in easy reach and asking one last time if he needed something. He brushed you off and sent you out of the room with the rest, saying to wake him up when food was made. 

You had stepped out onto the back patio after parting from Mingyu and found solace under an umbrella to hide from the sun but enjoy the hot air. Being here at the house was one of the only times you could enjoy the outdoors without the constant noise of the busy city streets bothering you. Oftentimes you wished you could afford a home outside of the concrete jungle you lived in to have solitude and room to breathe truly fresh air. 

“Oh- Mouse, hey.” Vernon’s voice found its way to your ears and you turned to see him exit the back sliding doors. “Mingyu is home then, good.” 

“Mmm, yeah, he is probably knocked out in his room.” The response hummed out of you. “What are your plans?” 

“Ah-” He paused, mouth wide open and averted his gaze, trying to think of a good answer, but it was clear none came. “Honestly…I was going to smoke a bowl and stare at the ceiling for a while.” 

That sounded amazing after the last couple of days…

“Vernon,” You scratched the back of your neck and puffed out a breath. “Can I join you?” 

He didn’t bother hiding the surprise that spread across his features and one eyebrow raised high. “Are you sure?” 

“Yeah, I think I need it.” 

With one more moment of hesitation, he shrugged and walked towards one of the sheds with a little bounce to his step. “If we get in trouble, it’s your idea.” 

Chuckling quietly as you trailed behind, you nodded. “Got it, I’m just ready to get higher than a kite.” 

As Vernon threw the door open to the shed, he spread his arms wide and spun around, walking backwards until his knees hit the back of the blanket covered couch at the far end of the building and sunk into it. “Welcome to DJ Leafblower’s Sanctuary. Very few are allowed in and when they do get invited, they leave relaxed.” 

It was a pretty small space but it was dark and comforting. It smelled strong of weed but that only added to the hippie vibe. He reached over to hit a button and the small area came to life with different types of colored lights and designs moving on the ceiling. Now you could see why he was going to stare at it for a while, it all made sense now.

“You make this sound like something completely different.” You closed the door behind you and crashed on the couch beside him, kicking off your slides and tucking your legs in criss-cross. “Also- DJ Leafblower? Did you name yourself that?” 

“Yes.” He said proudly and you only shook your head, laughing under your breath. 

“Whatever, let's just get this going.” 

If you tried to count on your fingers how many hits you took, you would have ten- wait…no five…everything looked a little funny. 

You don’t know where in between hits you and Vernon ended up on the cushioned, blanket covered floor, laying opposite directions but your heads beside one another. The light designs that shifted around on the ceiling were mesmerizing in your inebriated state, every time you slow-blinked they changed and you were even more fascinated by it. This was the most relaxed you’ve been in a long time and you didn’t want the feeling to end. 

“You know-” The words came out slow from Vernon, “I thought we lost him there for a moment.” 

Processing the sentence had you closing your eyes for a moment, humming back. “I couldn’t let another person die.” 

Vernon turned his head to you and you maneuvered to lay on your side, able to see his face but too unfocused to see his expression. “Another person?” He asked quietly. 

“My parents.” 

Silence filled the shed. The lights continued to move. You swore you could feel the earth move with how high you were. 

“Mouse…” Vernon sounded so…sorrowful if you had to point a word to it. “Is that why you didn’t sleep?” 

“Mhmm.” You don’t know why you were speaking about it, in your relaxed state it was too easy to just let the sob story – well, you thought of it as a sob story – spill out. “They ODed when I was a kid, like six.” 

“Fuck dude.” He sat up and turned to sit and face you. “That’s horrible.” 

You gave a quiet chuckle and shrugged. “When I saw Mingyu on the table, I had flashbacks to my parents on the floor in the living room, minus the blood and all. I kept picturing their faces on him, how lifeless they looked, how pale they looked. There was fucking needles on the ground beside their bodies. I just-” Sighing, you closed your eyes, “I couldn’t have that same feeling. I needed Mingyu to live.”  

You slowly sat up and everything around you spun for a moment. “What makes it worse? Those bastard cops, the ones that came when I called 911, brushed it under the rug because who wants the fact that a cop ODed with his stay at home wife while their daughter was sleeping written all over your police station and the small town news.” 

Vernon looked like he didn’t know how to respond, but the words continued to spill out. “I told them that I saw the guy's face that sold it to them but they never believed me, saying I was just making it up. Who the fuck makes that shit up? I saw the drug dealer that sold them laced stuff and no one cared. My family, god those assholes too, didn’t want the fucked up kid so I went into foster care, which sucked by the way. I tried to reach out to them but they told me never to contact them again. I bounced around from small town to small town for years after that. I got a scholarship to the university here in the city and I never looked back. I’ve had this fucked up sense that it was all my fault, like they turned to drugs because I wasn’t a perfect kid.” 

There was a smile on your face the whole time like the entire story was some kind of joke. You reached out and lit the put out joint, taking a long drag. “I learned later that they blacked out all and any information that my dad reached out to his commanders for help. The entire police report from the day I found them was blacked out too. Sick fucking bastards.” Every word that left you was said with hate. You took another long drag and handed it over to Vernon who gladly accepted it. He met your eyes, the expression he wore soft and in no way filled with pity. “If I ever see the guy that sold those drugs to them, Vernon…I swear I’ll kill him myself…” 

Vernon’s mind was fuzzy but he nodded, seemingly a mutual understanding of the feeling. “My sister and I…our parents were killed in a hit and run when we were young.” Hearing him start, your attention, while slow to focus, was drawn to him, watching as he stared up at the ceiling. “Because it was local gang shit and the cops were lazy as hell, we didn’t get any justice. We were sent off to our grandmother’s but she was old and couldn’t really take care of us. There wasn’t enough money so I stole to get by. Really I wanted to shield my sister from it.” 

“Is she-?” 

“She is going to college this year. When I joined SVT a few years back, I made them promise to help me pay for her education and I’d do what they needed. Mainly blackmail, weed growing and sales, shit like that. I’m not doing stuff like Chan, Minghao, and them. I’m mainly on Wonwoo’s side with work.” 

You nodded, laying back down beside him, letting your eyes follow the lights on the ceiling. 

“If I knew who those gang members were, I’d kill them in a heartbeat right now and I’m not the most coordinated with a gun.” Vernon let out a small huff of a laugh. “But we always have someone with my sister even if she is just being watched, if anything was to happen to her, I’d have justice as quick as I could. I’d raise hell and heaven to make sure she is resting in peace. I hope you find the guy that did it, it's an eye for an eye at that point.” 

“Thanks for not thinking I’m crazy.” 

“Crazy?” Vernon let out a loud laugh, shoulders shaking to the point where his arm knocked against yours. “We are laying in a shed where I smoke a fuck ton of weed on a property that Seungcheol built and prospered with mainly mafia money. Mouse, we are in a fucking action movie and honestly it gets boring.”

“Has anyone seen Vernon?” Seungkwan called through the living room, frowning. “I can’t find him.” 

The sun had set and almost all of the members were back at the house. He had gone in and checked on Mingyu who was knocked out, tucked snuggly under the comforter. Seungkwan had gone to Vernon’s room to hang out but came up short. He didn’t get any text messages that Vernon was leaving the property. 

“I swear you are usually attached to the hip,” Soonyoung shuffled around the kitchen, laughing at him. “Have you checked the shed?” 

Jeonghan entered the living room, looking at the group of members littering the area. “Have any of you seen, Mouse?” 

“No idea. Usually Seokmin knows where she is but he went back to the city for something. I haven’t really seen her since we got Mingyu into bed.” Minghao was lazied on the couch, a book hovering above his head as he scanned the pages. 

“I’m going to check the shed.” Seungkwan huffed, having a feeling that none of them would be of any help. “I’ll let you know if Mouse is in there.” 

Turning on his toes, he jogged out the back door and towards DJ Leafblower’s shed. He couldn’t see anything inside with the blocked out windows but a quick pull of the door gave him his answer. 

Mouse and Vernon were sitting back against the foot of the couch, heads leaned back as they stared at the ceiling. A blanket was thrown over their legs but the cloud of smoke that left the small building gave him a clear answer to the current state they were in. 

“No, all I’m saying is that if you want a really good bowl of soup, you need to let me cook..” Mouse rambled off and Vernon nodded along, “I make amazing soup, Vernon. I’m telling you.” 

���Nah, nah, I believe you, but soup is so…overrated.” 

Mouse gasped and slapped her hand against his arm. “ Take it back .” 

“You both are idiots.” Seungkwan sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Vernon high is bad enough.” 

Both Mouse and Vernon lifted their heads and beamed at him. Truthfully his heart melted a little. They looked like little kids when their favorite person came into the room. 

“Seungkwan!” Vernon waved his hand and motioned for him to join them. “Kwan, Kwan, come tell Mouse the thing you were telling me about. About Jeonghan.” 

Seungkwan slapped a hand to his face and sighed once more. Of course he remembers that now. “No, Nonnie, I’m not going to talk about that while both of you are smoking.” 

“Why not?” Mouse questioned, resting her head on Vernon’s shoulder. “I wanna know the tea on Jeonghan.” 

He stepped inside and shut the door, pulling out his phone to send Jeonghan a text that they were in the shed, and sat down across from the two. “Because the tea shouldn’t be talked about when your head is in the clouds.” 

She whined, pouting. “That’s dumb.” 

“No, you are for smoking whatever concoction of weed Vernon had on hand.”

“The Leaf Blower special.” Vernon laughed.

Seungkwan mockingly muttered the words under his breath but leveled them both with a judgemental gaze. “Are you guys hungry? If you come inside, we can get you some of the chicken tenders Mingyu keeps in the freezer.”

“Tendies sound amazing.” Mouse giggled, “Do you have other trash food?” 

He was going to die by the end of the night because of them. “There are probably some pizza rolls and french fries in there. I think Shua brought home two dozen cinnamon rolls too.” 

“Seungkwan, I’d kiss you right now but I feel like jelly.” Mouse was looking at him like he was a literal god among men. 

“Please do not,” He started, continuing to talk under his breath but didn’t realize how loud he actually was, “Jeonghan wouldn’t be happy about that.” 

She frowned, confusion twisting across her face. “Why would he be mad about that?” 

Vernon grinned. “Because Jeonghan like likes you, Mouse.” 

“Oh for fucks sake-” 

“Wait- What?” 

Tag List is Open! Comment on the BSH Master List to get added!

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@unlikelysublimekryptonite @iiaweirdo @aurorajoye

[potatoparakeet]

Some of my meet the Robinsons headcanons 🫣 cause my head is full of em. A lot of these r kinda worldbuildy but some are Robinson family based!

-I'm a believer that Franny went to school for bio-engineering (and music ofc) and put all of that knowledge towards her frogs. Maybe she even had a successful lab of her own before finally succeeding with the band, and left it to conduct full time.

- I don't think Lazlos paint gun would shoot random art, but rather Lazlo would have to manually program a painting into it somehow, and trial-and-error test it until it looks perfect.

- Billies train system through the house is Uncle Joe's primary mode of transportation across the bigger stretches of the estate.

- Along w the hover-chairs, there's a Robinson brand of wheelchairs and crutches that can fold/unfold to travel through the travel tubes and be sensed by the bubbles!

- Robinson industries is obviously the top of the line when it comes to tech products, but there are also other companies that sell similar products. The Samsungs to Cornelius's Apple.

- Future City/Todayland is Not Named That. I don't have any better ideas but both of those ain't it

- Nonetheless I think it became the biggest city in the country just due to it being the first to take on Niels cityscaping inventions. It's kind of his personal playground in that sense

- In that breath I also think there's many places in the country that just Aren't that advanced. I imagine public transportation has majorly improved but in many cities life hasn't changed all too much.

- I think it'd be interesting for Robinson Industries to have people who just HATE the things they do. Look at those instant-buildings and tell me the construction working community didn't freak out.

- imo 2037 (from what we see) seems technologically advanced in the way that people would be able to return to art- but the transition period was definitely rough as people started losing jobs to Neils tech.

- I don't know if Niel would make many robots to be sold commercially- not with the problem of AI vs humans.

- In tiny text of a concept art in the art book you can read that Cornelius created "Robinson™ Blue/Green fuel cells" which are the "world's first renewable clean-burning fuel source" source.

- If we accept that as canon and assume all the new flying cars were fueled with this energy source, we can pretty much assume ground cars went extinct pretty quickly, unless other car manufacturers and gas companies were still allowed to produce.

- Probably by 2037 the use of gas has been banned, leaving only the souly electric ground cars, which probably weren't enough to run whole businesses on. With flying cars as the new norm, roads were likely torn up.

- I don't imagine the whole car switch thing went over well with the public either tbh. I would not be happy if Some Guy told me I couldn't buy gas anymore and had to take the airbus.

- I could have sworn it was canon that Niel had won at least one nobel peace award. Does anyone else remember that

[bradandchris]

Whatever his boyfriend Brad said was fine. It was water under a bridge he's never seen, heard of, or planned to cross, but here's what he had to say as to polls. "Half this country was in an abusive relationship and either didn’t know it, know how to get out, or somehow convinced themselves the situation just didn’t apply to them despite not living in an isolation chamber for eight years."

Chris then noted humans remain capable of reasoning anything and then followed this statement by a renewed call for a better form of thinking. As for the more desirable poles, well...Chris said he "would always take two and never turn down left overs or twins. Yum!"

Before his boyfriend could react to the raunch, Chris took ownership readily admitting his suggested sexual antics rang to him "a bit old school Christina Aquilaria," meaning it was both hot and dirty minus a few 'r's' of course.

The fact was the two were at a pool party in WeHo where every beautiful man in Los Angeles was in a Speedo or something of equally negligible coverage so Chris naturally assumed "between PREP, chlorine, and whatever part of the spectrum of sunlight that killed microbes and such, this was essentially the definition of a very well calculated risk."

Leaving no space once again for Brad, Chris went on to mansplain "in reality it was hot partially because it was summer. There was also this whole climate change thing going on," but then switched gears saying the leftovers and twins thing being so hot mostly stemmed from a softcore he watched when he was 16 titled “The Grill” that followed the sexcapades of a men’s college swim team while attending their coach’s off season summer bbq.

The early 80’s flick was considered edgy in its day apparently because the coaches wife was away on a business trip leaving the boys to fend for themselves. Chris was quick to point out tho the viewers never learn what kind of business she was in. He assumed it was advertising as that’s what the lead lady in the flick “Mr Mom” did. That both films were coincidentally released the same year carried enough weight to take the one hole in the softcore Chris didn’t want right off the table.

Seeing himself in full truthing mode, Chris then physically reached into thin air, pretended to grab something, then did the gay ‘z’ snap as he declared the shenanigans at the pool party "not actually dirty, but dirty adjacent due to all the precautions both manufactured and natural taken by the parties attendees.”

It was then Brad finally dove in the poll/pole conversation he started but largely failed to participate in with a sharp "True." Everyone attending the event already knew not to bring up the responsibility already taken at the party itself as it defeated the purpose. They were there for a good time and much of that was indulging themselves in the wild care-free fantasy. If someone was stupid enough to show up knowingly with something that wasn't theirs that's another tomb-sized plot of real estate for dancing upon in recognition of this person's immediate social death.

Vengeance hardly ended there. The reprise occurred at this persons physical death pending anyone knowledgeable of the event outlives this person. 99% of the time they did as for whatever reason vengeance keeps people alive until it's achieved. At that point, you’re as good as dead yourself.

That last part never appealed to Brad or Chris so they chose the sweeter slow release option of dancing nearly naked while high as a kite once or twice a month. It werked a lot of negative energy out though it admittedly invited some wonky back in. No transformation of energy was ever perfect or completely clean. Oddly this was never really spoken to across the board from the underground gays all the way through to mainstream society and then some.

The spiritual death or the parting of this person's soul were also celebrated but occurred less frequently. It largely applied to those in the deepest of the deep usually either claiming hetero and/or some sort of divinity. Ironically, few of them had souls or any sign of spirit hence the small numbers. They either never had them in the first place or they were already goners by the time the gays got to them. Regardless, the offenders helped keep the dancefloors packed in the after-after-afterhours which was a very twisted way to say sometime between 8am and noon the following day.

Brad went on to say "they were all reasons to dance and do drugs. Taking responsibility certainly granted its freedoms but no matter the situation or level of involvement, people will always cross lines. It's how anyone knows where they are. Once they are established, you’re either stupid or a hero for crossing them." Brad paused for a few seconds of self reflection. "We jump on that ship so quickly when on the sidelines don’t we?”

Chris dove back in the chat with his own sharp "True.” Then a two second pause followed by another “True. And True.” He then pointed out for the sect of the gay spectrum this notion did apply to inclusive of themselves, jumping on the revenge train for the anti gays felt not too dissimilar in concept to the whole 'I'll do anything for science' phenomenon.

Chris looked to his right giving a facial expression as if pulling files in his head. “It was weird to see that go off the deep end in recent years. Science that is. How did the entire field of academics and study just not make the dinosaur/bird connection until just now? Ummmm. Ooops. We took the dinosaurs extinction as this grand dramatic exit for hundreds of years."

Chris paused for Brad's acknowledgement smirk as he knew that was a zinger. It also gave him just enough time to conjure up another to wrap this conversation up. Chris was horny and could see a platter of hot dogs floating their way. He nodded to Brad who turned to see, then motioned the tray boy to stay on course to them. When his boyfriend turned back his way, Chris could see Brad's excitement matched his own.

Chris let out and unrehearsed “nice” then mentioned the hot dogs filled out their buns quite well too. Brad smiled at the notion and thanked his boyfriend for such kind observations. Chris then proceeded to smash last hurdle to happy happy joy fun land by spending his last two cents.

“As for both polls and poles, whenever these f*cks come around, we will take them in.”

“We always do.” Brad whole heartedly agreed adding, “people always seemed surprised both of them were so versatile and open minded.”

They were when it counted.

[howlingday]

au where the arc family owns the Arc cooperation the predominant dust manufacturer in the world. while the schnees remained the noble knights of atlas.

the jaune however grew up humble by virtue of his massive family keeping him grounded reminding him that even as heir to the company he still was only a small part of something larger.

whereas weiss still had a toxic father and alcoholic mother and still was put under a lot of pressure to be perfect.

so personalities remain the same but status and wealth are switched

Humility and Pride

"Well done! Give it up for Jaune Arc, the pride and heir to the Arc Institute of Dust."

The crowd roared as Jaune's father finished exclaiming around him. People from all over Remnant, either close friends or business partners of his family had come together to cheer for the young scion of the Arc family name. As Jaune removed his helmet, he gave a smile to the cheering throng, especially the... similarly aged group of the guest family's daughters. That ended, however, when he caught his mother giving a scolding glare at him. As if to tell him, 'Keep it moving, lover boy.'

Jaune turned round the room, admiring the crowd admiring him through the cloud of ash that was the captured Grimm he had slain. Something about this felt wrong to him. True, the Grimm were awful monsters to be eradicated, but to turn it into a sport? But he knew why this had to be done.

After all, the headmasters of Beacon, Haven, Atlas, and Shade had sent some of their brightest minds to come view. In a special section of the atrium, on a balcony overlooking the entire demonstration. One such fellow made a fuss about seeing a mouse that everyone swore wasn't there. He'd hoped he wouldn't be attending that school.

But that would come later. For now, Jaune returned to the staging area, where he was to swiftly shower, change, and mingle with the potential future educators. After all, he was Jaune Arc, and when an Arc gives his word, he stands by it. No matter what.

================================================

"It's about time you got home, Weiss. For a moment, I thought you'd finally had the guts to abandon us like your sister did."

Weiss ignored her father's comment. She made her way into her room, past the door to the obnoxious 'family history' of the once great Schnee name. If only she could ignore it as easily as her father's words. On her way, she also passed by her younger brother's room, glancing through the crack to find the young man staring in the dark at a screen of passing numbers on a black screen. She rolled her eyes and continued until she finally reached her room.

"Mom is out again." She didn't turn to greet her younger brother. "She's out with Mr. Sieben again."

"She's at her therapy-"

"No, she's not." He said. "I hacked into his garage camera. She's... She's been there for hours."

"He's her therapist. Maybe she feels more comfortable-"

"In his bed than father's?" Weiss whirled at her brother. His eyes were read and puffy. "I... I'm want to tell Mom tonight, but..." He gulped. "I'm scared of what Dad will do if he finds out first."

"If I find out what?" The two flinched and found their father glaring at them. He was always sober, which made him all the more terrifying. "Whitley?"

The boy trembled, shivering under his father's gaze. He opened his mouth. "I-"

"I'm going to Atlas." Weiss glared defiantly as her father shifted his terrible gaze to her. Unlike her brother, she would not cower. Not even when his fist came flying with her next act of defiance. "And you can't stop-"

[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

[fuzzkaizer]

BOSS - CE-1 Chorus Ensemble

"... yeah, there’s a reason why they occupy so much Cabinet real estate. The company created the “first” of a variety of effects, and was certainly the first to offer many types in compact boxes. However, one such pedal is a stone-cold all-time classic despite never being offered in Boss’s trademark compact enclosure. That pedal is the CE-1 Chorus Ensemble.

Released one year after parent company Roland’s flagship Jazz Chorus amplifiers, Boss did what was once considered the unthinkable. Following the rapid and perhaps unexpected success of the aforementioned amp series, Roland wasted no time with ripping a circuit straight from them and putting them in a floor unit. In fact, this circuit ended up being the first pedal to bear the Boss name, and what a first it was.

Back when the CE-1 was conceptualized, the idea of mains-powered pedals was pretty commonplace. Mu-Tron effects used them, and so did MXR on some of its more ambitious models. Onboard and oftentimes custom-wound transformers ensured that voltages would be stepped down at precisely the right increments in order to preserve tonal integrity and headroom.

Of course, most pedals of the time also ran on nine-volt batteries, establishing a standard that continues today. But before these standards were established, the idea of grandiose effects thrived under the usage of mains power. Such a boundless canvas allowed companies like Boss to rip entire hunks of circuitry straight from larger silicon conglomerates and put them right at a player’s feet. These days, very few manufacturers offer such exacting circuitry, and the few that do charge exorbitant prices.

The CE-1 is one particularly exceptional example of this practice, because it expands on the original circuit, with the added bonus that you can play it through an actual tube amplifier. It also adds an extra functionality that the Jazz Chorus just couldn’t match. The Jazz Chorus gives players both Chorus and Vibrato modes, and to that end, serves up three knobs, of which Speed and Depth are two. The third knob is actually a rotary switch that chooses either mode. While the JC-120 offers a footswitch input to toggle the effect on and off, the CE-1 does one better and converts the rotary switch into a stompable button, meaning you don’t have to do the Angus Young duckwalk back to your amp mid-set to change modes. Nobody wants to do this.

Roland’s Jazz Chorus—and thusly the CE-1—couldn’t have come at a better time for end-users or commerce. Californian semiconductor company Reticon developed the first bucket-brigade device (BBD) and distributed them through the usual suspects, including Radio Shack under the store’s in-house Archer brand. The only problem—again for end-users and commerce—was that each one cost a crazy amount of 1970s dollars. Even at wholesale prices, Reticon’s SAD series of BBD chips made effects a bit on the expensive side.

Shortly after in Japan, Matsushita released the genesis of the Japanese BBD boom that ended up sinking Reticon and all pedals that relied on it. The first chip off the Matsushita line was the MN3002 and found its way into the CE-1 tout de suite. With the combination of the relatively inexpensive BBD and the full-strength brawn of the circuit itself, the CE-1 made a splash in the effects world and primed the pump for Boss’s compact series to take the effects world by storm.

The most unsung piece of the CE-1 puzzle is the onboard preamp that preps the signal for its impending modulation. While many effects and amplifiers (especially of this era) features “high” and “low” inputs, they usually correspond to a brute force approach that swaps out resistors in the signal path. However, the CE-1 preamp section starts with an op-amp preamp circuit that sweetens the signal, and switching over to high mode inserts a transistorized gain stage between the input and the op-amp section. This adds a velvety gloss to the signal before it ever sniffs the BBD chip, catapulting your tone into heights unreached by lesser devices.

It’s not often that almost 50 years later, no effect of a given type has surpassed the first one ever created, but such is the case with the CE-1. Its combination of unsurpassed tonal brilliance, component count and wacky power requirements has cemented its place in the effects hall of fame, leaving even the most modern refinements squarely in the rear-view mirror."

cred: catalinbread.com/blogs/kulas-cabinet/boss-ce-1-chorus-ensemble