#contrarian strategy

[stockmarketdailyupdates]

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[salty-an-disco]

this doodle was just too cute to leave it unfinished, so here’s to your regularly scheduled contrahero

[sgrji]

Mastering Intraday Stock Trading: Strategies, Tips, and Risks

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[thisisgraeme]

Custom GPT for Decision-Making: Fat Tony Weighs In On AI and Automation in Education

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[mylittleredgirl]

buckle up folks, it's deep dive about chakotay hours!

season 2, "initiations"

@isthereintruthnobeauty1968 asked a question about chakotay in this post about the scene above:

for an infamous leader of an anti-federation rebel group he seems to firmly believe in its authority and ideals And to have (at least externally) adjusted to the blended crew seamlessly. what's the deal?

see, i don't think chakotay ever wanted to be a rebel, or even a leader for that matter.

he wanted to be a starfleet officer.

season 2, "tattoo"

chakotay enrolls in the acadamy as a teenager as young as he legally can ("tattoo"). he tells seven ("one small step") that he joined starfleet because of his love of paleontology, and he only turned away from that out of responsibility to the maquis and now to voyager.

[get a snack for this one y'all]

season 6, "one small step"

it doesn't come up often, but whenever chakotay talks about his pre-voyager starfleet career, it's always about first contact or archaeology. in "emanations," he compares their exploration of an alien burial moon to a mission he went on as an ensign, all while demonstrating his anthropology expertise. add that to him nerding out in "blink of an eye," "one small step," the dinosaur episode, and a bunch of other examples, he's a social scientist both by training and by inclination.

in the original star trek, they had an "A&A officer," a specialist in archaeology, anthropology, and ancient civilizations:

tos season 2, "who mourns for adonais?"

we never hear that term again, but that's the role chakotay often fills on voyager, and he's very happy whenever he gets to do it.

now, realistically, i don't know how much time pre-maquis chakotay would have spent in a blue uniform, because those skills would not make him an obvious choice to lead a maquis cell. ro laren sets up his character (unnamed) in tng as a tactical specialist who resigns to join the maquis:

tng season 7, "preemptive strike"

(which is a very polite and noble way to do it, as compared to eddington's defection in ds9.)

if he was in fact ro’s teacher (i think so, despite a stardate conflict in some later dialogue), it seems very in-character to me that chakotay could have started out pursuing a sciences path before showing an aptitude for piloting, strategy, and/or command. given what we know of him, regardless of his own passions or preferences, if a senior officer noticed his skills and encouraged him to change career tracks, he would do it.

teen angst era aside, he respects authority. he argues against dogmatic ideology when it's inflexible to the needs of the moment, but he likes working within a command hierarchy, and for better or worse, he is easily swayed by charismatic leaders.

season 1, "caretaker"

not only does he yield to janeway's authority on voyager before she even asks him to, and then molds himself into the kind of first officer he thinks will help her most, he does the same thing with annorax in "year of hell." tom is the voice of ethical conscience and reason in that episode, and he organizes the rebellion—against chakotay's orders!

there's so much going on here:

season 4, "year of hell part 2"

despite his father's perceptions of him as a contrarian, chakotay only rebels as a last resort. he would genuinely rather not. he clearly talked about the maquis cause with ro and others before he left—and i bet that's why he resigned to a starfleet admiral in person, to make one last appeal. his preference is to try and change systems from within.

not to west wing about it, but chakotay is only The Guy when he has to be—he wants to be the guy the guy counts on.

(hot take: with how he rationalizes the calculated sacrifices annorax is making in "year of hell," i don't think chakotay would have left starfleet for the maquis if it wasn't personal. but it was personal, so here we are!)

maquis chakotay is a disillusioned idealist, but he's never that disillusioned. he believes in the stated ideals of the federation, sometimes more than janeway does.

season 3, "scorpion part 1"

and it's a fundamental character trait that he looks for the best in people and situations, often to his own detriment (tuvok, seska, annorax, that time janeway and tuvok and tom all lie to him for half a season, the list goes on).

and it's easy to see good in starfleet, especially when most of his career was during the height of federation utopia before "the best of both worlds," at which point starfleet remembered it's also a defensive force and started building the defiant—which was the very first starfleet ship ever designed solely for combat.

the cardassian situation in tng is shown as an aberration in a largely peaceful era. the off-screen "border wars" were fought by officers who expected to go their entire careers never firing a phaser.

tng season 4, "the wounded"

for decades since making peace with the klingons, and with the romulans keeping to themselves, starfleet has been mostly goodhearted nerds who are committed to exploring and making friends. even if chakotay was a tactical officer, that was the starfleet he signed up for and served.

and, in fact, the reason why the federation abandoned the colonists in the dmz in the first place and wouldn’t help bajor during the cardassian occupation is because the federation and starfleet are devoted to the ideals of peace and noninterference to a fault.

tng season 5, "ensign ro"

chakotay doesn't object to starfleet's actions, but its inaction.

which, side note, is why janeway's choice in "caretaker" makes it easy for him to rally behind her. by choosing to protect the ocampa, even though it's a huge sacrifice and puts her in a prime directive gray area, janeway specifically addressed the exact trust gap he has with starfleet.

season 1, "caretaker"

that's what he wanted them to do back home!

chakotay defends his starfleet uniform in the kazon scene that inspired this whole essay, and he believes what he's saying, because he's right: that's not what a starfleet uniform represents, either in theory or in practice. especially in the mid-24th century, regardless of the political issues, the federation and starfleet do not conquer planets or enslave alien cultures by force.

(of course, they wouldn't have helped the kazon free themselves either, but that's not the question on the table.)

to op's main question: it's an interesting (or boring?) doylist choice to make chakotay such a platonic ideal of a Starfleet Officer™️ (which, for the record, has always included going off-leash at the expense of one's career whenever ethics overwhelm regulations).

season 1, "prime factors"

star trek went to a lot of trouble to create the maquis for the voyager premise of two crews... and then quickly brady-bunch'd them into one happy family and let deep space nine wrangle the maquis problem instead. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

chakotay being so willing to put himself and his crew into starfleet uniforms (even though some members of both crews objected to it) cheated us out of some potentially rich drama, but it does hold water with what we see of him as a character on screen, and his relationship with starfleet. it has disappointed him, but he still believes that it's a force for good, and chakotay will always err on the side of seeing the good in something and thinking he can change it for the better from within.

--

tl;dr: chakotay is a starfleet officer by training and at heart, who was temporarily out of uniform because his family and tribe happened to be directly in the middle of starfleet's messiest ethical quagmire.

he made a personal, moral decision to join the maquis, not because he was anti-federation, but because that was the only way to protect federation civilians—which was part of his starfleet oath to begin with. he worked hard when he was younger to earn this uniform and i think, in spite of everything, he feels honestly proud to get to wear it again.

[rootspiral]

Agatha All Along deep dive: episode 4 part 1

(Wandavision entries: [1][2][3])

(AAA entries: ep1 [1][2][3][4] ep2 [1][2][3][4] ep3 [1][2][3] ep4 [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][+1] ep5 [1][2][3][4][5] ep6 [1][2][3] ep7 [1][2][3][4][5][6] ep8 [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9] ep9 [1][2][3][4][5][6])

It's episode 4 If I Can't Reach You / Let My Song Teach You, time for two of my favorite things: glam rock and homosexuals. which are basically the same thing if you think about it.

she's like damn, billy, that was ruthless. honestly this is going to make her care about billy even more, not only he's powerful, not only he reminds her of nicky. now he's a murderer too?? perfect son is perfect. I love how she's studying sharon's body with her detective Agnes face, her mind is going a million miles a minute

her third-wall-break winks destroy me. and that poor hairdo. all gone expect for the giant turd on top.

alice being truly and genuinely sorry about sharon. lilia and jen being gossiping hags

agatha honey you're so dainty and feminine, look at you. and that's an interesting and not at all painful tree shape you picked. (I would have never noticed any of this without brightening the scene, it's outrageous. everyone involved in this show is amazing except the lighting department. shame on you lighting department)

whatever alice does openly and sincerely, agatha does secretly or as a joke. parallels, parallels

jen is like, can you believe this bitch

without being asked, alice goes to help digging the grave

that is the idiot I fell in love with and I'm way past regretting my choices at this point!! I know how rio feels now

"coven two" is one of those lines that make you laugh on first view and shreds your heart in a million tiny pieces at every following rewatch. this show HAS to be watched at least twice, don't ever trust reviews or complaints by ppl who didn't, because they missed at least half of what makes it great.

a clown running from the tragic truth that her son wrote the Ballad, making sad clown noises all over the Road

when alice is called to referee as the Resident Ballad Expert and agatha looks at her expectantly hands in pockets, somehow extremely obnoxious, extremely gay and extremely sad at the same time

alice is SO above bickering. jen is being a baby because she's mad at agatha, lilia is being a baby cause she's grumpy and a contrarian, billy is sixteen, agatha is, well, agatha. alice is the only adult in the building

just one, huh? that's fine. that's fine. who needs a heart anyway.

the common gypsophila or baby's breath symbolizes sincerity, purity, innocence. does it symbolizes sharon? or is billy leaving it on her grave a metaphor for his naivety and good intentions gone wrong?

billy's romantic ideals of what it means to be in a coven have just been shattered. he set out, consciously or not, to teach something to these witches and of course it didn't work. he is the one who needs guidance, he is the one who's making a mess of things. he's just a kid.

agatha going !! when billy says he wishes he could go home. agatha covertly pointing out that he has a replacement body and she would really like to know how. she's observing him so closely, trying to puzzle out the mystery. exactly like she did with wanda inside the Hex. not revealing her cards just yet, testing and manipulating him. when that strategy blew up in her face so spectacularly the first time! she's so smart and so reckless it makes her practically an idiot

case in point: she's making up stupid rules trying to manipulate billy into shaping the Road the way she wants. that's right, agatha. let's summon another poor victim you can siphon, wonder who's gonna show up! (and she KNEW sharon was laying dead ten feet away and SOMEONE was bound to be in the neighborhood. dumbass.)

aww he's so proud of himself for having brought the spellbook. he's being helpful! he's made his four moms happy!

check, debatable, check

debatable and debatable

I'm gonna give that one a BIG check

yes I know advil spells "vidal", thank you tumblr for letting me know that one. also same, alice.

'esse viridis non es facile' IT'S NOT EASY BEING GREEN?!?!!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?! oh I knew my high school latin was bound to come in handy at least once in my life

(by the way the set + costumes combo is giving me such hocus pocus vibes, but you could never tell because the SCENE IS SO FUCKING DARK) (NO I WON'T SHUT UP ABOUT IT)

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAH

I mean girls, you chose to follow the head clown, you have to travel in the clown car. that's on you.

WHY IS THE PRINT SO SMALL???? I LOVE YOU PATTI LUPONE

admit it we all wished it was sharon for a moment

oh?? is that mayhaps someone you know, agatha???

and that's a wrap, see you guys tomorrow!

no, I'm kidding, I'm kidding. I'm doing another one tonight. I need to shove all the rio scenes in my eyeballs NOW

go to episode 4 part 2

[aettuddae]

business matter — chapter 92.

↳ synopsis: two of the most important kpop companies covet a partnership with a huge global brand, only to be surprised when the deal is extended to both labels. fearing potential sabotage and cynical strategies to secure exclusivity for just one of them, both CEOs resort to desperate measures. in a bid to maintain trust and prevent betrayal before the signing, they come up with a pact: forcing a fake relationship between the leaders of their star girlgroups. if one side attempted to fail the other, they threaten to expose it all to the conservative south korea.

masterlist | prev | next

[written chapter]

[warning: suggestive]

"just come here."

serim put her phone away aggressively, frustrated at not being able to stop her body from getting up from the chair and heading toward the restroom area without giving further explanation, grabbing the attention of the other people at the table, who knew exactly where the girl was going.

they knew that serim would go wherever karina asked her to.

she opened the door to the ladies' bathroom, making room for herself to enter. there was no one there, it was not crowded, there was only a girl at the opposite end of the entrance, with her back against the wall and her phone in her hands. her attention was on the screen of the device, but as soon as she heard someone walk in, she moved her eyes upward without raising her head completely, long strands of dark hair falling in front of her face.

the girl straightened as she recognized serim, now also resting the back of her head against the cold concrete she leaned against. a confident, preponderance smile spread over her lips.

"i knew you would come." she spoke, breaking the static silence within those four walls.

"of course i came." serim closed the door behind her abruptly. "you're in my company's public restroom taking provocative pictures of yourself to send to me during a party." she took quick steps to approach her, scolding her.

"do you really expect me to believe that you came to give me a lecture and not to rip my dress off and fuck me in one of those?" she pointed to the cubicles, the vain expression still on her face.

"are you aware of what might happen if we were caught in the act?" she found herself elated at the contrarian's stillness. "or even if you were seen in this state?" she extended her arm to point at her, exposing the girl. "fix your dress." serim ordered after noticing that the bottom of the garment was raised and uneven, revealing her thigh almost to the edge, possibly a result of those images she was taking earlier.

"namu." she stopped her with a composed yet flirtatious tone. "i don't believe you don't want to touch me." she let out a soft laugh.

"you're drunk." the older one declared.

"i'm obsessed with you." she rebutted. "come on, don't you want to find out what it's like to have sex at the risk of being discovered?" she held out her arms, waiting for her, but serim remained silent, serious, still. "or do you...?" karina propelled herself away from the wall quickly, walking towards the woman impatiently, staggering slightly due to the alcohol in her system, her attitude changing from haughty to indignant after realizing what the lack of words hid. "so you've already fucked other girls in public spaces before, but you're playing morally correct with me?" she grabbed the fabric of jang's clothes to pull her closer and force her to look at her. "are you incapable of keeping yourself in your pants?"

"ironic that you would say that when your first reaction to getting drunk is to beg me to have sex with you in a bathroom." she reciprocated karina's tug on her garment, standing just inches away from each other. "my coworkers are out there." she reminded.

"and you and i are in here." she slid her tact to serim's waist, holding her from both sides.

"jimin." she let out in a sigh, her eyes closed, trying not to lose herself in the touch.

"namu." her tone was low, imploring, claiming.

serim was already used to not knowing how to refuse jimin, or maybe she didn't want to, but she didn't dare to assume it. every time she gave in to her, a warm feeling flooded her chest, which could be so many emotions, but she always related to guilt.

the same guilt you feel when you go back to your ex, when you buy something stupid even though you know you will spend the money you had to make ends meet on it, or when you postpone your obligations until the last possible moment because you don't feel like doing it at that time. it was the guilt that came hand in hand with pleasure and desire.

there are times when human beings submit to delight and don't know how to anticipate reason to it, and this was another one of those moments when serim couldn't hold her conscious decisiveness over the need to kiss jimin. trapping her mouth with her in a power play, wrapping her arms around her body and running her hands up and down her back as they engaged in a wet, messy make-out session. pushing her and walking with her until she was leaning against the nearest wall, so clumsily and restlessly that, in the state she was in, if jimin hadn't been holding tight onto serim's shoulders and the back of her neck, she would have lost her balance.

serim lifted from both sides the girl's pink dress, which was already a mess anyway, leaving room for nothing beyond the girl's underwear to make her uncomfortable as she placed her knee between the blackhaired's legs and with it pressed her center, causing jimin to break the kiss for a moment to let out a deep sigh in reaction to the new contact, reconnecting their lips in desperation as she moved as best she could her waist over serim's leg trying to generate friction.

"i'm tired of you always getting your way." complained jang, though her agitated, longing voice was countered by her statement, her upper lip delicately resting on jimin's lower one, her mouth free to speak, but still not entirely detached from the girl.

"this is literally what you wish for me to do." she mentioned, feeling the skin on her neck moisten as she received serim's kisses upon it.

"so you're only doing this for me?" she pulled away a little, just enough to be able to speak, her breath still colliding against the younger girl's neck. "wasn't it you who asked me to come?" she suddenly lifted her leg that was already pressed against karina, slipping it even deeper, shooting a wave of sensations through the girl's body at the stronger, more direct touch she had just felt, facing the ceiling and closing her eyes, this time it was an explicit moan that broke from her throat.

"i do want it." she admitted, finding it hard to speak as she tried to keep her breathing in sync. "thank you for fulfilling my whims." she smiled indulgently, holding serim's cheeks and moving her until she could kiss her lips again.

"i'd do anything for you." she confessed, though it wasn't something that wasn't already known between them. "even if it's stupid things like this." with her palms on her waist she began to direct her to rock her hips on her knee. "or go against my reason."

"do you like me that much? that you physically can't turn me down?" her eyelids were drooping, leaving her eyes barely open just to look at her, for the reality was that they were closing on their own to focus all her senses on how good she was feeling, her fingers trying to cling and keep the opposite as close to her as they could, her lips struggling to stay entwined and just letting go so they could talk to each other in that careful, soft, eager tone.

"is because i love you."

silence. but silence of the tense kind, not the comfortable kind.

karina's eyes suddenly opened wide and all her movements stopped, her hips ceased going back and forth on serim, her hands not seeking to trap her between them anymore, her lips abruptly parted from hers, as she brought her head so far back she could almost feel the coldness of the wall against the nape. she stood static as if she had just been told that someone had run over hiro or she had been kicked out of her group. her pale porcelain skin seemed to have lost even more pigmentation, not even the pinkish hue that had accumulated on her cheekbones due to the arousal she was experiencing moments before had remained on her cheeks, the sobriety hitting her as if she had never ingested alcohol in the first place.

noticing the blackhaired's reaction, serim decided she should take some distance, detaching herself from the woman and taking a few steps back, still an arm's length away, but letting her breathe. she didn't know why she had said that, it was true, but she couldn't find a reason why to confess it. possibly she had no more tools to make that situation better, to fix it, to make it stop hurting. in desperate times, desperate measures. seeing the look of dread on jimin's face, she realized that she had run out of resources to make either of them start acting coherently and maturely.

"jokey joke." the older one tried to diffuse the tension by speaking in a high-pitched, awkward tone, raising her fingers simulating two guns and pointing them at the girl like someone who tries to look cool after saying something stupid.

"do you love me?" she ignored her.

"well, that's what i said, i guess." paralleling the horror shown by the younger girl's behavior, serim couldn't help the urge born in her to turn any unfortunate event into a funny one.

"do you love me?"

"jimin, you know me, i have a lot of love to give." she continued with her attempt to redirect the conversation.

"serim, do you love me?" she repeated, still in shock.

"yes, i do." she admitted, frustrated after failing to calm the mood.

"are you in love with me?" emphasized on the words 'in love,' walked up to serim, completely disoriented, facing her.

"yes, jimin, i love you!" she exclaimed, tired of hearing her say the same thing over and over again.

the dancer couldn't wake up from the trance she was in, everything felt surreal. of all the possible outcomes she calculated when she asked serim to go there, none of them ended with the woman confessing that her feelings were much deeper than a simple infatuation. it was as if her brain couldn't adapt to how quickly everything had escalated, how much her life had really changed since the moment the company called her to tell her that she would have to pretend to be the girlfriend of this person.

karina is a beautiful and captivating being, but realistically, how many times in a someone's life do they get a love confession told in the face?

jimin didn't know what to do, how she was supposed to react, the only thing she was sure of was that there was no way serim was going back home that night with a sane heart.

"that doesn't make sense." she shook her head to both sides, her eyes on the ground.

"what?" the first hints of disappointment were beginning to make their presence known in serim's chest.

"you can't be in love with me, namu." she furrowed her brows seriously, pretending to sound reasonable. "we barely know each other."

"jimin." she let out a dry, indignant laugh. "you live in my house, i've seen you every day for months, you've been fooling around with me for days." she began to list despairingly. "are you trying to invalidate how i feel about you?"

"you're confused." she tried to convince her, her voice soft, and she lifted her arms to wrap them around the oldest's neck. "when you spend some time away from me it will pass." she leaned forward intending to initiate a kiss.

"jimin, are you fucking bipolar?" she pushed her away without using force, just enough to keep her from reaching up to touch her mouth. "are you seriously denying my confession by telling me i just have to pull away from you while you try to kiss me?" the levels of exasperation she was reaching at that moment she had never experienced before.

"i'm drunk and i need you." the ravenhead must have been really intoxicated because she seemed sure that was a good excuse.

"are you admitting that you are using me to please you?" serim was not a person who cried often, but everything that was going on with karina was beyond her and tears began to form in her eyes.

"no, serim." she was so calm considering she had a person on the verge of crying in front of her. "i need you." she connected their eyes. "i really do, i treasure you." she admitted. "when i see you i can't resist the urge to touch you and kiss you." she cupped her face in her hands, caressing her cheeks. "when i lose control the first thing i look for is you." she took a breath trying to stay focused, feeling her throat beginning to ache, that she too was going to burst into tears. "but even for me it's going to happen too, it's going to pass."

"but, why would it have to pass?" she implored in anguish.

"because it has to." she sentenced coldly. "because you and i can't be together and that's the only certainty."

"no." she declined, not willing to listen to the same old speech. "the only certain thing is that we are not able to stay away from each other." she performed.

"namu." she tried to stop her words.

"jimin, do you love me?" she interrupted her, not wanting to look vulnerable, but with hope in her voice and eyes.

and karina kept silent. her pupils began to wander on serim, getting lost in her features. the older girl's skin was soft, delicate, a result of the care her work as an idol demanded of her, which she knew was even more exhaustive with serim whose diet consisted merely of cigarettes and very poorly organized meals at peculiar times of the day.

after remembering her bad habits she could not suppress the onset of the domestic fantasy of cooking for her and reminding her to eat at the required times, of being the person to give her a judging look and a reprimand when she lit one more cigarette than she was allowed, just as she couldn't help the nostalgia of not being that one, as if she had the chance and it had slipped through her fingers.

her eyes were small, but intense. whenever serim looked at her she felt exposed, observed. karina knew the oldest was like a big toddler in need of affection, but when she had no idea of that and saw her as just her senior in the industry, she thought of the heavy presence she had, distracted by how she drew the eyes of everyone in any room she entered with that star-like aura. serim's eyes were the eyes of someone who could command people's attention. and now that hazel color she liked to lose herself in was accompanied by the red of the sadness she herself had generated.

and those full, pompous lips, which at that moment were glistening from the remains of jimin's own saliva on them. of course serim was appealing to so many women, who wouldn't want to kiss those lips? even she had found a fascination in them, since the first time she had tasted them she had struggled to find anything else that would quench the desire to do it again.

karina could only look at her, part by part, as if trying to get to see her bones as well, and maybe even that would have seemed like a wonder to her. feeling her heart pounding in her chest at such a speed that it seemed like the seconds before it stopped completely, like when a light bulb explodes before going out forever. looking at serim she knew what she felt, she was aware, but she also realized that she couldn't let herself feel it.

"serim, i..." she began, the sensation of knowing you're letting someone down gripping her chest. "i have feelings for you." she explained, searching for the words, watching serim roll her eyes and begin to create distance as she heard what seemed to be more excuses. "but they're just sporadic things that will end eventually."

"sporadic things that will end eventually." she paraphrased, anger in the way she quoted her. "what a complicated way to say you don't love me." she turned on her heels, heading for the door.

"namu..."

"don't call me that." she stopped her, with her back to her. "and go back to the party after you fix your clothes." she left.

"there you go."

serim bent her knees to be closer to the height of karina's bed, standing sideways to it and close enough for the owner to slide off her back and land gently on the mattress.

because yes, jimin had broken serim's heart -again-, but still the older girl had to carry her on her back to her bedroom and up to her room since she could hardly stand up because of how drunk she was.

the ravenette, in her state bordering on unconsciousness, could still feel when her body made contact with the comfort of a bed and moved in search of the pillow to rest her head on, closing her eyes almost instantly when she found it. serim, as much as she felt a deep rage towards her at that moment, couldn't just throw her there and leave. she began to inspect the room for some sort of pajamas, but the only piece of clothing she could find was a t-shirt she recognized as her own on a stool where other things were also carelessly lying around, and she even remembered the time when jimin had asked her for it.

she took the garment and hung it on her shoulder and then approached the bed, put one knee on the edge to support the weight of her body as she leaned over the girl, slid one hand between her back and the blanket and pushed her up while she lifted her up pulling from the arm with the other, helping her to sit up and trying not to let go so she wouldn't fall again. she ran her fingers through her back to the side of her torso to find the zipper of the dress to pull it down with difficulty and once the fabric that wrapped around the younger's body was looser making it easier to slide it off, serim set about removing it, sliding down the straps that fastened it to her shoulders and then tugging it down.

"no." suddenly jimin regained lucidity, stopping serim's hands with her own.

"no?" the vocalist looked at yu in amusement as she swayed in place and stared lost to a point in the room, as if trying to make everything stop spinning. "are you going to sleep with the dress on?"

karina didn't move, at least not voluntarily, as she couldn't keep her body balance, she was only still upright because the woman was still holding her. "serim." she was able to articulate after a few long moments of silence.

"what happens?"

"serim." she repeated, trying to get an idea out, but finding it difficult because of the alcohol.

"what?"

"only serim can touch me." she finally mustered the strength to finish the sentence and turn her head, still looking down, but this time in the direction of the opposite, using the contact with her to push her, though it was pointless as she was so intoxicated she could barely generate any impact. "sorry, but this can't happen." her words were barely understandable as she had no ability to modulate and her lips formed a small pout.

"i swear you're bipolar." she shook her head, confused by the girl's statement, but being unable to contain a giggle because of the way she spoke.

"that's something serim would tell me."

"jimin, i am serim." she reminded when she noticed that she really wasn't able to recognize her.

the blackhaired raised her head with intentions of deciphering the identity of the other person, her eyes squinted in order to focus on her because, first, she had bad eyesight by nature, and, second, her state was making her see things double and blurry. after a few seconds she finally recognized those brown eyes that were looking at her incredulously and almost by instinct her senses were activated.

"my namu."

the woman squealed in such a high pitch and raising the volume of her voice to such an extent that the door opened behind them and serim turned quickly to see who had entered, already thinking of what explanation she would give in case one of the other members had woken up and found her late at night with a completely out of it and half undressed karina, but turning around she saw that it was only hiro who had been alerted by his owner. the puppy climbed up to the bed next to them and sat down, following very attentively the movements of both women while the younger one rushed over jang, running her hands through her hair, her cheeks, her neck, shoulders and any part that she could hold on to because her only intention was to give her comforting caresses while she started to spout explanations, without taking a breath, about the situation they were living. the same arguments and apologies about why they couldn't be together that serim had already heard a thousand times, so she decided to put all her effort into not listening to her.

serim, determined to change her clothes, lay her down and put her to sleep so she could go home and pretend that all that night hadn't happened, grabbed the top edge of her dress, pulled the fabric down until she finally managed to detach the rag from the young girl and, without karina having shut up for a single second, managed to put the shirt on her so she would be more comfortable to rest. she held her in her arms while guiding her back to lie down.

"namu, i do want you, and i'm sorry."

it was the tenth time she had said that same sentence within perhaps five minutes. her eyes were closed, but the words kept falling from her lips in a frenzy, intending to appease the seriousness and the pain serim was sure feeling.

jimin felt guilt too, only this was the guilt that comes by hand with a mistake, from the certainty that you are causing harm.

jang let go of the girl's body, removing her hold on her back, but karina sensed this and instinctively caught one of serim's hands with her own, to pull it to her mouth and begin kissing the woman's fingertips in the short, fleeting moments when she stopped justifying herself. the subtle and sensitive display of affection, the pout that still lingered on her face, her shirt decorating her figure and the eagerness she had to show her that, although she could not give in to her emotions, she did care for her, endeared serim, who, as annoyed as she was, and as much as she didn't want to hear any more about it, found herself absorbed in the dancer's gestures and demeanor. they were both so engrossed in each other's presence, for better or worse, that neither noticed that since he came in, hiro had been cautiously stepping towards them, until he was at the perfect distance to reach out his neck and bite down hard on serim's limb that was being worshipped by karina.

serim reacted to the feel of the animal's teeth digging into her skin and jerked her arm to pull her hand away from the dog's muzzle, standing up suddenly to make sure it was out of her reach in case he wanted to attack again.

"baby!" jimin exclaimed to serim after witnessing everything, making an effort to maintain clarity in case she had to help her, lifting herself up a bit and watching her with concern, grabbing hiro to hold him along with her so he wouldn't go towards the woman again.

"i'm fine." reassured jang as she looked at her skin for wounds, but it had only been a bite, hard, but nothing more than that.

but as she inspected herself she realized that hiro had targeted the same hand that he had the previous time, that time where it was her who had gotten drunk into a blackout and where she had to wear bandages for a few days. she still had the scar and maybe it would never go away. the whole scenario was so similar to what had been described to her. she turned her gaze to the pet, who was comfortably resting next to his master as if nothing had happened, on the bed.

hiro. bed. jimin. alcohol. bite.

it wasn't easy to explain how quickly the erased images of that night were being restored in her brain. it was as if someone was shouting it in her face. all very sudden.

how long had jimin been repressing her feelings?

"you really wanted me to believe that your dog attacked me because i touched his food." she pointed her finger accusingly at the woman, who was already falling asleep before serim spoke.

"what?" the girl was in no condition to deal with this at the moment.

"why did you hide from me that we kissed?" she asked indignantly.

"i do want to kiss you, yes, please." she only understood single words, her body was begging her to go to sleep already.

"that time we went to an event and you brought me drunk here, that hiro bit me and you had to heal me." she recapped patiently, trying to get the younger to assimilate each part. "why didn't you tell me that we kissed that night?"

"but..." she tried to keep her sense. "i did tell you." technically she wasn't lying.

"you told me it was a company order." she refuted.

"i had to manipulate the information for my own benefit." she said in a single, quick breath.

"you kissed me because you wanted to." realized.

"can we kiss?" jimin stretched her lips into a beak, waiting.

"how long have you wanted me?" she questioned, an empty feeling in her chest.

"well," she pulled herself slightly upright on the blanket, doing her best to remain coherent. "ning says that since the first recording of azza time." she admitted awkwardly as she spoke. "but the truth is, i think it was since that night."

"ning says?" she repeated, eyes lost, everything was getting more and more ridiculous.

"yizhuo knows how much i like you, obviously." she reasoned. "but she likes you too, what can i do about it? i'm her unnie, she's my world." she let herself drop again. "and to think that everything would have been easier if only i had admitted everything you made me feel that night."

serim couldn't find anything else to say. her breathing was labored to the point where her chest was noticeably rising and falling, and her eyes were once again crystallizing. she had avoided crying before, but she didn't think she could hold it back now. not that jimin was going to notice, the girl was getting lost in her dreams again and this time she wasn't going to do anything to wake her up, there was no point anymore, she had to let her sleep and get out of there. get out of there and finally stop running after someone who had so little perception of her emotions, someone who was saying in very clear terms that she wouldn't fight for her, and who, in fact, had months to do so, but never even tried.

as she faced the desk against one of the walls, she saw the plant that she had given to her some time ago, franky, decorating the table. she thought it was in ningning's possession, so it was unsettling to see it there. it was cared for, indeed, it looked like it had been watered recently, it looked pretty. that only caused the tears to come more easily. she spun on her heels, walked over to karina, leaned over her already sleeping body and placed a kiss on her forehead, keeping careful that hiro didn't get angry.

perhaps everything serim had to contribute to karina's life was already in that room, and there was nothing more for her to give.

serim left, closing the door carefully so as not to make any noise, she turned towards the hallway to walk through it towards the living room, but when she did, she found ningning watching her from the entrance of her room, aspect as if she had just woken up.

"ning." she spoke as she noticed the girl's presence. "please don't think anything strange, karina is very drunk, i just helped her get to bed" she informed nervously.

"semmie." the worried voice of the maknae was heard from the other side. "it's okay, don't worry, i know you weren't doing anything." even in the darkness, serim could make out that she was walking towards her. "are you crying?" she questioned, as she had noticed the trembling as she spoke.

serim wanted to rationalize herself, to help her understand what was going on, she wanted to talk to yizhuo, but it wouldn't come out of her. she was exhausted, mentally she no longer had the will to keep pretending to endure what she was going through with jimin or to keep trying to make the people around her think everything was normal. in the end, she properly burst into tears, not being able to beat the tears with glibness. ningning rushed over to wrap her arms around her and hold her as the older one broke down on her shoulder.

(!)

— taglist [CLOSED]: @yoontoonwhs @cwpiqwon @aliceiwk @xen248 @gtfoiydlyj @rinapomu @aeriuchinarga @multiliker @somedaydream @impossiblesharkcashrebel @yjiminswallet @nwjnsloona @yerimbrit @73vyn @dni-unavailable @yizhuobberi @sewiouslyz @yeetaberry127 @masuowo @yallatalla @aerithykly @chaenniefirst @minfolio @starrynini05 @hotluvlet @wmnrhot @mineige @lisaswifey @brocoliisscared @fae-the-wanderer

[meanbossart]

Did Astarion kill DU Drow or did DU Drow pass the checks? (Or did that interaction not happen?)

Cause you’ve basically described DU Drow’s type as THAT Bitch™️ which I respect. But if THAT Bitch™️ killed him too?

Of course this could be me projecting, cause my Durge failed the checks and he came before he went 🫡.

Pretty face, legs for days, a mean streak, AND held a knife to his throat within five minutes of meeting, Astarion had already grabbed his attention, top that off with the fact Astarion actually killed him? My murder man was munted, the Bhaal boy was barking, slaughter son was salivating…

You get the idea

God damn it you're right, his type is just the conceptual archetype of That Bitch isn't it LOL

THAT BEING SAID you are actually mistaken! He may not like suck-ups, but he likes strangers putting knives to his throat even less.

Not to mention: Astarion's immediate order of business after that is to try and desperately get on your good side. In other words, doing the very thing that puts DU drow off. He didn't care for Astarion or his attempts at seduction at all, held him at arms' length, and was just a dismissive asshole to him throughout the majority of Act 1 (he was an asshole to everyone at that stage though, to be fair.)

It was only at the tiefling party when Astarion, completely unprompted, implied that the very idea of having sex with him disgusted him that DU drow became interested and started pursuing him. In the narrative I made up for this course of events, I like to think Astarion realized that his usual strategy wouldn't work here and that he was dealing with a man who only wants what he can't have. DU drow is a contrarian at heart, and for as long as Astarion was throwing himself at him he was going to be turned down.

Astarion only bit him after they started having sex, and at that point he had already told DU drow about his vampirism through normal dialogue ("Well, Obviously."). This is sincerely the only way he got away without being staked when that scene triggers (and it was honestly really cool to experience it in that order because it felt a lot more strategic from my POV as the player).

The bite was definitely a turning point in the relationship (DU drow enjoys being hurt by people he values under a controlled environment, but isn't fully aware of it due to his missing memory -> now his object of carnal desire puts that very concept on the table on a habitual basis, making it pretty much a pillar of the relationship -> DU drow begins to see Astarion as someone who actually has something to offer him, instead of just being a pretty conquest that he can show off.) However he still attempted and passed the first check to break free from it. They weren't close enough for DU drow to completely let go of his sense of self-preservation, nor did he come to trust Astarion entirely for a long time even after that. At that stage, if Astarion had sucked him dry (and then revived him, I guess) DU would have most definitely killed him.

(And If you're wondering how this translates to my actual gameplay - I wasn't taking the game seriously because I don't usually like fantasy as a genre, so I made a guy, named him Drow, and proceeded to be a huge dick to everyone until they all ultimately wormed their way into my heart while I kicked and screamed.)

[punkishtoxtricity]

a comprehensive list of problems with lily orchards pokemon video

there is a point to where my criticisms just repeats so they’ll get different down the post

generation 1

-she claims that blue is a friendly rival when the whole point of him is that he’s a dumb kid. he’s a cocky 11 year old who thinks he’s better than you and grows to realize it’s not all about strong pokemon

-complains about length of dungeons such as lavender tower and silph co but for some reason likes rock tunnel??

-complains about other youtubers strategies for gyms that are usually meant for nuzlockes and challenge runs when she’s playing casual

-acts like she is so much better than everyone else for her strategy when it’s been done to a more extreme degree before

-acts like having butterfree on her team is some feat of strength

generation 2

-thinks silver is the worse character ever and all around a jerk

-complains about the ai of the game beating her when in reality her team just kinda. sucks

-complains about having bad pokemon and then doesn’t catch the good ones that the game literally hands to you

-straight up does not do kanto. has me thinking she just didn’t wanna fight red

generation 3

-this is the start of her being very weird about gardevoir. she calls ralts her child and then throughout the video has art of her being romantic with it which is. eugh. apparently she has incest accusations so i’m not that suprised

-calling magma and aqua the best teams of the series because “they don’t impede on the story”

-complains about the legendaries

-complains about the water routes and proceeds to throw out ideas that don’t make sense for an ocean

generation 4

-this is the start of her hacking in ralts as her starter. it’s very funny because it’s legitimately obtainable in every game she plays besides gen 5

-complains about parts of the game being too hard when she’s using ralts. which dies if it gets touched by a slight breeze

-whines about there being too much dialogue and then genuinely does not understand the story. common theme around all the story driven pokemon games

-she’s VERY annoying about the rivals. like they’re there for a reason

-the start of her acting like her calm mind strategy is the best thing ever. calls other youtubers stupid once again for their cynthia strategies. she can’t choose between gardevoir being the most broken pokemon and blaming ralts sucking on the game(the whole video is a big contrarian fest)

gen 5

oh boy. there’s a lot

-complains about there being too much story in the game and calls the game a peta reply. which is funny because peta is an american company and pokemon is japanese. (also the peta criticism of pokemon didn’t come around until AFTER black and white)

-compares a character who is a victim of abuse and has been indoctrinated by what is basically a cult to a podcast alpha male incel. looking at the allegations against her this also makes sense as to why she doesn’t like him

-whines more about there being too much reading. at this point i started believing she was straight up illiterate

-whines about the amount of rival fights and how it’s “impeding exploration” i don’t think she wants to play an actual video game she just want a pet sim

-misunderstands the whole moral of the game, being that not everything is black and white

generation 6

-complains about not being able to get gardevoirs megastone before the post game, so obviously she hacks it in.

-goes on a tangent about shiny pokemon and how their community is stupid, misunderstanding that people just do it FOR FUN

-also complains about something she calls “damage inflation” with the opponents being able to 1 shot ralts. this is all actually because ralts has god awful defenses, which she ignores.

-loses to what is one of the easiest gyms in the entire series. not really anything wrong with this i just honestly think she sucks at the game(skill issue)

-says x and y are the best games because there’s not much dialogue

gen 7

-once again spends the whole hour complaining about the amount of talking and then doesn’t analyze what the characters are actually saying. still believe she can’t read

-compares gladion to a hitler youth which is??? he’s hawaiian and light skinned but he’s still just an abused kid trying to find his way in lofe(doubt she actually read his dialogue)

-complains about team skill being “an unfunny joke” when the whole point of the team is that guzma was an abused kid who took in those in need and just formed a group of thugs

-still complains about “damage inflation” instead of actually changing her strategy or stepping out of her comfort zone pokemon wise because ralts sucks against the water trial

-goes on a tangent about how lillie should have been the main character while still choosing to mash through her dialogue

generation 8

-whines about dexit and calls dynamax the worst mechanic when it is in fact loved by vgc players

-calls milo a twunk (she doesn’t know what that means)

-a lot of the same problems of the previous gens, can’t read and doesn’t understand the story

-she’s also weird about gardevoir in this one. i think she just REALLY wants to fuck it

generation 9

-whines about dialogue some more

-literally all of the complaints at this point are the same. she can’t form an actual opinion of it bc she can’t FUCKING PAY ATTENTION TO WHAG THEYRE SAYING

overall

-she’s a racist creep to japanese folk outside of the video so hmmm

-has apparently assaulted someone so i see why she has no sympathy for the characters that are victims of abuse

-the weirdest about the pokemon and the characters. compares them to nazis a bunch

-is unfunny

anyway thanks for reading all the way through. the vid made me loose 200 brain cells and i will never stop hating

[batsplat]

agassi/sampras please tell us more! the only thing I know about that rivalry is that sampras was very boring and they they disliked each other. but the way you talk about it sure makes it sound fascinating!

in a nutshell, the appeal is this

"pete. as always, pete"

imagine your whole career ends up being defined by one guy who you consider the "quintessential opposite" to you, who feels incomprehensible to you, who comes seemingly out of nowhere to beat you again and again and again and again. who is everything you could never force yourself to be. who seems entirely comfortable in a life that torments you. he denies you in what should have been your crowning moment. and then he ends his career by denying you again. inescapable and inevitable

agassi hated tennis with a passion. he hated tennis throughout his career - the sport he was never given a choice but to play, the sport he was forced to excel at. it's not an uncommon story in many respects, an ambitious father who sought greater things for his son... a cocktail of lofty expectations and the pressure applied to achieve them... the predetermined path in life agassi had been moulded to follow. and all of this forms the foundation for his fraught relationship with the sport (x)

as a seven year old, he already dreamt of quitting the sport, of just walking away and playing with his siblings, sitting with his mum - anything but tennis. except even then, it wasn't that simple. as much as he wanted to flee the sport, something about it also forced him to keep coming back for more. as he details in his autobiography:

Doesn't that sound nice? Wouldn't that feel like heaven, Andre? To just quit? To never play tennis again? But I can't. Not only would my father chase me around the house with my racket, but something in my gut, some deep unseen muscle, won't let me. I hate tennis, hate it with all my heart, and still I keep playing, keep hitting all morning, and all afternoon, because I have no choice. No matter how much I want to stop, I don't. I keep begging myself to stop, and I keep playing, and this gap, this contradiction between what I want to do and what I actually do, feels like the core of my life.

his father's favourite training method was to use a ball machine that andre nicknamed 'the dragon' - quite deliberately designed to look frightening, making andre flinch every time it shot balls at him. it spat out balls in unpredictable ways, all to make it impossible to hit it the same every time and forcing agassi to adjust anew for each ball. he was constantly instructed by his father - an iranian erstwhile boxer - to take the ball earlier and earlier, training his reflexes and adaptability through sheer brute force of repetition. what was being forged in the process was a game that was built to react to what the guy on the other side of the net was doing. in tennis, you can win both by attacking and by defending, by acting and reacting. agassi was moulded to do the latter

My father says that when he boxed, he always wanted to take a guy's best punch. He tells me one day on the tennis court: When you know that you just took the other guy's best punch, and you're still standing, and the other guy knows it, you will rip the heart right out of him. In tennis, he says, same rule. Attack the other man's strength. If the man is a server, take away the serve. If he's a power player, overpower him. If he has a big forehand, takes pride in his forehand, go after his forehand until he hates his forehand. My father has a special name for this contrarian strategy. He calls it putting a blister on the other guy's brain. With this strategy, this brutal philosophy, he stamps me for life. He turns me into a boxer with a tennis racket. More, since most tennis players pride themselves on their serve, my father turns me into a counterpuncher - a returner.

the biggest and most important weapon in tennis is the serve, and sampras had one of the best serves this sport has ever seen. like agassi a child of immigrants, his personal history is largely free of the angst of agassi's tale - though it should hardly be surprising that he had a strict father of his own to push him along his path. the type who was perfectly willing to make his disappointment felt whenever pete didn't live up to his exacting standards, even if pete was generally a pretty obedient kid, attentive of what his father demanded of him. take this anecdote about young pete speaking to a reporter after a big win at juniors level (from sampras' autobiography):

The next day, on the very same court, I lost something like 6-1, 6-0 to Mal Washington. I mean, he really schooled me. So after that match, the same reporter went over to Mal and got an interview from him. My dad pulled me aside and said, "You see that guy who talked to you yesterday? Now he's talking to Mal, because it's all about how good you are every day, not one day."

tennis parents. gotta love them

anyhow, sampras says he learned his lesson - and he also learnt to live by his father's straight-talking, honest ways. blunt and to the point. sampras was generally a considerably more straightforward character than agassi, "boring" as some might put it. he didn't hate the sport - he was good at it and he wanted to be better, always working tirelessly towards that goal like the perfect professional he was. to that end, he had to make some major adjustments to his game as a teenager, making the radical switch from a two handed to a one handed backhand and uprooting his whole style of play to make him the ultimate attacking player

But there were uphills and downhills, and my toughest challenge was changing my mindset from grinder to attacker. I had to learn to start thinking differently, and more. A grinder can lay back, waiting for a mistake, or tempt you to end points too quickly. An attacker has to think a little more: Flat serve or kicker? Charge the net, or set up a groundstroke winner? Is my opponent reading my serving pattern or shot selection? As a serve-and-volleyer, you attack; as a grinder you counterattack. The basic difference between attacking and defending is that the former requires a plan of attack and the latter calls for reaction and good defence. In both cases, execution is paramount.

'serve and volleying' as a playstyle has basically died out in the modern game (it still exists as an occasional tactic), but back then it was extremely common. the principle is straightforward enough: you hit a big serve and then you follow the ball, so that when your opponent returns it, you can hit the next ball out of the air (the volley). it's the purest attacking playstyle imaginable. it simplifies every service point, focuses everything in on the execution of just a few strokes. ideally, most rallies won't last longer than three shots - serve, return, first volley, rinse and repeat. short, fast, and sweet. when it is executed well, it is as lethal as it is efficient

agassi and sampras were part of a high profile quartet of american players to turn pro in the late eighties. the first of these to win a slam was sampras' childhood archrival michael chang, still the youngest man ever to win a slam at only seventeen years of age. the fourth member of this quartet was jim courier - who had trained in the same academy as agassi as a teenager and had generally felt neglected when compared to the star pupil. young agassi was a prodigious talent with unique style and flamboyance that served to grab the public's attention; he was the one who hogged the most headlines and carried the loftiest expectations on his shoulders, anointed the new flag=bearer of american tennis... and he was soon coming under increased pressure to finally crack on and win one of these slams. an immensely promising junior, the next big thing in american tennis, the guy who was supposed to rewrite the history books... by 1990, at just twenty years of age, the public was already threatening to lose patience with him

I go to the 1989 French Open and in the third round I face Courier, my schoolmate from the Bollettieri Academy. I'm the chalk, the heavy favorite, but Courier scores the upset, then rubs my nose in it. He pumps his fist, glares at me and Nick. Moreover, in the locker room, he makes sure everyone sees him facing up his running shoes and going for a jog. Message: Beating Andre just didn't provide enough cardio. Later, when Chang wins the tournament, and thanks Jesus Christ for making the ball go over the net, I feel sickened. How could Chang, of all people, have won a slam before me? Again, I skip Wimbledon. I hear another chorus of jeers from the media. Agassi doesn't win the slams he enters, and then he skips the slams that matter most. But it feels like a drop in the ocean. I'm becoming desensitized.

in 1990, agassi competed in two slam finals. the first was on the clay of roland garros, the fetching pink of his kit (see below) drawing plenty of headlines as he (very satisfyingly) beat both courier and chang on the way to the championship match. then, in the final, he lost in straight sets - in large part because he was terrified his precious hairpiece was going to fall off. which is definitely a story that deserves more space than it is being provided here... look, go read his autobiography, it's worth it

the next slam final was on home soil, conducted in the frenetic cauldron of the arthur ashe stadium. this was agassi's coming of age tournament at the slam he most wanted to win. he had scorned wimbledon, dismissive of the stuffy atmosphere and the grass courts and the strict dress code. he simply could not be bothered to travel to australia in order to compete at the australian open. roland garros was perfectly fine - but really, it was the us open in all its boisterous exuberance he wanted to conquer more than anything. and the us open crowd was ready to watch their new great hope win. agassi beat boris becker in four to advance to the final, eagerly awaiting his opponent - either the decorated john mcenroe, or a nineteen year old kid who had previously never gotten past the fourth round of a slam. sampras and agassi had already played when they were kids, with agassi in his autobiography remembering a match back when sampras was nine years old and agassi was ten. they had faced each other for the first time as professionals in 1989 on the italian clay... agassi had previously dismissed sampras while watching him practise, critical with his team of sampras' ruined backhand in particular. in rome, agassi beat sampras easily despite the improvements sampras had made

I beat him, 6-2, 6-1, and as I walk off the court I think to myself that he's got a long and painful slog ahead. I feel bad for the guy. He seems like a good soul. But I don't expect to see him again on the tour, ever.

the following year, in 1990, they play again and sampras wins in three - fittingly on the way to his maiden title. later that season, they meet for the first time in a slam final. now, look, the problem with narrating this rivalry is that the perfect narration already exists. it is agassi's autobiography 'open' and is available at all good bookstores etc etc. here is the most relevant excerpt:

It doesn’t seem possible, but the kid I thought I’d never see again has reconstituted his game. And he’s giving McEnroe the fight of his life. Then I realize he’s not giving McEnroe a fight—McEnroe is giving him a fight, and losing. My opponent tomorrow, incredibly, will be Pete. The camera moves close on Pete’s face, and I see that he has nothing left. Also, the commentators say his heavily taped feet are covered with blisters. Gil makes me drink Gil Water until I’m ready to throw up, and then I go to bed with a smile, thinking about all the fun I’m going to have, running Pete’s ass off. I’ll have him sprinting from side to side, left to right, from San Francisco to Bradenton, until those blisters bleed. I think of my father’s old maxim: Put a blister on his brain. Calm, fit, cocksure, I sleep like a pile of Gil’s dumbbells. In the morning I feel ready to play a ten-setter. I have no hairpiece issues—because I’m not wearing my hairpiece. I’m using a new, low-maintenance camouflaging system that involves a thicker headband and brightly colored highlights. There’s simply no way I can lose to Pete, that hapless kid I watched with sympathy last year, that poor klutz who couldn’t keep the ball in the court. Then a different Pete shows up. A Pete who doesn’t ever miss. We’re playing long points, demanding points, and he’s flawless. He’s reaching everything, hitting everything, bounding back and forth like a gazelle. He’s serving bombs, flying to the net, bringing his game right to me. He’s laying wood to my serve. I’m helpless. I’m angry. I’m telling myself: This is not happening. Yes, this is happening. No, this cannot be happening. Then, instead of thinking how I can win, I begin to think of how I can avoid losing. It’s the same mistake I made against Gómez, with the same result. When it’s all over I tell reporters that Pete gave me a good old-fashioned New York street mugging. An imperfect metaphor. Yes, I was robbed. Yes, something that belonged to me was taken away. But I can’t fill out a police report, and there is no hope of justice, and everyone will blame the victim.

what I can contribute are some high quality screenshots of agassi's mid-match beleaguered frustration at perfect pete who was currently in the process of mugging him

and here's agassi pulling sampras in at the net after losing in straight sets, 4-6 3-6 2-6

Hours later my eyes fly open. I'm in bed at the hotel. It was all a dream. For a splendid half second I believe I must have fallen asleep on that breezy hill where Philly and Nick were laughing about Pete's ruined dream. I dreamed that Pete, of all people, was beating me in the final of a slam. But no. It's real. It happened. I watch the room slowly grow lighter, and my mind and spirit grow palpably darker.

it is a brutal loss for agassi. not only has he once again been denied a slam - but it's happened at the hands of a direct peer, a compatriot, a nineteen year old american who has flown relatively under the radar until now but has snatched away from agassi the title that he felt should have rightfully been his. agassi had already become a frequent target for media storms, most memorably with the infamous 'image is everything' canon marketing campaign that had been widely used to mock him - but now, here was the proof anyone needed that this overhyped, cocky showman wasn't anywhere near as good as he'd been cracked up to be. it didn't help that sampras provided such an obvious contrast to agassi... quiet, more reserved, outwardly humble, less showy and less prone to drama and with a far more clean cut image... really had way more of a sweater boy aesthetic going for him y'know

tennis is a fundamentally conservative sport that is ill at ease with its own conservatism. the soul of the tennis fan secretly longs for a little glamour, a little excitement, something with a little more flair and thrill than the purist should strictly allow. when confronted with excessive emotion, when exposed to the true messiness of competitive fervour, the response of the fan is conflicted. on the one hand, the spectacle is exhilarating, to be celebrated, stimulating in the controversy it causes. but on the other, transgression is something to be repudiated and to be punished. the tennis fan averts their eyes but cannot look away, eager to capture every detail of how the gentleman's sport is being defiled by the newest freak show. the tennis fan begs for players to feel every emotion deeply - then jeers at them for losing their heads. the tennis fan hates sampras for being dull and lacklustre, for winning points as quickly as he can and refusing to provide much in the way of a show. the tennis fan hates agassi for being a loose cannon, for feeling so much and never quite living up to his potential as a result, for being so loud and vocal and obvious in his imperfections. sampras is a robot. agassi is a clown. sampras lacks personality. agassi lacks conviction. it is distasteful how hard agassi finds the life of a tennis player, but sampras finds it far too easy entirely. the fan loves to hate agassi, but sometimes they forget to think about sampras at all

the rivalry and their two respective careers develop from there. agassi has to go through a third slam final defeat, a horrendously painful five set affair against his old enemy jim courier at roland garros that leaves many doubting he will ever get over the line. but at last he secures his first major in 1992 at wimbledon of all places - the slam he had once upon a time had so little respect for he did not even bother to attend. sampras in all his precocity struggled for a while to adjust to a slam champion's life and took until 1993 to add to his own collection... beating agassi once again on the way to snatching agassi's wimbledon crown off him. there's a lot of stuff in those few years I'm going to skim over for the sake of brevity... like the final the two of them played where sampras was really ill right before the start and agassi agreed to a delay, only to be beaten by a revitalised sampras... that 1993 wimbledon match and sampras' nasty habit of catching agassi by surprise... or all their davis cup exploits (the main nation-based event in men's tennis, basically think like the world cup) where they both faltered and won as a team

let's pick up the narrative again in 1995. agassi had won his second slam at the back end of 1994, finally taking the us open title he so craved. and so, at the start of 1995, he made the enlightened choice of going - hey, you know how there's four slams on the tennis calendar? how about showing up to all four of them! yeah, not kidding, 1995 was the very first time agassi made the trip down to australia for the first slam of the year. which is a teensy bit unfortunate, because it turned out he was actually brilliant at that tournament. in 1995, he was the second seed at the tournament (sampras, of course, being the first) and scythed his way through the draw, making the final without dropping a set. sampras, by contrast, was progressing nowhere near as smoothly. his long time coach, tim gullikson, had been suffering from seizures for a few months and was flown home for tests after going through another seizure while practising with sampras. in his next match, sampras faced courier, fighting back from two sets to love down to level the match. then, in the fifth set, he broke down in tears during the changeover and struggled to contain his sobs while playing the next few games. courier asked whether sampras wanted to come back to finish the match the next day... something sampras interpreted as a sarcastic comment, which pissed him off enough to get him to regroup and focus once again. he went on to win the match. this is another part of the story that will not get the attention it deserves in this post, and there's a lot more to be said about how sampras describes the incident in his autobiography - his frustration with the narrative that he had finally shown how he was 'human' after all. it is this incident that is still what the tournament is perhaps remembered the most for. gullikson passed away the following year

and so sampras faced agassi in their second meeting in a slam final, fourth meeting in slams overall. agassi had gone through a major style rebrand since the last time they'd played, at last forgoing the hair he was so closely associated with (aka ditching the finicky hairpiece that had been distracting him in slam finals) and embracing the bald pirate aesthetic

perhaps a little more importantly, agassi won the match in four sets, claiming his first australian open title at the very first time of asking. I was going to check if I had any particularly insightful notes about the match - but mostly it's stuff like pointing out that the first set ends on an agassi double fault and the second one opens on a sampras double fault (#mygoats), plus enlightened commentary like this

we'll leave the sophisticated match analysis for another day

and here they are in their respective autobiographies about the conclusion of that tournament

"a tournament that I seemed destined to win" // "tennis has nothing to do with destiny"

and from there, it was game on. 1995 was basically the year of their rivalry. after the australian open final, they immediately faced off in both indian wells and miami. as sampras describes it, the increased exposure meant the general sports fans had more and more opinions about the pair of them and their rivalry: "we presented enough of a contrast to make people feel passionate about why they preferred one of us to the other". that season also featured an increased marketing push from nike to make this rivalry A Thing while the pair of them spent the year hashing out the number one ranking. we're talking joint marketing campaigns, interviews, all that shebang... once again, I won't be able to do this time period justice here - but at least in passing you do have to mention nike's famous "guerrilla tennis" ad campaign (see here), where they would play on makeshift courts set up in city streets. as sampras put it:

The campaign was brilliant, and it was an enormous success. And it worked because, instead of "Pete or Andre?" or "Pete vs. Andre" driving Nike's promotions, it became Pete and Andre. There was a welcome, counterintuitive feel-good message conveyed in them. The commercials helped further interest in the game and our rivalry. It also caught the true nature of our relationship. We had plenty of differences, but we were friends.

an important thing to remember, right - sampras was generally keen for the agassi rivalry to flourish because it helped him too. it helped combat the perception that he was boring, that he had a dull game too reliant on his serve (especially on the speedy grass of wimbledon, where he increasingly excelled at), that he had too little of a personality to capture the imagination of the masses. it also helped his relationship with nike, who he often didn't see eye-to-eye with - the agassi rivalry brought those guys on side because of how marketable they were as a unit. in his autobiography, sampras points out that players are only ever seen as good as the quality of their opposition, and agassi always had the potential to be sampras' ideal career rivalry. agassi becoming a more consistent, prominent rival was good news for the both of them... but, well, often it was sampras who got the most out of the whole thing

given we're in 1995, at this point I do need to throw in a top three anecdote from agassi's autobiography that just like... nails who both of them are As Guys and what the dynamic between them looked like

if my archrival said in his autobiography that I sounded more robotic than his parrot, I would do something that would get me on national news (more on that later)

so then... it looks like they'll meet in another slam final that year, at wimbledon. as agassi so nicely puts it,

In the semis I face Becker. I've beaten him the last eight times we've played. Pete has already moved on to the final and he's awaiting the winner of Agassi-Becker, which is to say he's awaiting me, because every slam final is beginning to feel like a standing date between me and Pete.

cute

of course agassi goes on to lose that match, after which becker makes some disparaging comments about agassi - prompting some fun drama that does also deserve more space than it will be provided here. the long and the short of it is that agassi vows vengeance and sets of on his "summer of revenge", going on a massive tear on the american hard courts. he defeats sampras in the final of canada, is unbeaten all summer going into the us open... at the us open, his hot streak continues - and he gets the great satisfaction of beating becker in the semis. revenge completed. 26 wins in a row

but of course, there's one more match to go. and it's the one that matters most of them all. it's also the one that agassi loses. "no matter how much you win, if you're not the last one to win, you're a loser. and in the end I always lose, because there is always pete. as always, pete." it's the brutality of tennis, the relentless inescapable cycle that so tormented agassi... there's always another tournament immediately on the horizon - and most weeks, defeat is waiting for you at the end of it. a lot of weeks, it was sampras who was waiting for agassi. after the glorious high of that entire summer, agassi had been brought back down to earth. he would struggle for years to recover

I've always had trouble shaking off hard losses, but this loss to Pete is different. This is the ultimate loss, the ueber-loss, the alpha-omega loss that eclipses all others. Previous losses to Pete, the loss to Courier, the loss to Gómez - they were flesh wounds compared to this, which feels like a spear through the heart. Every day this loss feels new. Every day I tell myself to stop thinking about it, and every day I can't. The only respite is fantasizing about retirement.

this began agassi's unravelling, the downward spiral that would consume the next two years of his life. eventually, he dropped out of the top hundred entirely. it was in 1997 that he infamously failed a drug test and managed to escape punishment plus cover the whole thing up (he had indeed taken crystal meth). he barely played tennis at all during that year. it would take him until 1998 to regroup and recommit to tennis, to decide that he wanted this enough to fight for it anew

in the mean time, let's bring in two encounters between sampras and agassi in fittingly liminal locations - one in a plane and the other in an airport. these brief moments of letting their guards down - of talking to each other as people - that are described in their respective autobiographies... both reckoning with the vast differences between the pair of them. first, there's late 1995, where agassi was already evidently struggling with the mental impact of the us open loss - as well as with the injuries that ruled him out of playing the davis cup. in a gesture sampras appreciated, agassi turned up anyway to support his team. here is sampras's account of a flight on agassi's private jet to los angeles:

I sensed on that flight that Andre was struggling. He quizzed me very closely on how I lived my life, and seemed dumbfounded to learn that I had moved to Tampa solely for my tennis game. I told him that I missed my family, and Southern California, but considered it a necessary trade-off. He admitted that he wouldn’t give up living in Vegas, or his lifestyle, in order to be the best player in the world. The contrast was clear and striking, although Andre made that point at a time when he was feeling a little disillusioned by the game. Through all of that, though, I always believed something that others, particularly people who didn’t know Andre very well, doubted. I always thought that Andre was a sincere guy. When we spent time together out of the limelight, he was always honest and frank—and I respected him for that. Davis Cup was always a good time when Andre was around. He was, at times, downright exuberant. He frequently let his guard down in Cup practices, screaming and yelling about any little thing, just for the fun of it. He seemed to get a kick out of stirring things up, creating drama, taking little things and making a big deal out of them. He was emotional, and he liked to whip up others’ emotions. At other times, we sat around in the locker room and talked about this or that, mostly about sports, and it was very comfortable. Andre was inquisitive. He liked to compare notes on players and he was eager to see how others perceived the same things he was thinking about. Andre had a great grasp of strategy; it was a great asset, given the type of game he played.

and then, two whole years later in 1997 - here's agassi about a meeting they had in the airport:

Walking up to the gate, who should I see but Pete. As always, Pete. He looks as if he's done nothing for the last month but practise, and when he wasn't practising, he was lying on a cot in a bare cell, thinking about beating me. He's rested, focused, wholly undistracted. I've always thought the differences between Pete and me were overblown by sportswriters. It seemed too convenient, too important for fans, and Nike, and the game, that Pete and I be polar opposites, the Yankees and Red Sox of tennis. The game's best server versus its best returner. The diffident Californian versus the brash Las Vegan. It all seemed like horseshit. Or, to use Pete's favorite word, nonsense. But at this moment, making small talk at the gate, the gap between us appears genuinely, frighteningly wide, like the gap between good and bad. I've often told Brad that tennis plays too big a part in Pete's life, and not a big enough part in mine, but Pete seems to have the proportions about right. Tennis is his job, and he does it with brio and dedication, while all my talk of maintaining a life outside tennis seems like just that - talk. Just a pretty way of rationalizing all my distractions. For the first time since I've known him - including the times he's beaten my brains out - I envy Pete's dullness. I wish I could emulate his spectacular lack of inspiration, and his peculiar lack of need for inspiration.

even these short excerpts should hopefully give you a sense of how differently they approached the process of writing their autobiographies, as always in itself very revealing. agassi is honest to a fault, forthcoming in his confessions even when he's not necessarily doing himself any favours - unsurprisingly, the crystal meth story caused quite a stir at a time, given he had successfully evaded a ban and had managed to cover the whole thing up. he does not spare sampras in his account, willing to compare him to a parrot or marvel at his lack of need for inspiration. it is a sincerity that does not necessarily feel malicious, but certainly is brutal. agassi's narrative is harsh, self-effacing, darkly comedic - he stresses how he really didn't take sampras seriously until sampras was beating his ass, talks up how sampras' commitment to tennis was clearly the far better approach than his own... and yet there is inevitably something pretty insulting in how baffled agassi is by sampras' simplicity, by the pure, unencumbered drive and discipline that made sampras such an excellent competitor. by how boring sampras could be

by contrast, sampras was far more reserved in his autobiography, providing a straightforward account of his career that really did mostly just focus on the tennis of it all - hardly a bad book, but one that lacks agassi's flair and skill for narrativisation. there is a rebellion of sorts in sampras' restraint... he's painfully aware of how he was perceived, rankles at it repeatedly in his autobiography, and you hardly need to read between the lines too much to get a sense of how much it really bothered him... but if there's one thing to understand about the guy, it's sampras' incredible stubbornness. if the people wanted a show, he was even less likely to provide him one. if they wanted drama and gossip from his autobiography, he would provide them with no such thing. and it's fair to say that sampras did not exactly appreciate agassi's approach

we'll circle back to sampras' reaction to the autobiography in a minute, but I wanted to bring in these quotes now... because sampras does capture something quite key to their rivalry in a way that is a touch more honest than he was willing to be in his autobiography. agassi hated tennis and always wavered in his commitment towards it, trying to fill his life with all sorts of other pleasures, travelling around with his entourage to make the tour life somehow bearable to him. it never came easily to him - and at several junctures, most notably after his long slide down the rankings set off by the 1995 us open sampras loss existential crisis, he had to make the conscious decision to try and give his all to the sport. sampras was always willing to make those sacrifices, whenever they were demanded of him. he was willing to move wherever he needed to, willing to eat and breathe and sleep tennis if that is what he needed to do to win. professional sports doesn't always reward the biggest personalities - in fact, as said sports become ever more demanding and the level rises further and further, if anything athletes cannot afford much of a life outside of their chosen domain. no time to grow up properly, to experience much of what the world has to offer, to figure out who they are outside of the sport... hey, no time even to start up too much drama where it isn't necessary - because are there many things more inefficient than media shit storms? in some ways, sampras represented the future of the sport. agassi, in all his impetuous talent, could in a sense be considered a relic of the past

that is not to say, of course, that agassi was not massively successful in his own right. and somehow he did what felt ever so implausible - he successfully completed his comeback, making it all the way back to the top of the sport when he had been so summarily written off. in 1998, he made an unprecedented jump from 110 to 6 in the rankings - and in 1999, he came from two sets to love down to win the roland garros title, completing his career slam by winning all four majors. this is one achievement that sampras could not match, having never progressed past the semifinals of the slow clay of roland garros that has tripped up many an american. (oddly enough, that's actually the slam all three of sampras' american peers had won, but courier was a natural surface specialist and chang was a grinder so it just kinda happened that way.) agassi reached the wimbledon final only to lose to sampras once again, then won the us open. and eventually he managed to snap sampras' record streak of six consecutive year end number ones (a rare record that has actually remained intact), capping off his most successful season to date

let's skip ahead once again, and talk a little more about what was possibly the most revered match the pair of them ever played. once again, it was the us open to host their showdown,taking place in the quarterfinals at what was now very much in the twilight stages of their careers. this time let's get some of sampras' thinking about that particular match and how it fit within the narrative of their rivalry:

It was fitting that Andre was the last man standing when it came to my rivalries. Andre was toughest during that great summer of 1995, and then again near the very end of our careers, culminating with the night-session quarterfinal at the 2001 Open—a match that was the crowning moment of our rivalry and, to me, our toughest and greatest battle. Volumes have been written about my rivalry with Andre, and from every perspective. In my heart of hearts, I know he was the guy who brought out the best in me. He had ups and downs, which accounts for why we didn’t have more confrontations, especially in big finals. But Andre was still the gold standard among my rivals. Nobody else popped up as frequently, over as long a period of time, to test and push me to the max. For most of our careers, we really couldn’t have been more different—in personality, game, even the clothing we wore. Our lifestyles were radically different. Andre always seemed bent on asserting his individuality and independence, while I tried to submerge my individuality and accepted the loss of some personal freedoms. Andre was Joe Frazier to my Muhammad Ali, although the personalities were kind of flipped around because Andre was the showman and I was the craftsman. Wherever you lived, we were your neighbors: I was the nice, quiet kid next door on one side, and Andre was the rebellious teenager on the other. Yet as Jekyll and Hyde as we were, and as much as people liked to emphasize the very real differences between us, there were powerful, deep similarities between us, too. The Gift we both had shaped our actions and lives, posing challenges as well as offering opportunities. First-generation Americans (Andre’s father, Mike, was from Iran), we were both champions but outsiders who crashed a sport dominated for most of its history by white Anglo-Saxon Protestants. That never bothered me, because the American Dream fulfilled its promise to my family, a few times over. Because we had both been prodigies, we grew up in the public eye, under scrutiny. It was easy to stereotype us—Andre was the brash, flamboyant showman, I was the reticent, old-school, boring guy. Who was hurt more by the stereotyping? Who knows? What I am sure about, though, is that we were tough, albeit in different ways and with different goals. When we reached the top, we cast frequent, nervous glances across the divide between us. Andre and I always made it our business as individuals to know what the other guy was doing.

as I am aware this post is already far too long, I won't dissect this passage too much. in any case, sampras addresses the sense of absence caused by agassi's inconsistencies elsewhere in his autobiography too... agassi made sampras better, always, agassi pushed sampras to new heights, agassi provided sampras with a legitimacy and also excitement the public would not have otherwise afforded him. but agassi wasn't always there. and the rivalry was ultimately far less kind to him

"in my heart of hearts, I know he was the guy who brought out the best in me" // "he says I bring out the best in him, but I think he's brought out the worst in me"

that entire section is one of the stronger parts of sampras' autobiography, which I'm also resisting the temptation to include in full. I will, however, include just a little more of how sampras describes how the pair of them match up:

Andre had to think a little more about the nuances of the game than I did. Against top guys, he needed to set things up for himself in order to play his most effective game. At his best, Andre was the consummate puppet master, jerking his opponents all over the court. Thankfully for me, he was also a little bit at the mercy of what his opponents could do. My game, by contrast, was much more about what I was going to do, and whether or not the other guy could stop it. The big question for me on every surface but clay was, Okay, what do I do to break the guy? That was because I always felt confident that I could hold my serve. Andre didn’t have that luxury—at least not to the same extent that I did. [...] The overarching theme, in my eyes, was that if I could make it a test of athleticism and movement, things would break my way. I had the fast-twitch-muscle advantage. By contrast, Andre had amazing eye-hand coordination; he was unrivaled as a ball striker. The idea was always the same: avoid becoming the puppet on the end of Andre’s string. Avoid getting into those rallies in which I found myself trying to get the ball to Andre’s backhand, while he’s cracking forehands and jerking me around the court.

sampras does go into more detail about how the actual tactics between them played out, but in a brave act of restraint I shall not discuss any of that. it does, however, tap into one of the central tensions of tennis - namely the curse of the counterpuncher. sampras acted, agassi reacted. in a way, it always felt like the match was on sampras' racquet, win or lose. sampras had the weapons. agassi had the wits. sampras could blast his way past agassi, if he could just summon up all his discipline to execute to perfection. agassi had to try to cling onto his nerves while going all he could to trip sampras up. the curse of the counterpuncher - the helplessness of being beholden to another player's whims... especially brutal when facing someone with sampras' painfully excellent weapons. and sampras had one more great weapon at his disposal: his mentality, that unflappable presence that graced him one of the most ridiculously good tiebreak records you'll ever find. from the moment sampras snatched that us open title away from him way back in 1990, agassi was always going to have to look over his shoulder, eternally wary of the threat posed by sampras. because perfect pete at his very best might have just been a little too much for andre the prodigy to handle

the 2001 us open quarterfinal has gone down as one of the very finest matches in that tournament's history. agassi had come into the tournament the number two seed - sampras, suffering from a slump in form, had been seeded only tenth. it played out over four sets, all of them tiebreaks, with not a single break of serve. the home crowd was riveted for the entire contest and enthusiastically celebrating both of their heroes for the spectacle they provided. you already know who won

so then, both of them slowly but surely reaching the end of their careers, their slam counts tailing off as injuries and frailty scupper them... sampras' decline was earlier and sharper, finding himself struggling after securing his fourth consecutive wimbledon title in 2000. agassi was generally ranked higher during that time and had won the australian open title in both 2000 and 2001. after wimbledon, sampras went for two full years without winning a slam, and retirement looked increasingly imminent. but in the end, they managed to put on one last show - and where else but in the same place where they had contested their first slam final in 1990.

At 4 P.M. on a calm and bright Sunday afternoon in early September, I looked across the net and saw the same person who had been there twelve years earlier, almost to the day, when I played my first Grand Slam final: Andre Agassi. The Andre I saw in 2002 was someone very different from the kid I had seen in 1990, and it went well beyond the fact that the multicolored mullet had become a shiny bald head, and that lime green costume was now a fairly plain, conservative shorts-and-shirt tennis kit. I saw a seasoned, confident, multiple Grand Slam champion who was in full command of his game—a game that could hurt me. This was no stranger. This was my career rival. This was the yin to my yang. Over time and through rivalry, though, our identities blurred a little and parts of our personalities had jumped from one to the other, like sparks sometimes do across two wires. We had a lot of shared history now. The sharp edges had been worn down and the contrasts muted. We were elder statesmen, celebrated champions, co-guests of honor at the Big Moment one more time. In many ways we were just a couple of nearly worn-out tennis players looking for one last shot at glory.

as always, pete

agassi was the favourite in that match. but that's the funny thing about tennis - all this stuff in between, all these matches, talk of form and confidence and all of it, you'll find it has a nasty tendency to not matter at all. because you already know how this story goes. tennis, in particular on the men's side, writes its narratives in advance and then begs us to act surprised when everything unfolds as expected. every once in a blue moon, you will have something different - an australian open 1995, where everything had been disturbed just enough to throw up a different outcome. but otherwise, there is no amount of form or confidence in the world that can change the inevitable. it doesn't matter that agassi was supposed to be the prodigy who would claim his glorious first slam in 1990. it doesn't matter that agassi had been on a 26 match winning streak in 1995 and had bested sampras just a few weeks before. it doesn't matter that agassi was facing a washed up version of sampras in 2002 who had lost touch with his 'gift' and had been staring down the barrel of retirement for the better part of two years. when they faced each other on that stage, at the most important tournament of them all to agassi, they both reverted to type. agassi got a slow start, felt the match slip away from him, as sampras blasted through him - and only two sets in managed to mount any sort of resistance. of course, it was not enough

it turned out to be sampras' last professional match. he announced his retirement a year later. the last time sampras ever played, and it was denying agassi on one final occasion

one more thing before I wrap up this post - a coda of sorts, because the story just wouldn't be complete without it. because there's one more rather infamous story from agassi's autobiography. here's agassi talking about the lead up to that us open 2002 final, lying in bed the night before that match and remembering a moment from a few years prior:

Sipping Gil’s magic water before bed, I tell myself that this time will be different. Pete hasn’t won a slam in more than two years. He’s nearing the end. I’m just starting over. I climb under the covers and remember a time in Palm Springs, several years ago. Brad and I were eating at an Italian restaurant, Mama Gina’s, and we saw Pete eating with friends on the other side of the dining room. He stopped by and said hello on his way out. Good luck tomorrow. You too. Then we watched him through the restaurant window, waiting for his car. We said nothing, each of us thinking of the difference he’d made in our lives. As Pete drove away I asked Brad how much he thought Pete tipped the valet. Brad hooted. Five bucks, tops. No way, I said. The guy’s got millions. He’s earned forty mil in prize money alone. He’s got to be good for at least a ten spot. Bet? Bet. We ate fast and rushed outside. Listen, I told the valet, give us the absolute truth: How much did Mr. Sampras tip you? The kid looked at his feet. He didn’t want to tell. He was weighing, wondering if he was on a hidden-camera show. We told the kid we had a bet riding on this, so we absolutely were insisting he tell us. Finally he whispered: You really want to know? Shoot. He gave me a dollar. Brad put a hand on his heart. But that’s not all, the kid said. He gave me a dollar—and he told me to be sure to give it to whichever kid actually brought his car around. We could not be more different, Pete and I, and as I fall asleep the night before perhaps our final final, I vow that the world will see our differences tomorrow.

and just to quickly add this, about the end of that final:

Now he's serving for the match, and when Pete serves for a match, he's a coldblooded killer. Everything happens very fast. Ace. Blur. Backhand volley, no way to reach it. Applause. Handshake at the net. Pete gives me a friendly smile, a pat on the back, but the expression on his face is unmistakable. I've seen it before. Here's a buck, kid. Bring my car around.

this is probably the most infamous part of the autobiography, excluding anything related to crystal meth. I buried the lede somewhat when I was talking about sampras' reaction to the autobiography - more than comparing him to a parrot or calling him uninspired, this was the bit that really got traction. it's just such a brutal story in an understated way... this is the kind of impression that sticks with you, the slander that stands the test of time. perfect pete the multi millionaire is a bad tipper

which brings us at last to indian wells 2010. an exhibition event the pair of them participated in at one of the most prestigious tournaments in the united states (second only to the us open), done for a good cause to raise money for charity. it was a doubles match they participated in, both partnering up with top players who were reasonably prominent at the time - all in order to put on a show for the crowd. for a good cause. over seven years after the conclusion of their rivalry, more than enough time for any old wounds to heal. what followed is quite possibly the only worthwhile moment indian wells has ever provided us... I hereby present to you a clip of two guys who are definitely over it, engaging in some entirely friendly banter, for a good cause, as a playful continuation of their respectful rivalry, which is fine because they're over it, so it's all fine and it's for a good cause. here you go:

now, honestly I would just recommend you watch this four minute video, because I think it's quite tricky to quite get across in words how the vibes gradually get more rancid. it's the little details that often get left out when this historic event is recounted that really make it - agassi's "you always have to go get serious, huh pete" is a personal favourite of mine. but to give a summary of the main points... sampras imitates agassi's famous pigeon-toed walk (the result of being born with spondylolisthesis, a back condition where one of your vertebra slips forward). then, agassi mockingly and repeatedly alludes to sampras being a poor tipper. which sampras follows up by straight up attempting to murder agassi

well, not quite, but he does use that lovely powerful serve of his to hit right at agassi - rather than diagonally across the court, where your service really should be going. also the serve is supposed to go like, into the box that's just on the other side of the net. whereas sampras' serve was travelling at a trajectory that took it oddly close to agassi's head

what's delightful to me about this clip is how they're both trying to play it off as a joke, even though you can tell that they're both visibly losing their tempers. look at the faces of two men just having a laff

shout out to the commentator for saying the rivalry between the retired players seemed to be stronger than the one between the current players. which - well, yes, that is true! this is what a proper rivalry looks like

they both got plenty of criticism for this episode - and agassi ended up both publicly saying he'd been out of line and messaged sampras to ask if he could apologise in person. and they did move on from the controversy, playing another exhibition the following year with no incident. here's what agassi said then:

isn't this great. isn't every word of this just great. like man he just gets it. isn't this great

still, beyond just being a fun bit of drama, it is a revealing moment between the pair of them. sampras is right that they both usually tried to avoid too much controversy, inclined to keep things civil and resist too much mudslinging in the press. sampras, after all, just wasn't really the type - and agassi had other things to worry about, never in a real position of strength in that rivalry. and yet, sometimes the mask slips just a little. the two of them often didn't understand each other, didn't really know each other at all, but they managed to get under each other's skin nevertheless. sampras was everything agassi couldn't be - and the reverse was true too. agassi couldn't find it in himself to copy sampras' pure dedication towards the sport, whereas sampras could never match agassi's flair and charisma. at times, there's a whiff of contempt in how they judge each other, cataloguing the other's shortcomings and incapable of imagining what it must be like to walk in the other's shoes. agassi could not dedicate himself completely towards tennis. sampras was uninspired. agassi was flighty. sampras was simple. a touch of envy, a little more contempt, and a whole lot of bafflement

for all that he won eight grand slams, in many ways agassi's story is one of failure. this is how much of his autobiography is framed - around hating tennis, around needing to be brilliant at it, over having to cope with loss after loss after loss. so much of tennis is about trying to find ways to process failure. it's all about failing... in matches, where even the winning player typically wins a little more than 50% of all points played and generally will lose quite a few games in the process. in tournaments, where all but one player will emerge from each event the loser. and even if that one has been won, the next tournament and potential loss is generally right around the corner. agassi hated that life, and yet he still took a couple years longer than sampras to walk away from it. and for agassi, the inevitability of that ultimate, final, inevitable loss was tied ever so closely to the existence of pete sampras. once more with feeling: "no matter how much you win, if you're not the last one to win, you're a loser. and in the end I always lose, because there is always pete. as always, pete." it's a bittersweet narrative - for all of agassi's success, for all that everything did turn out well for him in the end... it's always there, inescapably so, that lingering sense of inevitability. that helplessness. maybe the hand of destiny, after all. agassi was never able to overturn that narrative, no triumphant changing of the script or final triumph or any of it... and that'll hurt, and it'll always be a little bit sad. but he learned to live with it - and eventually found his own happy ending. there's something to that, isn't there?

[pumpumdemsugah]

Some of you have been driven mad by being online so much you're at the point where you're rejecting good criticisms and frameworks because you might agree with an annoying twitter leftist. Being a contrarian isn't a political strategy, it's childish

Some see the rabid misogyny of the online left and have come to the conclusion that centring women and feminism in their analysis means ignoring the impact of other systems exacerbating misogyny to do good feminism. No, you're not going to solve misogyny by ignoring imperialism because you don't want to use the same word as your online enemy. Western chauvinism isn't good for women, and you're literally making yourself racist to spite people online you'll never meet. On the other hand, many on the online left have made themselves rabidly misogynistic because they don't want to share whatever opinion with whoever.

Please get bigger problems than sometimes agreeing with annoying people on social media. It's making you stupid. An understanding and analysis of how oppression impacts women should always come first, instead of optimising your hot takes to piss off and differentiate yourself by not using X words/agreeing with X concepts ( this isnt about centrist or conservatives )

A lot of people do some variation of this and it's made online discourse so much more stupid now the dumbest fuckers are trying to coin new concepts while they're taking a shit because X use it. You're not smart enough for the task. Stop it !

[slowcatsworld]

Julian Loki acts like an older sibling. PART 2

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

Small disclaimer: as far as I’m aware his family hasn’t been mentioned in the manga nor the egoist bible, so bear with me.

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

Julian Loki & Charles Chevalier’s dynamic: patience

Julian Loki is so incredibly patient with Charles that it’s almost endearing with how Loki responds to Charle’s contrarian attitude. Julian repeatedly tries to redirect Charles to get the kid to focus on taking his ‘homework’ and football seriously. And while this is inevitably for Loki’s own future benefit, he gentle parents Charles so well. This is seen when he counteracts Charles’ contrarian system to trick him into listening to him (I’ll put an image of the panel.) Julian doesn’t raise his voice, resort to violent or degrading words, or physically harm Charles-except for kicking a soccer ball at his shoulder/head lol unlike some characters (I’m looking at you Michael.) During the current PXG vs BM match when Charles asks to be subbed out because he has no interest in playing any longer in chap. 259, Julian is still speaking calmly and controlling himself even though this has shown to anger him.

Julian Loki’s coaching mannerisms: politeness

This one panel in Chapter 246 really stood out to me so I wanted to include it.

After the PXG vs Barca match, Julian and the French team have a post game meeting in the locker room. Loki debriefed the team (starting by praising the whole team with quote, “good job today, everyone.”) and gave them personalized ‘homework’ or critiques to help them improve as an individual player. This was normal, I thought. What stood out to me was how polite and formal his speech was. There were no single digs or transgressions at all. There was no harshness or abrasiveness at all either. Everything was rather soft spoken, with ‘please’s and suggestions. I thought that was rather refreshing, to see he’s a teenage boy with manners. He’s always had manners though, since when he and Isagi met for the first time, Isagi was able to pick up on his politeness (as discussed in Part 1.) It makes me feel as though he was raised right with a good set of parents, he’s probably a mama’s boy.

I also think that it’s worth mentioning how much I doubt that he will use the star system to enter the PXG vs BM match. I doubt he’s entered like all the other masters except for Noa in the previous PXG matches, and since he has already declared minimal interest in the league itself there is no way he would join the match. He doesn’t gain anything by doing this, and it also shows his restraint. His mindset his precisely why he doesn’t stand to gain anything if he were to join the match. Unlike Chris Prince, he doesn’t want to stand out and upstage the other players. Unlike Marc Snuffy, he doesn’t want to enforce his control and strategies over his players by joining their ranks. So cool to think about in my opinion. He’s more calm and collected, like Noel Noa. Noel wouldn’t gain anything by joining the match either. The only reason he joined the previous matches was to stop the other master strikers and limit their influence on the field’s plays and players.

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OKAY! Next part I’ll actually talk about him being an older sibling bc I haven’t said squat about that yet in two posts of analysis ranting lol

[edwardsissyhandsthtdanceslikeabb]

i think what makes my feelings on hans so muddled is that there seems to be no discernable truth to him, there's no concrete narrative or even throughline to hold onto.

i started out believing hans, partly bc my initial view on magnus was shaped by my inclination to contrarianism, but also bc the facts simply aren't in his favor. looking at this tangibly, what magnus said, alongside the prevailing undercurrent characterizing hans, has been rooted purely in bias and irrationality.

however, grandmasters have been speaking on how his play is uncharacteristically engine-like, both his playing style and level are notably unstable and he's not consistently good in any format. he has no foundational characteristics. which is suspicious when you're operating in a sector predicated on skill and ranking.

on the other hand, magnus' loss to him has been analyzed as reasonable through both fair play and quality analysis, with it being said that his strategy was simply impaired on the day. and its not like magnus hasn't been susceptible to being psychologically affected by elements he finds suspicious or distracting before. however, magnus' impaired play doesn't preclude hans from cheating, and him making a few inaccuracies or blunders could easily have been intentional. yet, i would immediately write off the theorizing and confirmation bias inherent in sustaining this position, and i initially did, except hans is the one who most incriminates himself in this whole situation.

however, i honestly think hans' reactions thus far have been completely understandable, i think there's reason to his hyperbolic and paranoid view of chesscom and the top players, and how scarring and overwhelming it must be to be dogpiled and ostracized, especially as a teen and burgeoning talent. its obvious why your idols persecuting and shunning you must've crushed him, or how bravado would be an instinctive mask to that. or even that he would demand more from bystanders like levy for example, and would regard impartiality as betrayal when the definitive narratives around him were so punitive and overt. its clear why he would be impulsive and retaliative and uncordial. i think hans is right that his life was ruined over nothing™.

but i also know that the nothing in question is only for present proof, and that regardless, demonstrably, he has a propensity to morally grandstand and equate punishment with remorse, which is partly justified bc at least he has been punished, but the question of magnus or even hikaru's dues begin to grow dubious when its not just them who constructed the cheater narrative, it preceded and eclipses them. its not merely a reactionary stance, but one rooted in consensus and skillful inclination. but magnus was also vulnerable to confirmation bias, and the inconsistency in which cheaters they play holds gravity.

which makes one think abt what exactly in him elicits sm ire, and whether its truly his play or rather his attitude — which is further complicated by magnus' eagerness to nurture the youth, and his embracing of competition he sees as genuine and substantive, with him platforming alireza, pragg and others, despite the former's equally inconsistent play, yet historic aptitude with faster time controls and success in less pressurized events. this eliminates hubris or elitism as magnus' motivating factor, especially when his legacy goals are so attuned to the youth and fostering their growth and succession.

ultimately, it blurs the lines between bias and justification: when hans has a history of cheating which he vehemently downplays, obfuscates and cherrypicks, and consequently twists the juvenile shellshock that could've resulted in his pisspoor post-game analysis into smth more implicating and sinister. it calls into question the premature and subpar blunders he makes, or his association with a supposed anti-cheating figure like kramnick. and also forces equal skepticism when he psychologically outmaneuvers elite talents like wesley, and when he unexpectedly loses to typically middling IMs. and where this otherwise would have been branded an expected lapse, hans' glaring lack of stylistic and rating consistency, supposed cheating in both prize and non-prize events, and overall cheating history, which extends into the hundreds in actuality, will forever cast doubt on him — painting him as more of a glory cheater if anything.

the central question remains, why exactly is a guy so historically inconsistent now in the top 20, and what delineable evolution has he underwent in his play when he's still as inconsistent as ever. turning what may have otherwise been a witch-hunt into smth inadvertently understandable. hans is overt in his irregularity, he's unabashed. but, he's also logically and evidentially innocent.

hans can't account for his growth, yet neither can his detractors. he's an amorphous oscillation relegated perpetually to inscrutability. he's an inherent contradiction, and any objectivity we try apply is inevitably refracted through his personhood, and whatever sentiment he reflects back at you. the question of hans' validity, of his professional narrative, is now his career. hans is tasked with completing a picture with colours he doesn't have.

there is no way to know, no vision to clarify, and i hate that.

[princess-of-the-corner]

I got to thinking about that "Hawk Moth does the Villain with Good Publicity" angle idea and I love it but it needs some tweaks to work I think.

1: He needs to know there is a Guardian and suspect they are in Paris, rather than rely on the "Chaos will reveal the Black Cat & Ladybug" angle, he's specifically trying to get at another human & coax them out.

2: He needs to collab with the media, mayor and more, so he's likely out in public as himself at first and does a lot more public perception handling than Ladybug or Chat ever did to help maintain his public profile.

Plan:

With that in mind he likely stages and or orchestrates several accidents and criminal situations. Some of which definitely target Chloe cos why break the habit of a life time. & he uses these to establish himself as the Heroic Hawk Moth!

Adrien being at school is so helpful for this.

Fu is suspicious cos he can sense rancid vibes but the guy hasn't done anything wrong yet or even seems to know about Akuma. He ends up tracking him down when transformed to talk & hinges turn ugly when HK reveals' he wants the LB & BC.

Hawk Moth uses a civilian, again maybe Chloe, to goad Fu into attacking him, they have a fight and Fu saves the civilian and gets away but is pursued by Nathalie, turns out Gabriel was just hiding his Akuma. Still, Fu gets away, but they know his general area.

HK claims to have been ambushed and severely wounded by a 'thief;. He claims himself to be the Guardian of the Miraculous & that while injured he can now create champions. The mayor is all "We must do all we can to help our beloved hero Hawk Moth!"

So, Paris is looking all over for a short older man who might have the Miraculous. Police are poking around all over, Hawk Moth's champions are on the move & Fu realizes he needs allies.

Story thoughts:

The thing here is that this totally changes the dynamic and type of story being told. The powers that would be useful to hand out, even how many people Fu would want active given he's specifically being hunted. Let alone how public perception and such would effect things and more to the point the heroes strategies and motives and methods!

Hell, Fu may well end up looking for entirely different personalities and people for this task. Or find himself pulling from whoever is left over from conspiracy theorists to the universally contrarian, to people who were caught up in Hawk Moth's staged crimes but came away suspicious.

So yeah, that'd be my set up anyway.

Honestly a fun part of this could be that as Chloé was targeted, she'd know the truth.

And Gabe doesn't think much of her as anything but a tool, so he'd never expect her campaigning against him to ever get off the ground. But it's enough for a small rebellion.

[loveothislife]

Timothée Chalamet: ‘Young Dylan was a contrarian. I was so obedient!’

Bob Dylan’s love of films has always inspired his work – but playing him in one is a another matter, reveals the star of A Complete Unknown

The Telegraph | January 17, 2025

The first time we glimpse Timothée Chalamet as Bob Dylan in the new biopic A Complete Unknown, he appears as a scruffy urchin in a Huck Finn cap and battered jacket, hunching his wiry shoulders as if steeling himself against bitter winds, or perhaps building his nerve to take on the world. It is 1961 and we are meeting Dylan as he arrives in New York, all of 19-years-old, shedding his given name of Robert Zimmerman, and every bit as anonymous as the title proclaims.

Key to the success of any biopic is the audience’s willingness to accept an actor inhabiting a familiar physical presence. In this respect, the 29-year-old modern heartthrob might seem odd casting. Physically, the leonine Chalamet doesn’t bear more than superficial resemblance to Dylan, lacking his prominent nose, baggy eyes or jowly features.

Yet speaking to Chalamet at a preview of the film in London, he made an interesting observation about Dylan’s presence. “You know, you have these names like Elvis Presley or Mick Jagger, Paul McCartney, John Lennon, all these gods of culture, and you can easily associate a face with them, because there’s so much media on them,” said Chalamet. “But the truly elusive figure Bob is, it’s sort of harder to pin a face to him.”

What unfolds across the film’s two hours and 20 minutes is an act of self-transformation – the spectacle of a great actor playing a real person whose own character is a kind of act.

A key scene, appropriately, takes place inside a cinema, where Dylan and his girlfriend (Elle Fanning playing Sylvie Russo, a lightly fictionalised version of Dylan’s real-life paramour Suze Rotolo) are watching Bette Davis in Now, Voyager. Russo comments on Davis’s character being on a journey to find herself. “She didn’t find herself,” Dylan notes. “She just made herself into something different.”

It is something Dylan has been doing all his life. I once asked Joan Baez (elegantly portrayed in the film by Monica Barbaro as his lover, singing partner and early champion) how well she felt she knew Dylan. She smiled and said, quite seriously, “Bobby’s unknowable.”

If that’s what Baez thinks – a woman who has known him most of his adult life – what chance is there for any film-maker or actor to get under his skin? Writer and director James Mangold’s thoughtful movie doesn’t really attempt to solve Dylan the enigma as much as Dylan’s multifariousness. “You’re kind of an asshole, Bob,” Baez’s character notes at one point, which Dylan seems to accept as fair comment, an interesting aside being that both Baez and Dylan approved the script.

“Dylan was really helpful,” according to Mangold, who also spoke to me at the screening. “He shared a lot of stuff from the inside about what he felt about so many people wanting things from him at such a young age.”

Mangold made the Oscar-winning 2005 Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line starring Joaquin Phoenix, which took a conventional narrative form, locating the roots of Cash’s complexity in childhood trauma. Adapting Elijah Wald’s 2015 book Dylan Goes Electric!, Mangold decided that he needed a different strategy for Dylan. “There was no real way to unlock Bob that was going to satisfy the kind of standard movie unlocking – like, Oh my God, he’s been hiding that secret, and now he’s spoken it, he’s released!,” Mangold says.

“I think if there is any real secret, it is the burden and joy of something none of us can completely understand: how a young man can write so many of the greatest songs of all time, and become one of the greatest artists of the last 100 years, and secure that position before his 24th birthday. I don’t even know if Bob can explain it, and do we have to? Sometimes people are born with something, and there is no specific Freudian event of their genius that somehow is the cost. It’s actually that they’re touched in some ways.”

Chalamet is not the first actor to play this mercurial character. In Todd Haynes’s brilliant, experimental drama I’m Not There, he was portrayed by six actors, including Christian Bale, Heath Ledger and Richard Gere. Ben Whishaw played Dylan as a rebellious poet channelling Arthur Rimbaud, black teenager Marcus Carl Franklin was cast as a young homeless busker and Cate Blanchett memorably evoked the lean, druggy, androgynous rocker who is effectively emerging as A Complete Unknown ends. Blanchett’s performance has become a fan favourite, partly because it has an element of comedically edgy impersonation whilst embracing an androgyny that reflects Dylan’s near universal appeal.

A 1978 review in The New York Times pertinently noted that “as an actor, Mr Dylan specializes in giving the simultaneous impressions that he isn’t really interested in acting, and that he is always acting anyway.” For a songwriter who opens up vast interior worlds in his work, Dylan never appears sincere on screen. He is a very flimsy presence in Sam Peckinpah’s elegiac Western Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, for which he at least provided a classic soundtrack. He appears to be drunk all the way through abysmal 80s rock romance Hearts of Fire.

Dylan’s love for movies permeates his work, even if his awkward screen presence suggests movies don’t always love him back. His accomplished amateur oil paintings often feature lovingly recreated scenes from old movies, whilst actors, film characters and whole lines of borrowed dialogue flicker through his songs, from name-checking Bette Davis in 1965’s Desolation Row to setting 1986 epic Brownsville Girl at a screening of Gregory Peck’s classic Western The Gunfighter.

Anita Ekberg, Brigitte Bardot, Sophia Loren, Peter O’Toole, Al Pacino and Marlon Brando are amongst the actors to have walk-on parts in Dylan lyrics, whilst Leonardo DiCaprio makes an incongruous appearance in Dylan’s fanciful 2012 retelling of Titanic, Tempest. A fan website compiles 61 movies quoted in Dylan songs, a favourite apparently being The Maltese Falcon starring Humphrey Bogart, from which Dylan appropriated lines for three songs on 1985’s Empire Burlesque.

The Dylan portrayed by Chalamet in A Complete Unknown is at the start of his musical journey, but already a trickster and a fabulist. He drew heavily on Dylan’s 1960s press conferences. “He’s so confrontational in his attitude, sort of a wise-ass. When my own career took off, I was so obedient! Just to see how contrarian Dylan was at that age was so appealing to me.”

Dylan has offered words of encouragement, albeit via a typically ambiguous message on social media platform X. “Timmy’s a brilliant actor, so I’m sure he’s going to be completely believable as me. Or a younger me. Or some other me.”

“That was hugely affirming,” admitted Chalamet, who learnt to perform 30 Dylan songs for the role. Despite Dylan requesting a script and agreeing to personal meetings, Mangold seems equally uncertain of the extent of his real interest, noting that the first thing Dylan asked him was “so what’s this movie about?” Making his own enquiries, Elijah Wald, author of the source material, was told “Dylan doesn’t read about Dylan.”

For Mangold, it was vital that Chalamet and all his actors playing real people should have the freedom to bring their own characters to the role. “Timothée’s exceptionally bright, exceptionally logical, focused and verbal and articulate. There’s a lot I felt he could burrow into with this character. You’re playing a real person but if you want a perfect representation, we can actually watch footage of the real person...”

A Complete Unknown succeeds because it offers a visceral, entertaining glimpse into another side of Bob Dylan, rather than attempting a definitive portrait. “Who’s Bob Dylan?” as the man himself said at a press conference in 1986. “I’m only Bob Dylan when I have to be Bob Dylan. Most of the time I can just be myself.” Whoever that is.

Text: Neil McCormick, Chief Music Critic 📸: Macall Polay/Searchlight Pictures; Rowland Scherman/Hulton Archive; Michael Ochs Archives

[iwantmycookiesback]

slay the princess spoilers

I only now understood that the reason the Contrarian joked about throwing the Razor out of the window is she's made out of razors. like, blades. I thought this was a fight strategy suggestion but I guess this guy just really likes breaking windows with sharp things for the sake of annoying others