#don't look back - original story

[fictionadventurer]

Have I mentioned lately that creating AUs is the most fun thing ever? You get to take a story you love and then mash it against another type of story you love and fit all their pieces together like they're a jigsaw puzzle. You get to find all the unexpected points of similarity where the stories fit together really well, and see the places where their differences change and make commentary on the original stories/genres in really interesting ways.

And then once you fit the pieces together, you get to look at the new world you've made and see how these characters in this specific world have different conflicts and explore new themes, and you get to play with another level of puzzles as you figure out what this means for this story.

It's the most fun ever. It's my favorite game.

[nostalgicfun]

Koosa! 🌈

[goatsandgangsters]

tell me you've never read the buccaneers without telling me you've never read the buccaneers

girl help they're girlbossifying and decontextualizing Edith Wharton !!

what is this ~~~oooh the fieeestty american girls #disrupting #subverting the corset-wearing english aristocracy with their Bold And Daring New American Ways~~ when the buccaneers is literally a social commentary of how wealthy turn-of-the-century americans were desperate to elevate their social standing by enmeshing themselves as part of the english aristocracy and the misery their daughters experience after marrying and assimilating into the aristocracy. it is, and I cannot stress this enough, an exploration of nationalism and class anxieties, not some schlocky Bridgerton-esque ~spunky heroine romcom

[sskk-manifesto]

And so the big sskk shortage begins (no sskk for the next 15 episodes) (and the sskk episode coming after kind of sucks)

[batsplat]

casey also talks about sepang 2015 what do you think of that

oh in that podcast? uh... lemme listen again...

yeah idk it's not really anything new I'd say? he's said basically all the same stuff in more interesting and extensive ways elsewhere. I think casey inevitably has a very 'well feuding is bad and helps nobody' point of view, has expressed that before in the past, does it here again, and he's also drawn a parallel between himself and marc on several occasions. which... well, of course there's similarities in terms of public discourse or whatever, but the parallel really falls apart whenever casey argues the feuds cost valentino. like, I do think it's sometimes important to just. keep in mind. it's interesting that casey draws this comparison in his mind but that doesn't necessarily means he's right about this. I'm not sure how you'd argue that starting a feud with casey cost valentino anything competitively? you can argue it didn't help him I guess, and then we can have a debate about the ins and outs of the 2008 season. we can also have an argument that in a hypothetical world where casey isn't ill in 2009, valentino doesn't break his leg and casey isn't on a piece of junk in 2010, and valentino isn't on a piece of junk in 2011-12, then actually maybe valentino sparking open animosity with casey COULD have cost him. but we don't know that! didn't happen! I wish we could have found out, but we never got the chance! as it stands, the tally on this is pretty straightforward: casey won the title when things were reasonably civil between them in 2007, and valentino took control of the following season at the exact moment he worsened the relationship between the pair of them in 2008. obviously, it's all more complicated than that and casey would of course argue laguna didn't negatively affect his subsequent performances... but it certainly didn't help them. like, at the very worst valentino escalating tensions in 2008 is a complete net neutral. after 2009, them being bitchy to each other every other tuesday was completely competitively irrelevant beyond maybe affecting how they approached occasionally fighting for a podium position. hey, maybe casey used that feud to fire himself up through sheer spite throughout the later stages of his career, but that doesn't actually support his anti-feud stance - it's basically the exact same thing as what valentino does. they're both quite similar in that regard! always so hungry to prove a point, to show how someone else is wrong. kinda half the point with this feuding business is to get yourself going, get yourself motivated, yeah. he straight up openly admits to using yamaha's repeat rejection of him as a way of giving himself motivation, and at the end of the day that's really not all that different?

anyway, what else does casey say... oh yeah, that him and the other aliens were already kinda prepared for this and had learned vale's tricks. that valentino had only been able to get into the minds of the previous generation. welllllll *wiggles hand* sure, I mean, he did clearly have to change his approach... he couldn't just use the exact same playbook to get to them, either on-track or off-track. but that's why he did change up the playbook... again, whether you want to believe valentino won his final two titles 'in the head' rather than just through pure pace kinda depends on how you assess the evidence, but it is at the very least a debate. and, y'know, it's always worth remembering that valentino's most important mind games with casey didn't happen in a press conference... it was on the track. and the on-track stuff really is just embedded in how valentino approaches winning. speaking of aliens, this is what dani and jorge have said:

like, valentino's entire approach to his riding, even to the way he's setting his bike up, is deliberately about directly fucking with you... he's not actually always trying to be faster than you as much as he's trying to give himself the tools to make your life miserable, to pressure you into mistakes, etc etc... and again, especially with casey (if anything because he was so mentally sturdy), the off-track stuff was really just window dressing. (I know they bicker a lot after 2009 but it's just so fundamentally irrelevant to actual on-track competition.) so you can be aware of those tricks, but it also doesn't necessarily help you when someone's being nasty to you on-track in a way you just fully do not enjoy. which is what it was like for casey! for casey, a lot of this comes back to the truly unpleasant context of how he was perceived by the public, how he was treated as mentally weak or 'broken' or whatever partly because he had the misfortune of coming up against a bloke who had the reputation for breaking rivals. I think it's quite natural to end up with a bit of a hardliner 'actually I've never been mentally affected by a result in my life' stance - and of course casey is a lot tougher than a lot of people give him credit for. that being said. sometimes your rivals affect you, shit happens, it's part of the game. it's fundamentally a nice idea to think that valentino's tactics weren't just morally wrong but also ineffective, which is kind of the appeal of this narrative, right? you want to believe you're above that, you want to believe you were adequately prepared and wise to valentino's tactic. it's unsurprising and understandable that casey does tend to tell the story that way, but again it's *wiggles hand* also hard to describe it as completely factual

uh. what else. oh I'm thrilled casey does canonically know valentino and marc were friends, he has said he wasn't following motogp too much during that time period so you couldn't be sure of that. does this mean anything? does it tell you anything? well, no, but it's just a pleasing thought to me. I like that. oh also 'provoking particularly aggressive riders isn't a good idea' is kinda a funny take from casey? like, he of all people would hate the idea of being cowed by someone's reputation like that... casey's right that provoking fast riders can potentially be dangerous, but y'know I do think that's probably not news to anyone almost nine years later. um. that's all I've got I think

[humblemediagenius]

thinking about.... drawing philemon as the fool tarot card when I get the time

[triangle-strategy-notes]

[Image id for the two images above: The first image is a scan of the first page of Medina's concept art. There are two versions of Medina's canon portrait, one colored, one uncolored. There is an illustrator's note at the bottom in Japanese. The second image is a translation of that note, which reads, "The face on the bottom of the next page came from the first draft. It didn't look quite right, so I was grumbling to Ikushima about it, and he redrew the whole thing, giving it the look it has now (laughs). Sorry about that, I was pretty busy at the time. In my opinion, she's become the most beautiful woman thanks to you! (Tatsuaki Urushihara)" /End id]

[Image id for the three images above: The first image is a scan of the second page of Medina's concept art. It has several drawings of Medina, including a full-body portrait that shows some details of the belt and pouch she wears, and has an additional illustrator's note at the bottom. The second image is a translation of the title, which reads, "Buff, Debuff Character," and translations for the captions. One points to a feather decoration on her hat and reads, "Feather ornament that resembles a leaf." Another points to her uniform and reads, "Well-made uniform, since they're provided by a medical institution in a rich country." Another caption points to a version of her without her hat, and says, "No hat version." The third image is a translation of the illustrator's note at the bottom of the second page, which reads, "I put this together based off a concept for an apothecary costume in 'Various Daylife' that I was given. (Tatsuaki Urushihara)." /end id]

Translation notes under the cut.

"I put this together based off a concept for an apothecary costume" might have been making a reference to a specific job class in Various Daylife. I looked it up a little and found one called "Herbalist" that might match, but I'm not super familiar with the game myself, so I wasn't 100% sure about it.

[distance-does-not-matter]

sitting in the garden wondering what comes next

only by leehi / visible light by alexander harding / spring by leon wyczółkowski / the predatory wasp of the palisades is out to get us! by sufjan stevens / thoughtful reader by franz dvorak / 11:23 a.m. by alexander harding / oxygen by mary oliver / the four loves by c.s. lewis / darling by leehi / oda with lamp by christian krohg / try again by jaehyun, d.ear / reading by lamplight (twilight: interior) by george clausen / sophie by the altogether / dusk by charlotte ager (@ charlotteagerillustration) / the ink dark moon: love poems by ono no komachi and izumi shikibu, women of the ancient court of japan / moonlight stroll by edward henry potthast / only by leehi

[pttucker]

Wait a second.

Dokja's still wearing his new face at the Gourmet Association banquet? Is it permanent?

Oh.

Oh Dokja.

I know the novel (or rather, Dokja) always plays it off as being a bit silly, but man you can see that the constant ugly comments are getting to him.

It was a little uncomfortable when nobody in the Industrial Complex even knew what Joonghyuk looked like and thus wouldn't call him out on "you're not as good looking as Yoo Joonghyuk" (rude) but Dokja still felt the need to change his face because "shouldn't I be handsome to be a revolutionary?" but that could still be played off as a precaution specifically because he's been called out before and also the guy was literally leaking stories so one more added onto him wasn't necessarily a bad thing.

But the fact that he's literally just made it his new face?

Oh Dokja.

I looked in the mirror and smiled with satisfaction. 「 Kim Dokja thought: It isn't better than Yoo Joonghyuk but isn't this decent? 」 Then Aileen finished the procedure and muttered, "It seems a bit better. Well, I don't know. Why is the impression so fuzzy…?" …I guess it was fine. My nose was slightly higher and my cheeks more taut… [Chapter 201]

"Isn't this decent." Was your original face not decent? 😭 And that's not even getting into the fact that he considers himself so ugly that "decent" is enough to satisfy him. 😭

Ugh and he's at least happy about his new looks (even though you don't need them Dokja!) and he's immediately shot down again and his satisfaction morphs to "well I guess it's fine." 😭

People remembered my outfit and cheered. I felt a bit sad that no one realized I had changed my face. [Chapter 201]

He was looking forward to people to finally say something nice about his looks. 😭

Man, we've come such a long way from the guy who read "Yoo Joonghyuk is devastatingly handsome" and thought "well I can probably get away with playing Yoo Joonghyuk."

It has been a cruel, cruel path downward.

I had never been interested in what I looked like since I graduated from high school. Then I thought about the reactions of the prophets when I pretended to be Yoo Joonghyuk and it seemed that I was ugly. I didn't think I was ugly when I took occasional selfies in the bathroom. [Chapter 97]

[minakoaiinos]

It's not even a joke anymore I need to see Mey Rin.

[wwillywonka]

.

[starpros-sunshine]

woag ur birthday is the day after mine????????? happy birthday seb !!!!!!!!! i hope u had an amazing day :3

thank you thank you <33 yess it's the 20th nodnod I think because of timezone shenanigans for like six hours or so we're kind of birthday twins lol

[zorilleerrant]

The angel slides a piece of paper over towards us, and I try not to telegraph my relief, although they can probably tell anyway. Better to see it written; that means it’s probably the original and not a long string of mistranslations and sly winks. I do take a minute to worry that they’re lying to us intentionally, but the ink glows true. It’s written in a mix of Adamnatine and Argentine, which is unusual, because it’s usually just one or the other – I’m wrong. There are only a few Adamantine words sprinkled in.

The part that threw me was the first word – usually angels will use the more typical ‘host’ to describe the cohort, although I guess with demons involved they don’t want to, here. They’ve picked a group term that’s fairly nonspecific, all things considered, but then since when are prophecies anything but vague and unhelpful? At least it specifies that we’re a separate group from whoever our allies might be. So I don’t have to worry about recruiting anyone else. I mean, they did promise, but you know extraplanars.

It uses the prophetic auxiliary the whole way through, only it had to start in Adamantine and force me to translate back and forth and now trying to tense match is giving me a headache. But it says we’re going to fix – probably reinstate, possibly just bolster – magic, or a magic, or all magics – really couldn’t have used Adamantine for that word, guys? – at the end of/as a consequence of our, well, quest. Heroic arc. Enlightenment. Whatever. I really hate that specific word because there’s no real translation for it.

We, apparently, although it doesn’t specify if it’s all of us or just some of us, are claimed. That word had to be in Adamantine, had to specify the direction and force of the protection, had to give us the shivers. It makes my brand itch. That’s probably all in my head.

All of us have our particular magical skills, and that much I guess I figured, but I don’t know why they rendered the word that way. There are all kinds of perfectly viable Argentine synonyms for it. Especially since, in context, it has to mean Fated, not just new or unique or strong or special or singular. I don’t like it being called valuable. I mean I know the Value of my family’s gifts. I’m over it by now. But, like. Come on.

The next sentence throws me. It’s one of those all purpose words, whatever you do with the object of the sentence, which is, again magic. Some specific magic, or all of them, or one of ours, or what? For the sentence that directly states our success/safety hinges on doing this, you’d think it could make more sense. Fuck – we have to either discover a new magic, or discover our own special talents within ourselves and believe in each other or some shit, or we’ve got to teach each other what in most cases can’t be taught. Or, best case scenario, if we can hope for that, we’ve just got to learn all the banned shit. Great. Awesome. Loving this prophecy.

Someone – it specifies part of our group, but not how many, or who – will/must/has… I don’t know that word. Hang on. Usually that’s used in the context of higher education to talk about graduating, but I think that’s a recent innovation, and possibly more human-driven than anything native to the language. Extraplanar travel, that’s it, that’s the historical verb usage, there, that’s what angels and demons do.

Hang on, that’s a euphemism.

Hang on, that means die.

Then it concludes with the same word all prophecies conclude with, the one that means time is a circle or written in stone or self-consistent or what have you, but it doesn’t usually make my stomach hurt to read it. Maybe that’s because I’ve never read a prophecy about me before. (It feels wrong when I say it, but I can’t remember if I’ve ever seen another one. It must have been when I was really small.) It still rubs me the wrong way. All of this does.

The party will bring back magic as proof of their quest. They are Claimed and have each one a Fated talent. They must learn each other’s magics and/or new magics in order to succeed. Someone will die. Time flows as time has ever flown.

I don’t know. I don’t like it. I also don’t know why they insisted on bringing us all here first, given that Gabriel’s the only one besides me who seems to have actually read it, with maybe half of us still trying to struggle through. The rest don’t look like they’ve seen either of these languages before. Probably they haven’t; I don’t think they’re taught much outside of specific trade schools or doctorates anymore, but still, you’d think the magically chosen would have some familiarity. I don’t think they can even tell the difference.

I don’t want to translate for everyone. I’m bound to get something wrong.

[malaierba]

Cain and his two dad's from hell

[irritablepoe]

ok i wrote a little over 1k words today, somebody tell me they're proud of me :')

[seithr]

Randomly remembered the half-reason i call my oc-verse by the name it has while laying in bed. One-half of the reason i still knew, but I had forgotten what had truly, really cemented it jointly until now

(it was a song from my favourite band I haven't listened to in a while.)

(the song fit so well at the time, still does, that i needed to hold onto it for the main protagonists forever, by partially naming their story in reference.)

Does this explanation make any sense? Does anyone know why I'm tearing up remembering this. Aahh