#he is after all a rat

[1very1fancy1doilies1]

ripred the rat for my sister's birthday :)

[lazylittledragon]

dndads s1 you're so special to me

[blondeaxolotl]

"They don't bite-" BRO YES THEY DO 😭😭😭

[elodieunderglass]

I have two jockeyposting questions, if I may! 1. Killie has a delightful bear of a boyfriend. Is he out? Horseracing doesn't seem like it would be very queer-friendly but maybe I'm wrong about that. 2. Is the fact that people are generally getting taller a problem for finding tiny jockeys?

Of course thank you so much! I adore getting these thank you so much ☺️

1.) horse racing is not queer-friendly to jockeys.

There is one ☝️ out gay jockey in the Anglosphere/Europe/probably the world, Jack Duern. (1) Duern came out on Twitter and his career tanked, with trainers openly disapproving and no longer offering rides. Since no mounts = no pay, he left the field. Interestingly, he came back a few years later, with lots of inclusion campaigns in the UK promising that “horse racing is for everyone,” but it’s reasonable that nobody else has followed him out! Duern has said that of course there are other gay jockeys, and that the jockeys themselves are actually quite supportive of each other. But as disposable freelancers with no collective bargaining, who don’t hold power in the sport and get rides based on reputation, why risk what very much happened to Duern for no benefit? All the people who hold power in horse racing are ghastly Tories, and the rainbow capitalism clearly hasn’t created conditions of safety or trust in the real world.

Now Killie is of course a fictional jockey who lives in my head. Realistically, he is Not Out in the modern era. Him being out would be MASSIVE. He is barely out to himself. His emotional baggage requires a storage unit. Probably the biggest single piece of baggage was that his twin brother was thrown out (of family, home and sport) for dating men, and disappeared for several years; which broke several load-bearing things in Killie.

He will definitely have to come out of the closet, like a badger boiling furiously from a hole to bite your feet off, possibly in the end by simply bringing Derek as his plus-one to a black-tie event and then lunging at the first person to Have a Problem With It. Suspended jockey license for three months for biting, again.

Mind you, Killie is terrible queer representation. Can you imagine.

Pride is for everyone, even Killie. Pride is for everyone, even Killie. Pride is for -

The answer to question 2) has a trigger warning for discussion of size/weight, tap “keep reading” to keep reading

2.) the legendary tiny jockeys are indeed getting rarer, and their extinction has been claimed in the UK. There is no preference - no economic pressure - for short jockeys; the industry doesn’t care much if you’re a healthy short bastard or a starving lanky skeleton. But there’s two approaches to it at the moment: in the UK, they’ve raised weight limits across the profession. In the rest of the world, where jockey weights are still around 118lbs, jockeys just get recruited to wealthy countries.

Killie races in the UK and there’s a slight problem now. He was initially formed in the 1990s by a child who did NOT want him to have an eating disorder, and therefore, I waved my hand and said that he’s 4’10”, the same size as Julie Krone (Triple Crown winner) and Willie Shoemaker (said to be the best American jockey of all time). This was realistic then, but might be a problem now.

The UK has some of the highest permitted jockey weights in the world, and is the stronghold of steeplechasing (jump racing) which allows the highest weights of all. In 2025 a UK jump jockey can now be 160 lbs, with a minimum floor of 140 (including gear) meaning that a jump jockey needs a minimum riding weight of around 133 lbs(this can include as much lead weight as they need.) Underweight jockeys make up their weight to the assigned number by adding lead weights in the weight cloth, which is absolutely normal, although less desirable than living weight; and handicapping adds extra dimensions; but Killie could realistically jump at close to an average weight, and no longer needs to be extra-tiny to be a flat-and-jump jockey.

The last two UK lightweight jockeys of the old school both just retired Autumn 2024. They were quite successful until the end, and it’s clear that there’s an advantage to their frames - even now and even in the UK - but you can see that at their retirements they had gone from archetypal-jockey-type to outlier-among-the-young-bloods. Killie was intended to have the same build: if he was a person aging at normal rates, he would have been in his 20s when created by a dumb kid in the 90s, and exactly this age (50s) now. Instead, if he’s in his 30s now, he was now probably born around 1990 - and would be the short outlier!

(The UK’s “last lightweight jockeys”, born in the 1970s. Left, Jimmy Quinn (centre, yellow silk) Irish flat jockey with colleagues; centre photo Franny Norton, English flat jockey with sports physiologists; right, Franny Norton, having also been a boxer, showing a child how to box. Jimmy and Franny both retired Autumn 2024, hailed as “the last of the UK’s great lightweight jockeys.” They were both very short, very muscular, very successful and rode healthily into their fifties. The younger jockeys on the left would be considered smaller than average people, but are noticeably in the lankier-framed modern style.)

However. That’s the UK, and its heavier jockeys, higher weight limits and its overarching steeplechase obsession. The rest of the world prefers flat racing, and is stuck firmly on basically the same weight limit as the 1990s, of about 118 lbs. Killie might now be well-below-average for UK steeplechasers; but to ride the most famous flat races in the world, he’s comfortable. He could easily and healthily do the big famous flat races - Japan Cup! Kentucky Derby! - where steeplechasers are limited to very few races.

So given that the UK steeplechasing has pulled away from the rest of the world, we might have to either make Killie a bit taller to keep up with that, or let him focus on international flat racing. ANYWAY, that’s just to say that that’s the immediate impact of rising average heights on Killie as a character.

So how do the flat-racing nations manage to get their tiny jockeys?

Japan pulls from a population that, statistically, has more people who are able to match the weight requirements.

France seems to naturally produce enough little guys to export excesses to the USA. Flavien Prat, who is 5’1” and wins a lot, is one of those.

For better or worse, the USA relies heavily on jockeys from other countries, particularly Latin America. You can draw your own conclusions about colonial power and land justice from this. But on the personal level there is significant representation from Puerto Rico (Irad Ortiz Jr, John R Velasquez) and countries like Panama, the Dominican Republic, Peru, and Mexico. When you subtract French and LatAm riders from the top lists in the USA, you’re left with a few American generational jockeys.

Australian horse racing annoys me so much I don’t even want to touch on them or acknowledge them!! There is a problem with indentured child jockeys around the world, but Australia really kicked this up a notch.

Aotearoa / NZ is not a prominent racing nation, but you know how in the LotR films, most of the Riders of Rohan were women because that’s who the most competent local equestrians were? 40% of their jockeys are women, apparently!

Today, the UAE tends to operate through the UK training system, recruiting UK/EU jockeys. In the past they had widely-reported child jockey and kidnapping scandals.

Ireland is known for producing generational jockeys (Killie’s from a fictional “racing dynasty.”) By nature and nurture or both, they’ll probably keep doing this. Small parents don’t necessarily produce small people, of course, but horse-obsessed families tend to produce horse-obsessed people.

So it’s hard to say! Setting higher weight limits like the UK would offer more talent, but then again, Extracting Immigrant Labour is the system working as intended. the sport itself is declining in most countries, with millennials and everyone after being pretty uninterested.

Killie’s a special little guy, staring into the distance while “Last of My Kind” by Shaboozey plays

(1) There are only a handful of horse-racing countries outside of the Anglosphere and France, where Duern is the only out gay jockey. Japan - whose racing association is famously controlling of the public image of its jockeys - doesn’t have any English-language gossip about them being LGBTQ. I don’t know much about the Hong Kong racing scenes ditto; homosexuality is illegal in the United Arab Emirates. The other nations of the world produce jockeys, and occasionally horses, but don’t host the grade 1 world famous cups that make them major players.

[backpackingspace]

Odysseus with his head in his wife's lap, happily not paying attention to anything, humming one of athenas song and carving something

Some random guy: your majesty----

Odysseus: not bothering to sit up: whatever my wife decided is fine.

[bacchuschucklefuck]

okay unironically I love so much that porter is like this world SUCKS its BAD here and it HURTS you why do you care abt it!!! and literally every single bad kid is like ngl we just hate ur ass it does not matter what ur philosophy is

[probably-impossible]

rat man of all time

[eddies-ashtray]

eddie laying out by the community pool in the sluttiest little short shorts & crop top. hair all frizzy from the humidity so he puts it up but strands fall out around his face and ears. you agree

[ratatatastic]

"how many mouthguards does matthew tkachuk chew through every season?" "3 maybe? 2 or 3 a season?...but in playoffs i actually switch each and every round"

CBS News Miami | 6.28.24 (x)

THATS A 1 ROUND MOUTHGUARD???? THAT WHAT HIS MOUTHGUARD LOOKS LIKE AFTER A SINGULAR SERIES????? (x)

the more matthew denies it not being about "chewing through" his mouthguard the more it makes it seems like its because he chewed through his mouthguard like that is a maintenance issue THERE IS A HOLE IN THERE???? HELP???

also him mentioning that he likes his equipment fresh for playoffs and changes it every round which is so prevalent because THIS is what he had to say about the mere notion of new skates when asked on media day before the 2324 season started...

survey says that all cats who were asked (and shown) agreed they could not stand the idea of never getting new skates and went for "never be able to get a new pair of gloves"...matthew being the only one to go for "never be able to get a new pair of skates" (x)

youre telling me despite how much he obviously hates the physical discomfort of the cinch of new skates he still elects to change them because playoff superstitions (its not about about superstitions! he says...as if he also hasnt said on camera that the oldest piece of equipment he has is his jock and will in fact NEVER change it like that doesnt reek of sibney-isms...the way this man has influenced a whole generation of children...)

[likesummerrainn]

AEW Dynamite | 10.16.24

[typosandtea]

Nobody including me posts about their ocs enough so please please please reblog reply or whatever with some oc tidbits!

[kawareo]

Idk if this is a hot take but the way I see him, Gortash never gave the slightest shit about Karlach. I think he might have found her useful and capable for a while but then he didn't need her anymore and just wrote her off like nothing.

I think he sold her to a devil and felt nothing and then wandered if that was what his parents felt like after they've sold him.

I think he genuinely never thought about her again until she showed up at his coronation and I think that only after that, he would've even consider respecting her; she escaped Hells now? She takes what she wants now? She isn't blind to how evil he is anymore? Now we're talking!

[hanakihan]

since it’s annual dishonored brainrot period

you know Corvo either being mute from birth OR losing his tongue due to his torture period makes much more sense when Burrows confesses everything to Corvo

It becomes less stupid in way of ‘you’re gonna be executed tomorrow anyway it’s not like you’ll escape’ and more in a way of ‘you aren’t able to talk anyway, who you will tell?’

That way it starts to look like even more of a mockery from Burrows, spilling everything to a man who won’t be able to tell anyway not because he’ll be dead next morning, but because he literally can’t tell anyone

Like yes I know second game straight up denies such possibility with Corvo now being officially voiced, but before second game was even announced it was a solid (and still is honestly) head canon for me when I play Dishonored

There’s also something absolutely terrifying at meeting this masked man and he literally doesn’t answer anything you tell him

[chayannesegg]

If Tubrat was being REALLY honest, his day with Ratcumber was the best day he can EVER remember. Ever ever. Ever ever ever.

Of course, that feels mean to Mordecai—that his best day ever could possibly be on a day when Mordecai was gone and he didn't know if when (the Angelic One says soon) he will be back—so he doesn't say it out loud. Doesn't even think it, really.

It's just, he was SO worried. Because Ratcumber was so nice and then he hurt her. He REALLY hurt her. On purpose. She screamed. She must have been so hurt and scared and lonely. And no one stopped him! Everyone saw it happen (like always) and didn't do ANYTHING. And it was really scary, like REALLY scary and he can't stop thinking about it. About hurting her. About doing what he was told. She should hate him forever like everyone else but he had to. He HAD to.

He can't be without Mordecai again. He can't be alone and face all the other rats who hate him and don't care about him and left him to die and want to forget he exists.

Because he's so awful and broken and he can't shut up about it because it hurts less to say everything wrong with him before anyone else can spot it on his face. Because it's worse if someone else says it first. Because Everyone knows, but only he should say it.

Mordecai doesn't say it. He's just there. He's always there for Tubbo and he doesn't leave. He never leaves. Until he was ABANDONED and left to DIE and Mordecai was lost. Because TUBRAT let him go. Because Tubrat failed. Because Tubrat didn't deserve to keep him.

He has to earn him back. He'll do WHATEVER the Ancient Ones Angelic Ones want. So he's not alone anymore.

And Ros knows. Ros knows. She gets it! She GETS it. She also doesn't want to be alone. She was a companion to a HUMAN. She lost them. She wants to GO BACK.

It's so scandalous he can barely imagine it. Rats don't mix with humans. Humans are SCARY. They're scary. They're so scary that is Tubrat is willing to hide in an attic with rats who hate him just to avoid them. He can't imagine how Ratcumber feels SAFE around one.

But he can imagine being alone after losing a friend. And no one caring, well knowing. No one else KNOWS Ratcumber is missing a human. Because Ratcumber doesn't tell people. She keeps her worst parts secret like Shelby keeps her worse parts secret.

Which Tubrat also can't imagine because it's like anytime he tries to keep something bad a secret it seems to burst out of him like bees escaping a hit hive.

(Unless he needed to be sneaky, like right now with the plan to hide Ros' sacrifice. Then he can be sneaky because he HAS to be. No one will notice he's up to something until it's too late. Owen and Munch and Ratman know NOTHING. Totally. Definitely. For sure.)

Of course, the other rats would PROBABLY care if Ratcumber told them she was missing her human. If they got over their fear and anger. Because Ros is good and kind and nice. The rats would understand that Ros wants her human back. They would want her to feel safe and happy (unlike him).

But Ros DOESN'T tell the other rats. Because Ros is scared. And lonely. And she doesn't want to live in a place where everyone hates her for being friends with a human.

And that's.... awful, really. How scared and lonely and desperate Ratcumber must be all the time. And it makes Tubrat's stomach twist to think about. Especially because her sadness makes him HAPPY.

Because she GETS it.

Gets him.

The Angelic One was RIGHT.

She was the PERFECT sacrifice.

Even though it hurt her. Even though it was scary. Even though it felt bad.

Because now she understands. That Tubbo's not crazy. That the Great One ANGELIC ONE can save them. That it was necessary.

And this is good for Ratcumber. Because she gets her friend back (maybe, no definitely, the Angelic One wouldn't lie).

But also it's good for TUBRAT. Because now it's almost like he has a friend.

Ratcumber talked to him! And listened to him! And built a new altar with him.

She made it better. They worked together and made a BEAUTIFUL altar that the Angelic Ones will LOVE and then he'll get back Mordecai and Ros will find her human and everything will be so GOOD.

Because Ros gets him now. She gets HIM. Tubrat. No one ever has before. She saw the very worse parts of him. Really saw them. Felt them. Was hurt because of his desperation. His need. His weakness.

And she DIDN'T leave.

She talked, listened, built with him. Even more than that she PLAYED with him.

Ros played with him.

SHE PLAYED WITH HIM.

No one plays with Tubrat. But Ros DID. She ran around (not away from him) together with him and lied to other rats about doing a play and teaching Tubrat how to talk to rats.

And It was FUN. It was FUNNY. Tubbo laughed SO much it hurt. He didn't know laughter could DO that.

And it was true. Kinda.

This was the longest time Tubrat has EVER spent with another rat in a LONG time. And it did feel like Ros was showing him how it works. And she wasn't scared off when he did something weird.

Ros played with him and he played back and nothing went wrong. No one yelled at him. No one caught them.

(Which, by the way, Ratman didn't CATCH them. He just said scary words but he knows nothing. They can fix it. They can fix it TOGETHER. Because Ros GETS it.)

And the play. The play! Owen sounded like he wanted to buy tickets. So maybe they WILL put on a play. To keep up the act. They'll HAVE to do Ratcumber's Shake-Spears thing. Even though it's probably stupid. But, it might be fun.

Maybe they could have Beky join too once she's been sacrificed. And then he'll have TWO friends. Almost friends. Kinda friends.

No, THREE friends.

Because then Mordecai would be back (right?). And Tubbo REALLY won't be alone anymore.

And, well, Ros' human still sounds scary, but maybe they would watch from a distance.

And Beky would invite El.

The point is today was a GOOD day. Ros GETS him. He ALMOST has Mordecai back. Nothing can go wrong now. And all the bad-scary-awful things that had to happen don't matter anymore.

They only have ONE more sacrifice to do, and Beky will WANT to do it. To save her wife. So it won't even be THAT bad or scary. He doesn't even have to do it. Ros will do it and he just has to WATCH.

Tubrat just has to do ONE more thing and then maybe everything will stop feeling so bad.

Then EVERYTHING will be PERFECT.

And no one can stop it from happening.

Right?

[ask-the-totally-real-peppino]

Happy Holidays to Pep and the gang!

Pep: "..."

Pep: "Mrrp!"

Pep: "Niaga uoy ees ot deticxe ma I!!! Syadiloh yppah!!! Sdneirf olleh!!!"

Pep: "Kool emoc! Enoyreve rof staert gnikam yad lla ysub neeb ev'ew!"

Pep: "Olleh yas sdneirf ruo! Kcirb ,kool kool!"

Brick: *happy greeting squeak!*

Pep: "Enoyreve rof eikooc a edam ew! Kool!"

Pep: "Sdneirf, uoy rof tsuj eno laiceps a s'ereht dna!"

(Happy holidays to you too! Everyone can't be here right now, but I hope you guys enjoy a little bonus post for now, hehe)

[backpackingspace]

Odysseus: demanding Athena take off whatever enchantment she put on him the second the situation ends.

Odysseus: who constantly reminds Athena that he has great plans to grow old and die with his wife so don't even think about getting any ideas.

Odysseus: side eye diomedes who has started fucking glowing he has so many enchantments on him: bro you should talk to Athena about getting those removed. You're going to end up immortal or some shit

Diomedes: who has been a solider since he was 5 who has intersting thoughts about his own personhood who has a much more traditional relationship with Athena and would rather literally stab his own eye out with a rusted sword than speak out of turn: I don't know what you're talking about