#he does like like real people do but obviously that’s a very different vibe

[bookwormonastring]

played my dad some songs from wasteland, baby! and he decided he needs to get that album but not the first one… wait til i play him angel of small death and the codeine scene, or to be alone, or it will come back

[rene-spade]

Ok but how are the crazy f1 dads with their daughters dating? Who on the grid do they like?

oof this is a loaded ask bc they really are all out of it 😭 they just love their babies fr

♤ ♤ ♤

dad! kimi | growing up räikkönen!

FIRST OF ALL kimi doesn’t really vibe with most people in general, let alone anyone who’s trying to get with his little lumienkeli. kimi was lucky to raise a little girl similar to him, who listens when he places a no dating rule lasting until she’s 21 (as far as he knows anyways). despises the guys on the grid trying to get with her; he was one of them once so he thinks of them as animals, especially leclerc who’s known for his brow-raising dating life. also hates pierre but he already didn’t fw him bc he’s french. he is SLIGHTLY more easy going with women around his daughter so any grid guys with girlfriends might have an advantage. he finds that he wants the im-a-dog-and-ill-do-whatever-my-girl-says type for his daughter, but he dislikes unintelligence. he does not like anyone on the grid, but he best tolerates:

mick schumacher!

oscar piastri (+lily)

he vibes with kika okay but hates pierre 💀

bonus! he actually really likes max but his hate/distrust for jos overpowers that so he’s not letting that happen

♤ ♤ ♤

dad! jenson | growing up button!

OK SO JENSON is a bit less intense than kimi, however he is much more publicly affectionate with his daughter which means that he has definitely gone on public rants about how no man is good wen enough for his baby. that being said, he is a decent judge of character so he doesn’t hate anyone on the grid. but he gets real serious when he notices people hitting on his baby. this is mostly bc he was def a whore when he was younger so he isn’t quick to trust guys who are living the same lifestyle he was. he kind of turns on dad-mode when he notices anyone eyeing her up. but alas, he raised his own mini-me, who attracts just about everyone, and who likes to flirt back. it takes warming up to, but he can see himself fine with most of the drivers. he most prefers people who are friendly and who didn’t act like him when he was in f1 like:

george russel

daniel ricciardo

lando norris

♤ ♤ ♤

dad! fernando | growing up alonso!

NANDO IS DEFINITELY one of those guys who thinks he’s a “cool dad” bc he’s a young father and his daughter is his best friend. but in reality he’s one of those intense, fiercely overprotective dads who have impossibly high expectations for his daughters partner. 100% the type to punch a mechanic for saying gross things about his princesa. he’ll be calm and in a good mood then someone on the grid (or any man ever) mentions his daughter and he’s like 😐. UNLESS! it’s carlos. carlos is the only one who meets his standards, sorry to literally everyone else. but even with carlos, he can be a little stern just to get his point across about not messing with his only child. he just feels the need to personally approve of his daughter’s partner bc he’s hyper-paranoid about someone hurting her. his list looks something like:

carlos sainz!!!

that’s it

i mean if you put a gun to his head maybe max bc he’s a winner but he needs to learn to speak spanish so-

♤ ♤ ♤

dad! jos | growing up verstappen! unfortunately

FUCK JOS VERSTAPPEN obviously, however this man is one crazy dad who we have to discuss. his love for his youngest daughter is wild and unpredictable, and it’s very different from the way he treats his other children. his baby has some extreme one-sided beef with him that he’s smart enough to know about, so he isn’t too forceful about bonding, it’s definitely more desperate since max found success in f1 and she sticks with her big brother now. her entire life, he’s never allowed her to date, and when he found out about her first secret bf, he got arrested for trying to kill the kid so. he has IMPOSSIBLY high standards for his daughters partner and definitely wants her to marry within the f1 community, but he hates losers and despises half the grid.

suddenly he’s charles leclerc’s biggest fan !

lewis hamilton but he’ll never admit it

MAYBE carlos sainz

bonus! max obvi likes daniel ricciardo best but jos doesn’t fw him like that

♤ ♤ ♤

Ren

[asstrolo]

PISCES PLACEMENTS.

one thing you need to know about Pisces is that they always look aloof and are extremely observant.

✦ Pisces Risings have a very good intuition to situations involved with emotions and other people's feelings, they can read them very well, but should always be careful as they can appear to think they know what a person is feeling when it could be something completely different.

✦ People with a Pisces stellium deal with very difficult mental health problems, like any other water stellium (or any stellium) their emotions are at an all time high and can make it hard to put things into perspective when it's all just one energy. To add that Pisces are mutable energy and that energy is very volatile, balance is not something that comes easily to them, unlike fixed signs like Aquarius, Pisces stelliums get trapped inside a thought or a scenario in their head a lot, it's really hard to make them come back to reality unless they are aware of what they are doing. This does not mean they are unstable or untrustworthy, they are wise and can with frequency have prophetic dreams

✦ One thing about Pisces mercury is that they will lie unprovoked, they often lie for their peace of mind so people would leave them alone, but other times they just lie because they can and I can confirm this as a Pisces mercury I lie a lot about things that don't matter like when I buy something and I tell my family that the person that sold it to me recommended it because it's really good, that's a lie nobody recommended me anything

✦ I do believe Pisces like to be sad more than they liked to admit, as the sign is known for not being present and you can always see them not wanting to be in the real world, sometimes they can use their moods to escape real life issues or responsibilities

✦ Jupiter in Pisces generation are really good at spotting a person's energy, they tend to have luck in everything esoteric but can shield on that a little too much, have an over positive or negative view of life as they have a strong intuition sometimes they will fool themselves into believing something just because of the ~vibes~ thy feel, a little too delusional sometimes ngl

✦ Pisces in anything but specially Pisces sun people are very addictive, is the Neptunian force, when people talk about Pisces have addictions to escape reality that is valid, I do believe they are super intoxicating to be around, is something about them that leaves people wanting more. Watch Pisces people that are famous, Hozier and Rihanna, Maddison Beer or Justin Bieber, Olivia Rodrigo, and the most Pisces of them all was Kurt Cobain with a extremely present Pisces stellium and a Water dominance with a Cancer moon and Scorpio mars, he looked almost like a cult leader and that's the magic of Pisces, they can draw people in so easily it's hard to know where you start and they end, but that's the magic of mutable signs

✦ Pisces men why are you like that? I'm not a mind reader don't make me kill you

✦ As Saturn is transitioning Pisces people with this placements can feel like it's just one thing after another, they can never really be calm because Saturn is not about calm at all, it's about responsibility and maturing in the blink of an eye, they will be confronting things they used to sweep under the rug, which is something difficult to do for Pisces placements as they can be too n their own world to see certain things surrounding them

✦ Continuing the Pisces/Saturn transit, this can obviously be felt more on where you have Pisces in planets or house. Venus in Pisces will be dealing with a lot of hard lessons in love, if you have unhealthy patterns that follow you through all your relationships and it can feel very overwhelming when you try to connect with somebody but is impossible because there is something you must learn, or you view of love could be very different when you start your first healthy relationship or stay single for your mental health. It really does depend on the person as Saturn has lessons in all shapes and forms . Pisces in the 9th house could mean responsibilities outside their home or comfort zone, or the impossibility of traveling due to these responsibilities. College or School can take a significant time in your daily life as someone who is starting to take it more seriously, or the sudden decision to leave a career to chase other dreams. Either way, it's a challenging time for the dreamers

✦ Pisces placements and always looking like they don't know where they are

✦ Since Pisces is the last sign of the zodiac they do encapsulate a tiny part of all the signs and that's why they can be so changing, Pisces Sun and Risings are known to be really good actors like Anya Taylor-Joy having a Pisces rising or Oscar Isaac. They can mold into a different personality very well and that's part of their empathetic tendencies too

✦ to me pisces placements embody the forever I hate it here I want to be inside my mind palace ALL THE TIME there's a reason a lot of pisces placements are actors or writers, they continuously try to run away from real life!!

a pisces placements song in my opinion

[comradekatara]

do you have headcanons about the gaang and fire girls’ gender identities and sexualities?

i mean yeah 😭😭 obviously 😭😭 im literally a homosexual on tumblr dot edu. that said, i don’t really care for the term “headcanon” in this context, as i think that reading characters as informed by the text constitutes “interpretation” rather than baseless theorizing and fancy. i do get that the term headcanon is pretty ubiquitous in fandom spaces, but to me there is a big difference between “interpretation” (something you can cite the text to persuasively argue, but which may differ across readers) and “headcanon” (baseless inventions purely for self-indulgent pleasure). when it comes to the characters in atla and their relationships to gender as informed by patriarchy, i think there is more than enough material to suggest my readings, as gender plays a fairly significant role in the worldbuilding and characterization. obviously when it comes to more minor characters, that is when a vibes-based analysis is needed, as takes on less integral players are largely conjecture. i have no evidence that june, for example, is a lesbian, beyond simply vibes. and as much as i trust my own judgment when it comes to sniffing out dykes, there is no real textual evidence that june eats pussy. i simply know in my heart of hearts that she does. HOWEVER, that is not what i am doing when i discuss the principal players of atla, whose relationships to gender are largely crucial to how they function in the narrative and how we read them. so without further ado..

aang is actually the vaguest character for me in terms of how i read his relationship to gender, because it’s very clear that he wasn’t raised in a traditionally patriarchal society and thus has a fairly different view on gender than the rest of the world, especially a world whose borders and categorizations have been more rigidly reified after a century of imperialism and colonialism. i can see the argument for aang being a cis, straight boy, and i can see the argument for aang being a nonbinary bisexual kid, etc etc. the one thing we know about aang is that he likes girls. like, really likes girls. so i’ve always kind of read him as mostly straight, but i don’t think he would rigidly define his own gender and sexuality along those lines, even if functionally he would probably present as a straight guy. but he could also be bi, or trans, or what have you. beyond his love for katara (and that time he rightfully felt humiliated by the fire nation portraying him as a woman, not because he doesn’t “respect women,” but because he correctly located it as a propagandistic tool of disrespect and colonial humiliation on their part) it’s not really crucial to his character either way.

katara, on the other hand, really only makes sense if you read her as a cis straight girl. i know that people have gotten incensed over my saying this in the past, but it’s just the most logical reading of her character. she is confident in her femininity and sexuality. she is a girl who can successfully conform to gender roles (and expects others to, quite frankly) but also recognizes and protests the fundamental inequalities of patriarchy. she has internalized a lot of patriarchal ideas about what is appropriate, but also understands that on a structural level, equality across genders is needed. she’s not a girl who struggles with her own gender identity or sexuality, she’s just a person who’s sick of being dismissed and devalued due to her gender, as if her femininity negates her strength or her capacity for anger. she is feminine, strong, and angry. she likes fashion and boys and ecoterrorism. when i call katara a straight girl, it is not to position her as a less compelling character (the fact that i have to even say this is crazy to me. sometimes characters are straight and that doesn’t make them less compelling??? unless you’re some kind of egomaniac who can only like characters if you relate to them… but she's literally the world's specialest princess). in fact, as someone whose best friends are all incredibly intelligent yet kind of ridiculous straight girls, i say it with the deepest, utmost love.

sokka is not cis to me but sometimes people will "agree" with that sentiment by being like "yeah he's a trans boy" and i'm just like.... what. manhood & masculinity are clearly concepts that are imposed upon him as a role he feels compelled to fulfill within a colonial paradigm. people will also say "sokka's arc is about learning what it means to be a real man" and like. if anything sokka's arc is learning that he does not Have to be a "man." so i guess technically i read sokka as nonbinary, but i also don't think sokka would ever bother to conceptualize his own gender, he'd kind of just reach a point wherein he inwardly feels like his relationship to gender is no longer significant to how he defines himself, and not really communicate that feeling to anyone to except for probably suki. also i think he's bisexual (again, he would never outwardly communicate that, he'd just be like "of course i've experimented, i'm a scientist") but with a strong preference for women. and thank god for that bc his daddy issues are so bad; he should not be dating men.

i do read toph as a baby butch who doesn't quite know how to articulate her own relationship to gender and sexuality yet bc she is still a baby. but i definitely see her as embracing her masculinity down the line, as something that isn't only valuable to her as it is positioned contra femininity, but as a mode of expression in its own right. and i know that long hair =/= femininity necessarily, but i do think toph would cut her hair short as a way of undermining the confucian values of belonging to the family, which i know may seem like its unrelated to gender, but considering the patriarchal role of the nuclear family structure informing toph's quite radical disavowal of it (we don't talk about lok, but she was also a single mom by choice so like that's ...... something, at least) toph's decision to renounce those entrenched values is reflective of her gender identity and refusal to adhere to patriarchal dogmas as they impose femininity as passivity and submission. i do still see her as identifying as a woman though, but in a distinctly butch dyke way that complicates the role of womanhood as it rejects the notion that womanhood is primarily a performance for the male gaze. so i think toph is a masc lesbian, which i suppose is quite an obvious reading of her gender, and i don't think it's the only valid interpretation either. i can accept someone reading toph as transmasc or bisexual or otherwise recognizing that these identities can be unstable and even in flux. for example, acknowledging toph's baby crush on sokka means problematizing the notion of her as a lesbian, or at least it can. but i do think sokka is like the one "man" (see above) that dykes find appealing (suki, ty lee, etc etc.) so it makes perfect sense that he'd be like. her ring of keys moment. if anything toph having a crush on sokka illustrates her latent lesbianism (although nothing will ever come of it, obviously). and her gender is also just Lesbian.

suki's relationship to gender is a lot less complex than toph's or sokka's because she's also just a far less developed character in her own right, so i've always kind of just read her gender as an extension of kyoshi's for thematic reasons. and since kyoshi is canonically bisexual with a preference for women, i also read suki as bisexual with a preference for women. like i definitely think that she was surprised at first by how into sokka she was because she had never experienced liking a "boy" before. and i also think it's fun to read kyoshi as trans (no, not because she's tall and "aggressive," dear god); if you've read the novels you'll probably understand what i mean by that. so i'm partial to trans girl suki as well, but i think her being cis or trans is actually equally likely because she literally grew up on the isle of lesbos. but nowhere else on avatar planet in that particular epoch is this true. except for maybe the swamp idk. anyway she's a bi dyke to me for sure.

zuko is very obviously gay. i'd say that zuko's sexuality is the most obviously entrenched in the entire show. however, i don't think the writers themselves are aware of this (because it was 2005 and gay people weren't invented until december 2014 korrasami handhold) so they clumsily try to get him back together with mai in the finale even though they had actually constructed a near-perfect portrait of two closeted children attempting to perform a functional relationship under political pressure to please their noble families. but so much of zuko's arc is potently reflective of the struggle of a closeted child on the journey to assert himself against an abusive patriarch who imposes his rigid ideals of what kind of masculinity is appropriate for boys to model and what isn't. obviously the political and ideological dimensions to his arc as his consciousness is raised constitutes the primary aspect of his character, but reading him as gay is also just the logical extension of that journey. i could literally go through every single episode scene by scene explaining how every single facet illustrates his latent homosexuality in such and such way. but i'm pretty sure everyone following me also very much knows this, and also i don't actually care enough about zuko to do that (sorry zuzu). oh and yeah he's cis (obviously) but i have seen (sparse) transfem zuko interpretations that were kind of compelling. however, i do just think he's a cis boy who struggles with adhering perfectly to a fascist model of masculinity and has some stereotypically gay/effeminate inclinations. and also the blue spirit is drag and the height of camp. but yeah he's cis probably.

azula is a lesbian (cis, again, there's no way she's ever going to seriously contemplate transing her gender) and i'm not just saying that because she's cunty and mean. her relationship to mai and (especially) ty lee is highly reflective of the experience of teenage (closeted) lesbians in very intense friendships with other girls that precariously toe the line between platonic and romantic. azula's relationships are obviously also complicated by the factor of coercion and the fact that none of them actually have any agency to act on their desires for a myriad of reasons. the only time azula ever displays interest in a boy is when she is attempting to soothe her own ego by proving that she is in fact desirable to the most powerful boy in the room – a space wherein the hierarchy of court is replicated by the hierarchy of high school popularity rankings, and she is no longer at the top of the food chain and must climb her way up the ladder by asserting her ability to "attain" the famous cha(d)n. she also clearly has no idea what to do once she has attained such a boy because her desire is superficial, and she can only actually operate on the logic of domination and conquest that was instilled in her by ozai. however, contrast this with the softness and affection with which she treats ty lee, the jealousy she displays when ty lee is fawned over by boys (which she mistakes for jealousy over the fact that she wants the boys' attention for herself), or the devastation she feels over her betrayal. azula is capable of genuine love and affection, even if she has spent her entire life convincing herself that she isn't, but that affection is reserved for her female friends. [lord farquaad pointing] baby dyke.

ty lee is probably a lesbian but there's also the possibility that she is attracted to men but would simply never in one million years actually date one in any capacity, and thus is functionally a lesbian regardless. but like. she literally joins the dyke warriors as the culmination of her arc which is about how she hides her true face and performs and contorts herself to please others for the sake of her own survival, before asserting that her love for another girl is so strong that she would sacrifice her own life for that love, and then ultimately embracing authenticity. it literally does not get any gayer than that.

mai kind of has trans girl swag actually but also there's literally no circumstance wherein her image-obsessed noble family would permit her to transition (especially since they so clearly favor sons over daughters) so she's probably just a really cool cis girl (those exist, i'm told). and also she's a dyke obviously. i do think she did have a crush on zuko at some point as a child, but if anything it was born of the mutual recognition that they have something in common (gayness) and so she found him to be an appropriate yet also kind of thrilling object of fascination. obviously he's very different once he returns from his banishment, and so that illusion is almost immediately shattered, but she nonetheless tries her damn best to be a good, supportive girlfriend to him, and invests a lot of emotional energy into their (somewhat farcical) relationship. that said, i do think that assuming that her attraction to zuko is genuine beyond the social pressures that facilitated it is just. really sad for her. so i think she is a lesbian.

rapid fire round: iroh straight (duh), jet repressed bicuriosity but functionally straight, yue bisexual (vibes-based assessment), king kuei bisexual as is bosco the bear, kanna lesbian, hama bisexual, herbalist lesbian, piandao gay, haru straight, long feng eunuch.

[mysterycitrus]

Quick question about how you decide what comics to care about? When it comes to characterization?

I know there’s comics that are generally considered ooc and no one really incorporates them into their characterizations. (Eg: I skimmed All Star Batman and Robin for fun. I now understand why people call him Crazy Steve, and I’m obviously not going to be taking this particular iteration of Batman and Robin into account when characterizing them.) But other than these really obvious instances, how do you deal with it? Like, I know fans of pre-N52 comics avoided a lot of stuff during that time? But now that we’re in Rebirth? I know that characterization in comic fandoms is always a bit thorny because of comic books as a medium, with all those different writers, timeline resets, etc… But you seem to have a really good handle on that, cause whenever I read any of your stuff and then read a comic, I’m usually like, yeah, same person here. Which I think is a feat! So, do you sort on vibes? Writers? Another metric? Case by case? TLDR: How do you deal when a character canonically says/does something that makes you go, “he would not fucking say that?”

Love your blog! And your writing!!!! Thank you!!!!!

ahh, crazy steve. what a guy (derogatory)

hmmmmmm for me personally if im writing a character i generally identify a “core” comic, regardless of retcons or conflicting characterisation, and then go off that. im reading a lot of bart allen atm so i focused on mark waid and todd dezago and completely ignored everything geoff johns has done with the character. for dick, scott snyder and judd winick are kinda the benchpoint for me, and then i kinda pick and choose (from wolfman, dixon, higgins, etc) what i think fits with that character. jason is easy cause he’s only had two comics worth anyone’s time. weirdly, some of roys best comics are written by devin grayson. so on and so forth.

wrt “he wouldn’t fucking say that” disease of which i am a chronic sufferer, I look back on dick (as an example) and his legacy characterisation, and whether or not it would make sense. not all legacy characterisation is good, mind!! but it’s generally easier to get a good benchmark if u go off a period when writers weren’t terminally on twitter. a lot of it is case by case, and i just map that in my brain

idk like SO much of it is just vibes and trying to create some internal consistency. like u said — there is so much conflicting characterisation and plotting and events that it can be very difficult so u just kinda have to trust ur own intuition. when i first posted persephone and got positive feedback for how i wrote dick I was kinda surprised — cause how i write him tends to clash with his popular depiction in both fandom and many modern comics. ig my real advice if ur writing (or reading) about these characters is to not fear complexity, and be conscious of exactly how racist most comic writers are.

[morerawerbreath]

EVEN MORE Fictional Men Ranked Least to Most Likely to Eat Pussy

Pleased to say that since the positive reception of Part 1, I have had way more people than I would have ever imagined in my inbox asking me to weigh in on various other fictional men!!! If this is my legacy on tumblr.edu so be it

Corrections to Part 1 first: Many feel that Mr Rochester was unjustly assessed:

Thank you scholars for your input, I am listening and learning!!!!

Without further ado:

9. Ashley Wilkes — Gone With the Wind

No. no. you guys. Beau was born via immaculate conception as far as i’m concerned but if i HAVE to get more specific I’d say Ashley and Melanie do nothing except missionary. I know he’s devoted to her but that doesn’t necessarily translate to eros and being in touch with the body!! Holy wet blanket purity complex. Even if he and Scarlett ever managed to get a room together and she asked him point blank to go down on her he would start shaking like a wet lapdog and leave the room.

8. Jay Gatsby — The Great Gatsby

I HATE that you all made me think about this. Gatsby has no relationship with real bodies. I think he would cast Daisy’s pussy in wax and put it on his wall. He would buy her whatever sex toy she wanted. He might even watch her use them. But there are way way WAY too many weird repressed currents for this to happen.

7. Andrei Bolkonsky — War and Peace

Andrei isn’t thinking about pussy, Andrei is thinking about Napoleon I. He might be inclined to take a woman in a manly fashion once in a while but she’s definitely not a real person to him and odds are he’s thinking about military maneuvers and his horse while it’s happening. Oral sex does not once cross his mind.

6. Pierre Bezukhov — War and Peace

Pierre is ranked in the middle because I honestly can’t decide. On the one hand I get huge fedora m’lady reddit vibes from him but on the other hand his reading is extensive, he’s thoughtful, and he’s lowkey devoted to Natasha without ever really asking for recognition?? On the other other hand if he was into going down on women maybe Hélène would hate his guts less, but on the OTHER other other hand she seems like a women with a lot of internalized misogyny who might simp shame him for trying to eat her out so maybe it's not his fault? Despite initial awkwardness I think he and Natasha might be able to figure this out and if he had weird freemason-y ideas about sex (? not sure what these would be but I bet they exist) she would probably tell him to stop being a freak and they’d get on with it (i hope)

5. Colonel Brandon — Sense and Sensibility

If Colonel Brandon was with a different woman I would have doubts, or guess that he probably has affectionate/polite but perhaps not very x-rated sex. (Can he give himself over to true carnal abandonment? I don’t know.) HOWEVER, Marianne is so DEEPLY erotic and so obviously deserves/needs to have someone go down on her every day — he knows this and he loves her and he will do whatever she needs to be happy, so!!!

4. Captain Wentworth — Persuasion

Frederick undoubtedly would go down on Anne but would she let him?!? Would she be able to allow herself to be the sole object of attention and devotion? For him to stare at her fully between the legs with the lights on? I feel like she could get there eventually but it might take a few years. He would be patient and not rush her and probably be good at it when it finally happened!

3. Henry Tilney — Northanger Abbey

Henry would give the sweetest long-term-relationship/Sunday morning head to Catherine. Probably the kissing your stomach and your thighs before predictably doing exactly what you like thing. He would say something funny when he has to stop to fish a pube out of his mouth. He’s comfy, he’s relaxed, he nails it — Catherine giggles and everyone goes home happy

2. D’Artagnan — The Three Musketeers

Absolutely 100% will this guy eat pussy. He may not know exactly what he’s doing but by god, the will is there. Constance might have to give him some pointers but this is a man who will look at you with moony eyes and take the fucking note. Probably sloppy at first but would ask to practice every day until he can make someone come in 30 seconds. Then he would brag to his mates about it.

Henry Crawford — Mansfield Park

Henry fucks. If he lived today he would have a tiktok account for fingering techniques. if mirrors on the ceiling were a thing in 1810 he would have one. he’s a player and everyone knows it but it’s almost worth fucking him to see if it’s as good as he claims it is. not only would he eat pussy but he would hold your hips down and wouldn’t let you move until you come. he has 4 different kinds of lube. like, it’s trashy but respect the game i guess.

Bonus: Mary Crawford — Mansfield Park

Mary can shoot a single look across the sitting room at girls who think they're straight and they'll suddenly have an overwhelming urge to have sleepovers with her. She'd be like "it's okay, we're just experimenting darling" and then satisfy them sexually in a way they never will be again. I don't know what's in the water where Mary and Henry grew up but jesus christ. She has everything that Henry has PLUS staying power.

Part 1 here!

[deadpool15]

Roomate part 1

This is some dumb fucking shit. How can someone be this bad at their job, while sitting here smiling in my fucking face. "So, explain to me, umm, what was your name again?" Mika said, staring at the realtor with absolute disgust and annoyance. "Just Kim would be fine, sweetheart," he states, staring me up and down with a flirty expression. "Yea, that's amazing. I'm gonna call you bitch ass, you cool with that?" I stated watching his face completely drop. "So, since this very kind women can't talk to you like a fucking adult, I'm just gonna talk to you like the man child you mother obviously failed to raise. Now, would you be a dear and tell me how exactly does someone manages to sell a place to two different people with knowing. We obviously don't fucking look or sounds anything alike. Therefore, that rolls out that pathetic ass excuse. I should whoop your ass bitch-."

As I went to jump on him, the unknown woman that was standing next to me grabbed me. Holding me while apologizing, causing the man to immediately leave in fear. "OK ok you can stop now, Ms." I roughly back away from her casting her to put up her hands in the air as a showcase of surrender. "I know we are in a bit of a predicament here, but the papers have already been finalized. Plus, this place is more than big enough for the both of us, so we can just share it." I stared her down before laughing and shaking my head. "If you fuck up, I'll whoop your ass too."

And well, that's how me and bada met. At first, there was a bit of hostile energy, mainly from my side. I wasn't really sure about her, like I was judging her character before I let the real me out. Then, it all changed one night. She randomly got home from a long ass day of working, saying she needed some self-care immediately. I mean, true enough, I wasn't so sure about her yet, but I'm not a monster, and a girl in need is simply a girl in need. I sat her on the couch while we did face masks and painted each other's nails. She was a little on the rocky side about the nails, but I managed to talk or more so threaten her into it. After a while, we started talking about life. I learned she had a boyfriend named Howl, strange ass name.

"Wait so like when you two fuck, do you moan out howl or just government name. Because u fucking can't right now." I said laughing and hitting the coach, while bada sat there embarrassed and pushing me over. "I mean, I don't know. Like I don't really sit there and think about it." She says shyly. "What about you?" "Oo I don't do relationships, I mean, it's enough me to go around right. Plus, this pussy game is crazy, will have a motherfucker all obsessive and shit." She stares atcthe ground shocked. "Wow, are all Americans like this?" "Like what?"Just open and out there." I chuckle before adjusting myself on the seat. "To be honest, babes, I mean sex is sex. We are adults we should be able to talk about it freely. Plus, Korea is just really hush hush and polite about that stuff."

That night, Bada and i bonded. We became like sisters. Telling each other everything. I even met her man. They were a hot couple. I could see why they would go for each other. But that's pretty much all about Howl. we got to know each other to a certain degree. I mean, at the end of the day, girl code still exists, and it's something i truly ride and believe in, sisters over misters, you know. Like him and Bada would help pick out my outfits and stuff. Like right now. "So, what do you think?" I ask both of them as they are sitting on my bed eating snacks. "Don't you think they are a bit revealing?" Howl said while opening up another bag of the hot fries I had shipped here, while bada shoke her head, agreeing with him. "First of all, I'm a grown ass woman who is everything but insecure so I can show off. Secondly, shawty was fine in that pic she sent me, so she must wanna see all this. So, which one sluty sexy or sluty cute."

Each outfit was revealing yet gave a different vibe. I never questioned why Howl was protective over me, shit I thought he saw me as his little sister like Bada. Boy was I fucking wrong. I started showing then the messages between me and mystery women. She was a hot masc with a long wolf cut. And the entire conversation basically consists of us trying to have phone sex. But why sit in bed and play with myself when I can have her do it for me. "Wow, you two really are going to do this on the first date?" Bada asked while staring at me, looking slightly nervous, yet I couldn't understand why. To be honest, they both had been acting weird lately. They were like my best friends, so I wanted to know what was happening but didn't wanna drag it on. Maybe it's nothing. "Now you know I don't plan on dating that girl. Anyways, I'm sticking with sexy, so I'll be back and you two can do anything you horny fucks can thing of. Except fucking on my bed. Move it along weirdos." I tell them walking out the house.

"What the fuck, this shit is getting out of hand, Bada I thought we agreed to tell her?" Howl said angrily thinking about all the things Mika could be doing right now with that girl, she had been gone for hours. "I know, this is hard for me too. But we can't just tell her out of the blue. Hey, me and my boyfriend are totally in love with you, and I know you don't do relationships, but are you willing to date us, so we can finally call you ours and stop listening to you fuck other people." Bada stated basically yelling at him. "We just need to tell her this is bullshit-"

Before they could finish their conversation, they heard something slam against the door, startling them both. The sounds kept repeating as if someone was trying to get in, causing Howl to immediately grab Bada and place her behind him, thinking someone was trying to break into the apartment. "Are we being robbed?" Bada asks Howl in slight fear, but before he could defend them, both Mika comes crashing through the door, drunk as shit. With what seems to be her date. Both of them kissed and basically dry humping each other with clothes on, paying no mind to the people in the house. Mika moves her hand trying to lock the door before, the unknown woman grabs her neck shoves her knee into pussy, making sure to rub away all the tension. They both moan into each other's mouths and finally lock the door stumbling into her room, still without acknowledging her fellow roommate and boyfriend.

As they bedroom door abruptly closes shut, they are now finally out of the eye sight of Bada and Howl, who are seething in anger. "I thought you said they weren't gonna work out, jackass?" Bada whisper yelled at Howl, hitting him in the shoulder. Though he can't even find the time to register the pain before all they can hear is the sound of the bed creeks against the wall. "They shouldn't have, I mean, they don't have anything in common. What the fuck does she has that we don't?" "We are telling her tomorrow, I don't care what we have to do but she is gonna know. We can't go on like this. It's supposed to be the three of us, ok?" Howl says while grabbing Bada's cheeks, looking into her eyes for reassurance. She nods along.

"Y-yes... shit.... right there.... ughhh... fuck me...". Bada turns to looks at the door with a sour expression, "but let's go, I refuse to listen to this shit any longer. Not when we can obviously make her moan way louder then that." Howl just smiles for a moment and nods, "exactly baby let's not feed into negatively. She will be ours by tomorrow night."

(See, I know yall are waiting on the mommy duties part 2 fic, but I just got sick as fuck and I feel like garbage. But I don't want yall to think I'm one of those writers that's coming up with a new excuse every week, so I will try my best to work on it, babes. Now tell me if yall feel like roommate pt.2 would be a good idea or nah?)

[batsplat]

more thoughts? PLEASE

okay I'm gonna assume this is about my tags on the sete post and well when I was editing I cut out a lot from a bunch of different sections so there's not necessarily... uh. this isn't going to be a coherent addition. but I have a few more thoughts I might as well rattle through

1. reinvention

idk I just enjoy what he's doing with his style changes during that time... like in 2002, 2003 and 2004 you've got a different vibe going on each year. the whole point of that brno hair colour thing was that it was almost a step back into the past, of re-embracing the fun and the whimsy and escaping the constraints and pressures of the present. very much embracing a more youthful vibe when you compare it to 2002, getting back in touch with his inner teenager, all while he's plotting his crazy move to yamaha. and then 2004 obviously he inevitably changes up his colour scheme, but he also lets his hair grow out and it ends up nicely emphasising that this is a New Era for him. not really an original point but there's just something fun and playful to how he uses his cute lil visual storytelling elements, from the hairstyles to the celebrations... he makes it fun to analyse him, y'know? always thinking about The Narrative

2. the symbolism of it all

this bit was too vibes-based to make it into the post but it's basically linked to these bits in the conclusion:

and following on from the reinvention thing, I do think there's something narratively rich to how valentino had to change his approach as a result of the switch to yamaha. you have this... I wouldn't call it a regression necessarily but maybe a recapturing of this playfulness in the middle of 2003 with the whole brno thing, but then there's something a little tougher and hardened about him in his yamaha days that kind of comes from necessity because he just didn't have that margin for error anymore. from the mat oxley reference book:

Some racers think motorcycle racing is a high-speed ballet, others think it's a petrolhead's wrestling match. Valentino always had the killer instinct, but it's significant that he only became known as a warrior rider after he left Honda. Without the technical advantage of the RC211V, he needed to find another way to beat rivals. He found that way at the 2005 Spanish GP, where he battered into Sete Gibernau at the final corner to win the race. He used similarly aggressive tactics to beat Casey Stoner at Laguna Seca in 2008 and Jorge Lorenzo at Motegi in 2010, and to deal with Marc Marquez during 2015. It has been said that Vale invented this kind of racing, although a deeper look into the sport's history reveals that this isn't true. And yet there's no doubt that he loved the thrill of the chase and the thrill of the kill.

and yeah, crucially, he did always have it in him. he was a proper menace in his rookie 125cc season, to the surprise of absolutely no one. but it's a very valentino thing, isn't it... you've got this clown prince persona, you have this exuberance and joie de vivre and all of it, and it's not like any of that is a lie. it's also not like his friendliness to other people is a lie either: the anecdotes about this are pretty consistent in telling you about how he does take genuine interest in his fellow human beings, which is hardly something you can take for granted with the kind of socially isolated egomaniacs competitive sports tends to produce. (though he does also benefit in that regard from coming up through an era in which the sport was still a little less professionalised and he was afforded somewhat more time to develop into a generally more well-rounded character, not a bad thing lbr.) but then, back against the wall, the fangs come out. and in a way that's what the entire 2004 season was about for him - this period where he was actually facing real challenges, a period of transition and transformation where the winning was a little less easy and he changed as a competitor as a result of that

and there's just something... idk, fitting, about how it was sete specifically who ended up being the victim of this, the guy who had always been seen as a little too carefree and nice and soft to cut it at the sharp end of the sport. who valentino had befriended: he'd been happy to blur that line between competitor and friend back then, though obviously that friendship started before sete became a serious threat. if you really want to go off the deep end with this, you could say valentino ended up exorcising the softness within himself by crushing sete. he wasn't going to allow any weakness in his own competitive make up, not when it could actually cost him. and in a way he really did have to understand sete really well, to know how to get to him in the way he did, to know how to play all those little moments in front of the cameras... those moments where he's cold to sete and knows it will unsettle sete, where he extends his hand and knows sete will accept, all of it. targeted cruelty, based on a thorough understanding of sete's character. again, this is a bit of a reach but you could say the two feuds where he went the furthest with his cruelty were against the two blokes who were the most similar to valentino. and, well, sometimes you do have to understand someone to truly know how best to hurt them

the whole episode also ended up signalling something to his competitors, almost like a warning. it's not like his relationship with everyone else in the paddock changed from one day to the next and he still had good friendships with other guys after that - even those he was actually competing against, like nicky hayden or loris capirossi. but inevitably, it will have also shifted perceptions of valentino. after the feud with biaggi you could say he was really young and also a lot of people had problems with biaggi. but gibernau? if you need concrete evidence people took notice of valentino's behaviour, take casey in 2007 saying to valentino that he didn't want their relationship deteriorate the same way it had with biaggi/gibernau. one feud can happen to everyone, two starts looking a little suspicious - three was where it became a pattern

3. rivalries

y'know, I've seen that casey quote about valentino and gibernau and biaggi thrown around a fair few places over the years, but the thing I've always been kind of curious about is what valentino thought about casey telling him that. if this is a pattern of behaviour, then what's happening there is valentino being confronted with that pattern, right? I think an underlying question you have to address at some point with valentino and his rivalries is how aware he is of what he's doing. like, is he consciously engineering feuds or is he doing it subconsciously? and I think it can be a bit misleading if the first valentino feud you come across is the marc one, because it'll prime you to read all the other ones in certain ways that might not be entirely accurate. I've not quite figured out how to express this yet so bear with me here - but marc is the one who valentino felt the most hurt by and continues to feel the most hurt by and as a result it's the most emotionally charged feud from his perspective. but what that also means is it's the feud where he's the least consciously aware of how he himself has contributed to this whole nightmare situation they've got going on. because from his perspective he did treat marc differently from... well, basically from any post-sete major or even minor rival. he offered marc all that kindness and generosity and good will and graciousness in defeat as well as victory and had it thrown in his face

which makes it easy to assume this is all just... well, not just twenty years of feuding but also twenty years of self-delusion. and it's not quite like that - he has more self-awareness than that I think. when you read how he talks about biaggi in his autobiography (who he is kind enough not to completely erase from his narrative), even in 2005 he seems to have a pretty good handle on what that feud really was. okay, maybe he does somewhat shirk responsibility and somewhat overemphasises the role of the media as opposed to his own malice, but there's an awareness of how stupid and silly and mean-spirited the whole thing was. it was just a kind of nasty rivalry with a guy valentino didn't like much - but who, for what it's worth, wasn't exactly going out of his way to be nice to valentino either. sure, it ended up being torture for biaggi, and sure valentino did maybe relish inflicting said torture a little more than is morally appropriate. but y'know, in some ways, it's quite straightforward, this honest mutual dislike. uncomplicated, even

and this I did not include in the actual sete post because it's just complete and utter speculation, but I wonder to what extent the sete experience did end up changing valentino's approach to his competitors. whether he deliberately embraced that side of himself a little more and was a little more considered and calculating in how he treated his rivals, more in touch with his inner bastard, if you will. even if he just had in the back of his mind that something like with sete could happen again, even if he was just a bit more careful about keeping certain blokes at arm's length. because, remember, from his perspective this was also the first time a relationship with a rival deteriorated this drastically - now you can say 'yeah but it was his fault', but that doesn't change how it was a new experience for valentino too! he was also learning stuff about himself in the process, going through an important journey of self-exploration, etc etc. love crushing my enemies on the path to self-actualisation

and valentino did learn a lot from that whole experience on-track, he did learn useful skills in terms of managing rivalries - so maybe he also looked at what worked on sete in the psychological warfare department and, y'know, consciously made a note of it. when casey delivered that little spiel to valentino about not wanting their relationship to deteriorate, I assume valentino responded perfectly pleasantly in the moment... but I do also think he was extremely ready to deliberately sour their dynamic if he had to. zero self-delusion required

he's quite calculating with casey and jorge I feel... especially with casey, he really didn't waste his time feeling emotionally slighted or coming up with reasons why casey was the devil and needed to be destroyed. he wanted to destroy casey because he wanted to win, and was comfortable enough in his own skin to use the full bag of tools and tricks to do so, no complex internal narratives to justify the whole thing needed. for him, that was all just part of the game. it wasn't for casey, which is a topic for an entirely different post, but... well, casey and jorge in particular are the ones who have spoken about this valentino desire to create enemies, to give himself someone to hate etc. and in a way, ironically I would say they're the two for who that was the least true. yeah, they gave him a helpful target and he was perfectly happy to whip up drama where needed. but I don't really think he was going to any particular lengths to invent reasons to hate them (even his 2010 dramatics were really just faffing about). he found them both kinda annoying and he wanted to beat them. that's it

4. these photos of valentino and sete at sepang 2004

idk I just like photos that have nebulously bad vibes if you know the context. it would have been quite funny if they'd consistently used the same shade of yellow in sepang press conferences over the years

5. marc

all of the stuff above does to me really emphasise how... god. this is the thing about valentino and marc, right, as a tragic narrative - it feels inevitable in many ways that this had to somehow go wrong, but then at the same time the exact way in which it did end up going wrong was reliant on so many things playing out the exact way in which they did, that it feels like if you could have just slightly changed things... like, let's say for a moment my baseless speculation about valentino is correct and he did become a little more careful and deliberate in how he approached his relationships with his competitors after the sete experience. there's so much that had to come together for him to lower his guard around marc to the extent that he did. again, injuries, ducati, how he wasn't really competitive in 2013, how dominant marc was especially in the first half of 2014... all these things that came together to lull them both into this false sense of security, spurred on by genuine interpersonal chemistry - all of which allowed them to even become friends in the first place

think about what the early marc and valentino relationship looks like if you're casey (who, bless him, certainly wasn't paying close enough attention to motogp to be aware of 'press conference vibes') or jorge (who, bless him, was unfortunately unable to avoid said press conference vibes). isn't there a little part of you that goes 'what the fuck is all this then' when you see valentino act like marc is god's gift to motorcycle racing after spending years enacting elaborate hazing rituals any time particularly promising talent had come through? casey's little 'yeah he was fucking with me in practise in 2006' line, jorge... okay in valentino's defence, it's worth pointing out that their 2008 relationship was more cordial than literally anyone had expected, and things only really soured in 2010. but still, their camps did already start up a healthy habit of sniping at each other in the press in 2009 and they did have the whole cold war cosplay situation going on, so. jorge certainly wasn't being given the kid gloves treatment

and sure, 2014 was a pretty drama free year for everyone because the general consensus was 'what would be the point', and I suppose if you're jorge you might also just assume the old man's washed and has gone soft in his advanced age. but still! I think I'd be a tad peeved myself, especially given valentino immediately fell into a lovely little habit of taking marc's side in controversies from the very start of marc's rookie season. but that's kind of the point - valentino's entire approach to marc required that past history of feuding for him to fall back on, for him to imitate/echo when the moment arrived (as I talked about here)... but it also required valentino to have gotten enough distance from all of his past misadventures for him to not have that sort of mindset from the outset when it came to marc

which, another thing I feel like maybe can get obscured a little if you're looking back on past rivalries with the marc-lens - this concept of valentino 'switching up' towards his opponents. because I do actually think there is something categorically different between the sete + marc rivalries when compared to any of his other ones - and it's how deliberate that switch-up is from valentino's perspective, vs to what extent it's driven by 'genuine' emotion. I just think there were rivalries (for a given value of the word if we're including melandri here) between sete's era and marc's era where valentino decided he was going to create a little distance there - but it was all part of the game. he didn't hate those guys. he just wanted to win, and understood as much about himself

but he does hate marc, because that rivalry was never supposed to be like the other ones. which, in the end, is what made it far far worse

6. che spettacolo

'he was so happy after sealing his first yamaha title :)' I go, knowing he had just pulled off a pretty fucking nasty spite win against a bloke he'd recently put a curse on. he really did risk quite a lot in the penultimate round of the season, just because he could not bear to see sete win that race. revealing, isn't it? obviously he'd always try to win the race, but... at times he just couldn't help himself in how far he went

anyway, it's my favourite of his title-winning shirts. a deliberate departure from tradition - he told his team he didn't want logos or any other decoration or even any mention that he was world champion again. the reasoning he gave was that nobody would expect it from him, which... well, yeah, it's what that whole year was about, wasn't it? about doing the unexpected, about proving everyone wrong - and, in the end, about putting on a show. like all the best valentino celebrations, it gets the message across and explains to you quite clearly what he thinks the story of his victory was. memorable in its simplicity but tells you everything you need to know

one of his career highlights <3 it's in character that the whole thing was just a little bit evil

7. film

I cannot for the life of me remember when this was except it was post-2015, but one time in a presser valentino was asked which rivalry of his he'd make into a movie and his answer was biaggi. obviously it's hard to argue with the dramatic appeal of that particular story and it's certainly got a lot of very memorable moments, but my hot take is that the sete rivalry has got it beat by virtue of having a far clearer narrative arc. it's a slightly unusual, slightly odd story for a sports rivalry... like I said in the sete post, people aren't typically all that compelled by sports rivalries where you know from the outset which one of them is better. what's the point then, right? very much the indie flavour rivalry, a little more niche and philosophical and inscrutable and, y'know, darker. this is a feud that centres around a curse, after all. this one's for the girls who get it etc etc

valentino's erasure of sete is interesting for a lot of reasons, but it's a shame because it really is such a good narrative arc that adds so much to the transition to yamaha. the transformation valentino himself went through as a competitor, how he responded to real threats emerging, revealing your true nature in extremis and all of that... I'm not entirely convinced by how sete says valentino didn't need to do what he did against sete - he said it specifically about jerez, which I suppose is debatable, but I imagine he meant it more broadly too. there was a moment valentino could have lost that 2004 championship. and he'd already decided he would do anything to stop that from happening, which things like that assen last lap nicely symbolised. the thing about judging valentino for the foibles and the spite and the dishonesty and the competitive paranoia and all of it - well, at the end of the day they are key aspects of his make up as a competitor for a reason. you can judge him as a person... but as an athlete, more often than not they worked out in his favour. that's what's so interesting about sepang 2015 in a way - it's the only time the whole thing well and truly backfired

(I know casey has drawn the comparison between himself and marc before and argued valentino's biggest mistake was in making enemies but... well. was it? it wasn't against casey - valentino did not lose anything by making an enemy out of casey and he very well may have gained a lot, depending on what your read of the 2008 season is. very much a topic for another post... but this is the thing right, I think it's perfectly reasonable to object to valentino's behaviour on moral grounds, less reasonable to ignore why it was such a big part of who he was as a competitor and how it helped him succeed. I completely understand why casey wants to draw that comparison, but - perhaps unfortunately - it's a little too nice to be true that valentino's malice cost him as much as casey suggests it did)

valentino learns a lot from the sete rivalry in terms of his storytelling and self-mythologisation, not least in how he plays up the theatre of the sepang presser. one aspect that really stands out to me is the pointed cruelty of his celebrations after sepang. from the sete post:

revisiting his whole 'character arc' from the 2003-05 period here, you've got this reversion in 2003, right, this throwback to the antics of his teenage years, and then you've got him getting meaner in 2004... and these things are married here. the whimsy and fun inherent to his celebrations is being wielded in the name of humiliating his competitors, of making a joke out of them. there's this thin line between joy and malice, where throughout his career he seems so endlessly capable of both - even at the same time, clearly. he's obviously already shown himself capable of mocking his opponents in the biaggi days, but, I don't know, it really does feel like there's something to how deliberately the humiliation is incorporated into the theatre of victory here. what a spectacle indeed

8. rage and panic

but then again, I really don't want to pretend like valentino is perfectly rational or calculating in what he's doing here. remember where all this started - in qatar, a race where he well and truly lost his cool and he knows as much. I included the relevant autobiography section in this post, but just to put the bit here that's bit about qatar itself:

he knows his brain fucked him over! I also think it's interesting that this reads slightly differently from his immediate post-race quotes, which I included in the sete post:

was he angry or was he relaxed or, somehow, both? was that unfortunate moment of relaxation caused by the inevitable letdown from the anger - was it unsustainable to ride like that? either way, the key bit to me is the heightened emotions involved and how usually he has it under control, usually he can use all of this in his own interest to spur himself on... except when he can't. as I pointed out in the tags of the qatar post, there are elements of that race that do remind you of another 25 year old rider who had received a penalty he felt was unfair and was working his way through the field while running hot on emotion. it's all fun and games and smiling assassins etc etc, but if you get them really angry...

and, y'know, in a way there's an element of panic to his post-qatar media rampage. okay, sure, he was clearly furious and the whole thing did end up working out in his favour, but in the moment he must have also been scared he was going to end up losing a championship he'd thought he basically had wrapped up. it's funny because if motogp were a sane and normal sport, valentino (allegedly) vowing his title rival would never win a race again on live tv should have been a moment of foolishness and hubris and should have been remembered as such. it should have been him losing it for a moment there and saying a bunch of stuff he'd need to gloss over and hope everyone moves on quickly from. it is absolutely bonkers that it all played out the way it did post-qatar and it just like... all went in his favour. it could not have gone better for him. there's a world in which 2004 is remembered as the title valentino squandered. but sometimes hubris gets rewarded, I suppose

9. margin

sane and normal sport, huh? the thing about sports is that none of it is sane and normal. if you actually go through the races one by one and look at all the instances sete could have won a race post-qatar, it does feel just incredibly improbable that sete never won a single one of those damn things. I mean, there are five races where he's literally going into the last lap(!!) with a chance of winning. (in the name of journalistic integrity I do have to point out sete's fuel ran out in the last lap of brno so he didn't really have a chance of winning, but that just brings us back to the 'does motogp exist in a parallel universe where black magic is real' question.) in three of them, sete is ahead of valentino at some point of that final lap

one of the worst things about sports is that sometimes it can trick you into thinking the final outcome is in doubt when it actually kind of isn't. the fact that these two blokes are arriving at the last lap together fools you into thinking that both of them have a decent shot of winning. but obviously it doesn't actually work like that. call it skill and the extra margin of error a decisive performance edge will provide you, call it a clutch factor, call it how 'broken' sete was - it really was just the illusion of proximity, the illusion of tight margins. maybe it really was a test of wills. in two of those races, valentino risked quite a lot to win. phillip island for obvious title arithmetic reasons, jerez because he's literally throwing his bike against sete's in his desperation to prevent sete from beating him. in some ways, it feels unfair to judge sete's mentality too harshly - firstly because this is an insane person sport and I do think he has a point when he says it's maybe not a great idea to laud crash-happy riders for their 'bravery', and secondly because he was just fundamentally the worse rider, which obviously means it was always going to be harder for him to beat valentino than vice versa. but, and this is without any judgement, sete's problem was that valentino always would have been willing to go further than him in his desire to win. to be good at the insane person sport... you do unfortunately have to be insane

10. momentum

I'm not going to be able to do this justice here so I'll only address it very briefly. but I've referred quite a few times to what valentino 'learned' from those years and the sete rivalry and how it helped him acquire tricks he'd be able to use for his other rivals in the future, and there's one aspect of this that kind of stands out to me. you know this bit, right:

this is the thing to me, he becomes so much more proficient at managing momentum. take his 2001 season, he was just kinda doing stuff... panicked a little bit when he had a bad race at the sachsenring until jb talked him off the ledge and reminded him that neither him nor the bike were all that great there. poor thing. and then 2002 and 2003 didn't really have title fights, though I guess 2003 did have a mid-season turning point of sorts when valentino just decided he'd had enough of losing races. which is a nice thing to be able to do, I suppose

but yeah, obviously I already addressed at length how valentino did his whole show at sepang to stop sete's momentum cold, and then how he fatally undermined sete's self-belief and hope and conviction in jerez a few races later - basically stopping that title bid before it even got started. which is all well and good, but... okay, how do you actually manage to make your three most famous overtakes so meaningful? obviously the cause and effect relationship is a bit muddled here - just because they're his most famous overtakes, they're not necessarily his best, and we remember them particularly strongly because they had such a strong impact on his fortunes. but still, when you think about it... sepang was only a turning point that season because of the theatre and not because of the race itself, his overtake in jerez was 100% last minute desperation... but laguna and catalunya? he literally could not have scripted those races more perfectly

both happen at a time when he really, really needs a big win. in 2008, he might have had the points on his side but he sure didn't have the momentum, with casey's three consecutive wins on a ducati that finally seemed well-settled enough to fight for the title and with a lot of strong casey tracks to come. like, he basically wasn't the title favourite any more going into that race - even at the end of laguna one of the commentators still referred to casey as "the man to beat" for the rest of the season. in 2009, the situation was similarly dire. from here (I say like I'm citing something more substantial than my own tumblr posts):

they were both races that valentino went into at a time when he was in serious trouble - but on the flip side they also presented a serious opportunity. both laguna (a race casey must have felt completely certain he would win) and catalunya (jorge's home race) were ones where he could really hurt his rivals. at some point that weekend, whether before the race for casey or before the final corner for jorge, both of them would have been 100% confident they'd win... and valentino stole those victories from right under their noses. and the thing is, right, he couldn't have planned exactly how those races went. first of all because, contrary to whatever the italian public may believe, he is not literally a god. and second of all, the specific overtakes everyone remembers are also ones that inherently had a lot of risk attached to them you'd obviously prefer to avoid. at laguna you have the excursion into the dirt where he needed skill and also quite frankly luck to not crash. catalunya was a last corner overtake - and as we've established, valentino by this point had learned his lesson about leaving it that late if he had any choice in the matter

still, it's not like it was just fate or coincidence or any of that. obviously, he did get lucky that these races unfolded in such a perfect manner for him... but athletes do have a hand in creating their own luck. for laguna, and this is so very much a topic for another post, valentino deliberately deployed tactics to fuck with casey in a way that ended up generating that overtake - without getting into it too much, he basically knew he couldn't allow casey to be ahead going into turn 10 (the corkscrew's turn 8). so if you've decided in advance that come what may, you'll stick your bike in front of your rival's bike in a certain corner... well, if you get lucky, then maybe you can create a little magic. with catalunya, he said afterwards that he'd been imagining that overtake for the whole week before the race. incidentally, according to the commentators jorge had told them that if you're ahead going into the last two corners, you've won the race (which is obviously the kind of thing you should never say, are you insane??) - and that's the key, isn't it. here too, there's a meeting of skill and luck and jorge maybe not being as diligent in protecting the inside line as he should have been (a fact that casey, always polite, full of tact, ever helpful, was willing to repeatedly point out to jorge) and it could have very much ended up with two bikes in the dirt and some awkward conversations within yamaha that evening... but still, at the end of the day, you've got to "invent something" as the commentators put it, you've got to come up with that move and decide it's possible and visualise it again and again before eventually turning it into reality. both of those wins and both of the overtakes everyone remembers were at least to some extent built on tactics and prior planning and valentino deliberately producing something special when he really needed to

the other key bit is, okay, obviously it's not that remarkable that valentino immediately clocked they were important wins, given he'd intended them to be important wins going into the respective races and he knew full well how dramatic the duels had been... but he was still very adept at leaning into the theatre of it all. the idea that valentino came up with the idea of kissing the corkscrew during the race is very funny to me, but it is pretty plausible given he will have had time to do so while coasting at the front after casey's fall. and it's just very memorable, isn't it? sure, that corkscrew overtake helped him win the race, but so did the first lap move into turn 8 or that nifty move on the outside of turn 3 on the lap casey went down. the battle still continued for another twenty odd laps after that corkscrew overtake, but valentino had the shrewd showman's acumen to immediately pinpoint that as the moment of the race, the thing everyone would remember, the defining image, and paid tribute to it in his celebrations to ensure the association would stick in everyone's minds

obviously, he also goes for all kinds of over the top celebrations in catalunya, including wildly ecstatic fist pumping on the bike and breaking out of parc fermé to soak up the adulation of jorge's home fans and all that stuff. and he's a huge fan of the fact he got his 99th career win beating the number 99, because of course he is

also obviously he does that annoying thing where he goes up to both of them while they're doing their interviews so their reactions will be recorded for posterity. so yeah, that's the thing, right... it's about knowing immediately the wins are special and meaningful and signalling with your overblown celebrations how meaningful they are to everyone else so that everyone else is extra sure to remember them and talk about them forever and ever... obviously he got lucky here, obviously it's a little crazy that both those races worked out that well from his perspective. but, y'know. got to hand it to him, I guess. something pretty neat about how both times he went 'yes I am going to change the momentum of the season today'... and he did. plus you've got to give him credit for the fact that he actually capitalised on his momentum, which isn't always easy, and basically took control of both seasons from that point onward (if in different ways and to different extents). he knew he had to take advantage of how his rivals were on the back foot after his daring victories, and he did. you could almost say, right, he knew he had to bite harder when his opponent was already bleedi- *gunshot rings out*

bonus: valencia

so the thing about this whole 'back to back wins with different manufacturers' business is that, understandably, everyone focuses on the welkom side of the equation. very spectacular, very unlikely win, really shouldn't have been possible and somehow valentino did it anyway. but, y'know, that other side of the equation is noteworthy in its own right! he really was crap at valencia. eighth place in his 1999 250cc campaign, his worst result all year when he finished the race (1 dnf that season)... his 2000 title campaign died there when he crashed... eleventh place in 2001, his worst result all year when he finished the race (1 dnf)... in 2002, he got second place there, one of only five races that season he didn't win

but he really, really wanted to win that race in valencia. now, personally, my assumption has always been it was kind of supposed to be a 'fuck you' to honda, which I still completely believe btw. but this is how he himself frames it:

I was the one who worried. Saturday night I took pictures of myself hugging and embracing the RC211V. I wanted to say goodbye to my bike because I knew that tomorrow we would race our last race together. Leaving the RC211V was what hurt most. In fact, I now believe the reason it took me so long to say yes to Yamaha was because I was so attached to that bike. As I looked at the RC211V and thought that we would soon be separated, I genuinely feared that it would take a very long time before I once again tasted victory. That's why I decided I had to win that last race of the 2003 season. It would be a great way of saying goodbye of course, but also I wanted to stock up on victories, I wanted to have the taste of triumph fresh in mind because who knew when I would win again with Yamaha?

which, okay, setting aside for a minute what a freak he is about these bloody bikes, there's two underlying reasons he expresses here for why he's so desperate to win this race. first of all, yes, he really loves that bike and wants to give it the farewell their partnership deserves. and second of all, more poignantly (for the non-bike fuckers anyway), he really did not know when he'd win again. I don't know, it's something that stuck with me... I think we can talk all we like about how big a risk it was and what a step into the unknown it was and nobody believed he could do what he did etc etc, but to me this is just the most straightforward way of capturing that uncertainty. valentino wanting to remember the taste of victory, because he knew he might be giving it up for a long time. he loves winning so, so much, he's done so much over the years to win, he's never been able to stop chasing the high... and yet he walked away from that bike

"I decided I had to win that last race" is in itself funny because obviously a lot of people can't just 'decide' to win races. which, yes, it's just a thing people say, but it does capture the essence of that type of valentino win where it feels like he's won it through sheer force of will. a lot of the times, these are his spite wins - the phillip island 2004's and jerez 2005's of this world - hey, speaking of sete duels, we should include le mans and sachsenring and brno and qatar 2005 as well. various biaggi wins, perhaps most memorably the middle finger race in suzuka 2001 and his last lap overtake in phillip island 2001, where he won his first premier class title. when he beats spaniards in dramatic battles at catalunya like 2004, 2005, 2009, 2016. his fury at his penalty at phillip island 2003 that results in that spectacular fifteen second margin over the field. his desire to fuck with jorge in motegi/sepang 2010. let's throw in his dominant win in jerez 2016 in enemy territory, the first race win he'd had of that nature since... oof, let me have a think, maybe assen 2009? (incidentally, the race that directly followed catalunya.) like, man, this is not how he was winning races post-prime, it was always one hell of a struggle - with one glaring exception

which makes it worth pointing out that the second and indeed last time he won in valencia was in 2004, when he was in the process of dismantling sete. now, given sete ended up finishing fourth, it wasn't strictly necessary to get the win to ensure the curse continued doing its thing. but, y'know, there was a point where sete was in front of valentino on-track. then sete tries to overtake biaggi, pretty firmly it has to be said, and pushes them both wide allowing valentino to sweep right on through, which I found pretty funny icl. anyway, the best way to ensure your rival doesn't win a race is to win it yourself, right? after the frustration of qatar, he reacted by winning the last three races of the season spurred on by sheer spite. no wonder he took notes and learned a little something about how to best motivate himself

bonus 2: things that aged badly

october 2003, mind you. he really got those guys good

bonus 3: dovi

I mean, come on. it is a little bit funny that both valentino and marc acquire a new rival at age 24 seemingly out of nowhere who was their main rival for three years. (I don't care what the championship standings say, marco melandri was not valentino's main rival in 2005 - sete might have been extremely cursed but those were still The Battles that year.) said rival was 6-7 years older than them, known for being a particularly smart rider and a wet weather specialist, and announced themselves as a major threat in large part through winning two dramatic last lap duels against the all time great in the first year of that rivalry. both rivalries were (well, initially in valentino's case) notable for being significantly warmer on an interpersonal level than the ATG's previous major rivalry

both had previously been hrc riders but had been fired by the team. gibernau had one premier class win before 2003, dovi had two before 2017, and all three of those wins came in the wet. ofc dovi did have a bit more pedigree - the 125cc title, stronger results in the premier class, considerably more podiums. but both dovi and gibernau weren't really supposed to be the main rival to the ATG, not even within their own team - though, obviously, the reasons why they ended up assuming that mantle couldn't have been more different. with both of them, people said they'd changed their approach to riding, mainly in terms of their mentality - and that it had helped them grow into their new role as the primary challenger

there's not really a point here... I just think it's neat. obviously it is a little funny how differently those respective relationships unfolded, but I also wouldn't say it's fair to entirely pin that on the personalities involved, as opposed to circumstantial factors. that being said

[joanofexys]

Please I must know more about Angel…

I’m gonna do a mix of fun facts and extra Angel backstory/PSU stuff so hopefully there’ll be something good in there

Some fun facts abt Angel:

Cuts the sleeves off most of his shirts

Crop. Tops.

Basically I wanted more men to dress like whores

Except he lowkey does it in a dad, rock band in someone’s garage, hot mechanic kind of way if that vibe makes sense in any capacity

His nose is crooked

Has a lot of scarring across his body, most of it has keloided (idk if that’s a word but I have keloid scars so leave me alone rip). He’s also got a few on his face

Because they’re raised and pretty prominent they tend to weird most people out and even though most of them are from when he was 10 or younger (courtesy of his father) they haven’t really faded. Some of them hurt some of them don’t

He doesn’t really like them or think they’re cool, he’s learned to feel neutral about it. However, Phoebe loves his scars

He’s built like a fucking brick wall. Just absolutely massive

gonna put it under the cut cause partial nudity ig but this is an idea of his body build:

also real quick the closest I’ve gotten for a good face claim for him is Isaiah Baumgardner

His hands are really cut up/scarred (I’ll explain this in a sec)

Cat and dog person. He will argue very passionately for it too and how unfair he thinks it is whenever people try and demonize cats or dogs

Queen would probably be the top artist in his Spotify wrapped

Hoards different editions of classics

Okay yeah moving on from the random bullets to me writing another essay about him

I did NOT get into this in his initial post but yeah his dad is a serial killer. For years his mom is labeled as missing (went missing when he was 4 years old) and then at 10 years old he’s removed from his dad’s home and moved into foster care. It wasn’t until 14 that his mother was confirmed dead upon his father’s arrest and confession.

When he was 14 years old the police randomly showed up at the door of his foster family at the time and took him down to the station. He was questioned for 7 hours, wrapping up at 3 in the morning, while the police tried to figure out if he had any knowledge or involvement in his father’s murders. All it resulted in was a crying Angel begging for his mommy to come home. With how young he was and the fact that he had been out of the home for 4 years (and his father continued killing during those 4 years) they declared there was no way he was aware. He was offered a chance to testify against his father. He refused to show.

When they dropped him off at his foster home he very nearly got the cops called again. He destroyed his room. Every personal belonging he had bought or been given by former families. He moved to a different home within the week. He breaks a lot of glass. And insists on cleaning it up himself. He cuts up his hands bad doing so. They have to take him to the ER.

Because he was a minor and had basically no ties to his father he was largely kept out of the media. When his father’s arrest and plea of guilty made the news it was mentioned that he had a single son but there was never a name. Obviously with Di Fiore anyone who looks him up is likely to get his dad in the search results instead. But he does his best to keep it hidden. It’s pretty easy for Wymack (and Andrew rip) to dig it up but Angel keeps it buried until he ends up at Palmetto. Once Andrew drops that he knows then Angel gives up on trying to keep any secrets from the foxes pretty much

He spends most of his time with the monsters. Phoebe’s favorites of them end up being Andrew (much to Aaron’s dismay since Aaron babysits more) and Kevin. However, like how cats can tell when people don’t like them, she is prone to asking for Neil and refusing to let anyone else hold her. Neil has no fucking clue what to do with her

When he goes to Eden’s with them if he can’t leave Phoebe with Harper then his go to babysitters are Dan & Matt and Wymack

He spends more time crashing at Wymack or Abby’s places than in the dorms

Resisting the urge to dump about my oc x canon ships but he and Allison are fwbs. He and Kevin are something (he’s basically a weighted blanket as a person which is something I think Kevin needs)

Uhhhhh fuck what else is going on with him. Idk he keeps to himself. He and Harper go on double dates with Katelyn and Aaron despite being broken up. He’s both very obviously a fucked up teenager and a good dad at the same time. He’s prone to cheating at board games. He doesn’t yell at people. His hearing’s a little fucked but he’ll probably never get it checked out. He’s very physically affectionate when he’s given permission (but he’ll always ask first. it’s good for setting healthy boundaries but it’s especially for Phoebe and to make sure she knows her boundaries will always be respected at home even from a young age). He likes RPGs (he’d be a huge fan of BG3) and is a fantasy nerd. Yeah that’s just a bit more about him

[saintsenara]

the wizarding world really just does not care about anything huh? i mean. what would have happened if tom had been institutionalized due to his magic?

thank you very much for the ask, anon!

i need to actually get around to writing the big meta i have on the idea - which i know a few people have asked me about - that hogwarts applies some level of selection [that is, that - despite what lupin says in deathly hallows - it doesn't teach the majority of magical children in britain, whether they're born to magical or muggle families] when it comes to who it admits, and that muggleborn potential pupils who fall short of its criteria never get the letter-delivery meeting that we see the canonical tom riddle receive.

which would mean that, had tom been committed to a psychiatric hospital as a child, i think the wizarding world would have quietly struck his name off the list for potential admittance to hogwarts and continued on untroubled.

which is obviously grim.

although i think it's worth saying that, while there is a lot about 1930s psychiatric care which was legitimately inhumane - and the sort of one flew over the cuckoo's nest-style dystopian vibe, which makes the idea of poor wee tom being stuck in a hospital seem so terrifying, isn't entirely inaccurate - there's also, as odd as it sounds, a chance that he might have been genuinely helped by the psychiatric treatment of the time period.

we picture the psychiatric treatment of the early twentieth century as straitjackets and padded cells and lobotomies - violent and dehumanising procedures with no clinical benefit - because [as is often the case today in the way mental illness is spoken about both clinically and culturally] the medical community tended to regard anything accompanied by psychosis [schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, bipolar disorder, and so on] as intensive, untreatable and unmanageable [and to - therefore - institutionalise patients with these symptoms permanently].

but at the same time, mental illness which wasn't accompanied by [long-term] psychosis [depression, anxiety disorders, addiction, ptsd and so on] was increasingly seen not only as treatable, but as curable - and clinicians' aims were for patients to be treated temporarily either in the community or in modern hospitals which looked very different from the padded-cell asylums which were holdovers of the victorian/edwardian era, and to live independently after their course of treatment was done.

this was largely due to the prevalence of "shell-shock" and "soldiers' neuroses" - which we would nowadays understand as types of post-traumatic stress disorder - among men who had served in the first world war. these men - often from "respectable" backgrounds, with no history of mental illness in their families - were a very different demographic of patient than either the destitute "lunatic" or the hysterical woman of the victorian and edwardian imagination. they were also needed back in the trenches - but with their symptoms under control enough that they weren't considered dangerous to their fellow soldiers.

and treatments for shell-shock were - as a result - considerably more humane than the contemporary treatment of psychosis. emphasis was put on holistic treatments - especially the chance for men who had been shivering in the trenches to get a period of real rest - and on talking.

[british army officers were ordered - for example - to attempt to reduce shell-shock cases by encouraging their men to process their experiences of the war in individual and group settings.]

after the end of the war, the treatment of long-term shell-shock combined with the growing interest in "analysis" - which, while the image i'm sure many of us have of it is of sigmund freud suggesting the patient wanted to fuck his own mother, actually looked rather a lot like the various branches of psychotherapy do today - into courses of treatment for conditions like depression, anxiety, and ptsd [especially those caused by childhood trauma] which aren't actually terrible...

the way the young tom riddle speaks about magic in canon absolutely sounds like psychosis to someone who doesn't know he's a wizard - and so, yes, there is a very high chance that he would have been institutionalised to be stuck in restraints for the rest of his life.

but it's also the case that, since he was a child when mrs cole was trying to have him "looked at" by doctors, this increasing disciplinary focus on the psychological motivations for behaviour - especially in childhood; child psychology and the causes of juvenile delinquency were things the psychiatric community was increasingly interested in during the 1930s - might, instead, have had his belief that he could do magic put down to a fantasy which he had invented on account of his numerous [and treatable] neuroses.

and while it's not the case that he's making up being a wizard... it very much is the case that he's neurosis-central. you've never seen a more unbalanced ego.

and that actually being prompted to confront his childhood trauma [especially his grief over his mother's death] - even when the strange, freudian flavour any psychotherapy would undoubtedly have had is taken into account - would probably have done rather more to actually help him than hogwarts' "ignoring children's emotional needs is fine" approach...

[to-thelakes]

Having a BAU girls night out but with Luke tagging along for scary dog privileges (even though you could very well do anything you want yourself bc you're a literal federal agent)

girl i LOVE this idea, like luke would fucking LOVE to be the scary dog on a night-out, intimidating anyone in sight who was being creepy or weird. here's how a typical night with the women of the BAU (+luke) would probably go.

so you all get to the bar as soon as you're off work, sometimes in uniform (which is literally just formal wear), sometimes you get a chance to change into something more comfortable but sluttish for the bar, really depends on the day

either way, luke is there and he sometimes wonders how he gets himself into these situations because being surrounded by his absolutely gorgeous drunk coworkers is just something he never really expects but he secretly loves it

you and the girlies all do rounds of drinks, cocktails for garcia, rum and coke (or whiskey) for emily, jj gets like either aperol spritzer, cocktails or like vodka with a mixer (orange or pineapple or cranberry juice) and tara gets either whiskey, like emily, or she gets like coke/lemonade with vodka, you get whatever your favourite is on the night and you obviously are all drinking

luke probably gets like a beer but doesn't tend to get too drunk unless it's a whole team outing (including matt, reid and rossi) so he has a few beers

the ladies quickly get smashed which leads to dancing, which leads to reader being incredibly touchy with everyone but especially luke which leads to him getting dragged to dance

he loves dancing (even if he'd never admit it) and he loved seeing you so care-free on a night out

the dancing then leads to men approaching the other girlies and jj is probably the first to make her way towards you and luke when men start being weird

this is quickly followed by garcia

they are both strong independent women, don't get me wrong, but jj especially avoids conflict when she can, so you will drag her into you and dance with her and with luke

the GLARE the luke gives the weird men would be enough for them to give up or scuttle off

jj is always thankful for luke in the mornings and always tells him as much, garcia is a little more on-and-off about it

you almost never leave luke's side so you're usually clear of the creeps

now as for the other girls, whenever weird men come around, tara and emily are the first willing to start a fight

this leads to luke diffusing which only pisses them off more and you or jj or garcia step in to diffuse further, the men always back off when another man comes and it makes emily and tara mad (so real)

but after that hiccup in the night, it usually goes back to normal, dancing, singing, drinking until you can barely walk because a release like a drunken night is seriously needed after a long day chasing criminals

also emily will occasionally spend an entire night drinking wine but it makes her a little too silly and gives her a raging headache in the morning so she generally avoids it

but all-in-all, everyone loves when luke comes and are thankful for the scary dog vibes that he gives off to people who are being weird

obviously, they wish things were different and also can and do take care of themselves whenever they got out alone but luke being there tends to make everyone feel safer

luke also just loves having free rein and permission to glare down any man who even dares go near any of the BAU women if they don't want it

he is aware that everyone can take care of themselves but after dealing with weird men who make him feel sick to his stomach most days, being able to protect his friends from those same kind of men does make him feel a little better

you also love when he protects everyone, you just think it's so sweet and you adore him for it

which is just another reason that you fall for him

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

I don't know if this has been addressed, but what is Floyd's "squeezing"? I assumed he dragged students away to beat them up since the victims always reacted with fear. However, if Floyd's tsum copies his behavior, is he literally just squeezing students with all his might? It seems a little anticlimactic to elicit such a response because of a tight hug, don't you think? I mean, it will obviously hurt to be crushed, but it's better that getting beat up, right? 🤔

Interpreting Floyd's squeezing as only a "tight hug" is... well, it's sort of downplaying the harm he's causing to other people 😅 Depending on the context in which the phrase "squeezing" is used, I do believe it's a euphemism that can either mean beating people up (in a general sense) or actually squeezing them (because he is shown to do both). EDIT: In some contexts, “squeezing” can also mean playful hugs. It’s just that most of the time when Floyd’s threatening to squeeze mob students or other characters in the main cast, it’s meant in a more malicious way.

One thing you should keep in mind is that the size difference between regular Floyd and tsum Floyd is significant. Tsum Floyd does not have the arm or body length to completely wrap around someone, but regular Floyd definitely does (especially if we consider his merform). Therefore, even though they carry out the same action, the results are not necessarily 1:1. LOOK AT TSUM FLOYD'S NUBS, YOU THINK YOU CAN ACTUALLY DO A PROPER FULL BODY SQUEEZE WITH THOSE????? At most, it can handle someone's arm. Given Floyd's larger stature and longer limbs (to completely ensnare others), he'd be able to deal much more damage. There's a very clear example of Floyd "squeezing" someone so hard that they pass out early in episode 3 of the main story. He's strong enough to make them lose consciousness with physical strength alone, and (if we really want to go into darker fandom interpretations), this may even imply strangulation 💦 Floyd also has a number of voice lines in which he promises to "wring" people out, meaning he knowingly applies as much pressure as possible to deprive his victims of air. It isn’t some accident or an “oppise”, it’s intentional. Consider his merfom as well; he could easily coil around his enemies and squeeze them until they go blue in the face and their eyes pop. Just because Floyd squeezes people on land without the tail doesn't mean the matter is any less serious. Restricting someone's movements in general and/or cutting off their air supply will naturally elicit a panic of fear response. There's also the possibility of Floyd squeezing someone so hard that it damages their internal structures (ie like how even helpful movements like CPR compressions can break the ribs). "Crushing" someone in this manner is something that I would consider the same as "being beat up", not "better than" or "worse than". It's still damage, it's still legitimate fear and trauma. It's cruel, period, and the other characters' apprehensive reactions are 100% valid.

Again, tsum Floyd is presented much differently than regular Floyd. They don't match in size, and there is much more of an overall innocent, playful energy to the Tsumtsums. Them being a part of an event also says a lot about their presentation; TWST events are much more lighthearted than how the characters are typically portrayed in the main story. Mismatched anatomy aside, of course TWST won't show tsum Floyd squeezing students so hard they pass out. That's not the vibe the event is going for, so when tsum Floyd squeezes, it’s meant to be playful/cute and not at “full power” capacity.

(Side note: this is NOT to say that Floyd isn't capable of just normal behavior or genuine tight hugs/playful squeezes as well. He can do those too!! I'm just saying when he does threaten to "squeeze" others, there is always the potential for very real damage to be involved.)

[astral-mariner]

Hopefully this isn’t too stalker-y, but I’ve noticed you say a couple times that you don’t ship Kakavege the same way as most of the fandom. Would you be willing to talk about how you see the pairing and how it’s different from the “default”? Obviously no pressure if you don’t want to talk about it, but I love seeing different interpretations of their relationship (whatever form it may take)

Not too stalker-y! If anything, I'm flattered that anyone would be interested in what I might think about stuff, haha. That said, all of the following is just my personal headcanon. There are lots of fun and valid interpretations of this pairing, and mine is but one of them.

First to clarify: When I'm thinking of the "default" (which is, of course, a very loose term, as the fandom and the shippers are obviously not monolithic at all!), what I have in mind is how Vegeta is constantly put in a submissive and/or bottom role where he gets his absolute shit wrecked and gets all sobbing and unraveled. And while Vegeta getting his shit wrecked is definitely up my alley (lol), I feel like the journey to get to that shit-wrecking doesn't vibe with how I personally interpret each character.

I think a great deal of it has to do with the fact that I don't see Goku as a very sexual person. I think he's very sensual in that he loves physical activities like fighting, eating, etc., but that like, sexual DRIVE just isn't there in the same way that it is for fighting. He probably has a libido, sure, but there's a difference between having a physical urge and being preoccupied with sexual desire. He doesn't really think about sex in the moment unless it's happening to him. In canon, he's often shown to be oblivious or not to understand things involving sex. Not because he's stupid or he can't pick up on things (because he definitely does and even plays dumb to mess with people for fun!), but because he's just on a different wavelength. Things that occur to "normal" people just don't occur to him.

And to me, all of that doesn't really line up with his being characterized as a dominant top most of the time, lol. Someone who exerts his desire upon someone else. (Which is not to say you can't have a submissive-leaning top---you definitely can; I think that is *cough* how Vegeta is with Bulma *cough*.) Now there are definitely situations where I can see Goku entering this headspace, though. Namely, say, if Vegeta nurtured that feral side of Goku's saiyan nature and encouraged him to get in touch with and act upon it. Exerting it on others.

Which brings me to Vegeta's characterization. I don't see him as particularly nurturing, lol. He sees Goku as a rival---someone he wants to tear down, not someone he wants to build up. He's obsessed with and angry at Goku for besting him. And I feel like one of Vegeta's responses to this would be to dominate him in any way he feels that he can. Unravel and defeat him. Even if it's just a pathetic attempt to feel superior or to shove down his real feelings and longings. (Because I think, deep down, Vegeta longs to let go of his NEED to fill a particular role, play the prince, be the best---it's a cage for him, and laying down his desperate desire for power and reveling in weakness would be freeing.)

On top of this, Vegeta strikes me as a person with far more dark, sexual energy. He's repressed as fuck, of course, but he's just BRIMMING with pent up feelings and desires. It even comes out when he fights. When he's dominating someone in battle, he gets really into it. He gets really intimate and personal about it. And considering his past, he's seen some fucking shit out in space. He's not innocent or oblivious even if he is a prude who tried to stay above it all. He knows what sex is, he knows what sexual desire is, he knows what sexual violence is, and he feels all of it intensely even if he doesn't let himself act on it (probably plays into why he's so ANGRY and frustrated all the time, lol). Not to mention the fact that Vegeta wouldn't have to stop and explain to Goku how to fuck him, lol; he'd just fuck him himself and show him what's what (or even sexually dominate him by bottoming from the top, so to speak).

All in all, in my mind, Vegeta would be far more likely to exert sexuality onto Goku vs. the other way around. Act his desires out on Goku. Dominate him in one of the few ways he can. Even though it's pathetic! And perhaps not even what he truly wants (to let go and have his responsibility/power stripped from him). But it's what he would do, and what he'd tell himself he wanted.

All that said, this leads to a "default" dynamic where Vegeta is more sexually dominant than Goku is. Which is against the more common fan interpretation. "Kakavege" is definitely more popular than "Vegekaka." (Even though I personally don't like when people get obsessed with who bottoms or tops... I'm a queer man, I'm messy as fuck, and I like when my ships are messy and complex like me, haha).

Even so, as I mentioned somewhere else before, there are definitely still situations where I can imagine Goku topping and/or being more dominant. Particularly in AUs where he's a lot less innocent and didn't get conked on the head, lmao. I LOVE when Goku snaps and goes feral like he did when he first transformed, though. I also LOVE when Vegeta lets go of his pride and gets his shit wrecked. But I feel like not a lot of people get either character to those places in a way that satisfies me personally when they write the pairing. Takes into account all the little subtleties and complexities of their characters. So it results in me being very picky with my shipping content for the pairing.

And THEN, on top of everything else, there's the issue of the imbalance in their feelings for each other. Vegeta feels far more intensely about Goku than Goku does about Vegeta. Vegeta is fucking obsessed. Whereas Goku has lots of rivals, and Vegeta might be one of his favorites, and he might even have a special bond with him as a saiyan, someone who understands him in a way the others might not, but he's not obsessed with Vegeta. Vegeta is always going to be angsting about what is effectively a situation of unrequited love. The pairing, at least to me, is an extremely angsty and doomed one for that reason. Vegeta just wants so desperately to be noticed and cared about the way he cares about Goku (see: the Majin Stunt). And a lot of people write the ship to be a lot less angsty than this. But I'm all about the angst, lol.

Vegeta really is the more "emotional" of the two despite insisting how little he cares for anyone or anything. Despite Goku wearing his heart on his sleeve more. Or being outwardly affectionate and comfortable sharing his feelings. Vegeta feels for Kakarot deeply even if he doesn't express it outright. Whereas Goku may love Vegeta as he loves everyone---his general love for life and everyone he meets kind of way. But it's not the intense, dark, emotional, romantic obsession that Vegeta has. The two characters are extremely different despite being two sides of the saiyan coin and sharing many important things in common.

I hope that sheds a BIT of light on how I see them? There is so much nuance to these characters. I love hearing other people's thoughts too. There are lots of really cool and interesting reads on them that are different than mine. Thanks for the ask!

[comradekatara]

for tbe atla people who has had in-universe fanfiction written about them (along the lines of tina belcher who came from bobs burger belcher)

your asks are always so strange (both in content and wording) that I end up having to read them like 5 times before I can begin to parse them. anyway I love that you cite tina belcher instead of just. rpf. like the literal terminology for this phenomenon that we do very much have at our disposals. so I even can’t tell if you’re asking “who would have rpf written about them” (which also presumably differs from historical fiction about past avatars or smth like that) and “who would write freaky friend fiction (like tina)?” i’m gonna go with the latter bc it’s way funnier.

i think that girl meng would definitely have written some….things…..about aang, iykwim. zombie apocalypse au, enemies to lovers, there was only one bed, etc etc.

i can also just kind of see jin doing this (abt lee from the tea shop or otherwise) i can’t explain it she just has fujoshi vibes. like, whenever ppl talk about how jin, zuko, and jet should have all been friends in ba sing se, i’m usually like “uhh… why tho….” but now i see why. it’s so that she could write jetko rpf about them.

for therapeutic purposes mai probably writes a lot of really cathartic short stories about her entire family, the entire royal family, and ty lee all falling into a sinkhole. but then mai saves ty lee from drowning at the last minute, which teaches ty lee to appreciate her instead of that stupid sinkhole bitch azula (this is all pre boiling rock, obviously).

at one point mai and sokka find a notebook of really angsty fanfiction about the blue spirit and they’re like, “oh my god this is amazing we gotta show this to zuko, he’ll get a kick out of this,” not realizing that zuko actually wrote it himself as a way to work through his identity crisis. he’s just like, “yeah….wow….so cringey, right? but also, kind of incredible how this writer articulates the struggle of the bisected self in extremis so beautifully……right? you guys think so too?” and sokka and mai just look at each other and silently go, “okay…. we may have made a mistake…..”

when katara was a child she would make up stories in her head about finding the avatar and befriending him and having him fall in love with her due to her courage and beauty and (hopefully, someday) waterbending talent and they would defeat the firelord together and live happily ever after. but thankfully she never wrote any of this down, because paper is a very scarce commodity in the southern water tribe and even she knows better than to invoke gran gran’s wrath on that. she never tells aang. although at some point (in sworn secrecy) she does end up telling zuko (assuming that he’d understand considering he also devised fantasies of finding the avatar to cope with his miserable existence), and he laughs for hours.

during their time together in the nwt, yue’s diary gets filled with all kinds of lurid fantasies of sokka killing hahn (in increasingly brutal ways) and sneaking her out of the palace so that she can join team avatar and they can be together forever. of course, whenever they talk about it, she’s just like “yes I love hahn he is great and I love my people and I would never leave my home” so sokka’s just like “okay girl you do you.” but then during the siege, yue actually sees sokka kill a man, and she’s suddenly so conflicted because all her self-indulgent fantasies were a bit too real (and in reality, he’s way more efficient about killing people than he was in her fantasies, almost like he’s done it before….) and she has no clue how to feel about it. anyway, thankfully, yue has learned how to hide her diary really well at this point, because if arnook ever found those particular pages he would’ve tracked down sokka and killed him without hesitation.

ok bonus follow up to the fujoshi jin writing jetko rpf au: eventually they find it (or maybe she’s bold enough to just straight up give it to them. you know what, she might be) and read it. jet’s like, “uhhh…. jin….. i’m not gay. you know that, right?” (he’s actually been hitting on her for… a while now…) and zuko’s like, “okay well i might be. BUT NOT FOR HIM!!!”

[rontra]

How does failteacher Yuri interact with the greater plot of persona 5? I remember Toriumi mentioning 'some weird shit in 2010', but do the two of them have to deal with stuff like Kamoshida's change of heart and the principal's death?

the current policy is that unless something directly and immediately relevant comes up the answer is "it doesn't"

for 2 reasons. number one is that i don't feel like binding myself to the month-by-month timeline of p5-the-game in too much detail, because i'm lazy, and making my AU up as i go (lol). and the second reason is that observing the plot from a completely uninitiated unrelated POV is just not very interesting to me....... orz

one important thing about my failteacher AU is that it's a casual n sloppy style(!!) project that i do this way because it's fun (and as soon as i stop having fun i will stop making it). the vibe of creating it is just as important as the vibe of reading it. my worry is that committing too hard to ~The P5 Plot Is Happening Among Us~ would have me too distracted by logistics and timeline puzzles that aren't even relevant to the story i'm trying to tell, and suck the fun out of the project for me...

due to the year difference btween the 2 games, the plot of P3 did happen in 2009-2010 (the "weird shit" comment was in a doodle but yes it did happen and parts of it will be Main Comic Material later when relevant) (and i think its obvious enough from comics like #3 and general characterization that the Hermit 1-10 arc took place) (BUT MODIFIED IN VERY IMPORTANT PLACES. LOL) but obviously toriumi was an uninitiated & unrelated POV to that game so she doesn't really know that much about it outside of the parts that directly impacted her (which to be fair. are pretty serious)

p5 is much scarier because its looming on the horizon in FRONT of us and i hate being confined by a tangentially-related-at-best timeline. directly dealing with stuff like the fallout of palace 1 is a MAYBE? but ONLY because there are tangible Relevant consequences for -us- (more scrutiny placed on shujin teachers -> ms chouno gets on kawakami's ass, etc)

im gonna be real withyou i didnt even remember the principal dies. MDHNBFGB sorry to this man

all in all its just like. 99% of the plot of p5 is stuff these people are not privy to (kawakami's % is removed due to her no longer being joker's confidant thanks to hermit meddling) + committing to that timeline too hard would be abrasive to the comic + im much more versed in p3 minutiae anyway (especially later on in the p5 year). so its kind of like. well. just try not to Expect anything too major xD

if smthg catches my interest and i can work with it to make an interesting development, sure. but in the end its like why would i risk binding myself to specific points of a timeline and incurring Untold Rammys when i could simply not do that to myself. you know 😭

HOWEVER. FOR UNRELATED REASONS THAT ARE IMPORTANT BUT MAY OR MAY NOT PAY DIVIDENDS LATER (<- what did he mean by this?) it is seeming INCREASINGLY LIKELY that we might in fact currently be in the autumn -before- p5, meaning joker enrolls come spring in a few months and the game starts then.

^this paragraph directly contradicts everything above it but its fine. i have my reasons. just don't hold me to it TOO closely. i don't want to commit to a timeline just to be boxed in by unforeseen consequences later. but if you were curious there is a quiet notion in the background that says the plot of p5 proper hasn't started yet.

it's a "soft fuzzy timeline" but that's Secretly where we're at in it . kawakami bitching about her awful new student come April <3

So Perhaps Time Will Tell. if they're still doing this shit come May maybe i get to blow kamoshida up or whatever

[starbylers]

Nothing is more headache-inducing than when people say ‘Give me a single piece of evidence that Mike likes Will romantically’ because you just know what they’re looking for is simple, easily summed up and understood statements like overt flirting and obvious verbal hints etc. But this is a friends—best friends—to lovers story. Set in a completely different time period. It’s obviously going to be more nuanced than that?

The other couples on this show did not start from the same basis as Byler. Byler have been best friends since they were tiny. They’re also both boys. It’s also the 80s. Lumax, Jancy and Jopper were pretty much obviously romantically entangled from the minute their stories intertwined. (They are friends to lovers, yes, but the platonic side of their relationships was not hugely explored before their romantic interest became obvious, although they were still all friends before dating/kissing which is why they work). They are also all heterosexual couples.

Is it not obvious that Byler is probably going to look a little different in terms of its build up? Is it not obvious that it’s not as simple as ‘Mike likes Will and is 100% aware of it and cool with it and therefore treats him exactly as he would a girl he fancies’? Can people not consider context such as hmm if Byler was going to happen as they say, that means Mike would like boys, in the 80s, which would probably be a pretty difficult thing to navigate and come to terms with so maybe his feelings for Will aren’t going to be as in your face and overtly romantic as I might expect from the other pairings. And is it also not obvious that given M*leven is a canon couple, Byler happening would have to be intended as a plot twist, a twist which would be redundant if they gave obvious hints that Mike is in love?

But even keeping that in mind, Jancy, Lumax and Jopper have behaved in very similar ways to how Mike and Will have consistently done aka intimate heart to hearts, confiding in each other about their problems and fears, really emotional scenes that build the bond between them. And even aside from those glaring similarities that go right over peoples heads:

Mike confides in Will in a way he just doesn’t with El, there’s a deep sense of trust there

Mike pays extremely close attention and takes care of Will hinted in s1 and shoved in our faces in s2, a desire to protect that rises way above the rest of their friends

He treats Will with miles more maturity and compassion than he does El in s4, and is in fact made to look and feel really happy by Will’s literal (disguised) feelings in the van

And those are just a few examples of how strong and close their bond is on Mike’s end. People just brush this stuff off as platonic because well, yeah…they are friends. But it’s friends to lovers!! And a slowburn plot twist at that! Their relationship for the entire show builds the foundation for a realisation that the perfect person has been right in front of him the whole time! We might not see Mike giving Will apologetic M&Ms or calling him pretty, but what we do see over and over is how the two of them work really well together, as a team. A million times better than Mike does with his own girlfriend.

The only real difference with Byler and the other couples is that the obvious romantic vibes for those couples began way early on. Because they could. Because there was nothing really preventing them from realising and acting on their feelings other than ‘we’re attracted to each other but oh I’m dating someone else or oh we’re scared to take that next step’. When it comes to Byler, Mike and Will and Mike specifically have much bigger barriers to contend with. Mike may not understand what he feels for Will is actually love. Mike may not even realise he likes boys, he’s had a gf this whole time after all. Mike may be really scared to even subtly act on his feelings if he is aware. And these people expect Mike to be smiling all lovesick at Will, staring into his eyes, saying romantically coded things? (The biggest joke of all is of course that these things actually have happened but when they do? It’s oh they’re just good friends stop being delusional!!)

Byler is just a very complex and nuanced relationship, you can’t take the same approach to analysing it as you would M*leven like oh proof Mike likes El? That one scene where he called her pretty. He said he was scared she’d leave him. He said he loved her. It’s very easy to cherry pick and point to these moments, but to understand Byler you have to look at the bigger picture and not everyone’s willing to take the time to do that I guess 🤷🏽‍♀️