#he was just doing whatever

[batsplat]

'From the first time I worked with Valentino I realised he is so, so curious. He wants to know everything: why is this exhaust pipe like this, why is that exhaust like that, why does the rider do that, why do other riders do something different? In fact, when he was 14 or 15 another of Graziano's friends, Marco Lucchinelli [1981 500cc world champion], used to call him Virus. This was his nickname for a few years, because he wanted to know everything and he was always attacking people with questions. This is Valentino - curious and intelligent. Racing with him was a beautiful period in my life because he was very easy to work with. For me the impressive thing about him was his riding, but also that he was very friendly. "After Brno 1996 I immediately thought that he was a phenomenon, not only a phenomenon with his riding but a phenomenon in communication. He has all the characteristics: he is a fantastic rider, he is friendly, he is spontaneous, he's not fake, and he smiles with everybody, so all the grandmothers, the grandfathers, the wives and the kids fall in love with him - the people who know nothing about engines and racing. He had a big effect on Aprilia sales. We sold a lot of bikes and scooters and we made a lot of Valentino replica machines. "During that period Valentino sometimes fucked with me. In 1997 he was a big fan of Jacques Villeneuve [winner of that year's Formula 1 title with Williams-Renault]. He kept telling me, 'Carlo, I want to meet Villeneuve!' He was such a fan that he hated Ferrari at that time, because of the Villeneuve versus Michael Schumacher thing. So I called Carlos Ghosn at Renault, who I knew because at that time Aprilia was doing good business selling scooters in Renault dealerships. It was arranged that Valentino would meet Jacques at a big motorsport awards event in Bologna. "Before the event I went out for dinner with Valentino and Uccio Salucci. At the end of the meal Valentino went to the toilet. And he never came back! In the auditorium there was Jacques with his car and there was Valentino's bike, but no Valentino. All the world's TV and media were there, so Beggio was very angry and wanted to kill me. I still don't know where he went that night. He won't tell me!"

Carlo Pernat in Oxley's 'Valentino Rossi: All His Races'

valentino with villeneuve in 1998

[0vergrowngraveyard]

i think he does this sometimes

[humming-fly]

I love how Gerald was trying to keep Shadow from spoiling anything about the future meanwhile literally everything Shadow says and does around Maria is the biggest death flag ever

[edlucavalden]

Learning to eat with your hands.

[bakedbeanchan]

Drawing from a mini comic where the timeline is reset but Zuko still has all his memories

Minicomic here

[fairsweetlonging]

truth serum / system reveal au where shen qingqiu gets hit with an uncloaking spell that reveals the system in the reflection of his eyes every time it pops up.

during one of his missions, in the treasure hoard of some dragon-like creature, he finds a golden, oval shaped hand mirror, its gaudy style more victorian based than anything (airplane you hack!), that doesn't seem to do anything when he looks into it. but when he does, it reveals the system's screen in his eyes.

he doesn't notice this, of course, because he can't see it, and the system, surprisingly, stays quiet.

the peak lords think he's cursed.

maybe mu qingfang is the first to notice, during the mandatory post mission check-up, when shen qingqiu is scrolling through his most recently accumulated points and mu qingfang can see the strange vividly-blue lines reflected in his pupils. it's gone when shen qingqiu blinks, like it was nothing but a trick of the light.

it comes out when yue qingyuan is visiting and, just as he's done laying out the plans for a new mission, shen qingqiu's eyes glaze over and a bright blue box takes over the whole of his iris. shen qingqiu goes quiet; the thing in his eyes moves, shifts, pulses for a second, like static worms crawling all over his pupils. then he blinks, and it's gone, and shen qingqiu accepts the mission that yue qingyuan was almost sure he would decline.

maybe there is an intervention, when the peak lords corner shen qingqiu at qian cao peak and try to figure out what's wrong, subjecting him to all kinds of treatments and curse-finding spells that turn up empty, they can't find anything.

of course, the silencing threat is still very much up and running. at first shen qingqiu was kind of confused by the whole ordeal, but when the peak lords start describing a "strange blue box", he realizes, with sickening suddenty, that they're describing the system. and he can't say anything.

this only makes everything worse, because their fellow peak lord now keeps evading every question and acts like he doesn't understand. liu qingge points right at his face and asks, "that blue box, what is it?" and shen qingqiu laughs nervously and starts talking about how bright the weather is and surely it's the sky and nothing to worry about!

even worse, during the intervention the system thought it was a good idea to start talking to him, so now even the peak lords who hadn't seen it and who might have been persuaded by light tricks and reflections, get a first row view that no, that definitely isn't a trick of the light.

they try to do the whole thing of "are you in danger, blink twice" but shen qingqiu can't even do that because it's still a direct admittance!

maybe eventually he starts saying vague confirmations that don't actually confirm anything, like "this master hears what you're saying", or maybe he goes with a classic "this master can neither confirm nor deny that." but the system starts warning him for that too and eventually he stops saying anything, which worries the others more.

luckily mu qingfang catches on that every time they ask a direct question about the box or shen qingqiu says anything vaguely confirming, it appears. it doesn't appear when they ask about curses or demons, so it must not see that as a threat.

for a little extra angst: maybe the peak lords keep pressuring him for answers, and at some point shen qingqiu gets fed up and snaps out something like, "why don't you understand that i'm not allowed to answer that!" the system counts this as a direct admittance, threatening it's existence. so it punishes. shen qingqiu has a qi deviation so bad it lasts two weeks and takes two people every day to cleanse his meridians. the system doesn't appear in that time. it doesn't appear for a long while after that, either. the peak lords stop asking, mainly because shen qingqiu will instantly leave the room if they do. they don't stop searching for a cure, though.

shang qinghua returns from a business trip and catches on the second someone mentions a blue box and forced silencing.

[musubiki]

my favorite fields of mistria boys 🥰

[voltaical-art]

HE WAS SEVENTEEN. AGHHH ULDER WHEN I GET MY HANDS ON YOU

[gingermintpepper]

I think, perhaps one of the funniest things to come from EPIC popularising the Odyssey is that now a ton of people think Poseidon wanted to kill Odysseus.

In the Odyssey, Poseidon has no intention of killing Odysseus. In fact, part of the whole reason Zeus lets Poseidon do whatever he wants even though he thinks Odysseus is rad and should get to kiss his wife is explicitly because Poseidon had no intentions of killing Odysseus. Poseidon wanted to pay back the suffering/inconvenience blinding Polyphemus would have caused. It's a really abstract thing tbh. How do you pay back someone permanently disabling your son? Poseidon's solution was just to amputate Odysseus from his other half; i.e. Penelope. The end game was never murder, it was always an endurance race.

(Od. Book 1: Zeus reassuring Athena that he is not, in fact, a part of Odysseus Hater-Nation. Trans. Robert Fagles)

Also, for those wondering if there's any sort of in text reason for why Poseidon wasn't around in God Games - at the time in the Odyssey when Athena petitions Zeus to let Odysseus leave Calypso's island, Poseidon was -checks notes- on vacation in Ethiopia. Yep. He left to Ethiopia for a festival and thusly was very much absent for Athena's whole "please let Ody go? Please? 🥺" request.

(Od. Book 1: While Odysseus was suffering, Poseidon went to party in the east)

I am begging y'all to read the Odyssey. It's a comedy for everyone except Odysseus and Penelope who are, in fact, suffering 24/7 365.

[swiggity-swexual-i-am-asexual]

We all know the semi-canonical ‘all the Robins know to hide/duck inside of Batman’s cape, even as adults’ thing.

We also know that Danny ‘is LITERALLY a ghost’ Fenton sucks at remembering his own intangibility while ALSO forgetting to look ahead of him.

All I’m saying is, Danny Fenton (or Phantom, if you’d really like) would absolutely SLAM into Batman on accident while running on roof tops and Bruce ‘Brooding Instinct’ Wayne doesn’t even think twice about letting the kid hide and scanning around for danger before there’s a record scratch of ‘wait who tf is this?’ kicks in.

[hinamie]

I'm always pushing you away from me / but you come back with gravity / and when I call, you come home

[crumb-crumblet-s-crumbington]

both ethan winters and ashley graham were born in 1984, so i swapped their places

redraw

alt version with pants!

[chocostrwberry]

Kwami interactions!! Being a miraculous holder is not for the faint-hearted,,

[egophiliac]

tsum events really are just the best, huh

[to-be-a-dreamer]

I will never not love Lizzie and Joel’s dynamic in the Life Series she has tried to kill him so many times it’s not even a surprise anymore and he forgives her every single time. Joel refuses to even agree to let someone else kill Lizzie because he knows she’ll watch his video and find out and then he’ll be kicked to the couch with the dog. The biggest argument between the family was about how Joel kept giving Lizzie diamonds for no reason and Gem wanted him to stop being hopelessly in love for two seconds so he’d stop giving resources to his #1 attacker. Joel wasted half an episode because he wanted to run at Lizzie in slow motion like a rom com.

One time Lizzie THOUGHT Joel killed her in MCC and she yelled at him through the wall that she wanted a divorce. Joel realized he had multiple men obsessed with him on Hermitcraft so he built a statue dedicated to his beautiful fish goddess wife. They were a part of a roleplay server where their characters didn’t know each other and immediately had a wedding so their characters would be canonically married as well. Lizzie made the wedding an entire arc of the musical.

No one is doing it like them and they shouldn’t even try

[technically-human]

Bisexual crisis Crystal edition