#his two favorite players…

[sheltoner]

my dad is gonna crash out

[alacants]

The source of those rumors is a guy from Carlos's family's tennis club who is close to Kiko Navarro & knows some members of Carlos's team & is a regular collaborator with Punto de Break. According to him (he's said this before) Carlos & Juanki had a significant fight towards the end of 2023. But the claim that they nearly split up back then came from someone else who's less reliable.

As for 2025, the first guy says Carlos's dad has apparently not been happy with what Juanki is doing for a while... but it seems like Carlos doesn't agree. If things don't turn around after clay season his family might push for changes to the team.

From my perspective it's hard to understand the coaching strategy sometimes. Like you said Juanki's strength is not tactics but it seems like that's what Carlos really needs. This is just one example but I think it's crazy that he sat on court in silence for three sets without suggesting Carlos change his return position v Djokovic - Carlos eventually figured it out... in the last game of the match. And that was honestly the main factor in him losing. You could argue Juanki wanted him to figure it out himself but why on earth did they not discuss that beforehand when it also cost him massively at the Olympics (which Carlos said he didn't even think about before the match?)

I know Juanki's whole thing is treating team like family but there are a lot top coaches who say that after 5ish years a coach has nothing to give a player anymore & I wonder if their partnership has run its natural course. Carlos doesn't seem any more tactically equipped than he was two years ago & his technicals have mostly not improved either (return... backhand...).

thanks for this background - after replying to some earlier asks i dug around and saw some folks citing punto de break but not any specifics so this is appreciated. this does immediately increase the credibility to me bc i know pdb values their access and would not jeopardize it for nothing lmao. tho if it's like, a guy who sometimes writes for them and is mostly posting on his own time... i guess that's somewhere in the middle. (btw i still haven't seen anything other than reports of reports of reports? if you've got links i would very much appreciate them!)

as usual i think we're looking at two questions here: could carlos benefit from a different coach, and does carlos want a different coach.

i think we are all in agreement that for carlos to continue to develop as a player he needs something he's not getting at the moment, whether we're thinking in terms of incorporating a new addition to the team or making a wholesale switch. and i don't disagree with you at all about the natural lifespan of a coaching relationship. i've cited this before in discussions of juanki's own career (stuck with one guy; was it a mistake?) and of ferru's (split but waited too long; chalked the delay up to personal feelings).

but as long as it's presented to carlos as an all-or-nothing choice i don't think he's there yet and i would not be surprised to find out that his recent post-match declarations were a message. (tbc it very much MIGHT be an all-or-nothing choice, regulars here know i have plenty of thoughts about the academy lmao.)

the thing is that at this point the unknowns are still really, really risky. if you've had the same coach for most of your teen/adult years and you're ready to strike out and try something new, then that's exciting and stimulating and you're in a good place to make the best of it. but if you're dragging your feet? if you feel like you've been pushed? maybe someone else could give you more, but you have to be ready to receive it, you know? if you're an environment that you know enables you overall to perform at a high level (4 grand slams), where you feel overall confident and supported even if you're lacking direction in some big matches, where you get value from your coach's presence above and beyond the specifics of tennis--it is inherently going to be a risk to make a big change and if you're not all in on doing so the risks will be even more likely to find you.

that's why i keep saying is that i don't see it happening unless carlos' results gets much worse than this--or, potentially, unless a voice that holds as much weight with him as juanki's (so, his dad) gets strong enough that he listens to it. that might be where we're headed!

(incidentally i have feinted at this without saying so explicitly, but there is an unbelievable amount of money riding on carlos' success or lack thereof--i don't mean prize money, i mean his brand as a star--and it would be naive to pretend that's not a factor in decision-making. that's one of the reasons i've pointed to a sustained slump, rather than one or two disappointing slams. when the results start to affect the brand.)

just talked this over with friend who compared the ideal set-up to darren/simone for jannik--supervisory coach + tactical/court coach. if so, then the question is whether they come to that same conclusion and get the set-up in place before the decision is out of their hands, so to speak.

[goldentigerfestival]

I love the vocal nuance in this exchange, but also posting this for my differences posts because this is one of the changes that infuriates me the most. Yuri didn't threaten Ioder, did not threaten him with a weapon, and just said he'd punch him in a lazy, half joking voice (half joking as in, he really doesn't want to hear that - that's just his way of saying so; but that's not the voice of someone who is super angry and threatening).

My other huge grievance is that this is a recurring issue between them in the dub. Yuri is pretty much always vocally rude to Ioder. Ioder has done nothing to wrong him or anyone and has only ever done good for the people where he's able to.

Yet despite Ioder being nothing but sincere, honest and polite with Yuri, in fact even happy to see him here and there, dub Yuri is outright tonally rude to him leading right up this scene where he threatens Ioder in this dark voice. Meanwhile he's actually just supposed to be… lazily telling Ioder he'll punch him in his Yuri Lowell way of saying "I don't want to hear that".

The dub really just wanted to turn Yuri into this dark edgelord and I hate that for my goofy, silly boy.

[chasedeys]

bengals win today yes?

[sunlitmiracle]

smashes my current interest together with my old interest (aka yet another "what Dungeon Meshi but Gamers?" AU)

Once when I was a child I had a complete crying meltdown over Creatures, because the manual insisted that the complicated AI of the Norns made them truly alive and 10-year-old me was freaked out at the idea of being solely responsible for making sure these real animals wouldn't die. The funny part was that this was the Playstation version of Creatures, which has no biochemistry and very basic AI compared to the PC/Mac games where players actually were debating whether or not it was true artificial life. A PSX manual gave me existential dread and it wasn't even telling the truth.

Anyway, kid!Marcille would also have a meltdown over the Creatures series, especially if she had the computer games and got to see how vastly different some breeds' lifespans are. Like in C2 where you have Norns that live for around 5 hours and Norns that live for 10, both of which are vastly more than Ettins who don't even live for 1.5 hours (and usually less due to radiation or starvation).

Lucky for her, having the computer version means she could download modified genomes made by other players that make creatures live longer or even outright remove certain death triggers. However I think she'd have more fun learning to read and edit the genomes herself, to get a better understanding of how the game works and how to change it to suit her own tastes. And because she could pretend she's one of the mysterious ancient Shee who created the Norns, Grendels, and Ettins and then vanished, leaving behind relics of their old society.

(Speaking of Grendels, she would unfortunately dislike them because they're the Designated Evil Species and she'd hate how they harass and attack her Norns. I think she'd also pity them though, because they get sick a lot and have short lifespans. Likely she'd just end up downloading/creating a genome without the aggression towards Norns. Ettins she'd like except for in C3 when they dismantle her meticulously-placed gadget setups, so she might mod out their hoarding compulsions too. Both of them would of course also live for however long her Norns would live.)

Also. While standard creatures' lifespans are counted in hours, if you modify the half-lives in the genome editor you can increase it to centuries. Or even just over a millennium if you set the half-lives to their max length (assuming you also leave the old age death trigger at its vanilla value).

and I like to think that elven Creatures players would pass around copies of what they consider a template genome that's appropriate to their own lifespans. Something that would make their creatures live for weeks or months of continuous play. I also like to think the Creatures DS Warp is still active in this AU because of the hilarious frustration when these long-lived Norns travel to worlds run by short-lived players whose Norns have vanilla lifespans, and vice versa.

(Most of the time in Creatures, offspring of parents with different lifespans will just have one or the other, but there's a chance the genes cross over right in the middle of the various age triggers and cause unstable aging rates. Like a Norn that goes through the childhood stages in hours but then has a very extended adulthood. Or a days-long childhood followed by suddenly dropping dead of old age once the vanilla adulthood genes kick in. Or, if the child has one parent's half-life decay rate and the other parent's age triggers, all sorts of odd things could happen. I once had hybrid Norns who lived for 20 hours and would die of organ failure before reaching the old age threshold!)

(Now that I think of it, Marcille would absolutely hate fast-agers. The first time she watches a creature hatch, turn old, and die in just one brief minute of life, she would be sobbing for days. One of the first things she'd learn to mod out would be mutations that cause the Ageing/Life chemical to decrease unusually fast.)

On a lighter note, while I don't know what her favorite designs would be I think she'd love choosing cute breeds to use in her world. Once she figured out how to give her creatures the comfortable life she wants them to have I can see her redirecting all her gene-editing efforts into changing color expressions. She might even learn to sprite or model her own custom designs.

[risingsunresistance]

actually i changed my mind bc the long tags made me excited, here's this. there's actually three admins here, one of them was the lightning

it is EXTREMELY rushed, it's just supposed to be a concept not the actual finished thing. also puts his scale more into perspective, i forgot to include that in the post

[morethanwonderful]

[Image description: the epic handshake meme. The left arm is labeled "Xi Shiyong." The right arm is labeled "John Egbert." Their handshake is labeled "Becoming the godlike living embodiment of freedom and ending his story alone and mourning the one person he couldn't save despite all his endless power." End description].

I was going to make a much longer post about this, but my feelings about both characters are frankly Too Big to be concise in any format other than memes.

Anyway, I sure do love a protagonist from a normal happy home that unintentionally fumbles his way into becoming the Unbound God of Perfect Freedom and compartmentalizes all his feelings about being no longer human so hard he doesn't even realize he's having them. Love a guy that rewrites his very universe through a cheat code power that only he has and feels incredibly alone in the happy ending he creates. Love a story about grief. Love a guy that never lets anyone in because playing the lighthearted jokester is all he's ever known and he simply cannot stop doing so.

Though only Shiyong is actually good at pranks.

[lem-argentum]

it took me until dt to change rudy's hairstyle, but i ACTUALLY think he would've cut it back in post-stb when he became a reaper. the trope of "character cuts hair to feel more in control of their life" is cliché but REAL. and also the visual of him cutting it with his scythe is fun

[frenchy-and-the-sea]

Did I ever come back here and say that in our last CoS session, Wyn actually ended up chasing after the child-possessing demon and exorcise it with the help of our wizard? It was good! And she's feeling a teeny tiny bit of gratitude to the wizard and the fighter who followed her to help, because they very much did not have to. And then we bluffed our way out of getting in trouble with the guards and managed to get an ally in the headmistress of the orphanage! Nice things all around!

And now we're hanging out with Lady Wachter. I'm sure this won't go sideways in ANY WAY. :>

[tsubasaclones]

well my dryer did that cool thing where it takes 3 hours and then still leaves most of my clothes slightly damp. so i have to wear my slightly-too-small coat from middle school today

[atalante241]

Genshin NPC’s my beloved

[the-acid-pear]

the more i think about kris the more my insanity increases tbh there's just so much nuance with not only them but also the player and their relationship and it's layes upon layers of them and i keep tryin to peel them off inside my brain and its going to turn me into a dc villain or something

[britneyshakespeare]

i am so fucking mad about jag

[lilhawkeye3]

A Crash Course to Kendrick's Super Bowl Performance, from a Black Woman

Note: this does NOT go in depth into all of the song's lyrics. I don't have time to recount two decades of his discography. This is just a summary of the performance itself.

Let's start with the first visual we get:

UNCLE SAM - most notably recognized from WWII American wartime propaganda, Uncle Sam is the personification of American patriotism and freedom. The term "uncle" is also evocative of Uncle Tom from Uncle Tom's Cabin, an abolitionist book that aided in inciting the Civil War. Uncle is also a very common term (both endearment and derogatory) towards Black men (eg. "unc"). Samuel L Jackson was fantastic.

Uncle Sam also resembles a circus ringleader, notable for my next point:

THE GREAT AMERICAN GAME - no, not Super Bowl. The GAG is us the people being pitted against each other: through late-stage capitalism, through the culture war, through class warfare, through being built of the backs of slaves. We are all players in the GAG because none of us on this site were the oligarchs seated at the inauguration.

This is also seen as Kendrick's stage was a Play Station controller. Not only did it remind of circus rings visually, but it was a game battle stage. The Great American Game is a battle royale of the commoners for the amusement of the rich whites.

Remember the foods / Them color was tin and brown / But now they 100 and blue - For this I'll just say, look what the last election said about lowering the price of eggs... and look at the prices now.

The revolution about to be televised / You picked the right time / But the wrong guy - Election 2024 once more. *Edit to add, the first part of this lyric is in reference to the Black Liberation Song "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" by Gil Scott-Heron. Thanks to everyone who mentioned that.

THE FLAG DANCERS - yes, the dancers formed the US flag... off of the backs of Black people. Not a single white person in sight, and that's true of the cotton pickers in the fields. Plantations are part of how the US came to economic prominence after being a "backwater" colony. Remember tobacco? Cotton? Our bloodlines do. *Edit to add: they also all piled out of a clown car. The US flag in a clown car? Brilliant.

The red and blue dancers are also notable for representing the Crips and Bloods, two infamous street gangs. The dance in Not Like Us is the Crip Walk. I recommend researching more on your own time about them, but just know they are a large part of the stereotype of Black people being "ghetto."

TOO LOUD, TOO RECKLESS, TOO GHETTO. Do you really know how to play the game? - This is exactly what Black people, especially Black men, get told all the time. It's why we change our names on resumes if they sound "too Black." It's why we codeswitch in non-Black company. This is especially rich considering how non-Black people love our culture and love to make money off of us, as the latter part of the quote points to. And it's even more profound during the Super Bowl-- the NFL is majority Black players.

STREET LIGHT A CAPELLA -- "thug" stereotype dancers to counteract the a capella connotations, with Uncle Sam then saying that Kendrick figured out "bringing other street guys around being a culture cheat code." Yes, this is a direct hit at Drake (listen to "Not Like Us") but also politically. Look up "model minority". Notably I would point to Candace Owens, or the Miami Venezuelan political group that's been in the news recently, especially as this directly led to Kendrick being surrounded by...

DANCERS IN WHITE -- it's white America. That's... that's the allegory.

NOT LIKE US TEASER -- Kendrick says "Not Like Us" is "their favorite song." -> he means white people specifically here. It comes after he's surrounded by all white dancers, the women around him who are his call and response are also in white (my opinion, they represent the industry). He's saying "Not Like Us" is the favorite of yts because it is about BLACK MEN FIGHTING. This again is reflected in the video game stage and ringleader Uncle Sam.

SZA -- instead of giving what they want, we see SZA. She's one of Drake's exes and Kendrick has always supported her.

ALL THE STARS -- This was in the first Black Panther movie, which I recommend you watch. Rest in Power Chadwick. Notably, this movie was incredibly mainstream as a major Marvel movie, and then we have Uncle Sam say...

"THAT'S WHAT AMERICA WANTS: NICE AND CALM. DON'T MESS THIS UP" -- translation: Marvel (the industry, America, etc.) wanted a safe, semi-pop song because white American likes safe pop songs, not Kendrick's usual heavy rap style about his life as a Black man! Don't mess up what you've got going mainstream for having this "Black rap feud" with Drake, who is an R&B model minority to white people because he's safe.

So what does Kendrick say?

IT'S A CULTURAL DIVIDE / IMMA GET IT ON THE FLOOR -- He was warned not to be political or apologetically Black for this Super Bowl performance, but he is using this big stage opportunity to speak out.

40 ACRES AND A MULE / THIS IS BIGGER THAN THE MUSIC -- 40 acres and a mule are what the freed slaves were promised. Instead, this land went to white sharecroppers. Research Jim Crow laws.

THEY TRIED TO RIG THE GAME / BUT YOU CAN'T FAKE INFLUENCE -- rig the election, rig the industry like with model minority Drake, rig the Great American Game with culture war to distract from active class warfare.

NOT LIKE US -- the only thing I'll mention because it made me holler is Serena Williams crip walking on Drake's metaphorical grave. She's another one of his exes.

TURN THE TV OFF -- exactly like he said! The TV is a distraction, the Super Bowl is a distraction, the mainstream news is often a distraction. Turn it off and get with your people!

GAME OVER — could not see this on my stream but at the end of the performance, the lights in the stadium spelled this out. The world is watching, America…

In conclusion, Kendrick Lamar is a visionary and thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

[relicsongmel]

Ortega has von Karma energy I said what I said

[kagepro-hcs]

Help OMG!!!! Mona looks so much like Takane now that you mention it!

Also imagine Haruka maining Mona just cuz she looks like her and when Takane finds out she blushes too hard (HaruTaka playing Genshin together let's GOOO)

Also Shintarou and Takane would DEFINITELY fight over meta and who's the strongest character while Ayano and Haruka are the type to say "I just pull for the characters who look interesting!" But Takane and Shintarou are so serious about meta

WAAA EXACTLYY!! 🙌🙌

I so wish i could add more to this omg?? Like this is so accurate??

..ngl had to search up some stuff i am def not a hardcore player lmao