#how can you say commenting is easy

[catgirls-reading-stuff]

I see so many posts that say comment on fanworks you enjoy, share your thoughts, gush about what you loved ect.

But i find it difficult. Because when i do i get critized by the writer for it. I read ninety chapters and was so excited about the set up, the implications, the looming threat from the past! And i commented, and i gushed and shared my thoughts and what i could guess from whats been revealed so far -

And the author was not happy.

'How could you think you know more than me, the author'

I dont, i'm just a fan. I was just excited and as a writer too wanted to share what i knew from my own research or experiences.

I dont think i know what the character went through, ive read the past ninety chapters with excitement at each update and had guesses and theories and was looking forward to seeing if i was close or not.

I'm sorry i commented at all. I'm sorry i even found your work. I wont do that again. I've blocked you, and removed my bookmark. I didnt mean to bother you. I didnt mean to offend.

I hope we never cross paths online again.

[collophora]

haha I'll never finish this

but hewwo new followers <3

[stromer]

call me crazy... but i think hockey belongs in the desert idk

[zeb-z]

Bad has so many reasons to be cautious, even paranoid, as anyone else on the island. From Federation nonsense to Dapper being kidnapped to the whole purgatory nonsense to whatever fuckass suit of armor “old friend” was setting up cameras in his house. But it compounds on his regular overly aware paranoid self to this state of hyper-paranoia. And as a demon who can and usually will lie, cheat, steal, and use sneaky underhanded tactics, he expects the craziest extent because he thinks of it, realizes it’s possible, and would use it himself. We saw this very obviously in purgatory - when he thought greens desperate last ditch effort to balance the scale was a super planned out tactic to tip the scale, so he did it first, all the hardcore base hunting, the spawn killing, there’s a reason every other tactic he used usually followed a main channel qsmp post with updated rules - all usually things he was surprised no one else thought of. But then this also piles onto the fact that he has to have things go his way, all the time, and that he’s argumentative as all get out, which led to the debate between him and Bagi yknow. Especially because he’s not just doing it for the sake of being right, he doesn’t think he’s paranoid, but that he’s exercising the right amount of caution.

So like. Listen dude. Yeah he’s got reasons to be paranoid. But his thought process around building vaults for separate cookie caches like they locked up the risus pills, only to scrap it because it’s not perfectly impenetrable, is extreme. His character has hardly been a leading example in someone who has reasonable reactions to things. And even when there isn’t his own children’s livelihoods potentially on the line, he has a need for control, and the most control he has is if he keeps the cookies in his inventory at all times. If he makes himself the sole point in which the others can get ones in a case of emergency, then he can control the variables. The problem is he’s unreliable about himself when he’s at his most rational and healthiest, and he’s far worse with the current memory and health issues he’s been mostly unaware of.

I dunno it’s like. There is never going to be a purely impenetrable base. And it’s not just a case of “Bagi just hasn’t lived through __ yet!”. Bad’s own logic about keeping the cookies on him at all times is flawed under his own logic, because Bagi is right - if someone has enough drive to break into separate secured cookie caches purely for the downfall of eggs, they more than certainly have enough drive to find a way to kill Bad and just take them from his inventory, or to just kill the eggs themselves. All it truly does is give Bad a sense of control, and soothe his paranoia.

[destructive-delight]

of all the things youtube has picked up on its way down the cliff into the advertiser friendly algorithm hellscape that it is now, giving creators the option to heart comments is probably the only feature i truly consider an unambiguous improvement that i appreciate from both a commenter and creator perspective. wish more sites would offer that.

[kiwikiwiandkiwi]

.

[batsplat]

oxley bom pod was talking about the friendly atmosphere in the paddock today and they brought up vale as someone who would make himself hate his opponents in order to beat them. they mentioned biaggi before saying vale didn’t need to make up a reason there lol, and the gibernau, stoner, lorenzo, marquez. thought it was interesting to hear them say that especially since oxley specifically had a particularly close working relationship with vale!

got around to listening to the podcast rather belatedly + had a chat about this general topic that helped me organise my thoughts on this a bit. I transcribed the most relevant comments - probably some small errors because of cross-talk and like... I'm a fast transcriptionist but can't be bothered to properly do it, here:

O: One is because racing is so fucking complicated now. [...] They've got so much to do, so much pressure - to have the negative energy of anger and hatred is actually - B: It's a waste. O: It's a bad thing, you're just wasting your energy. I mean it depends on the character, okay - B: So maybe Vale was the last who really needed to hate somebody to give him - and now even Vale invites Casey to his ranch to ride with him. But he really needed to - It was not difficult for him to hate, but he - Some riders he really looked for a reason to hate them even more, because then he could dig deeper in himself - because he was just a happy chap - in order to beat them. O: Max Biaggi. B: But it was easy to hate Max! That was not very difficult. Sete Gibernau, basically he needed to try - O: Casey Stoner. Sete Gibernau. Marc Marquez. B: He hated Vale probably before Vale hated Casey! But that's another podcast. O: Yeah, I think so. No, definitely, definitely, definitely. [...] Some people - they get fired up by hating other people, and that's fair enough.

so yeah. I mean, qualified agreement, I guess? they're definitely right about casey hating valentino before valentino hated casey lol. if valentino ever really hated casey at all. which is not necessarily a mainstream take, so it's nice to hear it!

I also agree with this general take about... y'know, the creeping professionalisation of the sport and how that affects how likely you're going to get fun drama. goes beyond just hours spent looking at data and also about... having a bit of a life, having time to actually form a personality. and as I've said before, it's the fans! clickbait news + social media featuring partisan fans, who aren't just going to read every statement but also react to every statement like it's life or death shit. pecco and jorge have gotten push back for some incredibly, deeply, ridiculously mild comments these last couple years. they HAVE to phrase everything they say as inoffensively as possible while still getting their points across, and even then they'll generally be jumped. like, forget valentino, how do you think casey would have fared in this current media environment? up against a fanbase as partisan as valentino's - or marc's nowadays? not well is the answer! I think to some extent you can get away with this stuff more depending on people's perceptions of you, so marc and increasingly pedro will generally be fine... but on the flip side, the pecco's, the casey's, the jorge x2's of this world... everything they say gets read in the worst possible light, but now everyone's just so much louder about it

but this ask was more about valentino than the current landscape, so I'll get back to him. I do think it is a bit of an issue if you frame it as a completely either-or issue - at the end of the day, most competitors will probably motivate themselves through their enemies at least a little. pecco definitely uses negative emotions to fire him up, people criticising him and the like. casey absolutely used them, often directed at valentino. all the comments from the haters to fire them up right, to show everyone how wrong they are. on a psychological level, there is not something *fundamentally* different between using your rivals or the fans or the press to motivate yourself - it's still the same underlying motivational process (and indeed the podcast references lawson's distaste for the press). casey signs off his first every grand prix win by saying how nice it was to beat a spanish rider sponsored by the circuit, like are we calling that pure love for the game? he and mostly martin and to a somewhat lesser degree pecco do share a tendency to... believe the world is out to get them, and use that to fire themselves up. idk if casey strictly needed to do that or if it was just ingrained at a young age and became a stable self-perpetuating way in which he viewed the world but also, it doesn't really matter, right. maybe in both valentino and casey there is a pure unpolluted soul who could have enjoyed winning just for the sake of winning, but in practise it's clearly more complicated than that. as has been recently discussed in quite some depth in this parish, late 2007!casey was getting sympathetic interview write-ups that described his mentality as informed by 'bitterness and rejection'. including bitterness at valentino, who at that point in time was not meaningfully reciprocating any of that stuff!

so I do have a bit of a bone to pick with this idea of 'the last guy'. valentino didn't 100% motivate himself by hating his enemies, the blokes after him didn't do so 0%. I think of the aliens casey is probably the most similar to him by this metric... some are definitely less inclined to do so. lorenzo's a bit of an odd case where at times it felt like he was better at making other guys hate him than necessarily hating them himself... complicated guy but I think he actually really did want to mostly fuel himself in a positive manner, except then for various reasons both external and internal he needed to also draw a bit more from. the darkness. marc is more likely than either valentino or casey to just fight to win for the sake of winning... then again you do have cute little incidents like misano 2019 where marc - off the back of two back-to-back last lap defeats - miraculously happened to find an extra bit of motivation through a spat in qualifying after duly harrying the yamaha's all weekend. again, it's a question of degree, right. marc is just inherently less restless than valentino and less inclined to think the world is out to get him than casey, which are all contributing factors

with valentino, I think I disagree a teensy bit in terms of framing more than I do in substance. first off, not to be a broken record on this, but obviously all of these feuds were very different, involving very different emotional landscapes. I don't think it's correct to say valentino needed an enemy to fire himself up, but he did always need something. some mission to dig his teeth into, some way of making the whole thing exciting. of making it fun! I'm not all that convinced of this happy-go-lucky characterisation of valentino - a lot of the time he had to go to an awful lot of effort to keep himself entertained, and when that didn't work he could get pretty miserable. he needed to keep himself stimulated, he needed to stop himself from feeling lonely, he needed to give himself a purpose to work towards. hatred did help him in a motivational sense, and he's talked in his autobiography about how anger has made him ride faster. it's useful... up to a point. it's just not a uniform thing across rivalries

my sense is that it comes down to two things. 1) he needs something to motivate himself and get excited, be it a rival or whatever. and 2) he needs some distance from his rivals. motivating yourself through a rival is not quite the same thing as motivating yourself through an enemy. for instance!! casey was only really his enemy once they were no longer on-track rivals - it was unrelated to actual competitive calculus, and was in some ways more about casey than it was about valentino. when valentino did that shit to casey at laguna 2008, he's not like... mad at casey. he doesn't hate him. he's gleeful at least in part because of how obviously pissed casey is, but he doesn't hate him. because he doesn't need to hate casey to want to beat him! casey is already so considerable a challenge that beating him is reward enough in itself - he's this super tricky puzzle for valentino to work away at... and when he comes up with the answer at laguna 2008, he's delighted. he doesn't really hate jorge in 2009 either - dislike, yes, hate, no. he's already plenty stimulated by the challenge of beating his feisty young teammate... he doesn't need anything else. he gets through 95% of the 2015 season with barely any animosity with his title rival - there, he would have seen it as distracting from his primary mission of winning his tenth in a way that was entirely disconnected from any particular rival. he also runs into the problem that it feels like any psychological warfare feels like it's getting aimed more at marc than jorge - but that's entirely accidental, he isn't TRYING to fuck with marc in the middle of the season. why would he!! and jorge refuses to be fucked with on the track because he's just never in the same postcode as valentino, and valentino isn't attempting to fuck with him off the track. he's barely even doing like,, mild mind games, like they're quite actively friendly the entire year

(I do sometimes think you can do a bit of displacement here where you don't necessarily need to hate the person you're actively fighting to get the job done - cf marc at misano 2019, also... tbh casey 2011-12 kinda had that vibe where he was getting all that energy out of his system in valentino's direction and could then keep things civil with his actual title rival. there's a LITTLE bit of that 2015 even pre phillip island but mostly valentino does have a more early 2008 'we move in silence' vibe or whatever that pecco tweet read. this is the restlessness thing, right - he kinda needs to fill his brain with SOMETHING)

which brings us to the second element: needing some distance. zero problem with biaggi, which is kinda the training wheels feud in that it takes a bit of a life of its own before valentino REALLY was intending it to. he's a kid (literal eighteen year old) who's kinda snarky about biaggi in the press and biaggi takes it EXTREMELY poorly and confronts him about it and it kind of spirals from there. with casey + jorge, valentino ensures that they never GET too close. I do think there is an element of... y'know, not wanting to be close friends with the guys who are your title rivals, because it's harder to beat people you care about and deprive them of the thing they want most in the world. which I actually think is pretty normal!! valentino's problem is that on a few occasions he has ended up in rivalries with blokes he was at some stage close in - and either he preemptively withdraws as with marc and... ? probably...? melandri...? - or the relationship deteriorates and then blows up as with sete and also marc. the 'preemptive withdrawing' bit does suggest a degree of self-awareness with regards to his own competitive process - and as has been previously argued in this parish, valentino's relationship with marc developing as it did was in large part due to his competitive situation 2010-14. the two of them falling out was probably always going to happen if they were competing, the two of them falling out that badly required valentino's stint in the competitive wilderness to let him lower his guard to such an extent

so that's the argument in broad strokes. yes, valentino can use enemies to motivate himself - he certainly enjoys having rivals, he enjoys fucking with them, he enjoys figuring them out and measuring himself against them and also a little bit of competitive edge. that doesn't mean he needs enemies per se, or certainly he wouldn't have seen some of his rivals in quite such extreme terms (casey in particular of course felt differently). he did need SOMETHING to motivate him... rivals, definitely - enemies, perhaps. and he also needed a bit of distance from those he was competing against. which post-sete he tended to preemptively enforce, except that one time when he didn't, and when it wasn't preemptively enforced it did have a tendency to blow up rather spectacularly. so in essence, you still end up at the same conclusion, right - valentino did get a lot out of having enemies, did motivate himself with them, did need to beat someone. but the working process is a bit different as I see it. sometimes making enemies is about emotional regulation, y'know. feuding as a healthy outlet for competitive tension. as it should be

[f1gure-skater]

Super niche, but I just saw someone comment on something saying that they can't comprehend the fact that figure skating qualifies as a sport and as a figure it kind of just ticked me off? Of course the skaters seen on TV are really good at it and they make it look easy but the amount of work that goes into training that isn't seen in competition isn't as pretty as what's shown on the screen. There's a lot of off ice training for cardio and strength in the form of fitness classes and there's also the on ice cardio training which is running program parts in addition to the full run through. AND THEN, so it looks good, there's ballet, and on ice movement, and theatre on ice etc. etc. etc. which makes you THINK it's more of an artform but I've gotten so many bruises from falling that I don't think I can call it art, more like pain. Honestly figure skating is a dangerous sport, there's so many risks that can lead to injuries, I've a couple of friends who have gotten concussed from bad falls and I call myself very fortunate for not having gotten any bad injuries that cause me to take time off (knock on wood) but all of the gross stuff that happens out of the shiny costumes is what gives figure skating the right to call itself a sport.

[unproduciblesmackdown]

blade gunnblade !!!!!!!!

via eliza simpson:

There are no words for this true warrior. They kill me. MMM: went in for a post show hug. Me:"ow!" Asia: "oh sorry, that's my bullet necklace." 😳........ 😍

[reflectionsofgalaxies]

a friend body doubled for me today while i went through pretty much all my clothes and i ended up getting rid of a bunch of old clothes from highschool that i enjoyed objectively bc they’re pretty, but i felt SO uncomfortable in bc i was trying so hard to be someone else.

anyway that also led to us talking about gender and presentation and stuff bc he’s also a NB trans masc person. and i don’t think i’ve had a conversation that felt that good and honest in like. years.

i also came to the realization that for the first time in my life i feel Hot. and it has SO much to do with my hair being shorter. like, i’ve felt cute or pretty at times, but never hot.

but now? me with short hair in black jeans and a flat black sports bra with open flannels or muscle tees and shit? i feel SO good.

anyway thanks for listening to me talk about how hot i am and how great it feels to have other queer people in my life.

[ereborne]

Song of the Day: May 10

"The Ghosts of Beverly Drive” by Death Cab for Cutie

[ficsforeren]

Hey Kana! I've been a fan of your writings since the past year and I just wanted to say I love them and the way you reply to your asks ❤️ I just wanted to ask a question. How do you deal with the hate comments? Like doesn't it hurt when someone questions your writings? I'm kinda a baby when it comes to tumblr and I just received my first hate comment and it felt really bad. I'm really sorry if I'm bothering you. I just felt like you're someone I should consult about this.

Hello, darling! Thank you so much for sending me a message and you're not bothering me at all! I'm happy that you reached out to me! I don't think I'm the best person to seek advice from but I'll try my best to help! It gets a bit long under the cut, I'm sorry 😭

I have received a few hate comments in the past when I just started writing. Some of them were pretty traumatizing ngl and I had to take like a year break because of it 🥲 so I know how you feel and how upsetting it is. I'm so sorry that this happened to you, sweetheart 😭I'm sending you the biggest hug right now. Nobody in the world deserves a hate comment, especially when you're a writer/artist who creates stuff for free.

I just checked your blog to see the hate comment you were referring to (I hope you don't mind 😭) and I saw that some anon was mad because you wrote a smutty fic involving a character that's still a minor in canonverse.

Now, honey, I'm 10000000% on your side because a) it's your fic, your work, your blog, as long as you've put up some warnings, you can write whatever the hell you want. b) you've aged them up in your fics but even if you didn't age them up in your fics, that still doesn't make it okay for these people to be rude and attack you for it cause they're FICTIONAL. These characters are not real people with real life problems, they're literally just a bunch of drawings. That anon is spending their energy defending lines on paper and hurting a real person in the process.

Tbh I feel like this happens pretty often no matter what fandom you're in and I find it super weird that some people are actually upset about this. It's fiction! It's not real! And it's not like you support the stuff that's happening in the story! Like if you write about character A killing someone, it doesn't make you a murderer. It doesn't mean you support the act. If you write about incest, it doesn't mean you want to sleep with your dad or your brother. It's simply just for the plot, to make the story interesting. To share your ideas and be creative about it. And, the most important thing is, you're not forcing these people to read your fics, are you? They decided to read them on their own. And if you already wrote the warnings and they CHOSE to ignore them, that's their fault. It's like you see a bowl of hot peppers and you know they're spicy as hell but you choose to eat them anyway and when your tongue is on fire, you get angry "WHY IS THIS THING SO SPICY" like what????

A message for that anon: When you read stuff you don't like (stuff that someone wrote for FREE, stuff that someone spent hours or days creating it), the easiest thing you can do is just close the tab. Literally it takes zero energy to do it. Don't attack these writers with hate comments. Don't hurt their feelings. You don't know how hard they've worked on the story, their struggles in real life, or how insecure they are about their writing. One bad comment and they might stop writing forever, even when it's something that brought them comfort before. There are millions of other fics out there that you can read. Just scroll away and move on.

[hourcat]

i cant write that fic for real btw because that would mean charles would replace dj and i cant do that to my baby girl

[oysterie]

Nvm i forgot lab reports are easy and take 2 seconds to finish

[arts-i-enjoy]

Something I've noticed from subbing to just a couple of very small patreons (like fewer than 50 members) is how SHY people are about talking to the creator that they are paying! What's up with that? I wonder if it's because most of these patrons come via tumblr, where there is the culture of talking in the tags/reblogs and comments being your "outdoor voice"/basically it being RUDE to talk to people.

I think that's fucked up, especially in the context of artists (just to be clear every time I say artists that is inclusive of writers). Like these are people that are making a thing and showing it to you, they don't just want silent nods of approval by way of reblogs/likes. They want FEEDBACK. They want CONNECTION. I think a fundamental part of creating and sharing art is the goal of connection. And I don't think people realize how truly disheartening it is to post something and then get completely silent likes/reblogs.

For the love of God they are TALKING TO YOU. TALK BACK!!!!

[salithemage]

if you still think 100% or like 99% of humanity is either bisexual or in denial in the year of our lord two thousand and twenty three please get well soon