#i feel like i'm just retreading old ground here

[vimbry]

I'm impressed by how many angles tmbg can approach the theme of 'work sucks' and have it not feel like they're retreading old ground. every single one of them has something new to say, which becomes very depressing if you think about that for too long.

"put your hand inside the puppet head": thinking about a terrible job in hindsight rather than being in the thick of one, and the importance of keeping some perspective instead of falling afoul of romanticising the past, once the bad memories wane with time.

"snowball in hell": the lament of a tedious job that doesn't suit your needs. the past tense makes me think of it as the narrator reflecting on the day after clocking out for the night, and how pretty soon they'll have to face the monotony all over again tomorrow, just to stay afloat.

"someone keeps moving my chair": I dunno how accurate this is, but I've kinda been interpreting this one as illustrating the rigmarole of office politics. all the tasks and busywork and even worse higher-ups to answer to, all new ideas that get brought in and go nowhere - yet somehow, it's the most petty of annoyances that bother mr. horrible.

"hearing aid": there's an almost zen-like attitude towards the managerial pecking order here, which is also alluded to in "puppet head". both narrators mention fleeting sympathy for their awful bosses, knowing they're just as much a victim of a flawed system as they are, but not excusing their actions. I guess it's a vent about not letting the pressure get to you and doing nothing more than your set responsibilities, if even that. real "go out there and give it your 60%" type song from a totally checked-out character.

"minimum wage": a mockery of these types of jobs treating you like a mule (not only from the 'hyah' and whip noise, but the lyric being sung in the style of "mule train"), but oddly playful in a somewhat bitter way. it gives me the same kind of vibe as someone working an early student job they can afford to treat with a bit of levity, because they know they won't be here long enough to care.

"sleeping in the flowers": focuses more on the fantasy of being with a crush than work, but it's in there. the narrator would much sooner ditch their job, regardless of consequences, and spend that time with the woman they're in love with. this is the second song to mention an infatuation with someone working at a copy shop after "snowball in hell"; you could probably theorise that it's the same person.

"memo to human resources": their most serious and haunting song on the matter. the references to an attempt aren't subtle. the lyrics seem to function as both a metaphor of the narrator's state of mind and their plan, and a literal description of the day-to-day tasks that exacerbated their spiral. another double-meaning I like in its title is how it's a report of the incident, as well as a note.

[pixies-and-poets]

Hello everyone!

Super Mario RPG has been in my life for over 15 years, but it wasn't until the remake came out that I gave it significant space in my brain. Both the absolute joy and love that the remake invokes, as well as the renewed fandom around it, have gotten me obsessed with some of these characters like never before.

Even so, I've been a bit hesitant to write or put some of my ideas out there... it's a very old fandom, one in which I feel so many interesting story ideas and philosophical angles to these characters must have already been explored, since the days of forum roleplays and the heyday of sprite comics which I remember from my earliest years online. It makes it somewhat intimidating for me to write down my own ideas for fear of retreading old ground that I didn't even know had been trod. Or perhaps just not being nearly as interesting as fanon that has existed before.

....But I'm also really obsessed and I need to get some stuff out of my brain. So I'm just gonna try some things! For fun!

And therefore I present to you, my first ever SMRPG writing. Let me know if you like it, and there will be more!

PS: the way I'm resolving the name discrepancy between some of the characters mentioned here, is that I take their remake names to be the names Smithy gave them, and their "original" names to be the names they eventually take for themselves. That just feels right to me. But that is not yet relevant to this story.

So, without further ado...

The Forging

This one wasn’t much to look at. Yet.

Smithy had given this project days of nonstop planning and engineering- then hours upon hours of heating, hammering, grinding, polishing, the bright sparks flying ceaselessly in his workshop, the sound of his hammer ringing out like a song on repeat. Everything was calculated to ensure just the right amount of sturdiness and strength while maintaining a lightweight flexibility. The perfect incarnation of a spear.

But what it all amounted to, as far as an untrained eye could see, was an unassuming wire-frame of spindly limbs, attached to a cauldron-like lower belly for some weight. The inert body lay stretched out on the slab like a stick figure, more like the beginning sketch of a piece of art than its end product.

That was alright. It was only the beginning, after all. He still needed details: the flourishes of red that would bring his design to completion, the cape that would serve as the dramatic curtain to cloak his form. More than anything, of course, he needed life. He needed movement.

Of course, he didn’t have a head yet, and that didn’t help matters.

The head alone had taken Smithy a day in itself. But when finished, it was truly a masterpiece. The long and deadly point gleamed in the light of the forge, the very essence of both elegance and danger; below it, the “cheekbones” were two sharp and threatening downward curves, masterfully forged in their grace and symmetry. In between them, the eyes: open and blank. No thoughts stirred them just yet; but soon, there would be more than enough to animate them. This one was to be a thinker, after all.

He heated up the bottom tip once again, just enough so that it glowed, but didn’t melt - and using his tongs, pressed the final touch up inside what looked like the creature’s open snout. The red fibers of the mustache fused and glued themselves to the inner metal. There- the upward-pointing curves that reflected the downward ones above them, the spot of color- now the whole piece was perfection of both craftsmanship and design.

...And it made him look mature. Dignified. Adult. With Bowyer and Claymorton running around, they could certainly use a bit more of that around the place.

Smithy held the head at arm’s length, to admire it for a moment- and then approached the body on the slab. He slotted the head expertly into the joint where the spine arched back into what became a plume, clicking and snapping it into its place; it was meant to be removable, after all.

As he stood back again, the smith noticed that the yellow eyes had closed. Smithy smiled- there had been some reaction; good. He had not failed in his designs. Now his creation slept its primordial sleep, and would awaken when he commanded.

In the meantime, he would work on those final touches. He turned to his workbench to retrieve the accessories that had been created and set aside in advance. He slid and buckled the belt around the creature’s lower body- an unnecessary accoutrement, but a pleasing one. Two red “socks”- really, more like braces, around his ankles, attaching just so, to provide extra cushioning from leaps. And then- well, why not? He picked up the large red plume, which had been-

A scraping and rattling caught Smithy by surprise. He turned quickly, and saw that the Spear was moving his right hand. The skeletal steel fingers, as yet ungloved, scratched at the slab on which they rested. A drumming, a grasping- as if eager.

Suddenly the creature’s entire arm jolted, as if electrified- and his eyes flew open. As Smithy reached his side, the spear-being blinked, looking around groggily- and then he pulled himself up, resting on his elbows, his thin but supple spine curving into a more upright position. He blinked again, and turned his head- the movements of his eyes had already grown restless, darting around the room. They lit on Smithy, still holding the plume, and his eyes widened slightly in surprise.

“Well! You’re here early,” said the blacksmith in amusement. “You aren’t finished yet.” Hungry for life, this one.

The creation pushed himself upwards to a full sitting position. He looked down at his fingers, his shoes, his body… and then back at the other figure in the room.

“Who am I?” were his first words.

Smithy took a moment to respond. In his head, he was reacting to the question, comparing it to the others he had received. “What am I?” Boomer had asked. “Where am I?” was Claymorton’s question. “Who are you?!” was the inquiry from Bowyer, with a nya or two thrown in. And now…

“Your name is Speardovich. You are the sharp and shining spear of my army, who strikes with cleverness and cunning. You are a weapon.”

Feeling a bit silly with the plume in his hands, Smithy took hold of the wire that bent out from behind his creation’s head, and affixed the crest to its place. The activity seemed to startle the newborn being, and when it was done, he shook his head back and forth, feeling out his the new balance. He reached backwards with one of his clawlike hands and ran his fingers through the plume, as one might admire their own luxurious hair. He seemed to like it indeed.

“...What is a weapon?” he asked when he was satisfied with this, looking Smithy in the eyes again, curiously.

“Hmm! Good question.” But this would be easy enough, the blacksmith thought- it was long ago now, but he could still recall the essence of what he had told Boomer.

“A weapon is what we make here- what I make here. My name, by the way, is Smithy- your creator.” He turned back to his table, and came back a moment later with a red glove. He lifted the right wrist of his creation - still limp, weak, confused - and gently slid the hand inside. “Some would say a weapon is an implement designed to cause damage,” he said, as he fitted each finger delicately into its place; surprisingly deft with his own massive hand. “To hurt, to maim, to kill. To destroy.”

He stepped away, and came back with the glove’s left-handed counterpart. “Others would say,” he continued, as he again slid each wiry finger into where it belonged, “That a weapon enables self-defense. To defeat so-called evil, to allow people to live safe and free.”

Finished with the gloving, Smithy held his creation’s smaller hand in his own for just a moment- the one, long-fingered and designed for dexterity, atop the other built for strength. “But either way- a weapon is power. The very idea of power, distilled and manifested into an object. And that, my Speardovich, is what you are. Now- move your hands. Tell me, do those gloves fit well?”

The creation raised his hands, gazing at them, and wiggled and stretched his fingers. He did not answer for a moment.

“So?” prompted the smith. “Is something the matter?”

“I… don’t think it’s the gloves,” said the weapon at last, shaking his head. “It's- it's my hands themselves. They feel… incomplete. They…” he made a grabbing, clutching motion with both of them- he suddenly seemed pitiable, like a child needy for a parent, a role in which Smithy was clearly deficient. “I- I’m sorry, My Lord Smithy. I don’t have the words. I don’t understand-”

“Ah,” said Smithy. “I know what you need. Hold tight.”

He turned yet again to retrieve something, and in a moment returned holding a long rod with a shining steel point at one end. Wrapped near the tip was a bold ribbon of red fabric.

“This is yours,” said the smith. “Of course you yearn for it. It’s part of you.” He stretched out his large hands, presenting the object to his creation.

Said creation’s eyes had grown huge. “My spear,” he said, in awe. He did not need to ask what it was. Not this.

He took it, with desperate swiftness- and closed his eyes. He clutched it across his chest, in both his hands, and something spread across his wiry body, releasing tension he did not even know he had. He did not know the word just yet, but later he would look back and realize it was joy.

Suddenly, in an instinctive movement, he took the spear in his right hand and deftly twirled it, over his head, and to the side of the slab on which he had been born and still sat, pointing it downwards. His eyes opened and he sprang up, his young knees bending like a spring, and he stood upright, pointing and thrusting the spear before him in a series of expert stabs. 

Smithy grinned, giddy and foolish with pride at his work. “Yes!!” he cried. “There you are!! You know who you are, after all!!”

“Indeed,” said Speardovich, looking down from his great height at his creator. His voice had lost the slow, innocent wonder of his early questions- it was now rich and resonant with confidence. “I know who I am.”

“Come down here,” ordered Smithy, and the gangly outline of a figure obeyed, jumping nimbly to the floor. The weaponsmith carried over from the work-table the last accessory, the one that had taken up the vast majority of the space. He took the red-flowing cape and draped it over the back of his newest pride and joy. Speardovich bowed his head, resting the bottom of his spear on the ground, as Smithy proceeded with the cape, buckling the horn-shaped epaulets into the sockets he had forged for them.

“Now, my Spear,” said Smithy, “let us waste no time. I have so much more to tell you- of me, and you, and what you shall do for me. And of course, you will meet your colleagues.”

Speardovich raised himself to his full height- he was taller even than his maker- and hesitated. He tried to suppress his surprise and disappointment- colleagues. Just how many of them were there?? Would they compete for the glory their mutual creator had thus far lavished upon him? Or would they show him the respect and deference he so clearly deserved?

Well, there was only one way to find out- and he would maintain that respect with force, if need be.

He was, after all, a weapon.

“Lead the way, my Lord,” he said with a nod. Then he followed the heavy plod of his creator, his cape and his plume flowing behind him, his spear in his hand, his head held high.

[batsplat]

what do you mean casey and valentino are “very different types of guys in some respects, but also painfully similar in others”, like what? does it mean they’re similar in terms of riding or something else? pls i need to know cus i’m obsessed with these two after reading your posts

okay I'm gonna be honest, I have no clue when or where I said that, and a cursory search didn't throw anything up because tumblr sucks. which means I don't know what the context was... but I did say something similar a few days ago, so I have been thinking about this stuff! I kinda talked about the similarities/differences between the pair of them in this post and will be retreading a lot of the same ground. and, well, I reckon I can have another semi-interesting stab at this topic - you can treat that other post as a tldr because this very much will not be. so here goes

first off, they're definitely not similar in riding style! casey's got a far 'wilder' style, throws the bike around a lot more - versus valentino who looks a lot more precise and controlled. I think I find them the most aesthetically pleasing rivalry match-up when fighting on-track... it's particularly accessible to the layperson imo. if you watch them in the heyday of their rivalry, you have that easily visible contrast between the roaring ducati and the nimble yamaha, the way casey is bullying the bike through every corner, how valentino keeps darting alongside through the bends while slipping back on the straights... that was obviously a very poor generation of bikes in terms of producing good racing with any regularity, but on the odd occasion when we did get a fight between them, it really delivered. the cliché about them is that casey was the talented one and valentino was the smart one, which manages to be nicely insulting to both of them (unsurprisingly, you get the sense neither of them was massively into this as a framing). but you do need a striking contrast for a good rivalry - and there really was something to this raw potential that felt very nearly limitless, belonging to this young rider who only ever just remained in control of it, always on the limit... versus the cool and calculating established master of the sport, far more considered both on and off the bike, using all his tools and tricks in an attempt to trip up his new foe. the key thing about casey's emergence is that it was a bit of a shock. obviously, with the benefit of hindsight, it didn't really come out of nowhere - but when analysing their rivalry it's important to keep in mind that casey was not supposed to be the primary challenger to the throne. casey comes out of nowhere to defeat valentino, and then valentino has to plot and scheme to get him back. it works! it's compelling! 2007 to 2008 forms a very engaging arc... after that it all tapers off for various reasons but you kinda need to enjoy what you get, plus even the tapering off is pretty interesting

and I'm somewhat preempting the laguna 2008 long post still sitting in my drafts here, but this post is more vibes-based so it shouldn't overlap too badly. that race is important for all these different reasons, as a significant turning point in the season and the rivalry and the relationship between the pair of them. for valentino, it was a successful gamble - one that he felt he had to take in order to reassert himself, to finally gain an edge over his most tenacious rival. it was a culmination, in a way, of this journey of casey repeatedly surprising him, repeatedly failing to bend to the weight of valentino's expectations... until valentino dispensed with the old playbook and figured out a way of surprising casey in turn. it's the shock of what happened at laguna and the feelings that are associated with that loss that makes it such a defining moment for casey. yes, it was a deeply uncomfortable race for him given the viciousness of the riding on display, but his emotional response to that is a little more complicated than either fear for his own safety or righteous indignation at valentino's behaviour. the pre-race expectations, valentino getting the better of him during the race, the comically slow, almost feeble crash that ended casey's victory hopes, valentino's post-race triumphalism... what valentino did was make a spectacle out of casey's humiliation. and after all that, it is casey who has to apologise to valentino, playing contrite about his post-race comments when they reconvene after what must have been a painful summer break... it's humiliating! this is humiliating

ignore the points standings for a moment (where casey was 20 points down to valentino) - to the best of my knowledge, paddock consensus was treating casey as a firm title favourite before that race. this is how much of a mark casey's 2007 dominance had left on the collective consciousness of the paddock... early season ducati problems be damned: once he starts winning, he just doesn't stop. even in the immediate aftermath of the race, valentino was being discussed by a lot of the commentary at best as a joint favourite for the title. the ins and outs of how casey's title campaign fell apart are a topic for another day, but it's always crucial to reinsert some context when we're discussing that rivalry and remember just how scary casey's reputation had become by this point. and it's this story that's been developed through some particularly memorable races between the pair of them... qatar 2007, obviously, casey's first win on his first ride with ducati... catalunya 2007, arguably still casey's best win, beating valentino wheel-to-wheel at the circuit where valentino beat everyone else in similar fashion before and since (cf 2004, 2005, 2009, 2016)... casey comes into the championship and doesn't just beat the man who seemed unbeatable on sheer merit, but also beats him on valentino's turf - winning the precise type of significant make-or-break duel that valentino so excels at. and then, one year later, valentino rocks up at a track where everyone expects casey to win, everyone expects it until the very second the race starts... and he wins, doing so by reversing his usual tactics and taking a new approach to cracking the casey puzzle. it's the element of surprise, the shock of it, that allow these isolated performances in their (all too rare) duels to impose a new reality on the championship overnight. and it has the ability to leave the loser reeling, to need time to figure out how to go about their racing from this point forwards. they are forced to regroup, to reassess, to change their ways

now, with that in mind, we can actually start getting into the similarities between the pair of them, aka what the ask was actually about. exciting. let's start here: one thing that's important to remember about laguna 2008 is that it does not immediately turn it into an open feud overnight. casey apologised for what he had said after laguna at the next race. he said to the press he had overreacted, and he apologised directly to valentino:

(for more on casey/vale versus toni elias, see here)

valentino of course accepted this apology (more on this in a moment), happy to call it bygones. these photos are from the brno press conference, almost a month after laguna:

listen. it's just a few photos. god knows what's going on here. but it's casey who is having to reach out to valentino, to make an effort to be friendly to him, to smooth things over. I imagine his experiences in the years to come hardened his initial stance on the race, but obviously it's fair to say that this apology was not 100% sincere. unless casey has done a complete one eighty since then, he's made it repeatedly clear that he did lose respect for valentino, that he did find his riding unacceptable, that he does think worse of valentino as a result. and if there's anything that could radicalise him on that front, surely it's the experience of having to grovel, of having to play nice so that the gracious valentino can pardon him - who casey firmly believes was in the wrong... surely, that has to be galling. it's infuriating. it's embarrassing, especially as the championship continues to slip from his grasp in a manner that so perfectly contributes to the murmurings valentino may have broken casey too. quite frankly, it's humiliating

which makes it notable that for all intents and purposes... they get on fine after this, when they're interacting face-to-face at least. I did a post on this for a target audience of me with like a hundred something photos from 2007-09 - and for all the talk of the relationship deteriorating after laguna... well, I reckon a lot of this is after-the-fact narrativisation of their rivalry, rather than an accurate reflection of what the vibes between them were at any given point. they can still laugh together after laguna! isn't that lovely! now, from 2010 onwards, the relationship does get significantly worse - even if it never quite reaches the same depths of interpersonal coldness that basically every other valentino feud got to. there's a lot more vitriol to what they say about each other, there's just a higher quantity of increasingly petty spats between the two of them, and there's also clearly less interest in small talk on both sides. to be clear, it's not that casey was never critical of valentino from 2008 to 2009, far from it... it's just that those were generally isolated incidents, relatively mild criticism or interviews where you go 'ooh boy he was in a bad mood that day' at the whole thing, rather than the constant mutual jibes of 2010-12. there's not really a clear instigating party for the feud getting worse in 2010, also not a single incident you can point to. I am going to make an educated guess about the timeline here, but to be clear this is only a guess - we really don't have access to the full story. I reckon it was a few comments casey made during valentino's leg break that signalled the beginning of the end, stuff like this:

It seems there is only one positive in Rossi’s absence – noted by Stoner during the British GP weekend. “The fans are more polite,” said the 2007 champ who was booed by British fans following his Donington MotoGP wins in 2007 and 2008. “When Valentino is here, the fans love him so much that they hate all the other riders. The fans that are here now are here to enjoy the racing.”

just to give you an idea of the vibes. without passing judgement on the merits of casey's observation (delivered on a weekend he was generally rather ill-tempered), I can't imagine most competitors would take particularly kindly to opponents finding the bright side of their broken leg-induced absence. then valentino returns, they have that fun fight at the sachsenring, and casey is complaining about how much fuss is being made about valentino's hasty return from injury. at which point valentino reaches into the back drawer and makes a snide remark about how if casey had been on the receiving end of casey's riding at the sachsenring, then going by laguna casey would have endlessly complained about that - but of course valentino knows what real racing is, so he would never complain. which is a delightfully roundabout way of criticising someone's riding, you have to say. and later that year, valentino is quizzed about how both casey and jorge suddenly seemed so much more willing to openly express their enmity in valentino's absence (x)

so you had these two relationships concurrently deteriorating, though valentino was rather more proactive on the jorge side of the equation. so, somewhat oddly, a relationship that seemed to be 'cordial' for the better part of two years after the actual turning point of that rivalry... becomes a lot more ugly during a time period in which the two of them are barely competing on-track. valentino will of course have played his part in that, clearly feeling extra defensive and combative and frustrated (though probably more so in jorge's direction than casey's) in what was a rough, rough season - and when that dynamic between them started getting worse, he obviously made sure to add plenty more fuel to the flames. but to me, the timing feels a little more casey-dependent. after all, it is casey who is holding a grudge over laguna 2008. valentino will of course not have forgotten casey's comments after the race... but at this stage, it's just not a rivalry he has all that much emotional investment in, beyond wanting to beat a tough opponent. unlike with sete or with marc, casey does not have a preexisting friendship with valentino he can betray. it's like valentino said in his autobiography - he could only hate someone who had been a friend. casey is not that person. whereas valentino obviously represents something a lot more complicated, more emotionally thorny to casey... one man who is so thoroughly intertwined with his disillusionment with the entire sport. casey cares about this rivalry - and it's not just because he wants to beat valentino. and then you have the 2009 illness, the frustrations of the struggling 2010 ducati, and what you get is a casey who is increasingly willing to speak his mind... who has secured his contract with honda, whose greatest rival is currently weakened. and increasingly casey isn't playing nice towards valentino, because he's decided it isn't worth it. casey's willing to have a go at him, to be a bit more rude, to actually vent some of the anger within. valentino responds. it gets nasty from there

so... let's take stock for a moment here. there's an inciting incident in a race that causes immediate tension between two riders. both parties are willing to publicly move on from it, but it becomes increasingly clear that one rider is still holding a grudge. later, tensions escalate to the point of boiling over - and we eventually come to learn that the injured party had at no point come close to moving on, for all the playacting and friendliness in the press. does this not strike anyone else as... a little bit valentino-esque? it doesn't mean casey was being dishonest after laguna (though the apology was to some extent, yes) - and his feelings about that race did probably grow more extreme when he felt he was in a position where he could allow himself to actually be angry. there's obviously perfectly good reasons why casey knew making a public enemy of valentino rossi in 2008 would be an extremely uncomfortable state of affairs... but, well, he still had a choice! and the choice he made wasn't to openly declare his enmity, nor was it to forgive and move on. it was to file away the grievance, cling onto it for however long it took, before letting fly to his resentment and having it out repeatedly with his enemy when the time felt right. it's the delayed response to the whole thing that just compels me, because valentino does have a track record of a similar approach. the little slights from 2003, mugello and then assen and other murmurings in 2004, sete's flirtations with being a sore loser... it's all tucked away, barely acknowledged at all by valentino, until the exact moment where he decides he's had enough. 2013, 2014, 2015, this gradual accumulation of offences on marc's part... and then suddenly it spills over in dramatic fashion. a rapprochement for the better part of two years before another incident in 2018 triggers a response of unrestrained vitriol. now, look, you can debate about the comparisons being drawn here between the different rivalries, argue that not all of these grievances are equally legitimate, that likewise not all of the responses are equally proportionate to the crime - but let's talk psychology, not morality. because you do have the same underlying impulses at play here: an impressive ability to remember both major and minor offences paired with a refusal to move past them, a willingness to not openly engage in hostilities until the time is right, how the initial grievance can become ever more pivotal in the mind of the aggrieved. a largely retroactive emphasis on the moment in which the 'true' moral character of the opposition was revealed to the aggrieved party. some kind of perception of trickery, of deception, of an enemy who had not been honest about their true nature. all coming together in a grudge they will never entirely let go of

there's some more pieces of supplementary evidence you can quickly chuck in here, like casey's propensity for remembering slights for years and years after the fact (x)

and casey wasn't even right about it lol. over half a decade later at this point and casey's got it in for the man over a misremembered slight

then here we've got jorge drawing attention to valentino's ability to bide his time and attack from a position of strength back in 2009 (x)

almost like he prefers to bite his opponents when they're already bleeding idk

so neither valentino nor casey are particularly big believers in the 'forgive and forget' maxim. I'm sure I've said something like this before, but one of the charming things about this rivalry to me is that valentino gets to be on the receiving end of that kind of delayed retribution. broadly speaking, I do buy that he accepted casey's apology at the time of brno 2008 - there's no real reason for him not to, and there's also no real reason to believe he had any particular ill will towards casey beyond 'wanting to beat him in a motorcycling contest'. he said "sincerely I am not angry with him", and whomst am I to doubt him when he tells us it's sincere, right. now of course, there's a continual dissonance between the pair of them - because what valentino considers acceptable methods to win a motorcycling contest diverges pretty strongly from casey's standards. this is true both on and off the track - and the bit that casey always struggled with was he didn't understand a) how anyone could behave like valentino did, and b) how anyone could behave like valentino did without despising their target. valentino quite deliberately cultivated a fairly friendly but impersonal relationship with casey on his end, one that he was not particularly emotionally invested in during good times and ill (more of my thoughts on valentino's side of the equation in the context of his approach to rivalries more broadly here). valentino is capable of both these intensely personal rivalries where each offence is deeply felt, as well as these far colder purely sports-based rivalries where he is far more willing to dish it out and take it and move on. he also unsurprisingly enjoys the latter a lot more, feeling they are in some way more 'honest' and revelling in the nastiness in a manner he can't do in quite the same manner when his own pesky emotions are getting in the way. for all that casey was an awfully tricky opponent, this was a rivalry valentino took genuine pleasure in when they were competing for titles. it's a bit of a comfort zone rivalry for valentino, in a way. valentino has always needed enemies to motivate themselves - and casey presented such a unique challenge. beating that kind of talent made each victory all the more rewarding

“The rivalry with Casey was great because he was one of the greatest talents ever in MotoGP. Without a doubt, he was one of my strongest rivals.”

but for casey, of course, valentino's attacks were a hell of a lot more significant than just a bit of fun and games - it was all a lot more personal. he never forgot the humiliation he suffered at valentino's hands, whether directly or indirectly at the hands of the valentino-worshipping media and fanbase, whether on or off the track. there's a decent chance casey remembers every single negative thing valentino has ever said about him. if anything, he's actually more of an extremist on this metric than valentino is, because valentino's most longest-standing grudges rely on some kind of sense of betrayed interpersonal bond. and on casey's side there's definitely an element of this with valentino - he felt valentino got colder towards him once they became rivals, remember - but he really doesn't need all too many preconditions for his grudges. if you wrong him, he remembers, he resents, and he's unlikely to forgive

so, let's pick up on something else jorge said in the excerpt above: how he felt like he had something to learn from valentino in terms of attacking from a position of strength rather than weakness. for my money, jorge never got particularly far in developing this particular skill - just a bit too temperamental and impulsive to be able to help himself when he feels wronged. but it's this idea of learning from valentino, which sometimes feels like a bit of a portent of doom where his rivalries are concerned (remember how marc after argentina 2015 was going on about how you could always learn something from valentino) but casey in particular has talked about a lot. I'll throw in a relevant mind map screenshot again (an ever so slightly zoomed out version of the one I already included here, which also includes a few more screenshots of said mind map):

again, sort of preempting the Actual Laguna Post here - but this is kinda notable, yeah? this idea of learning from valentino is a real preoccupation! casey's belief that he has to be more selfish, that if others don't respect them he will do likewise, that he had to change his mindset... laguna did leave him reeling. he's got a very mind map-friendly way of expressing himself because he does end up making these broad strokes associations between, say, his alienation from europe, his frustrations with how the media portrayed him as weak, his thoughts on riding standards - and then they all end up being linked back to his rivalry with valentino and this single race in 2008. he talks about learning from valentino way back in 2009 and he still talks about it in 2022... this 'learning' exists along two dimensions, one on-track and one off-track. the off-track dimension isn't dissimilar to what jorge was talking about: how valentino effectively uses the media. there were times at which casey, at his most sullen towards the media, assumed that whatever he said or did, they would not take his side. and of course, he wasn't always doing himself any favours when interacting with the rest of the paddock, the media, the fans - something which valentino was happy enough to point out. here's one of my all-time favourite nuggets about the pair of them that really gets to the heart of their dynamic, from broadbent's 'ring of fire' about donington 2008 (three races before laguna):

Casey Stoner had won the British Grand Prix but had been booed. It was an ugly response from a minority of the British crowd and Stoner had, most definitely, been spitting blood afterwards. 'I had it last year when I won as well,' he snapped. 'On my slowing-down lap I was getting loads of abuse. I mean, what do people want? Are they here to even watch bike racing or are they here to abuse people?' I sipped my espresso and Rossi considered his response to the issue. 'It was very strange, for sure, but I think the relationship between the English and the Australians is not great, like the Italians and the French, yes? The people were unhappy because Casey always says, "This track is shit, this place is shit, the weather is shit." They weren't happy for that reason.'

just wonderfully in character from both parties. now, point of order: valentino's considerable popularity in the uk undoubtedly heavily contributed to casey's treatment at the hands of the british fans. if some stories are to be believed, this is something valentino quite deliberately encouraged - and he certainly wasn't all that interested in shutting it down. his line attributing casey's lack of popularity in britain to ancient hatreds is very funny, yes, but also a pretty obvious way of sidestepping any accountability. all that being said. "this track is shit, this place is shit, the weather is shit" does all sound extremely casey - and I have zero problem believing both that this is stuff casey said and that the british fans didn't take particularly kindly to this rhetoric. in similar fashion, while casey's reputation for being a handful to work with was probably harsh and he does obliquely imply valentino was badmouthing him within yamaha (very plausible but it's far from clear cut), it is also undoubtedly true he was sometimes a handful to work with. he did get his temper increasingly under control as he grew up - but there's a little more to how his handling of the media changed over time than just growing up, of course. just like laguna made him change his approach to riding, being on the receiving end of the sheer weight of valentino's power and influence in the sport forced casey to reconsider how to approach his public relations. he's conveniently explicit in discussing this, saying he cozied up to the media so they would "stop writing so much shit" about him. in an ideal world, of course, casey does not want to concern himself with such matters. he frequently struggled to understand why the more entertainment-focused elements of the sport was even necessary at all, seeing them as a distraction, as detracting from the purity of the racing, as something that no real fan would be interested in. but he learned to play that game anyway

on several occasions, casey has emphasised how he is not the type to get obsessed with his rivals, that he does not care who he is beating, that he doesn't understand why anyone would play mind games and make an enemy out of the opposition (more on this in a moment). unfortunately, given he had become the valentino rossi's rival, he was given little choice but to care... or, let's rephrase. while casey had displayed plenty of contempt for the parts of the job that require communicating with the public, he has always hated being misunderstood - he does care how people perceive him, he wants it to be accurate to how he sees himself. and given he was operating at an automatic disadvantage in dealing with such a popular and accomplished communicator, something was going to have to give. casey acknowledges it himself... there's always something a tad loaded in how casey talks about learning from valentino (including in the tweet commemorating his retirement!), because casey would prefer to live in a world where he didn't have to learn these lessons. he would have preferred not to learn what people were capable of, how to be more selfish, how to engage with the media circus. he just wanted to ride

still, valentino was certainly a capable teacher. "very savvy, and very clever, very cunning" as casey describes him, again with explicit reference not just to the on-track dimension but also what happens off the track, with the media. all three of casey, jorge and marc are in differing ways and to differing extents students of valentino's both on and off the track. all three of them have talked about learning from valentino. all three of them have shown obvious interest in how valentino conducts himself both on and off the track. for all of casey's respect and admiration for valentino before the commencement of their rivalry, however, when compared to the other two casey was markedly less interested in learning about all aspects of valentino's game. he wasn't interested in becoming the next valentino rossi, after all. casey is forced to pay attention to how valentino handles the media, is forced to learn from it and use those lessons to his own ends - which means this learning process only really started once they were already rivals. we can track casey's development when it comes to this in real time... because casey has become a far more effective communicator over the years, learning how to come across as opinionated rather than whiny and sell his side of the story

there's an obvious disparity to how much both parties have discussed the rivalry since the end of 2012, which to some extent is just a result of how one of them was still competing and cooking up new feuds and the other one wasn't, as well as the centrality of the rivalry to their respective careers. still, there is something intriguing to how little valentino has generally been interested in relitigating his old feuds once they were no longer relevant to his career. now, there's a very obvious exception to this rule, but even that goes to show that there's actually some quite specific circumstances required for valentino to be so wholly unwilling to publicly move on. first and foremost, it takes real interpersonal hurt on valentino's side... there's a world in which valentino responds to casey's numerous criticisms of him post-2012, maybe reacting to some of the jibes on instagram jorge lorenzo-style. beyond some mildly catty comments in 2013, valentino has mostly limited himself to blandly complimentary remarks about casey and their rivalry. by contrast, of course casey was hurt by valentino on a personal level. he's also aware that he's going to have to do his own pr here - if he wants his story out there, he's going to have to be proactive in telling it. he cannot rely on the public's unwavering affections in the way valentino can. still, casey made a choice to do that pr; in his shoes, valentino might well have done the same thing. because at the end of the day, casey does care what people think and is willing to use the enemy's weapons to change hearts and minds. he doesn't want to be written off as weak or broken or a whiner. he wants to be remembered for the times he stood up to valentino, not when he supposedly folded to him. maybe, just maybe, he wants valentino to get a taste of his own medicine

and yes, at this point we do need to bring in casey's most obvious act of revenge against valentino. it was valentino who gave him the opening to do so, valentino who infuriated casey in the moment, but casey jumped at the chance with relish. in early 2011, casey could already be satisfied with his immediate success with honda - as well as relish in his arch rival's struggles on a bike that casey had been accused of not getting the most out of for all of 2010. then, in the wet of jerez, valentino spotted an opportunity to get a good result on a poor bike and chased down the leaders, with casey running in second. he made an ill-fated attempt at an overtake that ended with both of them going down. the incident and what followed had all the ingredients to flick as many casey triggers as possible: lack of suitable caution from his opponent, injustice in treatment by the stewards, the performative nature of the apology, and valentino's failure to remove his helmet that was interpreted as a lack of respect and sincerity. there were a few other underlying points of contention here, like casey linking this incident to his feelings towards european values (or lack thereof) more broadly - a less honest people, one hears. then there is also casey enquiring after the shoulder, something valentino later picked up on as an odd focus on casey's part (cf too casey's response to valentino's comeback from the broken leg). I've discussed this elsewhere, but at a guess casey was internally comparing how he and valentino were treated in their respective health-related absences in 2009 and 2010. the suspicion he had gotten versus the sympathy and adulation that accompanied valentino's heroic return. with the shoulder, you'd imagine casey was particularly sensitive to the suggestion that valentino was hampered in his riding by his injury - again, compared to how poorly casey's struggles with his mystery illness had been received. now, obviously the shoulder was hampering valentino (and he later admitted he had been afraid it could be career ending), but that isn't really the point, is it? what casey is objecting to are the double standards. throughout casey's career, valentino provides the most obvious lightning rod for his frustrations, and it's not hard to understand why

then there's the line itself, ambition outweighing talent and all that. if I had to choose a single word to describe the experience of having to go and apologise to your rival (who you severely dislike) for what was clearly your error in what is already proving to be a rough and often painful stretch of your career, only to be met with a sarcastic smile and a horrendously dismissive line, I suppose I'd have to call that 'humiliating'. given casey has later clarified he believes the line describes valentino's entire career, it is quite a strong reaction for what is at the end of the day still a racing incident in tricky conditions. and... well, for all that the rivalry had essentially shifted to being primarily off-track by this point, given the pair of them were not fighting it out for titles any longer, it was still in some ways playing out in a similar manner. once again, casey has managed to surprise valentino. back in the day, he took on valentino in vale's kingdom of extended wheel-to-wheel combat, and he won. then, valentino took on casey in his domain at laguna seca, and he won. see too casey's autobiography when discussing the race: "we had a lot of great over the years but there were occasions where he would try different tactics that surprised me. laguna seca was one of the occasions where he had to get a result." the element of surprise, again and again. on-track, off-track, how they fight and how they are perceived... take even, for instance, the british fans: casey, who had family in britain, is a native english speaker, moved there initially from australia as a teenager and saw the place as a second home, would have expected the place to love him back like a second home. he certainly wouldn't have expected to be despised by the fans - and it is this thwarted sense of expectation, of vulnerability based on that childhood connection, that ensured casey has more enmity towards the british fans than towards any other nationality (including the italians)

and now, casey is in front of valentino's cameras, playing valentino's game. and he wins. it doesn't matter that the inciting incident itself was far from the worst you'll ever see, it doesn't matter if casey's comment was a proportionate response or not. because here, casey was given an opportunity to get some payback. to dish out some humiliation of his own, from a position of strength. and the thing is, right, nobody would remember this incident if casey had not played into the show of it all. it's not actually the seriousness of valentino's misstep that makes the difference here... because if it was then everyone would still be talking about motegi 2005, surely a worse misstep from valentino - except marco melandri made the mistake of not having a pithy line up his sleeve while valentino was attempting to not faint at all the blood mid-apology. normally, jerez 2011 just isn't the kind of incident anyone remembers. it quite literally was not that serious. but casey understood he could make it that serious... and he's followed through on the promise of the moment by bringing it up again and again and again in the years to come. he has deliberately ensured it will remain a part of the legacy of that rivalry. because it is deliberate, isn't it - if casey is so eager to tell us how much he learned from valentino, then perhaps we should take him at his word, shouldn't we? it's a valentino-esque level of attention paid to the narrativisation of the rivalry - in this case, a level of attention that considerably outstrips the effort valentino has put into crafting his own narrative. but that really is first and foremost a reflection of the emotional stakes of the rivalry for the both of them respectively... if valentino had felt like casey had, he likely would have done much like casey did

so, let's circle back to the idea that casey does not get obsessed with his rivals. as casey puts it in his autobiography: "of course I had looked up to [valentino] as a rider for many years myself but to be honest there was no extra value in beating him as far as I was concerned. it didn't matter to me who finished second as long as I finished first and I never became obsessed with my rivals in a way that some riders do". now, look, 'never' is a big word. 'obsession' is also a big word, so let's not focus on whether casey gets obsessed with his rivals per se - his claim in the autobiography is more broadly that he did not motivate himself through the identity of his rivals, that he didn't care who he was beating. that he had this 'pure' desire to win that was entirely disconnected from his competitors. and to some extent, this notion holds up: clearly, casey would generally have been at his happiest if he had had the track to himself. a few years ago, he said he missed qualifying but not racing. he enjoys pushing himself, enjoys testing himself, is perfectionist in a way that is not dependent on his competition and tended to be overly critical of himself even after his victories. so it's the truth... but it's not the whole truth, is it now? it's not just a drive for perfection that motivates casey. sometimes, he has a point to prove

let's bring in one of my all time favourite casey clips, when wee eighteen year old casey was reacting to his very first grand prix victory. here are his initial thoughts on how happy he is achieve this milestone:

"Very good feeling, you know - to beat the Spanish at their home circuit is very good - especially Hector, who is sponsored by the circuit."

quick bit of context: hector barbera finished third behind both casey and german steve jenkner, a full 1.1s off the race victory. so. casey. my man. what exactly is it about beating the spanish at home that is particularly satisfying? when you say "especially hector", it does almost sound like not all rivals are equally enjoyable to beat. a cynical soul might say that it sounds almost like we're engaging in a teensy bit of schadenfreude here, during the very first win no less. start as you intend to go on, right?

to fully explain why casey might have found besting the spaniards so satisfying is very much a topic for another post, but for now let's just say that it does make sense he would feel this way. we should also acknowledge the more generous explanation here - that a rider from spain might be more familiar with the track, especially if he is sponsored by the circuit. while this is not an explanation I buy, it does not change the fact that obviously, to casey, beating certain opponents did carry some "extra value" with it. he's human! it happens! it's telling that this is pretty much the first thing that comes out of his mouth after the win... we've already established that casey can very much hold a grudge; the next step is to talk about how casey does like to use spite to motivate himself. another obvious example is his repeated rejection at the hands of yamaha (and honda) - when he went to ducati, he wanted to show the other manufacturers that they had been wrong in not choosing him. from his autobiography: he wanted 'nothing more' than to "put every factory honda and every factory yamaha behind me just once and make them sorry that they had passed me up". valentino likes to make his fights personal - and so, to some extent, does casey. all these deeply felt grievances resulting from how he was treated throughout his racing career, throughout his life... if he can use them to fuel himself, why shouldn't he? (for a more left field discussion of casey's use of negative emotion to fuel himself, see here)

and then, of course, there's valentino. you have casey's reaction during the race itself at laguna 2008, intensely personal as it became clear that valentino's desire to beat casey was matched only by casey's desire not to lose to valentino. the determination demonstrated at sachsenring 2010, where casey was willing to do whatever it took to ensure valentino would not take a podium immediately upon his return. his new stance that he would only show on-track respect to the riders who deserve it. his promise that another laguna 2008 would not occur, otherwise valentino would get it back "tenfold". (history's top ten tragedies we never got to see what that would have looked like.) the obvious, undisguised schadenfreude at valentino's struggles on a ducati. casey does like a bit of schadenfreude, or maybe just grim satisfaction - one of the more striking examples is when he devotes a fair number of words to jorge in early 2008 in his autobiography, detailing how arrogant jorge had been towards casey until he *checks notes* started to repeatedly smash up his body and was forcibly brought back down to earth. (also a topic for another post, darkly funny episode when you really dig into it - but this post does include most of the relevant autobiography excerpts.) valentino might be more proactive in acquiring feuds for himself, but casey has such a litany of resentments and grievances at his disposal that he always has a little bit of spite to draw on. and when he's on top, when he sees those who have wronged him suffer, then he can enjoy himself like the best of them

the other element of casey's rhetoric that's worth briefly acknowledging is his belief that 'mind games' are something counterproductive - because why would you make enemies who will then in turn be more motivated to beat you? marc, in this sense, has become quite a useful rhetorical prop to allow casey to argue that valentino made a mistake by making so many enemies. I talked this a little more here and really don't want to spent too long on it in this post - but the idea that valentino suffered any material consequences from making an enemy out of casey just doesn't stand up to any scrutiny. the rivalry ended up becoming quite unpleasant for valentino, but by the time their relationship had truly deteriorated they were no longer meaningfully competing on-track. it would have been interesting to see how their on-track rivalry plays out with the vibes between them so abysmal, so it is a bit of a shame... though maybe they never would have let it get that bad if they had still been competing, with valentino less frustrated and casey not in an equivalent position of strength. as to the disavowal of 'mind games' as a legitimate tactic and the idea that it's a sign of weakness to play them... linked to the idea that certain victories achieved in certain ways become less meaningful, less well deserved than if competitors had gone about things 'honestly'. let's quickly bring in this parallel I drew in this... idk, web weave, compilation, whatever:

now, call me a cynic, but personally I feel like what casey is describing here would in common parlance constitute a 'mind game'. expectation management is basically mind games 101, though it gets upgraded to a 201 if you're being deliberately deceptive about it. this isn't supposed to be a gotcha, not least because casey is capable of a little nuance here - e.g. on one occasion, he adds the revealing caveat that he takes issue with "trying to get into someone's head and doing it in the wrong way". the problem, as he sees it, is giving them a reason to disrespect you, to hate you. a problem valentino is not unaware of - it's also worth pointing out that the single biggest reason casey grew to hate valentino was an on-track battle that swung a championship fight, and from valentino's perspective was unavoidable. casey's critique of valentino's intimidation tactics does have to be accompanied with the context that beating opponents in direct wheel-to-wheel combat was a major part of what made valentino so good, a far more significant element of his game than it was for any other alien. it's just a style of racing that happens to gel with valentino's more 'psychological' approach to competing in general, where as he describes it he does some off-track 'work' to complement the combative on-track process by which he went about achieving a hefty bulk of his victories (topic for another post, but my sense is that valentino wasn't making an enemy out of casey quite as intentionally as casey thought he was)

anyhow, it's part of why the concept of 'mind games' is really only of limited use (see here). nobody is actually going to be opposed to everything that could be seen as playing mind games. while to some extent casey really would have preferred to exist in a universe where his competitors were entirely irrelevant to him and he could just beat the clock on an empty track, part of his process of maturing as a rider and as a person was about being a little more conscientious about the people around him - both in the positive sense of 'no longer subjecting his team to tantrums' and in the... uh, neutral sense of 'paying more attention to his opponents' psychology'. he describes in his autobiography how he'd never felt entirely comfortable around valentino, knew how to read other riders' body language and felt disquieted by the moves valentino was willing to pull, believed him and valentino were on a different "wavelength" (not a bad way of describing their dynamic in general, you'd have to say). after laguna, he speaks of matching his level of respect to the respect shown by the opponent. he learns to adjust his levels of on-track aggression, just as he is willing to mislead his rivals, at least a little. just as he is willing to engage in wars by proxy in the press with an enemy, if it comes to it. the sport isn't just about riding on a track on one's own, unfortunately for casey, but he too could play the game if need be

speaking of playing games, it's worth examining how the pair of them were quite so adept at pissing each other off in the latter years of the rivalry. my pet theory here is that valentino and casey have just enough trigger points in common, just enough overlap in their sensitivities and the criticisms they most loathed to receive, that they ended up perfectly suited to getting under each other's skins. for all his wariness towards the media and initial struggles in expressing himself, there's an argument to be made that casey was the only valentino rival who managed to get to him with his actual words. biaggi certainly never managed to. jorge took a bunch of swings at it, a keen student in the art of mind games - but there's not all that much indication any of it ever landed on valentino's end, who mainly just seemed pissed off by the general fact of jorge's existence. the one exception you could make is perhaps misano 2016, where jorge criticises a pass by valentino during the race that nobody really saw as all that egregious... but, well, you take your chances when you get them, and valentino did seem genuinely irritated when they started bickering in the post-race presser. with sete and marc, there's various assen-based controversies where valentino clearly didn't take particularly kindly to the reactions of the losing party - but this wasn't tied to the specific manner in which his rivals expressed themselves, as much as it was the simple fact they took the loss poorly. I struggle to recall any instance in which even marc, the rival who valentino continues to be the most obsessed with by a fair margin, managed to draw a response from valentino through a verbal provocation. one fairly obvious reason is that unlike casey, marc generally hasn't wanted to provoke valentino - and when he has wanted to, he's tended to do so on the track

but casey and valentino? oh, they clearly got to each other. the real giveaway is the frequency of arguments post-2009, which vastly outstrips any of valentino's other rivalries (especially given the absence of an actual title fight!) and completely dispensed with valentino's general restraint and ability to choose his moments. anything was fair game here and once one of them got in a jibe, the other one couldn't help but respond. partly this was a reflection of valentino's competitive frustrations, and I suppose lashing out at casey was as good a way to pass the time as any. but the simple fact of the matter is that valentino's rivals generally weren't going toe-to-toe with him in any war of words. casey was not only capable but also clearly willing to do so - and they figured out to hit each other where it hurts. all riders are unsurprisingly sensitive to the idea their accomplishments were not achieved through their own merits, but casey and valentino's sensibilities are particularly delicate in that regard. for all that valentino in 2001 to 2003 could enjoy the role of carefree king of the sport, a surefire way of getting to him was by suggesting his successes were down to the bike. as he details in his autobiography, by 2003 he was getting extremely irritable at the suggestion even by riders in his own house (read: biaggi and sete) that his factory status was giving him a massive advantage. it's one of the main reasons he switched to yamaha! he took a massive gamble, partly because he simply had to prove a point and show he was more than just a great bike. in 2014, he notes that marc's successes were generally not being attributed to being on the strongest bike, commenting that perhaps the difference was marc's rivals were less likely than valentino's to complain about bike disadvantages. (this is true broadly speaking, and remains true even after valentino and marc's relationship falls apart.) casey spent much of 2007 becoming increasingly short-tempered at suggestions he owed his title to either the bike or the tyres, annoyed that nobody was seemingly willing to accept he might just be that good. he hates it when riders make excuses for their poor performances by blaming their machinery, remained exceedingly sensitive to any insinuations he might not be extracting the most from his machinery - and generally can't stand it when riders cannot pay credit to others for their successes

so given their respective stances, it should come as zero surprise that they both ended up spending a fair bit of time discrediting each other's successes. again, in 2007 to 2009, they mostly aren't too bad with this. valentino complains a lot about the tyres in 2007 - but he generally frames this as a frustration that he can't fight with casey, rather than saying he would be beating casey without the tyre difference. and he's willing to actually make the gamble to switch the tyres, rather than just continuing to hide behind that disparity as an excuse. for his part, casey criticises valentino on a number of issues, including of course the laguna victory and how valentino went about achieving it. still, more often than not, they stress how much they respect and even admire each other as riders. then, when the relationship goes to shit in 2010... well, you've got stuff like valentino saying casey isn't pushing to the pushing on the ducati and casey talking about how valentino maybe should try not being soundly beaten by his teammate. in the next two years, casey in turn criticises valentino for not pushing to the limit on the ducati, while valentino gets irritable about comparisons made between the pair of them, uncharacteristically publicly sensitive to the idea that casey was more successful and/or more talented. and in his autobiography, casey expands on his jerez 2011 remarks to posit valentino's success relied on building up his confidence in a weak era

now, listen, if we were to fact-check these jibes, most of them would rank somewhere in the 'eh' tier. valentino's belief that he was at a disadvantage on the michelins in 2007 does broadly stand up to scrutiny, not least given what happened in 2008 - but of course, he will have been aware that his stance of 'if we were on the same tyres, the fight would be closer' would be translated to 'valentino is only losing because of the tyres' by much of the media and public. he didn't really need to do his own pr with a lot of this stuff; you can't just judge what he said without taking into consideration the unspoken implications he would surely have known the rest of the sport would run with. then, there's the claim that casey wasn't getting the maximum out of the ducati, which obviously aged horrendously. given the state of valentino's shoulder and how he very much should not have been riding with it, casey's teammate comment feels pretty harsh - though, again, it's probably fair to assume there was some bitterness there on casey's part about how much less sympathy he had been afforded a year earlier when he had been struggling. the criticisms of valentino on a ducati are again harshly phrased, and the bike was probably a fair bit worse than in 2010, which in any case was already a lot worse than when casey won the title in 2007 - though casey was of course right about the lack of progress of the project. the weak era argument is just not a framing I have any interest in within any context so I won't touch that one here, though your mileage will vary on that

the point here isn't to figure out who was 'right' or 'wrong' because, literally, who cares - this is more about establishing that both sides are insulting each other in ways that aren't always particularly 'fair' by their own standards. they're insulting each other in ways they hate to be insulted themselves. and once of them starts, of course the other has to respond in kind, which is how they had a bunch of petty insult contests that typically became races to the bottom. and it's worth remembering that valentino has gotten himself involved in some pretty nasty feuds where he doesn't do this stuff. even in late 2018, for instance, he was saying that marc didn't need to switch from honda to prove himself. he hasn't shied away from acknowledging marc's ability as a rider over the years - as far as he's concerned, his conflict with marc is entirely irrelevant to that. his insults of jorge were generally targeted at jorge's personality more than his ability (minus perhaps the 2009 cold war dramatics where everyone was constantly insinuating the other side was only fast because they were copying set-ups, but that's something different). of course, it's not just casey whose riding valentino has been snide about over the years - but it's the pettiness and frequency that really do stand out when compared to every other valentino rivalry. looking at the full body of evidence at our disposal, it's generally obvious that valentino did rate casey as a rider and suffered under no delusions when it came to either his talent or ultimate potential. but somehow, casey developed this ability to draw valentino into these completely pointless bickering matches. am I really saying, then, that their singular ability to annoy each other is evidence of how similar they sometimes are? well, yes, I suppose I am

again: all riders are to some extent preoccupied by the question of how much of their performances can be attributed to themselves or their bikes. these two are really preoccupied with it - and both have spoken to the importance of not deluding themselves about how their successes and failures have come about. from valentino's autobiography:

Looking back, what I said about wanting a bike that could win at Welkom, well, that was a way of boosting morale, an attempt at wishful thinking. You can't demand something like that. And even if you get it, there's no certainty you'll win. But then again, we riders always say all sorts of things. Sometimes we believe what we say, even when it sounds crazy, other times we're just being hopeful and, still at other times, it's all an exercise in self-delusion. We try to convince ourselves of something, because ultimately, every time you step on the track, words don't matter, and it's just you, the bike and your opponents. In fact, that's the only time you really have a clear picture of things. When you're actually on the track, racing against your opponents. That's when you know where you are and where the others stand. You know how your bike is doing and how those of your opponents are faring. That's the moment of clarity. Then, you can say whatever you like to everyone else: your chief mechanic, your mum, your girlfriend, the press... but, deep down, you know the truth and you know it with crystal-clear clarity. You can tell people you fell because the bike didn't follow the trajectory it was supposed to follow, or tell them that you're actually really fast, but the bike simply isn't. Inside you, however, you know the truth. You know you fell off because you made a mistake, or because your opponent is simply faster than you. And the opposite is also true. Deep down, you know whether your victories were deserved. You know if you won races on the turns, when it's down to your ability as a rider, or on the straightaways, when it's all about the power of the engine. You know the others are looking to make excuses when they say you beat them just because the bike was better. I always knew the truth behind each of my victories, and behind each of my defeats, too. I knew exactly why and how I won or lost. And so, at the end of 2003, after winning everything in sight with the Honda, I was certain I could win with another bike. But, of course, until I actually did it, I couldn't be truly certain. Thus, I set off on my journey, in search of that place where certainty meets truth.

and from casey's:

Livio once said to me that when a rider is not having success they have to find an excuse because the alternative is to accept they are not good enough. If they do that then it is hard to find the motivation to keep digging. Why even bother to keep on racing if you know you can’t win? He says riders always have to have that in them. I find a lot of truth in that, but personally I also think it is a weakness. If a rider truly believes that the bike is the problem and not them, this gives them confidence to keep going. But I have never needed that confidence because my approach is to adapt myself if necessary. I have no problem admitting if it is me who needs to be faster. If the bike had problems I tried to ride around them, not point them out and use them as an excuse.  

I wouldn't say these passages are saying quite the same thing, but at the very least they're in conversation with each other. riders tell themselves stories to protect themselves. but there is only so far that can take you - because eventually, the truth is unavoidable. valentino believes that deep down, riders know the truth anyway, whereas casey's theory is that riders can give themselves false confidence by lying to themselves. both ended up switching manufacturers at age 25, both immediately won their first race on new machinery and proved their point. and it's that point proving that they really are both awfully fond of - valentino is always wrapping up each of his victories in stories, ones that he provides significance in ways that are at times lampshaded with his various celebrations, while casey too is no stranger to finding satisfaction in proving people wrong. it's a love for subverting expectations, for surprising. it's a need to prove themselves, a desire to take on the toughest of challenges and conquer them. it's also not unconnected to their desire to uphold the importance of the rider over the bike, their wariness towards many of the more recent developments in the sport. casey's opinions about many of the technical advances from various electronics to aero to ride height devices are well-documented, and more often than not it is something he and valentino have been most outspoken about among the aliens. (for a recent contrast compare marc's reaction to his ride height device issues in austria and his insistence they need not be immediately be banned - as one of the various post-race podcasts noted, a cynic might suggest this stance could be affected by how he will have access to the very best ride height devices next year, affording him an edge over the competition.) casey and valentino are both interested in preserving the soul of the sport, are in love with its heritage; see the pride valentino takes in having won the last ever 500cc championship, how casey wishes he could have raced with those bikes and was delighted when given the chance to ride one of them last year. valentino has agreed with several of casey's critiques over the years, including in 2013 after their rivalry was already over and he was quizzed about some off casey's comments in press conferences. casey has even acknowledged a certain common ground between the pair of them here, saying in 2018, "he is like me: if it weren't for all these electronics that manage the bike, if the power was controlled only by the rider's right wrist, rossi would still be number one on the track"

a desire to allow riders to perform without too much outside assistance, then, without too much dilution of the 'pure' nature of competition. even casey's disgust at the merest sliver of yellow on the desmosedici reflects that respect for heritage, in a way, and valentino has hardly been shy in paying tribute to racing heritage himself. and yes, there's the desire for truth - the desire to ensure that the sport continues to be decided by riders and their skills more than it does by clever technology, so that the most deserving rider can be revealed. nothing better than a journey where 'certainty meets truth', is there?

and what could be more of a truth-finding journey than a good old fashioned conspiracy theory? those, after all, are all about revealing hidden truths - ones that need to be revealed, ones that only the select few are initially able to perceive. valentino has competed in two title deciders in his career - and casey and valentino have split the honours in coming up with a conspiracy theory for each. in this bold division of labour, valentino took on 2015, accusing another rider of sabotaging his title bid in a seldom discussed incident that has gone a little bit under the radar in subsequent years. casey, for his part, tackled 2006 - believing that valentino had been intentionally sabotaged by way of a faulty tyre. bafflingly, he included this in his autobiography. even more bafflingly, this passage was seemingly changed between editions (more of my thoughts on that here):

I wanted to include both excerpts here mainly because I think both add something to the conversation. and for what it's worth, while valentino has mentioned that his tyres felt weird and it is plausible he may have had a dud tyre, to the best of my knowledge he has never speculated that he was the victim of any dastardly plot to deny him the title

while both valentino and casey's theories are technically speaking in the realm of 'possible', I think we can all agree that they are rather unlikely to be true. sure, there may be elements of truth to both of them - maybe valentino really did have a dud tyre, maybe marc really did race valentino differently - but there's this suspicion of malevolence here that elevates them to the conspiratorial. there is, however, also a clear difference between the two theories that I think can tell us a lot about the pair of them. casey's conspirator is faceless, a shadowy presence - influenced perhaps by uncertain, murky "commercial interests". it is not an individual that plays the villain, but is instead a structure - or certainly a collective - acting maliciously against a single rider. "welcome to my world, mate", thinks casey in response - because this plot has reminded him of all the instances in which nefarious collective actors have done him ill. in some ways, it echoes one of his earliest grievances: being denied the club membership by an australian committee that he needed to be able to continue to race in the country - a committee run by those who wished him ill. 'politics' that casey did not understand, fuelled by 'jealousy and spite', ended up forcing his family's relocation to britain, which made them financially completely reliant on casey's racing. in many of his grievances over the years, you will find echoes of this incident: the jealous and malevolent banding together to use their institutional power to make life hard for casey. in essence, to deny him entry to their clubs - to force him into the role of perpetual outsider. by contrast, valentino's conspiracies take a deeply personal shape, focusing on identifying potential traitors and preemptively striking against them before they can finish their job of destroying him. while valentino might be friendly with many, he has tended towards a tight circle of friends who have known him for a long time, is intensely aware of how establishing close bonds can open someone up to betrayal. the only way to avoid that is by managing vulnerability - and with rivals, more often than not, he would prefer not to have the kind of bond in the first place that would prompt true hatred when betrayed. shallow, violent hatred is acceptable, yes, so is cultivating a little bit of distance when a fellow rider develops into a true rival. but if such a close bond is established, then it only makes sense to suspect that bond in a time of crisis. casey thinks the world is against him - which valentino doesn't think, because it's not. he is on the look out for isolated bad actors, whereas casey is keeping a wary eye on the entire system

I don't want to go too far in pathologising these processes. plenty of casey's grievances are not only legitimate but also an accurate assessment - sometimes, they really are out to get you. valentino's tendency to distance himself from his most immediate rivals is in many ways the sensible way to go about things. but of course, there is not always a hidden truth to be uncovered, the guilty party is not always accurately identified. even casey's animosity towards valentino at times seems strangely impersonal, separate from their direct interactions ("and I dare say valentino as a guy was probably fine", after all) - but instead position valentino as the beneficiary of a system that uplifts him as much as it demonises casey. 'welcome to my world, mate' says casey about the supposed 2006 sabotage, for this is not usually a world valentino occupied. the other process casey deploys is one of abstraction, wherein valentino is to some extent depersonalised, treated less like an individual threat and more representative of broader ills: lack of respect amongst riders, what people are truly 'capable of', the corrupt nature of the european soul etc. valentino for his part never let casey close enough to allow any kind of betrayal - and you can see this from his 2010 comments, that the new hostilities 'please' him because they are the 'truth'. the competitive paranoia that unites them goes beyond what is 'normal' for athletes - with a tendency towards suspicion and conspiratorial thinking more than evident in both of them, even if it expresses itself in somewhat different ways. they're certainly not the most trusting individuals, are they

let's wrap this up, then. what it really comes down to is that valentino unwittingly ended up being pretty much the perfect foil for casey. in a lot of ways, of course, they really couldn't be more different - of course, casey had to run into the ultimate showman, the most ruthless of competitors, the one beloved above all others by the sport and those who govern it. valentino is a walking nightmare for casey to have to deal with: the way he embodied the ideal of sports as an entertainment product, the way he was determined to use every tool at his disposal to humiliate casey. of course, casey simply had to run into a rider with a reputation for breaking rivals, what with everyone already predisposed to seeing him as weak, what with his health problems that allowed much of the motogp world to write him off as broken. of course, casey just had to run into a rival who might as well have been tailor-made to make him suffer

still, casey provided rather a good account of himself in that rivalry. and valentino isn't just a foil in the sense that he provides a striking contrast for casey to define himself against - he is also the agent of transformation who forces casey to learn from him, to grow and change himself, as well as a mirror who can throw into sharp relief elements of casey that might have otherwise gone unnoticed. not to get too jungian here, but the analytical psychologists would say that casey is being forced to confront his shadow self, with valentino quite nicely mapping onto a trickster archetype (junk science but can be fun if you don't take it too seriously). the unconscious elements of casey's personality he is not entirely at ease with, these strict codes and rules and standards he subjects both himself and the rest of the world to... valentino both acts as an embodiment of the various injustices casey has experienced throughout his life, a living breathing representation of many of the grievances casey has accumulated - and as this discomforting presence that teaches casey things about human nature, including those parts of himself that had existed within casey's emotional 'blind spot'. valentino exists in such violent opposition to a lot of casey's most strongly felt ideals that he not only serves as a conveniently malevolent presence to be projected upon at will, but also as this mechanism by which casey is forced to confront the shadow. it's all over his descriptions of laguna - "valentino showed who he really was", "I learned a lot about character, I learned a lot about race craft, I learned a lot about what people were capable of", "I underestimated what people are capable of just to win a race"... valentino deceives, he manipulates, he tricks - but he also serves the function of revealing what was hidden. and on the one hand, it makes casey recommit to his own values, knowing that he would not have acted like valentino did - "in his place I would have apologised", "I couldn't have done that overtaking, if I touched someone and moved them I felt guilty. it was the stupid part of my character, but it was what kept me asleep at night". but on the other hand, it also prompts a transformation within casey - a "change in mindset", something that "helped me in the following years", adopt "a different mentality", that taught him to "be more selfish with my racing", to "race for myself". again: "but, after two years of racing with people who don't worry about you, I've learned that I have to do the same." "people think it was the turning point of the season, but instead it was the turning point of my career, because from that moment I told myself I wouldn't worry about thinking about others anymore" - he's very explicit about this, isn't he? and of course, most memorably: "what happened between me and valentino at laguna 2008 won't happen again, or if it does, he'll get it back tenfold". for all that acting like valentino did would cause casey sleepless nights, if given a do-over then casey believes he would match and surpass valentino's brutality. if that's not being brought in touch with your own shadow I don't know what is

likewise, valentino functions as a focal point for many of casey's issues surrounding public performance, exposing the tension between casey's distaste for this type of public-facing communication in the name of entertainment and his desire to be understood and recognised. once upon a time, casey struggled to even acknowledge appreciation of his skill, much less seek it out

“When he won Superteen races he used to ride round with his hands on the handlebars, so I told him that he should wave to the crowd. He said, ‘no, I’ll feel a real dick’. So he was riding around, hiding inside his helmet, embarrassed with what he was doing, embarrassed with how good he was."

(thinking.) this kind of embarrassment just will not fly if your rival is valentino rossi. nobody was going to rate casey if he didn't at the very least rate himself - and he always did, exhibiting an unwavering belief in his own ability, an ironclad self confidence that kept him going throughout all the turmoil of his career. but he was stuck being simultaneously resentful of how he wasn't being given the credit he felt he was owed and unwilling or unable to articulate his own case. in this rivalry, he was already on the back foot as a result of how obscenely loved valentino was, how skilled valentino was in using that love to his own ends. casey was forced to learn to stand up for himself and take pride in his own unmatched skill and talent. he learned to play valentino's game - and he became very good at it. there's a surprisingly effective communicator buried within the surly, outrageously stubborn introvert... the type who not only could make so cutting a remark after a racing incident that it would live on in infamy, but also understood the power of the moment - an echo, in a way, of valentino stopping on his victory lap to kiss the corkscrew in commemoration of an overlap he had executed on lap four but knew would be the defining image of that race. casey has paired his reputation for straight-talking honesty with a willingness to do a fair bit of talking, if that's what it takes for his narrative of the rivalry with valentino to gradually take purchase. he's always been opinionated, he's always had a lot to say - and eventually he's learned how to say it

in the end, it's all about the shock, and it's all about the awe. they both had the ability to amaze each other on the track, posing such a stern challenge to each other it felt insurmountable. here's both of them in 2021:

CS: "But after the first year in MotoGP, seeing things from the inside, my respect for him had grown - at that moment I thought he was someone almost impossible to beat." VR: “One of the most talented and difficult riders to beat because, for me, about the pure talent, he's unbeatable."

quite something, isn't it, for valentino to call his rival's talent "unbeatable"... he came up with quite some praise of casey back in the day, labelling him both a 'devil' and a 'god'. to valentino, the danger casey represents was in his youth, his raw, unmatched talent, exhilarating to face and to attempt to best. to casey, valentino was a reference, someone who served to 'validate' casey's career achievements. it's a rivalry memorable for its violence, in the vitriol they reserved for each other, in how capable they were of dragging each other down - but in this process, a lot was also revealed about the pair of them, and especially casey. it is the central rivalry of casey's career, one he might not be 'obsessed' with but certainly shaped him above all others. sometimes, it was defined by how different the two of them were, sometimes by how casey changed to use some of valentino's playbook himself - and sometimes, by how they may have been a little more similar than anyone would have expected all along

[aelfgyvaa]

re: your post about anne boleyn merch, would be interested to hear your thoughts on the musical "six"!!

I think we were always gonna end up here eventually. To briefly summarise? I have pretty much nothing but distaste for Six.

Before I get into it, let me just say - I don't care if you like Six. If it makes you happy, that's great, I respect that. I'm not trying to tell anyone that they can't or shouldn't enjoy it, just that my personal opinion of it is... negative, to say the least.

TW - In the discussion below, I do mention child loss and child sexual abuse

────────────

The very first song in Six promises that the show is going to explore a different side of the infamous six wives of Henry VIII, rejecting the popular narrative ('Get ready for the truth that we'll be revealing'). However, it only seems to succeed in retreading the same ground we've been going over for literal centuries. I'm sure a casual viewer of Six could certainly learn something new about these women from the show - if, that is, they'd never really known about them in the first place.

To start, I'll go over some of the gripes I have with each individual representation of the wives.

Catherine of Aragon

First off - did no one pause to think that a jokey throwaway line like this in an upbeat pop track might have been distasteful when discussing a woman who lost five children?? No? Ok. Catherine had four miscarriages or stillbirths, and lost her son Henry when he was little more than a month old (and from what I've seen, none of this is mentioned at any point).

'Kiddy-less' is just obnoxious.

Anne Boleyn

In her character description at the beginning of the script, Anne is described as 'a bubbly, fun-loving gal who only wanted to snog a sexy guy'. At another point, she is referred to as 'The temptress'. Right. So we're just sticking to the exact same reductive portrayal of Anne that's been circulating forever? Cool, cool, very revisionist.

The only person who confessed to an affair with Anne Boleyn was Mark Smeaton, who did so under torture, and his story didn't even align with known facts at the time. Portraying Anne as a flirt is not 'revealing' the 'truth' - it's quite literally repeating the narrative that saw her executed.

The script and the song lyrics are littered with jokey references to 'losing your head' and I just??? Apparently, the beheading of a real person was the opportune moment to slide in a blowjob joke. Sorry, didn't realise that her execution was funny - my bad I guess.

Jane Seymour

Six seems to want to give us the impression that Henry VIII's affection for Jane Seymour, the only one of his wives to give birth to a surviving son, was reciprocated by her. Which is... certainly presumptive.

Of course, I can't definitely say anything about her personal feelings, but the fact that Henry married her eleven days after Anne's execution, and that she was reportedly sympathetic to Catherine of Aragon and Mary Tudor, paints an interesting picture of their relationship.

Other than that, there's not much to say about Jane - but that in itself isn't great. She comes off as flat, and little more than a doting housewife-esque stereotype. I understand that she was only queen for a year, but... go girl give us nothing?

Anne of Cleves

Once again... this is just so lazy. Considering one of the two writers/composers for Six studied revisionist history at Cambridge, the revisionist narrative we were promised at the beginning remains entirely absent.

The first time Henry VIII met Anne, he burst in unannounced, in disguise, and kissed her without consent. I don't know about anyone else - but if I had just arrived in a new country, was not fluent in the language, and had never seen the man I was to marry before - I'd be freaking the fuck out if that happened. Henry seems to be one of the first people to ever call Anne 'ugly', which only happened after this incident wherein she was clearly unimpressed by him. Very convenient.

Katherine Howard

Sigh...

Yeah, I hate this. I hate it so much.

Accounts are definitely murky, but I think it's safe to say that Katherine Howard had a childhood marred by sexual abuse. Whilst she was a ward of the Duchess of Norfolk, Katherine had a 'relationship' with her music teacher Henry Mannox. We don't know exactly how old Mannox was (Six puts him at 23, but yeah. We don't know), but given that their 'relationship' reportedly took place around 1536-ish, Katherine would've been about thirteen. There's an acknowledgement of this age gap in Six, but it's pretty gross how flippant it is.

Her alleged 'relationship' with the Duchess' secretary Francis Dereham is also referenced with similar thoughtlessness.

Given that Katherine was most likely still a teenager when she married Henry VIII - and when adultery accusations resulted in her execution - the pretty blatantly sexual tone with which she is presented is incredibly uncomfortable and, frankly, super inappropriate.

Katherine Parr

First off - fucking pardon? Speaks for itself, really.

The first half of Katherine's song focuses on her relationship with Thomas Seymour as opposed to Henry VIII. Which, y'know, it's nice to move away from Henry, although Thomas Seymour is very much not off the fucking hook (child groomer👍).

Katherine's song is definitely the least blatantly offensive and/or boringly repetitive of the bunch, and I do appreciate the references to her writing (although it is pretty much thrown in without any context). To be honest, she's pretty much got the only characterisation that I'm not actively opposed to.

────────────

Six claims to be a feminist, revisionist retelling, and yet in its first scene immediately pits the six women against each other by deciding to compete for who is the 'best wife' by... comparing trauma? Even when Katherine Parr's character questions this, she's mocked by the other characters.

There's an acknowledgement towards the end of the play that comparing the women and defining them by their relationships with King Henry is reductive - but frankly, by this point in the play, the damage has already been done. No half-assed 'Hey maybe we shouldn't compare ourselves after all!' is going to erase literally everything else that happened in the show prior to this. I don't care that you've decided to pull a complete 180 right at the very end, you still populated the rest of the show with disrespectful jokes that made light of the traumatic experiences of VERY REAL PEOPLE.

Six fundamentally fails at its introductory promise of revealing any sort of 'as yet untold' history surrounding these women. Worse, it arguably dehumanises them, reducing them to a group of dancing, singing, jokey fictional characters who reflect on the misery of their real-life counterparts with a disconcerting sense of humour. Instead of fulfilling its feminist framing, it falls for the tired, repetitive method of thought that presents these women as two-dimensional placeholders.

I read Six's entire script for this post, and honestly, I hope I never have to look at it again.

[mdhwrites]

Going back through TOH's episodes, it strikes me how boring they are. Part of the problem seems to be how criminally unfunny the show is, generally speaking. I can count how many times I've laughed on one hand. In fact I can list them:

There was the "It's been my dream since I was a boy" guy pushing kids off cliffs (Moving Hassle), Luz's "He'll be fine" after throwing Hunter overboard - and then his subsequent re-entry (Hunting Palismen) - and lastly Luz tumbling offscreen in front of Amity after a spider crawls on her face (Grom). That's 3 scenes, 4 jokes if we're being charitable. And sure, maybe my sense of humour is just incompatible with TOH's and I'm being harsh.

But I can't deny that I just feel like there's no rewatch value in TOH? Like it's just... the jokes are so bad to the point it's not fun, it's not entertaining, it's a slog, I see no value in retreading the same ground. And I am a SERIAL rewatcher! This is coming from someone who spends maybe 85% of their time experiencing the same stories! I love seeing well-done media all over again, because even if I know what's going to happen or what they will say, a well-structured joke or a skillfully delivered line is still gonna engage me.

I can't even recommend the show to anyone because I HAVE in the past... and what ends up happening is they watch the first couple episodes, get bored, go "I recognize that you like this, but it's not my thing" and drop it. And I CAN'T BLAME THAT! Because that's how I reacted too when I got into the show! I only stuck with it because it seemed like it was going really interesting places. And it tried to, I think, and failed.

I'm also a very fandom-heavy person so TOH's boring episodes have made it increasingly harder for me to stay within it. Because I'm not rewatching anything, I can see myself in real time as I forget more and more of the plotlines, and even a lot of the characters. It's just... kind of disappointing. It's like I just had a gradual fizzling out of interest. I don't even hate the show, which might be better in some ways - instead I just can't muster enough shits to feel any type of way towards it.

I rambled a bit but I guess my ultimate ask here was: what are your thoughts on whether or not TOH manages to entertain new/old viewers?

So I like S1. I think the characters are what carry it and that they are at their most interesting, EASILY, in S1.

The vast majority of S1, in terms of concepts and executions for plots, is OKAY AT BEST.

This actually just comes down to a simple tonal decision of TOH and also just the fact that a boring world with boring magic creates little to do with bog standard plots and TOH actually has a LOT of bog standard plotting. It is a pretty classic story structurally and takes genuinely very few risks in the structure... Which is okay in theory.

There is nothing wrong with not reinventing the wheel and TOH talks a big game about subverting tropes but no. As a fantasy fan, I can tell you this is EXCEPTIONALLY normal. Like... Insultingly from how much it talks a big game. Especially because if you're going to do classic, you have three options: Shoot the moon, lean into the unique elements of your concept or do it VERY. VERY. WELL.

And remember: They did a body swap episode and it is one of the most hated episodes of the entire show. That's not a good sign.

But this touches on the second problem I brought up: This is a boring world with boring magic. Because TOH's fantasy world is so basic, has little magic and little flair with its magic, it inherently limits what it can do. Now, it doesn't have to be this way but the show made it this way with how little we see of it, how limited it is (like how plant magic is 99% vines), and how often it just blatantly makes one to one comparisons between it and our world with effectively NOTHING altered like how the covens are just jobs, right down to them being introduced through a job fair and a boring one at that.

So when we look at a classic episode concept like the body swap episode, the three plots are... Easily replicated elsewhere. One person gets in trouble in the swap's job because they don't know what they're doing (with the most unique twist of this actually landing them in prison), a classic animal plot where they're taken in by a place that seems cozy and then isn't with literally no changes, and finally... Teenager pisses off bullies and agrees to jump DEAD MAN'S GORGE! But instead of skateboards and people really building it up, its rat beasts.

None of these plots are actually bad, they're go tos for a reason, but... No one is bringing anything special to this. Luz is entirely ignored so her character may as well not matter, Eda is doing NOTHING to add to her plot and King... King is fun for about two minutes leading the bullies and otherwise is just any other character in this situation. It's not bad, I personally enjoy parts of the episode... But it's nothing special. From the second the thing that X character is going to do is revealed, you can guess every step of the plot and they don't even really throw in good jokes in the process. A couple jokes but nothing memorable because everything is weirdly subdued compared to how other shows would be, even in an episode that is definitely trying to be more over the top.

And this runs into the inherent tonal issue of TOH: It doesn't want to be an adventure comedy. Those are genres that are commonly really over the top. They hear jump the shark and go "How about a shark jumping ten other sharks in order to finish making a can of tuna for their fire giant overlord?" And the face of this fact, in that the genres it pitches itself as for the first two episodes!

TOH flatly refuses to be silly and over the top. It's characters are very... 'realistic'. I don't mean real, just that they're meant to feel more mature by being more in control. They don't let them interrupt each other for a joke, they don't let a character be potentially OOC for a one off gag like Hop Pop screaming "EAT THE RICH!" or Sprig asking "Have you ever killed a a man, Hop Pop," and I can only think of one time Luz got mad for the sake of a joke and honestly, yelling about the Rusty Smidge barely comes across as a joke because of how genuine the anger feels after a point. Otherwise, stuff that would normally get exaggerated frustration or the like to at least let you laugh at the reaction just... doesn't get one, like how Luz yells about Luzura being killed off but then... Just walks off and is passive aggressive mostly instead of even exasperated. For a drama or romance, this is not a bad approach but for even just an adventure kid's show... It's not great to put it mildly because people meet odd situations with weird levels of nonchalance. Not quite irony poisoned levels but getting there.

It's why TOH is mostly remembered for the romance and drama episodes. Not only do they allow some of the romance scenes to actually include melodrama, they also just fit how the characters act better. It's why Amity has some of the biggest emotions of the series and why Lumity have such great lines between each other because they're actually willing to lean into the sort of genre fiction that they're doing. This is also why S2 works better than S1 because a lot of the pretense of being a comedy adventure gets dropped but like... There's still plenty of boring in S2 with stuff like how Elsewhere Elsewhen takes time travel and includes a couple jokes at the beginning and then is just... horribly bland and barely qualifies as an adventure.

This lack of allowing people to be emotional and jokey also leads to the reliance on comic relief characters. People like Gus, King or Hooty, or S2 Lilith, who the characters can mock in someway, including the writers. Characters who can be the punchline even if it means a lot of people come off a lot meaner than they should, i.e. Luz absolutely rejecting Hooty for the vast majority of the series despite supposedly liking the weird and rejected. That also means that most of the time they're not on screen, either the scene starts getting pretty dry or you have a character suddenly warp to be comic relief, like how Eda gets in some S2 episodes like Elsewhere Elsewhen or Eclipse Lake where suddenly she's MUCH more of a joke than she normally is and also REALLY bad at it too and seeming potentially brain dead for it. Thanks to Them even does this to Amity even though she is probably the last person in the cast to make sense as a sudden clutz.

All of this stuff makes it so that if you go in wanting a kid's show, a fantasy show, ANYTHING that is pitched in the first episode... S1 is going to be just okay to you. I enjoyed it... But I also fell off when I first watched it. I thought the characters were good but none of it stuck with me as actually memorable and I watched until I think Adventure in the Elements. I never was never compelled to come back until Lumity animations (literally THE Little Miss Perfect animatic that is nowadays probably hard to find actually) made me go "I remember this show being neat." And Lumity was what kept me, not because I was generally laughing or calling these episodes something special. In fact, that sense of unsatisfaction is probably why I watched through it faster than Amphibia. No one episode of TOH is really great to watch on its own because... It's just kind of boring, or like half of it is boring because the B plots across the board are SO BLAND. S1 or 2 for that matter since Lumity starts getting boring B plots like with the archives or finding out the author of Azura. Both concepts btw that could have been really interesting setups and instead... If you're not into blushing Amity, get FUUUUUCKED.

That's without getting into REPETITION. Repetition kills comedy so King having one joke for S1 and also taking up like half of the B plots for the first ten episodes means you are going to be in agony eventually anytime someone talks to him because you know where it's going and you have DEFINITELY heard this joke before. And you know, he also gets three repetitive B plots which just hurts the joke even more, even as they try to make twists on it, and hurts the feeling that the show is doing... Anything..

It's just not good. Which is probably why once the characters and the 'subversive/unique' elements of the show both weakened, more and more people left because... Why would you keep watching this then? Those elements are what made up for boring plots with boring execution in a world that didn't allow for more interesting storytelling because it had few ideas and expanded on NONE OF THEM. So of course people pitch it using the elements that say "this isn't like other kids shows/fantasy shows" because if you pitch it to people who like those... They'll just be disappointed eventually and bored quickly. Like i think a lot of people did to be quite honest.

And a lack of creativity, and a lack of genre understanding, isn't something time could have ever fixed.

======+++++======

The short version of proving this point btw is going "Compare Bumi's introductory episode, which is a character giving three trials to prove another's worth, versus when the Bat Queen challenges Luz. One is exceptionally funny, interesting and has genuinely interesting twists while the other is... There. So very there. Painfully just... there. Not even bad, just... There.

Also, yes, comedy is extremely subjective which is why I tried to talk more about how a lot of these premises are boring because that can be a bit more objective.

I have a public Discord for any and all who want to join!

I also have an Amazon page for all of my original works in various forms of character focused romances from cute, teenage romance to erotica series of my past.

I have an Ao3 for my fanfiction projects as well if that catches your fancy instead.

If you want to hang out with me, I stream from time to time and love to chat with chat.

A Twitter you can follow too

And a Kofi if you like what I do and want to help out with the fact that disability doesn’t pay much.

[being-of-rain]

Time to write down my initial thoughts on Space Babies and The Devil's Chord! I'm currently busy staying with my girlfriend in America, so I've only watched the episodes once. And there's a lot of episode to talk about! I guess this is the most TV Doctor Who to come out on a single day, both by episode count and I assume by runtime. (I sure hope it doesn't get overtaken any time soon. Weekly episode schedule my beloved, whole-series-at-once events my despised.)

I've said before that I've used the word 'fun' too often as a way to sum-up new episodes, but it looks like that's going to be harder and harder to avoid. This season so far has a very wacky zany silly cartoonish style (especially apparent in the lead duo's energy together) and I think that's the season's greatest strength. My opinion on both of these first two episodes are similar: they're just okay, with the pros and the cons kinda balancing each other out, but the cartoony style makes them much more enjoyable to watch.

Under the cut I'll go into more details. Probably more complaining than not, because nitpicking is always easier to spend time on, but here's your regular reminder that these are opinions and anyone reading is encouraged to disagree.

And if you thought my ramblings about new episodes were long before, this time there's two at once!

--

Grossout stuff like bodily functions never really appealed to me, and neither does talking babies, so Space Babies had those things against it. But it also had things that I loved; on top of the infectious energy of the leads, there were some fun sci-fi concepts, playing with storybook narrative, and the design of the Bogeyman. And the Doctor saying that "nobody grows up wrong" was alone worth the episode. I adore that sentiment and it fits so well into Doctor Who with its constant cast of scary aliens, artificially altered or created beings, and characters with generally convoluted backstories. It's just a shame the episode faltered at its climax when applying that idea to the Bogeyman, because the sympathising and acceptance of it felt very rushed.

It's fun when new companions get an introduction scene or two where the show tries to teach as many of the important rules and backstory as possible. And Butterfly Ruby certainly was a hilarious addition to that. But as much as the show is allowed to mess around with time travel rules, it can still feel contrived when it says things like 'taking Ruby to meet her mum is too dangerous.' I can't think of a reason why they couldn't just park a bit further down Ruby Road and talk to her after she seemingly doesn't have any more effect on Ruby or the Doctor's lives. I'll talk more about the ongoing story arc stuff in a bit, but right now I still haven't strongly connected with Ruby. This is very much a personal thing, but she still feels kinda Generic Companion to me.

Oh, and I think every time the Doctor talks about how the Time Lords are gone and he's the Last One, I'm going to groan and roll my eyes. Honestly I think the best thing to do with that is just show that a lot of Time Lord society survived (very easy, since there's no reason at all that most of them couldn't have just run away from whatever the Master did to the Capitol) and then just move on. I'd love to explore post-War Time Lord society more, but at this point I'd rather just leave them alone and be done with retreading old ground that the show is not going to actually do anything with other than the odd angsty line.

--

The Devil's Chord had a lot of fantastic moments and elements, but that made it more frustrating to me when it didn't put the effort into fitting everything just a little better. It reminds me of my thoughts on The Giggle; I love love love whimsy and emotionally-driven stories, and stories don't have to be a slave to logic all the time, but moments of silliness or entire plots that revolve around whimsy are so much more satisfying if they have a narrative logic behind them. I think a prime example is the song at the end of The Devil's Chord: even if it's not particularly good (most songs that are just repeating one line for 90% of its runtime aren't going to interest me), it's whimsical and joyous and makes me want to see Tardis teams sing and dance more often. But it doesn't have an in-story reason to happen, it doesn't quite fit the episode's tone, and (as much fun as fans have been having fitting it into the season arc) the episode doesn't even really have a twist at the end. If any of those things weren't true, the song would've had so much more impact than it did, and I find it annoying that the episode couldn't shuffle things just a bit to make it work.

Somewhat similarly, the Maestro themself was spectacularly entertaining, but also felt rather shallow and full of missed opportunities. I was already a bit over RTD writing flamboyant and random queer-coded villains after he reinvented the Toymaker the same way he reinvented the Master (although a drag queen certainly adds a welcome layer to that) but it was sad that Maestro had the same surface-level connection to music as RTD's Toymaker had to games. Yeah they climb out of pianos and use sheet-music-themed whips and dress in a conductor's outfit, but that sounds more like a Batman villain than a Concept Made Flesh. Sure they can magically-somehow stop the world making music, but their motivation for it is... kill everyone in the universe? I really hope RTD can write better Old Gods than his last two if he plans to make them recurring villains. (By the way I assume that the world losing the ability to make music for two decades was magically unwritten at the end, but then again I assumed the same thing about the Flux destroying the universe and that was only half undone.)

Also, I know not every historical episode has to be a 2005-10 style celebrity historical (even though that might be one of my favourite ways of doing it), but if they didn't want to do that then it felt a bit out of place to have two of the Beatles turn up at the very end, with no idea what was going on, and save the day. (And the other two Beatles vanished completely. ...I know the other two were a bit less famous, but after learning that RTD ships the Supernatural brothers, I really wouldn't be surprised to learn he ships McCartney and Lennon.)

Anyway, some other fun or great moments that I wish were in a slightly more coherent episode are: Ruby playing her lovesick lesbian song, the Doctor and Ruby doing their piano battle together, the sonic silence scene, and the destroyed London scene which Maestro abruptly turned into a black background. Oh, and the Doctor saying "I thought that was non-diagetic" was hilarious, I think fans are going to get a lot of mileage out of the idea that the Doctor can hear the background music in older episodes.

Other random things about the episode: it did make me think of Scherzo's fairytale about the king who banished music from his realm. As a batfamily fan, the music teacher at the start being named Timothy Drake for no reason is confusing and funny. It's a niche pet peeve but I think its silly when fiction ties itself to when it's coming out for no reason or in contradiction to its own continuity, so Ruby saying her present day is mid-2024 baffled and irritated me. Since the last episode she's either been travelling with the Doctor for several months, staying at home for several months, or has decided to skip several months ahead, none of which seem very likely.

One last thing I'll say about The Devil's Chord is that the zany cartoonish energy, the visiting of recent history, and the magical menace all remind me of Legends of Tomorrow. It's one of my comfort shows that puts a lot of plot importance and stress on whimsy, jokes, and feel-good moments, but actually does tie them into the narrative. Compared to the last half dozen episodes of Doctor Who, Legends is more of an outright comedy, but its more satisfying and the emotional beats hit harder. If its trying for a more similar tone, I hope Doctor Who can reach the same highs as Legends (which, to be fair, took a few seasons to figure things out).

--

Finally I'll talk about the story arc! Or story arcs, because there's a lot going on. And looking back at his first time on the show, I realise RTD is a big fan of arcs that are basically just repeating things in the background that don't have any impact until the last few episodes. Personally I prefer arcs with a bit more relevance and development, but unfortunately that's probably harder to do on Doctor Who with less episodes.

That said, I was very surprised that Ruby's arc is one of the most interesting things to me in these episodes. The Doctor's memory of her mother changing and then breaking through into the real world is cool as hell, and then Ruby having something about her that trips up a god is really compelling 👀 Is that girl a cosmic horror??

On the other hand, another mention of 'the One Who Waits' is really boring lol. Just another ominous name that everyone can look concerned about without any substance. But I have seen fans connect it to the billboard for Chris Waites and the Carollers, which is hilarious. And speaking of, the mention of Susan was really cool, and so in-depth that it has me wondering if she'll actually come back, which I don't think New Who has made me do seriously before. Then again, it's so on the nose that surely it must be a red herring...

I can't wait to find out what it all means. And I can't wait for the next episode!

[rh3maji]

Some musings abt the soon to be Precure season

So i took a look at the new website and bruhhh

they're so tacky looking and cute I love them! I'd actually gotten spoiled for Cure Wonderful and Cure Nyami's designs thanks to fanart on pixiv, and at the time I thought the season was going to have an Alice and Wonderland motif thanks to Wonderful's crown [thought she was gonna be like the queen of hearts but nope]. After checking out the website and trailer tho, it seems like the theme is more of a zoo and or animal companion theme. When I first realized that I thought to myself "wait haven't we been here before?" but thinking about it further Healing Good's theme was more along the lines of veterinarians and the earth[?] and Kira Kira Precure's was moreso just animals as window dressing/attack inspo with sweets being the main theme so I suppose we're not technically retreading old ground here. Speaking of not retreading old ground- HOLY SHIT THE MAIN CURE IS A DOG??

Just like...a full on dog dog bruh, like dang man I never thought i'd see the day where we'd essentially get a fairy leading the team. It seems like the team's split into both humans and animals, with Cure Nyami definitely being that white cat

This is exciting! I love that Precure's held onto having fairies transform into humans, it's so heckin fun! Back to the designs- In order of my favorite to least favorite it's Cure Nyami [look at that hair bruh! she is beauty, she is grace]

Cure Friend [the poncho and hair are my fav]

Cure Wonderful [she looks like such a peppy kid awwww]

and lastly Cure Lillian [her arm thingies remind me of Futari Wa and I adore that ribbon]

Honestly, I think this may be the first time since Kira Kira Precure that I've been immediately on board with the designs. I ended up loving Hirogaru's over time but at first glance, I couldn't get over how weird they looked [never fully ended up liking Cure Wing's design but still love the character]. The only thing I dislike about them is Lillian's headband, and the big heart on Friend's shoes. I'm sort of a big sucker for poofy/frilly skirts, long straight hair, and ponchos so I feel well-fed. I'm especially looking forward to seeing them all in motion, especially Lillian since based on her turnaround she seems to have a bit of sass to her. Based on Nyami's turnarounds/previews she seems to be more of a kuudere[?] type which isn't something we've gotten for a main cure in a while. There's also all of these guys just hangin' out on the site too

Can't wait to see what these lil guys can do, hoping that they'll be connected to powerups and maybe even special outfits/attacks [really enjoyed it when Happiness Charge did that]. But maaaan this is so cool. It seems like ever since Hirogaru decided to play around with Precure conventions they're going all out with unique approaches to the formula. One thing I hope they continue doing this season tho, is keeping the fighting style as a literal fighting style like super sentai where they actually throw punches. I love Kira Kira, but there's only so many times [like 2] that I can watch someone fight by pointing a wand at something before I start skipping the battles. Really loved how Hirogaru frequently would have the characters strategize in battle, it really kept me engaged even if I always know how it'll end. All-in-all, it's sad to see Hirogaru go, but I'm excited with what new stories await in the new season! ^^

[tadpolesonalgae]

do you read a lot of fanfics on here? I'm curious to know what writers or stories you like or do you have a recs blog?

Honestly not as much as I used to 😕

There are still other writers that I look forward to seeing them post, but again, I kind of wish I had more time to just browse and nose at other people’s work :/

That being said…

Any of @azrielhours ‘s fics I will inhale instantly. I’m totally retreading old ground here but she writes intimacy and tenderness so painfully well—it astonishes me every time and always gets me to relax so a lot of affection is being sent her way 🧡💛

@whisperingmidnights — again, anything she posts I love getting to read. I think she articulates emotion with extraordinary clarity, and the details and descriptions she includes in her fics just make whichever scene she’s creating so effortlessly easy to visualise!

@leafsandstarlight oh my gosh do not even get me started on her vampire!eris—so yummy and scrumptious 🧡💛 we’ve chatted a little about him and her writing for him is just 🤌

(She’s also written a few things for Helion too, if anyone’s after some extra High Lord of Day content 🧡💛)

I’ve recently started reading @c-e-d-dreamer ‘s Nessian fics too because I adore her writing style, it genuinely feels like I’m getting to read more acotar content which is amazing to be able to do 🫠 I started with When We Howl, The Moon Will Cower, witch (get it?) is in progress at the moment, but is so good and has an interesting premise!!

I also recently read @honeybeefae ‘s dark!az x Rhys’ sister!reader (which features the use of a love potion so of course I was going to read it) as well as @bubbles-for-all-of-us ‘s exile—which I adored. It was the perfect slice of sadness to start the day with and charmingly written, too 🧡💛

[atsushishelteredinmoonlitjasmine]

The things I'm reading about the commentary for RW/BY Vol. 9 have made me want to write this post. It's just something I want to say, regardless of how it most likely retreads old ground or shares sentiment with other posts like it. At least it'll be more concise and filled with less angry ramblings than if I decided to write this last night, when I was first reading everything.

(Just to avoid confusion, I'll be referring to the characters/writers via their initials as a way of censoring them from people who don't wish to see this post. This makes it easier for me and is less annoying than having to put slashes everywhere)

I mainly wanted to focus on two things. One was the hacker crew (as I will "affectionately" dub the writers) deciding to off-screen W telling the rest of RBY of what happened to P and J killing her. The other was of ER saying on Twitter that he (and the rest of the hackers) didn't think R would find issue with J killing P. Anything else from the commentary may or may not have a separate post, it just depends on what is said and if it upsets me enough.

Let's address the second point first because I have something to say. I don't understand ER's logic here. Why did he, and by extension everyone else, think R wouldn't be upset/angry at J for killing P? She has every abso-fucking-lute right to feel that way! I mean, one of her closest friends KILLED another of her closest friends! Disregarding how it was P's choice (which I hate, btw), you mean to say R wouldn't lash out at J, berating him for not trying to find another way or doing more to save P? Even if R understood that the situation was complicated or everything was just going a million miles a second, I can't see her not being incensed at him. Shit like that needs time to process and I can't imagine R to be super calm after hearing that bombshell.

Which leads me to the first point. Why in the fuck did the scene of W telling RBY of said bombshell happen off-screen? Why do the hacker crew INSIST on off-screening important scenes like this? Even if fans want to say they didn't want to reiterate information the audience already knows, they could've made it to where W starts the conversation, fade to black or cut away, and come back to RBY's reactions afterwards. It's not that hard! Do they think scenes that are character-oriented are filler? I just can't understand their reasoning for doing this.

It's at this point I'm saying the writers are downright lazy. I've known for years now that they're not good but I know for sure now they're just lazy. ER can Tweet all he wants that he and the team should've been more clear on certain aspects of the story or they should've thought more on other aspects but the truth is, they didn't WANT to put in the work. It's too much effort for them to put in care for decency's sake so they might as well half-ass it or better yet, just shoot the first idea that comes out of their minds, write it into the story without any revising or editing, and call it a day. Let the fans who actually do more for the story than the writers do put in the work to explaining the plot because clearly, they care about the material and aren't thinking they're hot shit for writing nonsensical bullshit.

It must be nice, getting paid to sit on your ass all day while the animators you overwork and exploit the services of do all the work that you underpay them for. Wish I and the other people who create art, fanfics, videos, etc. could get money for all the promo we give you, whether that's our intention or not. But then again, the harassment we may receive for any fuckups on your end wouldn't be worth the blood money.

[8o--o8-deactivated20220523]

Honestly my biggest fear with the one piece live action show is....

Namis writing and probably most women's writing in One Piece

Now I'm not saying this because the way one piece treats women is perfect, you and I know how they're drawn, you and I are disappointed with how Rebecca was handled (I was more disappointed with how her story is presented and have nothing against what actually happened but that doesn't matter rn), you and I wanted more women fights

No need to retread old grounds

The reason why I'm worried is because I fear that they might try to "fix" Nami and end up overcorrecting her into a bland character

Let's look at the recent cowboy bebop adaptation by netflix, the originals Faye is pretty different from the netflixs Faye and comparing them gives you the feeling that they had some problems with the original Faye being this sexy merc who is pretty flirty and instead of adjusting some of her elements to make that kind of character work for a modern audience, they overcorrected and turned her into a bland Character with a really cool outfit that just blurts out Whedonisms constantly

"Welcome to the ouch motherfucker "

And here's the thing, I can see people (not even writers just people in general) give Faye as a character much more of a chance than any one piece woman, now it's a different writing team and they do work with Oda

It's just Nami is such a great fucking character and I don't want her edges to dissappear and that can very likely happen if we're being honest

Now again the way women are treated in one piece is not perfect but there is a lot of amazing stuff there and I just don't want the fear over fixing the bad to drown out the potential of embracing the good

[avatarthelastairgender]

oh I'm curious what your Out of the Abyss take is? Why don't you think it works?

i just really dislike the whole thing from conception to execution. the fact that it starts with a prison break that necessarily asks you to bring like 10 NPCs along in your early adventuring party is just horrible no matter how you spin it— whether it's ask the players to control an NPC at the same time as their PC, try to manage a massive party solely on the shoulders of the DM, functionally forget some of them are even around— it makes early combat a slog and roleplaying equally so. and none of the npcs with one arguable exception are really memorable or affect the story really!!!

the survival aspects feel repetitive, boring, and tedious, both as written and in practice (i've only played the module once but i've read through it a couple times since then; it's rough stuff). it very quickly starts to feel like a chore that doesn't contribute to the narrative experience. the structure of the story tries to present itself as an open-world sandbox despite the fact that at almost any time, there is really only one path that the characters can realistically take. the problem with this is that because it is in denial about this fact, it makes the playing experience worse for everyone. like, because it presents itself as a sandbox, it doesn't offer much in the way of streamlined guidance or tools for DMs to handle the linear story efficiently, and it leads to players feeling a loss of agency (in my experience anyway) as it becomes increasingly obvious what the story is.

one of my biggest problems is the midpoint, where the characters escape the underdark, hang out for a bit, and then they all just kind of get a letter from an NPC who goes "uhhh you have to go back now!". i think the fact that characters are kept away from anything interesting in their backstory except for a small, narratively irrelevant chunk of the story, is a problem in and of itself. but more than that it feels kind of forced and jarring. the sudden shift back to the underdark after escaping it kind of feels arbitrary and unearned, having an NPC just tell the characters halfway through the story what they have to do next is one of the least interesting ways to give a quest— breaks the immersive narrative flow and makes the story feel like a series of checkpoints, and it leads to us retreading old ground without any meaningful narrative or environmental variation. like ok. what was the point of all that then

also this is purely a personal taste thing but i hate random combat encounter tables. i don't think it's actually difficult to have a combat-heavy campaign where the combats are interesting and have personal stakes to the characters involved, tell us something about the world, and exist for a reason other than just "page 63 of Sepulchre's Sheep Saloon says if you roll a 6 an evil sheep shows up here".

[beevean]

https://www.gonintendo.com/contents/6435-sega-details-their-approach-for-sonic-frontiers-story-and-using-a-more-human-approach Um, I'm sorry.It seems that it was kishimoto who decided to make Eggman his father.

Yeah, I know.

Okay, I need to clarify something: I've been accused of disliking Frontiers' story only because Flynn was involved. And I'm not gonna lie, my first reaction upon hearing the news was pretty much an eyeroll lol, I was (and still am) sick and tired of this dude being shoehorned in every facet of the series.

However, I am aware that his role in the end was to simply write the dialogue for the plot that he was given. Which means that yes, I know that Frontiers' structural issues were beyond his control. I'm not that irrational!

I can blame Flynn for writing stupid lines like "then I'm wildly inconsistent!" or the tons of forced callbacks, but I know, I swear that I know, that my biggest grievances like Sonic's friends retreading old ground, Eggman being stuck in limbo cyberspace, everything about Sage, the completely unnecessary Chaos Emerald lore, The End being a forgettable villain, even stuff that is obviously due to rushed development like Sonic being healed in an anticlimatic way or him not giving a single shit about Sage's death, are not Flynn's fault.

I don't know why you sent me that link, if you think I'm some sort of rabid anti Flynn or if your intentions are genuine and you really simply wanted to clarify matters. I'm going to assume it's the latter. But I don't want to come off as being biased just because muh flynn is here.

I respect Kishimoto and I can feel all the love he has for Frontiers, and the series as a whole. But I can still think that I genuinely do not understand what the hell he was thinking when it came to certain choices, that I know were his fault. (as for the rushed development, yeah that's just SEGA sadly)

[game-boy-pocket]

And so, after 295 hours, I decided to finally challenge the final boss of Tears of the Kingdom today, and now the credits are rolling. I didn't finish every side quest yet or get every collectible, but I will do that overtime. I just wanted to be free from the shackles of worrying about seeing a spoiler. I'm afraid the final boss actually was somewhat spoiled for me, but it's something I could have easily seen coming. I won't be spoiling anything major here. If I do feel like something constitutes a major spoiler, I will put up a warning.

Breath of the Wild was always going to be in my top 3 Zelda lists temporarily. I could see that even before I beat the game. It was clearly the blue print for the future of Zelda, and the next game would dethrone it in that top 3 very easily...

Well, was I right about that?

I didn't have many problems with Breath of the Wild. It was pretty close to my idea of a perfect Zelda game. I just wanted more variety in the enemies, caves, and more unique looking dungeons. I also wanted better bosses, including the final boss, and a bit more backstory to the final boss. These were the bare minimum of what I was asking for. All of them were addressed for the most part. The common enemies from the last game are still the most common enemies in TOTK. But they have new tricks, and there are enough other enemies, and the less common enemies in BOTW are now more common, so I'd say the problem was fixed well enough for me.... I still want more enemies in the next game though. Caves were not game changers, but they broke up the overworld exploration and every one of them had at least one collectible in it, so that was worth something. I still haven't found a good chunk of caves in the game.

The dungeons are now themed. And there is one in particular that is super reminiscent of Ocarina of Time. I don't think these dungeons will make believers out of classic Zelda fans that dislike BOTW, even though they're taking out of the OOT playbook pretty closely... I just think classic Zelda fans choose to be difficult. It's not enough that you can make a hammer, it has to be the megaton hammer, it's not enough that you're making your way to a switch that unlocks the path to the dungeon boss, there has to be small keys in treasure chests, it's not enough that you gain a new ability before the dungeon that you need to reach the dungeon, and progress through the dungeon, and defeat the dungeon boss, it has to be a gadget you find in a treasure chest half way through the dungeon... I'm sorry to classic Zelda fans, but this is just so much better to me. .......all the shrines still look the same though, which sucks, but at least they're not as ugly as the BOTW Shrines. Just because it has irl historical inspiration does not make it good.

The bosses are better. Three of them are great, very classic Zelda. One of them sucks. And another one is more like a Donkey Kong 64 boss, but I still thought it was cool... the Final Bosses were great. Slight spoiler alert, but they do not explain anything regarding Calamity Ganon and his connection to Ganondorf, if there even is a connection. I guess the theorists are gonna have to do the leg work unless Nintendo has another expensive book to sell... The backstory for Ganondorf in this game kind of sucks and makes no sense. They're kind of retreading old ground here but not in a fanservicy way. But it doesn't bring my opinion of the game down.

As for the more common complaints other people tended to have with BOTW... I really didn't have issues with durability, in my opinion, people who do have an issue either have a skill issue, or a hoarding issue. So I didn't need that addressed. If anything, I actually don't care for how TotK addressed this "issue"... like, I kind of like the concept, but not the execution... not because it made a new problem or anything... it just made the weapons all look ugly... I also don't play Zelda for story. If anything, I prefer story to be more subdued and not break up the pace of the game like Skyward Sword. So weather the story was good or bad, the fact that it didn't get in the way of the game itself makes it a non issue for me. However, I cannot enjoy the story of this game if it's meant to take place in the same universe as the other Legend of Zelda games. There is too much revisionist crap that doesn't make sense and even retroactively sours all the easter egg in BOTW for me... however, if I treat BOTW and TOTK as a reboot with no connections to the past games, I think I quite like the story. But the easter eggs from BOTW are still gonna bother me. So in other words, TOTK has a good story, but it doesn't fit in with the rest of the series. I don't care how often this series does time travel... what's even more disappointing is that Ganondorf's first words in the game is a real "oh shit" moment for me, because I thought this was going to be a game that was very meaningfully connected to the past... but no, it turns out, they just re-used an old Zelda character's name for a new one, and he has no connection whatsoever to that old character. Just a funny coincidence.

Anyway... my favorite part of the Zelda series besides exploring vast worlds is also the combat, and almost all of Link's tricks from BOTW return. I already felt like the combat in BOTW was pretty great as long as you didn't just hammer the melee button and do nothing else. But TOTK adds a lot of options. Many new ways to alter your melee weapons, your bows, a lot of items an be thrown with varying effects, even your shields could be used in combat, and you could even build devices that can assist you in battle.

The building mechanic is kind of optional, but is too fun not to experiment with. You can make devices that will help you traverse the terrain more easily, gain altitude, assist in battle, just straight up make attack robots or turrets or attack vehicles, it's great. I do think some people can't be bothered to mess with it though, which is a shame. I don't like to fast travel unless it's absolutely necessary, so I was constantly building little scooters, ATVs, and even a small aircraft... I do kind of miss having the Master Cycle Zero though. Nothing I built quite matched it in ease of use and mobility. But being able to mount laser canons on the front made up for it.

I replayed BOTW immediately before this game. And I was pretty amazed at how fresh the exploration felt. So much of Hyrule is just not recognizable at all. There's still easily recognizable landmarks like the Dueling Peaks, but things really got shaken up...

I know saying this would cause me to end up like that meme with the cat having all those swords pointed at it, but I truly would not be mad if they made this a trilogy of games and reused this map one more time, as long as it was shaken up even more, and they gave us at least one more new landmass to explore...

...oh yes. That's right. This game had islands in the sky, and an entire Hyrule Sized map underground that is kind of like the Dark World from a Link to the Past, except once the novelty wears off, it's not really that amazing, it's mostly a place to gather a few resources, re-fight bosses, and you will occasionally encounter a curiosity or find a cool treasure chest... the game brings back Poes, but not really... they're not little ghost monsters you have to defeat for their souls, they're just little blue flames you can pickup and spend for currency. A little disappointing. But at least the things you can buy with them are kind of cool. Useful for replacing some of those easter egg weapons people will be too afraid to use for fear of breaking. The side quests in this game are much better than in BOTW, especially with the addition of the new "Side Adventures" which are generally a bit larger in scale... the rewards still tend to suck... not as much as in BOTW because a lot of of the useless junk that you'd just sell in BOTW now has a secondary use in TOTK. But much like BOTW, I don't care if the rewards suck... for me, the journey is the reward. I just like playing around in Hyrule, fighting monsters, and now, exploring caves and building vehicles and flying through the sky.

I might go more in depth in my thoughts at another time, I have so many of them, but this game is just too big for me to cover in one big tumblr post, it is made up of so many parts, this is one of Nintendo's biggest games to date, and it is also one of the most fun games i've played, probably since Breath of the Wild. This easily bodies anything they've released between then and now, for me personally speaking.

If you have anything you'd like me to talk about further, my inbox is open, and of course i'm happy to talk Zelda that isn't related to TOTK, or just talking in general. Have at me.

On a side note... one thing I wished was different from BOTW was that you could unlock the classic green tunic earlier rather than making it an end game reward... you can find it immediately since it' just in a chest somewhere... I am embarassed how long it took me to find all three pieces. I found the tunic... but the trousers and cap eluded me for many days while I scoured the game, but if I actually thought about where I found the tunic, and applied my knowledge of BOTW, I could have easily deduced the location of the other two chests. Oh well... also... the actual end game reward really sucks, but once again.... journey is the reward. I'm just happy I got my green tunic back.

[endless-sketching]

Caution: I'm an idiot so many things I say here might be inaccurate

A title that describes a story accurately compared to a title that echos the feeling of the story is such a compelling case

Painoko for example, the original Japanese title is called "Senpai wa Otokonoko" and Otokonoko is often used to described girly boys, a male daughter if you will. Despite that, the word itself is shrewd in a rather undefined mystery because of how Japanese queer people, like trans people, would use it to describe themselves in some fashion. So using this word tends to beckons the reader's past history to these types of gender nonconforming people, be it tomboys or femboys, otokonoko carries history but not a solid definition. At least from what I've seen a commonly agreed upon definition. If anything Otokonoko has sort of become a code word for trans safety in Japan of sorts. I'm sure that there's more history behind this that I'm ignorant of since this is basically just the tip of the iceberg to how Japan handles gender.

In short, Otokonoko is an accurate description word but a word that echos a feeling.

And when Painoko announced their anime, I was really excited about it until I found out that the title is done different from what I wanted.

A brief background check on the mangaka of Painoko, Pom (or Pomu from certain sites). More specifically what they created before Painoko, is a manga called Menhera Shoujo Kurumi-chan and how often Kurimi is used in a lot of trans memes.

(This is going to heavily focus on the trans femme side of things so my condolences for my transmen out there)

Im sure that it's pure coincidence that the many trans girls on the internet started using Kurumi specifically and that overtime people had just associated her with being the default anime trans girl rep aside from the other ones. But to go from that manga to Painoko surely means that Pomu knew about the trans memes that's been made with their character right? That in some way these trans memes had incfluenced them into exploring and making Painoko. A story that has very heavy queer coding with Makoto with how they present themselves and the turmoil that many trans girls will heavily relate too, that's just heavily intertwined with other stories within it.

Surely Pomu at least knew about the trans memes before making Painoko right? I mean people went out of their way to get Kurumi's Line stickers to make these memes.

I'd be delighted to talk to someone from Japan's side of the LGBT community about this, but as of now all I know that Kurumi is often used in a lot of these trans memes.

So it's just rather hard to see when the chosen English title they gave Painoko is called "this is him (can't be anyone else)"

It's more accurate to a certain degree but the story never directly confirms that Makoto is really trans. We see them dressed femininely without there wig they usually wear at the end but the story still addresses them with male pronouns here and there. Even up until the last chapter.

I honestly would've munched preferred a sequel to Painoko, exploring where everyone is now rather than what the currently ongoing Encounters Arc is doing by retreading old grounds again. Y'know how Yamada to Kase-san is a sequel story exploring the relationship between Yamada and Kase after the events of Morning Glories and Kase-san? Not only did it further expand on the two's relationships but it also went back and addresses a lot of uncertainty about both characters.

So it would've done leagues of clearing up many possible misconceptions about Makoto if they just made a short sequel story having Makoto directly confirming that they are a transwoman.

You've built the story up with how Makoto questions their gender identity and how they very much prefer to present femininely so why the drop the ball at a vague ending? The hints are there but you are basically giving the general masses a deadly tool to use against trans people by making it vague enough that people can twist the story in their favor instead of what you intended.

In Pomu's final afterword for Painoko, it really did feel like they were rather scared of what it'll do to them if they directly confirm Makoto is trans.

Japan in general has a very center focused "Don't break the norm" mentality in a sense. And being trans in Japan is somehow more accepted than being gay in Japan. The push for legalizing same sex marriage in Japan is there but it's been a brutally quiet battle since 2020 but that's going into politics.

If anything I'm just nitpicking over a mere title for a story that's going to be getting an anime soon.

I'm holding out hope that we'll get an interview with Pomu once the anime is out and they'll hard confirm Makoto being trans there while still keeping everything about the story and title intact.

Crunchyroll you better not fucking mistranslate it.

[not-souleaterpost]

For a next gen era fic, do you think you need to make the next gen as relatively low level in fighting capacity as Soul Eater's Three meisters were? I had an idea for such a story, but one thing i don't plan to feature is any particular rise in power for the cast(heroes and villains alike). Most of the crew is about as strong as they can be(with all the weapons being Death Scythes), with only one character in particular not being all that spectacular.

I dont know, i know the progress of getting stronger over time is baked into soul Eater's DNA as most Shonen series, but the fact is i think the original explored characters seeking strength as part of their journey well enough that doing it for the next gen is just retreading all ground.

Im way more interesting having the fights be more like the fight pre baba yaga's defeat, with a lot of interpersonal clashes where there are objectives at stake, rather than the fighting for fighting's sake that the manga became later down the line.

That way i can also use the fights to set up interpersonal rivalries between the kids and the witches they will be fighting, ala Black Star and Mifune.

Thoughts on this approach?

Thanks for the question, sorry for only answering it know, I only try to go on here once a week so I don't waste all my time scrolling social media lol.

But back to your question:

I think one reason why Shonen has this power escalation thing, especially in the "new gens surpassing the old ones" (besides obvious reasons like marketing lol) is because one does have the hope that ones children will live in a better world than you, that they will break circles of generational trauma and shit, like that old Nas song "born in correction, he'll be my resurection"

Ofcourse one can simply say that the fact that they dont have to fight that much and can focus on other more important things hence not being so powerful IS the better world the previous gen fought for.

Guess the only problem is that in battle shonen fights and powerlevels kinda define charachter, and thats why non fighters feel useless. (But more controversially I think its partly because not many writters have that inate talent of someone like Toriyama, the DBZ guy, who for example made Bulma a charachter who was interesting and relevant without ever having to fight but eh, dont wanna derail the post lol)

Ofcourse this is a kinda trivial problem, because nobody forces one to stick to the formula of the original work, and I think kinda subverting or evolving it further is more interesting than a simple retread.

But even something that seems to be repeating the same shit can work, like the next gen having the same flaws, or remixed ones, and dealing with the seemingly inescapable cycle of it - the fact that they cant even reach the heights of their parents being one additional problem and question they have to answer for themselves and the world:

Could even be like another type of Madness, entropy, for a charachter going crazy feeling that they are just a worse version of their glorious ancestors, and then thinking that their parents were too, so they're children or the next generations in the future will be even worse or something, leading to a conflict that resolves this contradiction, maybe by showing that the next gen has some novel talent.

And so we go back to the strength thing - I think ofourse it could work, but I think it would be intersting by exploring new applications of the abilitys, like maybe they are not nearly as strong, but more usefull for more problems? Maybe they get spread to a larger population so people dont require some single institution in the middle of Nevada to deal with everyones problems lol.

Maybe even it leads to a world where Kishineggs are a rarity and that is what the next gen accomplishes without doing shit youtubers overanalyze for "Could X beat Superman videos"?

I dunno, maybe I accidentally revealed some ideas from my own Next Gen concept (that Im not sure I'm ever getting to cause I have more than enough on my plate with SE Post, and not sure if I want to spend my whole life doing derivative work lol, but maybe it will materialize someday...) but I think in the end it is very possible to make a story without having charachter strengths baloon like that Macey parade or how its callled.

So yeah go for it, I think you have a good enough understanding of Soul Eater and general "shonen" stories to not fuck up that aspect, or even if you do - its a valuable experience anyways lol. Then I only will say good luck and hope to see it be realised in the future!

Oh and a little side thing - I think its prudent to have the old cast be usefull and not just disapear to not "overshadow" the new one, and thats a way to keep the powers down by knowing what treshold not to cross, and there one can even play with the idea of strength, like to spoil one of my plotpoints, I had an whole arc for an adult BlackStar who is the officially strongest by some rank (idk why they are ranked, lets just say commercialization or new mass media lol), but is kinda unhappy, first because a mysterious second ranked individual gets all the shine but also because he kinda having matured realises that he got alienated from most of his old circle, being alone while many of them had familys and settled down. Basically it would start from there and non of the next gen kids would prolly come close to his strength, atleast physically but idk if my idea comes of good in words, but if it feels like lame "charachter bashing" - Yeah...Sorry

[quadrantadvisor]

I have some thoughts for what the actual plot of owl house season 3 is about to be and I figured I ought to write them down in case I have anything right lol

We still technically have two big bads in play, seeing as Belos escaped back to The Boiling Isles and The Collector is over there doing something. I have no idea what their Owl House game is gonna look like, I'm just expecting it to be highly creative and chaotic. I don't think anyone is being seriously hurt.

(I have seen a lot of different takes on The Collector. Some people are interpreting him as straight up evil, some people seem to think he's essentially harmless. I would say neither are true. They have limitless power and a fundamental lack of empathy. Their highest priority is having fun, and they've never learned to value oth]er people's lives. They've also been hanging out with That Motherfucker Philip Wittebane for 350 years, which can't have been good for them. Basically, they aren't evil, they're just a child, but even that makes them incredibly dangerous.)

The Collector is beyond our reach to actually challenge in any meaningful way. He can move the moon with the twitch of a finger. How I see it, we have three options: making a deal with him, tricking him, or convincing him to change his ways. Any one of these has the potential to be really really interesting, but I do hope that we don't have to resort to trickery because that brings up more parallels between our protagonists and Belos and that would hurt me personally.

I think that we'll deal with that first, which brings Belos back to being our big bad. Just because Belos actually is evil and that makes the confrontation with him more narratively climactic. I could definitely see people saying and/or hoping that I'm wrong about this, since it could feel like retreading old ground, but I think the crew can make it work.

In any case, I think we're going to be getting a story of everybody teaming up against one big bad, but it's not gonna be like, power of friendship or w/e, more like, "Wow, this is messed up, it would be literally ridiculous to NOT be on your side." I'm basing this on just a few scenes that I think are potential set up.

I'm really expecting the Titan Trappers to come into play, mostly because it would be really fucking cool, but also that they have a pre-established connection to The Collector. Yeah, their teleportation thing got broke, but they just have to sail from the opposite side of the planet, it's not so bad. Personally, I'm expecting a bait and switch. We're meant to assume that they've come to either hunt down King or to serve the Collector, but they actually end up helping.

For one thing, it really complicates their lore if The Collector and King are already friends. But mostly, there seemed to be some set up in their episode. Tarak and King appeared to be legitimately bonding, and when Bill tells Tarak that King is a Titan, he gets a look in his eyes that looks damn near vulnerable to me. Still, Tarak rejects King and agrees to help sacrifice him. But after that, it's revealed to the entire group that Bill has been lying to them. Yeah, they still chase after Luz and King, but it seems like seeds of doubt in their belief system have been planted. I won't be surprised at all if we find they've changed their ways and come to help. Or, maybe they get here and see that The Collector isn't what they expected and flip sides then. Either way.

Similarly, I think the rest of the coven heads will be allies. They're bad people, sure, but they were in this for glory and power. None of them will want to be the plaything or a child-god or under the thumb of a genocidal dictator. They all know that Belos tried to kill them. It's the same as Kikimora during King's Tide. They'll also have much more to gain from helping out than by not. I'm mostly basing this on Snapdragon's moment with Raine during the draining spell. That shows us that she, and presumably the rest, are aware of what happened and will be ready to go against their former master.

Moving on to potential ending stuff, I don't thunk the characters will end up having to choose between realms. We will either get an unambiguously happy ending with free travel back and forth, or, in what I consider a far less likely option, we'll have a much darker story where King dies. Not only is King, y'know, full of Titan's blood, but we've also seen him do at least one task that could have been accomplished by blood just by like, being a Titan (freeing The Collector.) I'd say that that's enough set up for King to somehow learn to open portals. So if King is here, there's no reason that portals wouldn't happen. Thus, no isekai dilemma for Luz.

So yeah. Obviously these next two episodes are going to be harrowing and dark. But ultimately toh has been a pretty hopeful show about family and connections. I think a lot of people are going to come together and everything is gonna turn out basically okay.