#i know the whole jupiter thing isn't true ok

[shorelinessightlines]

Jupiter is often referred to as the star that failed. Max thinks about that, sometimes, when they're racing and he's just passed Daniel on track. He can look in his rearview mirrors and see the little three on the AlphaTauri—Daniel, in a shitty car he outperforms every weekend, and Max, already set for the podium.

When Max is particularly bored, he rewatches old races from 2014, ‘16, ‘18 and thinks about it, unbidden—how if Lewis and Max simply didn't exist, it might’ve been Daniel on the top step at the very end of the season. Daniel fighting for titles and wins, not letting anyone keep the 1st place cap on their head long enough to mess up their hair. If he'd just been a little quicker, a little more ruthless; if he'd stuck around long enough for the Honda engine, the RB19. If Daniel had just been a fraction of a second better.

Then Max feels bad for ever thinking such a thing. Not because it isn’t true, but because it sounds like something his dad would say.

Jos used to buy Max magazines full of interviews by Senna, Prost, Mansell. He said they were full of stars. He laughed at Max when they got home after Zandvoort in 2011, back when Max was still in karting and Daniel was just starting out in F1, and Max had said: "I want to be just like him."

That Christmas Jos bought Max a poster of Nigel Piquet and said, "This is the type of man you should be looking up to." Max hung it up on his ceiling that night and stared at it. He had thought, privately, that if Piquet was a star then he must have been one of those small stars, the ones that you can’t really see from Earth without a telescope. Daniel was closer, brighter. Sun-like.

He tore down the poster the next morning.

Jos was right, of course, to steer Max towards more successful heroes. Jos would never point to Daniel's article in GQ Sports and tell Max he's looking at a star. Daniel smiles at him, though, on the paddock and off, and it feels like sunshine.

He tells Daniel as much during the summer break, in Daniel's Monaco apartment, tipsy off some expensive wine Max can't even pronounce the name of.

"Jupiter is a very stupid planet," Max is ranting, unreasonably pissed about it. "You know, it has ninety-five moons? The fuck does it need ninety-five moons for? Stupid." He chugs another sip of wine, straight from the bottle. Daniel does the same.

"Jupiter?" Daniel muses after he swallows, less inebriated than Max but still drunk enough to have begun sitting on the couch upside down. The top of his skull almost touches the floor. "Mate, don't diss Jupiter like that. Space gets lonely, maybe."

Max snorts. "It is a planet, Daniel, it does not get lonely. It should just have one moon, or no moons. It is not very loyal."

"It is a planet, Maximus, it cannot be loyal," Daniel says back to him, snarky, in a high-pitched voice and a bad Dutch accent.

"Is that supposed to be me?" He shoves at him, accidentally causing Daniel's head to bang against the floor. Whatever. He deserves it. "Name one good thing about Jupiter."

Daniel shrugs as best as he can. "Biggest planet in our solar system or whatever the fuck. Why are we talking about Jupiter again?"

"Because it is awful, and my dad is not correct." Daniel laughs, at that.

"What? Does your dad, like, love Jupiter or something?"

Max points, accusatory. "See, that is exactly the point! He does not love Jupiter! In fact, he is awful about Jupiter!"

Max can almost see the gears in Daniel's head grind together slowly. "Then why are you dissing Jupiter?"

Max groans. His thoughts make less and less sense the more he goes on. "I am not, of course, dissing Jupiter. I am simply pointing out the fact that Jupiter is not a star and you, obviously, are a star." He's getting lost in his own, brilliant analogy.

Daniel says, "Oh yeah, Maxy?" He has his stupid smile on, the one that Max knows means he thinks Max is crazy but will indulge him anyway. "Well it's very nice that you think so."

"Of course I think so," Max scoffs, perfectly serious. He hates that he can't really look Daniel in the eye, sitting right-side-up. He opts to sit like Daniel, head towards the floor and legs slung over the back of the couch, so he can stare directly at him. "I am being serious."

"Well, I'm serious about that Jupiter shit. Best planet ever. Number one Jupiter defender, right here," Daniel slurs, pointing at himself and flashing his brilliant, sun-warm smile.

Max can't help but smile too.

"You are very stupid," he says, and it sounds like something else. "I am trying to tell you that I think you—you." He flushes, cutting himself off and looking away from Daniel, up towards the ceiling.

"Ah, whatever Maxy. You just can't accept Jupiter's superiority."

Max tries one last time, to make him understand. "Jupiter is called the star that failed," he says, trying to prove something.

Daniel is looking at him, he can feel it. His stare burns a hole in the side of Max's head. "I'm okay with that," he says, suddenly very very soft. "Jupiter's the biggest planet in the solar system. He's got a whole ninety-five moons."

"But he is not a star," Max scowls.

Daniel smiles again, smaller. Kinder. "He gets to orbit a star. He gets to be the biggest planet, and orbit a fucking star, the best star in the universe. That's a pretty sweet deal if you ask me."

Max shakes his head and says, "You are unbelievable." He reaches over to grab Daniel's stupid face and kiss him, and promptly falls off the couch.

[arkanaea]

Ok i want to use this post as an opportunity to infodump. I'm sorry

Pluto is a planet in the way a strawberry is a berry to me. Like, in everyday life there isn't any reason to have these kind of rigid boundaries for categorical distinctions. But scientists find this sort of classification useful. Scientists will ask "how many objects in this solar system are within this size class" and want an answer, one they can compare to other solar systems. In this way, we can find out a lot about how solar systems form, when they formed, how planet and planetoid distribution relates to stellar classification... a whole lot of things.

So when the scientists got around to doing a classification, they inadvertently wrote out a definition that excluded something that *everyone* knows to be part of that category. For example, it just so happens that the formal definition of a berry excludes strawberries, blackberries, and raspberries, while applying to a myriad of other things that everyone knows aren't berries, such as Apples, bananas, melons, pumpkins, tomatoes, cucumbers... the list goes on.

Part of the reason some scientists are reluctant to qualify Pluto as a planet is because it doesn't behave like the other eight. For starters, Pluto's orbit is astonishingly elliptical. Most planets have orbits that are very almost circular. Orbital dynamics has a quantity called 'eccentricity', which is a scale that tells us how close to a circle an orbit is. 0 is perfectly circular, and 0.99999 is highly elliptical. At 1, the object stops being in orbit at all, and is flung off into space never to return. Most planets have eccentricities less than that of Saturn (about 0.05), with two notable exceptions: Mercury and Pluto, each of which have a value around 0.2. Now, Mercury having such a high eccentricity is probably a product of it being really close to the sun and gravity working slightly differently there, but it is pretty weird that something as far out as Pluto exhibits this level of eccentricity.

This point actually indirectly influences the classification debate. When I went to school in the 2000's, I always learned that Pluto is the furthest planet from the sun. However, I'm curious if this is true for people who were in grade school from 1979-1999, because during that time Pluto was actually closer to the sun than Neptune. This fact is the biggest thing that stands between Pluto and universal acceptance as a planet. One of the clauses of the definition of a planet is that it must "clear its own orbit" - effectively, it must be the only considerable gravitational influence that intersects its own orbit (excluding its satellites). Admittedly, this is a horribly defined clause that excludes at the very least Neptune (for the same reason) and at most every other planet in the solar system.

Here's some fun facts to put Pluto into perspective, partly to demonstrate how much of an outlier it is, partly because I like comparative perspective.

There are 7 moons in the solar system larger than it, including our own. (the largest two moons are also bigger than Mercury)

Pluto roughly the same surface area as Russia

Pluto is about half as wide as Australia

Pluto is actually less massive than Eris, the guy who started the debate in the first place

Pluto's moon Charon is the largest moon relative to its host in the solar system. It's so massive that the Barycenter, the point around which the two orbit, is located between the two bodies. This is not true for any other planet-moon pair in the solar system

The distance between Pluto and Charon is only 1.5 times the diameter of the Earth, or a little over 2 Russias. Our own moon is about 2 and a half Jupiters away from us.

The other eight planets were formed from a single giant disk that surrounded the sun in its early stages, leading to them all lying on a single orbital plane. Pluto is about 17 degrees out of whack, leading to uncertainty about if it was formed in the same way

There are at least 9 other bodies in the solar system currently classified as Dwarf Planets: Eris, Ceres, Orcus, Salacia Haumea, Makemake, Gonggong, Quaorar, and Sedna. Of these, only Ceres is within the orbit of Neptune. Many, many more candidates are up for debate.

My own thoughts on the matter are, Yeah Pluto is culturally a planet, and I personally consider it to be a Planet. But frankly it is Not Like the other eight to the point where scientifically classifying them as the same thing is a bit of a stretch. Similar? Yes, absolutely. But there is also a massive group of things (Kuiper Belt Objects or KBO's) that it is way more similar to, and fundamental things which differentiate KBO's from the eight undisputed ones. The way I see it, there needed to be a categorical distinction of some variety along those lines. It was just a question of whether we'd have thousands of planets split into the major ones and the minor ones, or 8 planets distinct from the thousands of things-which-are-almost-planets.

[piratadelamor]

ok so, i just analyzed kageyama's birth chart! 

i made this out of pure entertainment, boredom and curiosity and i don't actually believe that astrology works on fictional characters (i even have my doubts that astrology defines one person's personality since i'm inclined to traditional astrology, but anyway, this is only for fun purposes aand it's very superficial and not supposed to be taken seriously as an astrology work!!) i'm also not the type of fan who knows every single detail about a character or who remembers every single appearances and lines so i probably won't go too deep into examples...

kageyama's official birth date is 22/12/1996 and he's from miyagi, okinawa. with this information only we can already identify most of his chart: he's a capricorn sun, capricorn mercury, sagittarius venus, virgo mars, capricorn jupiter and aries saturn (i dont use neptune, uranus or pluto). being born on that day, he could either be a taurus or a gemini moon, and, of course, there's no information about the time he was born, so his ascendant is also a guess. i tried to find a solution based on the chart as a whole, and i think it makes a lot of sense!!

first thing i wanted to look for was a placement that talked about his sport skills. being sports a matter of the 5th house, it seemed clear to me that that's where his sun should be placed. the sun represents life. in one's chart, it talks about our ego, our conscious identity, and it's placement tells us where we shine, where we direct our creative life force. for mundane astrology the sun represents the authority of the state, the government - presidents, nobles, and kings. kageyama is called "the king of the court". to me there's no doubt that his sun should be at the 5th house - where he rules, where his light shines brighter, where his will to live is directed.

if so, considering the whole signs house system, we get a virgo ascendant (house I), and so on: libra (II), scorpio (III), sagittarius (IV), capricorn (V), aquarius (VI), pisces (VII), aries (VIII), taurus (IX), gemini (X), cancer (XI) and leo (XII).

it was also very convincing to me that this would also place his mars on the ascendant (virgo). being the 1st house the part of the chart that talks about our physical body, and mars talking about a person's vitality, people with mars on the ascendant or even opposite to it (VII) usually tend to push their physical body to its limit, being pretty driven to physical activities (we can clearly see that on the way kageyama and hinata always stay until very late practicing at the club, for example... kageyama’s often seen running on his free time too). it would also make a lot of sense considering his appearence (both physical and the impression he gives off) and the way he acts. mars is the planet of war. it is violence, action. people with mars on the ascendant can easily give off an intimidating appearence or presence. being a capricorn on top of that, there's no escape: that's the famous resting bitch face..... he's energetic, straightforward, competitive and independent. and that also explains the way he can become pretty agressive sometimes, mostly regarding his competitiveness and his desire to be on top. i also found it funny that while i was looking up for kageyama's birth date i came across a few descriptions of him talking about his "sharp glare", and sharp objects are also a matter of mars. about the placement on virgo, the ascendant also talks about how perfectionist he is, including his appearence (he's always filing his nails, for example, and he's never negligent about his health. actually he takes it very seriously), and mars in this sign, besides the already mentioned perfectionism, is also about being very goal-oriented and critical. it's also interesting, if we play a little with words, that virgo's symbology talks a lot about serving, and kageyama's position as a setter is about "serving" the best tosses to his teammates, besides being his serve one of his strongest weapons.

on 22/12/1996, there were 2 times when the ascendant was in virgo: around midnight and around 10pm - 11pm. but the problem is, around midnight his moon would be taurus; around 10pm his moon would be gemini. once again, the placement of the moon made my mind. for a taurus moon, it'd be placed on the 9th house. a gemini would be placed on the 10th. i'd go for a gemini moon. you could doubt that, knowing that kageyama isn't very good with words, and having a virgo ascendant, which is ruled by mercury, the planet of communication and also the ruler of gemini, could be a little off. but it's not true that all geminis are talkative and sociable like that (specially because there's not a single placement in a chart that can speak alone for a person's personality). i believe the moon in gemini fits the way kageyama mentally deals with what he loves. he keeps a fucking volleyball journal!!! and while he's playing, he's always thinking and observing every minimal detail. his mental work is impressive. no wonder he's a genius. he might not have the best way with words (and this is about the way he's not good at dealing with emotions, which a gemini moon really might not be) but he can read his teammates very well and adapt to them perfectly. this is all gemini. speaking of mercury, a mercury in capricorn isn't very good at being sensitive with words either. they also have an authoritarian way of speaking and can be quite judgemental and impatient (specially if someone doesn't get something obvious to them). with mars in virgo, moon in gemini and mercury in capricorn, i guess we get a pretty close picture on kageyama's temper and communication skills.

i thought a lot about it's placement on the 10th house as well. the 10th house, being the highest spot of one's chart, is not only the house of career and success, but of our public image too. a moon in the 10th talks about an emotional need for public recognition and an emotional energy directed to the career. this is a very important placement for him, being his moon not only in the 10th but also conjunct midheaven, which means, literally at the highest spot of his birth chart. kageyama knows he's good and he wants to be the best at what he loves the most. he wants to be on top. and that's what he's passionate about. the moon also talks about our early childhood, which is when tobio's passion for volleyball began: the events of his childhood defined the path of life he chose to follow. but he also learns that that's not something he'd conquer alone. and it makes so much sense to be gemini. after all, gemini's symbol is the twins. not even the moon shines by herself alone. considering how kageyama learned this lesson, it seems like such a beautiful placement for his chart. that's something he had to understand in order to grow and get better and reach the position he achieved.

about his venus, the planet of love and relationships, in sagittarius, it brought me to his relationship with hinata (speaking as friends/teammates/rivals/whatever you want tbh). when venus is in sagittarius, a relationship is a place to experiment and grow. sagittarius is ruled by jupiter, the planet of expansion. a sagittarius venus will want you to take them beyond, to expand their horizons. that's exactly what hinata did to kageyama since the very beginning. "when you get stronger, you will definitely meet someone even better". hinata's always pushing kageyama beyond and that's why they get so connected to each other. hinata always surprises him, their relationship/partnership is never dull, but exciting, impredictable. it's fire burning.

i'm not going too deep into analyzing jupiter and saturn, and i'm not very good at analyzing aspects, but since kageyama's such a capricorn (sun, mercury and jupiter - like me! heheh) there was no way i could look away from his saturn in aries: after all, saturn rules capricorn, and his saturn squares his sun (a hard aspect). (btw, i found out that the kanji for “kageyama” means “shadowed mountain”, which is SUCH a saturnine name?? both shadows and mountains can be related to this planet) doing a little research, i found some interesting things about this placement. about saturn in aries: "Stifling your normal and healthy, more aggressive, competitive, or self-centered qualities can be detrimental to you, possibly causing headaches. You don’t like showing weakness. (...) You fear your own feelings of inadequacy. (...) You need to be careful not to limit yourself too much due to fear of failure or fear of making a poor decision. (...) You are highly resourceful. Your ability to start fresh helps you achieve your goals". like... that was really on point i guess. i think we could relate this to his development, as he began to adapt to the karasuno spikers due to a fear of repeating what happened during middle school. saturn is the planet that talks about fears and limits, and when it squares his sun, his position of "king of the court", this is what happens: he feels limited on the way he plays, on his true nature. and by limiting that, by denying his true nature, he was limiting his space to grow. there's a really good post i came across very recently on this matter, so i'm leaving this here.

i believe this aspect would be crucial to understanding his position as the "king". saturn in aries is the dispositor of his sun in capricorn. that means, the way his sun in capricorn "behaves" is modified by his position of saturn. aries is a self-centered, hot-tempered sign with needs of control, and that defines the type of role his sun plays as the "king". of course, this relates to an especific episode of kageyama's life, but it's a crucial episode, a truly turning point of his life - like most saturn related events. to add one more detail, the sun rules his 12th house (leo), and one of the 12th house's themes is isolation - what kageyama got in middle school by acting like a "dictator king" and what he feared the most that would happen again.