#i want to experiment more w this style i think but i might just be goin thru my yearly end-of-year artstyle crisis hehe ^-^

[itseghost]

some essek portrait doodles :] still figuring him out but i do love 2 draw him

[kokidee]

hai everyponyy hav not ko posted on a weekday in soo long thas crazy!!!! (* ´ ▽ ` *) goodnight kokis :3

[snapscube]

hi!! do you have any infinity nikki tips to share? your outfits look really beautiful- i'm not caught up with the story yet, and i wanted to know if some of those shoes were from resonance, recharge or storyline/world? im struggling with the impulse to spend money (i'd feel fine doing like a single purchase or something, but my road with nikki has been paved with quite a bit of money already, so i'm worried about the slippery slope)

some of my favorite outfits in the game are legit just free stuff you find/earn by playing! a lot of the stuff i’ve shown off here are in-game rewards entirely for free either by crafting or doing styling challenges.

so far here are my big tips i’ve learned just w my own experience (and mistakes 😬):

- there are SO many clothes in the overworld, way more than you might expect. check every chest and shop you find WHEN you find it. it’s never not worth it even if it’s slightly out of the way. same with dews of inspiration! they will only get harder to locate as you clear more of the map so make sure you never pass up the opportunity to grab one. EVERYTHING in this game ties back to clothes one way or another, so it’s never not worth it to be interacting w all of the systems in one way or another.

- do not spend a ton of bling until you are further in the main story quest. it’ll be tempting to roll stuff like the wish o matic but if u blow all of your bling on it or anything else early on you WILL regret it later. bling is used for every other upgrade system in the game.

- make sure u are not capping out on vital energy too often, its super quick to run a realm of the dark fight or trade it in for collection insight if you’re close to cap and about to log off. its constantly replenishing and the currencies/materials you can get from it are so valuable down the line.

- i would HIGHLY ADVISE that you save the diamonds you earn exclusively to use for pulls on limited time gacha banners. the ones with the pink resonance crystals. do not use them to refill your energy, do not use them for the permanent banner pulls. you are going to need to do a good chunk of pulls to get everything u need from limited banners before they go and this will make sure you are minimizing the temptation to spend real world money when u dont need to.

- don’t skip out on leveling eureka! the system can be a tad confusing and somewhat de-emphasized at first but it’s low risk and so worth it. ANY well leveled eureka at all is better than nothing for styling contests. you can literally double your score with a good set of eureka, it can be the difference between an average or perfect score.

- speaking of styling challenges, try to unlock the mirror styling challenges as soon as u can! you will know them when u see them, i forget exactly how you unlock it but there is a weekly reset version of the challenge that gives great rewards.

uhhhh that’s all i can think of rn feel free to post other tips in the replies if you’ve been playing tho :)

[astrologylunadream]

When will I find love?💗⏳🌙 (Pick a card/Tarot love reading)

Hey it's Lunadream🤗 This time I bring you a lovely reading for a very lovely person!♡👆 hope you find your message🌸

Notice: Only take what resonates because the most important thing is your own judgement!♡ If something doesn't resonate, don't worry! It's not your message right now <3 (Entertainment purpose only. All rights reserved)

Now, shall we begin~? ^w^ Think of the love you long for, and pick whichever pile that fits the energy you're feeling~🌸💞

Pile 1⏰

Pile 2☎️

Pile 3☕

Pile 4🌹

Take your time and choose carefully with the heart~♡

On to the readings —> 💕🍰⏳

Pile 1⏰

Sign energy: Close, 9th house, Resist, Pisces, Ring, 9th house, Sagittarius, Libra, Aquarius, 4th house, 🕊📚💤💆‍♂️

🌙Your energy: You are more reversed so to speak, you have been dreaming of the perfect relationship. I'm hearing enchanted "I've been dreaming of a true love's kiss" yes that's you😂💗 You are a hopeless romantic and you may be fascinated in many cultures and religions. You could be very smart even if you don't think so, you are a natural problem solver. You don't like conflict or bad vibes either! You may be more proper or well mannered. You are just so delicate and sweet-💗💗💗 You may fantasize about an outstanding love story with many plot twists and adventures, you're really hoping and searching for a message (omg here it is! :D) and you're waiting for devine timing to set in place. You may feel like you will be single forever but that's not the case💕 You could be very fun and artistic, you love fashion and might really be into vintage styles. You want a partner to be familiar and comfortable with, someone who is witty and romantic. All you want is to be held😩💗 You're such a pretty soul I swear. You may be into pinterest or spend a lot of time online, you could look at aesthetic photos and just spend a lot of time on your phone lol. You love learning and you really want to search for love, you are willing to go on a crazy adventure just to find it... your dream romance!☁️💌 You love dreaming and fantasizing a lot too, you want someone to hug and touch.

⏳When will you find love: Us, Face, Truth, Age, Right, Uranus, Libra, Venus, 8th house, Saturn, 🦊🚨🗯💧 Alright this is interesting.⭐ Some of you are most likely younger but not all, I'm seeing teens to early twenties, but that might not necessarily be the case I just see someone who is very youthful and you might not have many experiences with love yet!💓 I feel like my lovely pile 1 you're in the dreaming phase where you really want a partner and wonder what it's like to be in a commited relationship so for you, you're going to find love when you're ready to commit. So much will have changed by the time you find your person, like you might not even be the same person I think your ideas and views on love may be very different when this happens. You will most likely be very mature even, and I can see for some of you this could be a time where you have overcome your daydreaming phase you know, your fantasies about romance. You might have changed the way you give and receive love. Now this could be good or bad but I'm seeing good for most of you because you could've had a habit of overlooking red flags or toxic behavior due to your kindness or seeing things through rose colored lenses, you might have lacked realistic views on love so I feel like when you actually find love this won't be a problem for you anymore, you would have overcome this.✊💗 This will definitely be a more mature time in your life where you have learned a lot and you have so much control over yourself and what you choose to put your energy into~🌙 I'm getting with the 8th house energy along with Saturn energy, you may find love in a most subtle most unusual way. You won't be very aware that you have found love until your future someone is open about it, this could take time as your person might need to make their decision and honestly commit to you.💌🔗

💖Your future lover's energy: Kitty, Night, Mindfulness, Doll, At last, Sagittarius, Sun, Neptune, Cancer, Libra, 🦚♓♉🦢 Omg you guys your person is so sweet🥺💗 They have a big heart and they are very honest with you. This is such a fun and adorable person I swear like they're such a keeper.😫They could be a sagittarius or pisces, any of the signs cancer, libra, taurus.😇 They make you smile so much and they may love cats or resemble such creatures~ They have an unreal or almost doll-like appearance. This is a very loyal person their energy is so trusting and kind, they treat you so well and take care of you, they are so delicate with you from the way they speak to the way they touch you💗💗 They could be artistic or a dreamer too and when you two are finally together they will just feel so complete like "finally I found the one!"🙏😍 They're also a hopeless romantic type for sure even if they don't seem that way on the surface omg they crave romance. They really want to impress you and they always remember the little things!! Like they're so quick to remember that expensive item you like and buy it for you as a romantic gift♡ Did I mention they love giving you gifts? Like they're so stable too so the time you find love with this person you are in a mature state of mind so are they like you guys will be on the same page. They will have a well paying job and very reliable, and omg they're the type to come over just so you two can cuddle.🥰😭 They make things so romantic without getting boring, You guys will have such a warm feeling when you two are together.💐 They are your perfect partner, you just fit together!💗

If you feel this resonated, you may tap the heart to claim this message!💌

I hope you enjoyed your reading! ʚ(｡˃ ᵕ ˂ )ɞ If you did be sure to let me know pile 1 with the clock emoji~⏰ Thanks for scrolling through, Hugs hugs hugs!! See you in the next reading💞

Pile 2☎️

Sign energy: Match, Sugar, Soul, Connection, First, Taurus, Sagittarius, Gemini, 3rd house, 8th house, 🤭🛩🙄😘

🌙Your energy: Oh you're so cool okay so some of you may be a taurus rising/taurus in the 1st house or maybe you desire these traits in a partner. You want someone you can really connect with on the deepest levels, you want a loyal companion and fun conversations!🪂 You could be very social and you like adventure, many people look up to you because you're so inspiring⭐ You could be a foodie or love sweets too haha most of you might have taurus in your chart~ You have a great sense of humor and you like being sarcastic sometimes, your laugh is so addicting😳🌈 People describe you as fun and chill. You like memes and funny videos. You might be really into other cultures and you may enjoy listening to music from different countries. You have a diverse interest in everything and you just have this super sweet nature about you. You might kiss your besties a lot and you love having fun with people.😆 You really want someone who complements you well, like someone who has the qualities you want. You could have sagittarius/gemini placements aswell, also scorpio for some of you. I wanna be friends with pile 2😂💫

⏳When will you find love: Lover, Siren, Surface, Violence, Above, 10th house, 4th house, 7th house, Venus, 👻🙆‍♀️🛩🧸 My wonderful pile 2 you're gonna find love when you have overcome so much omg, this is going to be a time where you feel so empowered and strong.✊💫 Some of you may have finally broken off from a hurtful relationship, someone who hasn't been out for your best interest. Pile 2 you guys may still be healing from that but just know that during this time where you find love, you will have recovered from past experiences that were causing you pain. Anything that's affecting you currently, you will have made it out of all that and you're feeling so free because things and people just don't affect you like they used to during this period when you find love pile 2 this is a wonderful sign of healing.⭐ You will be very successful at the time and so much progress will be made, you will be above toxic behavior above bad cycles that weren't serving you. That's why during this time you will be open arms to receiving healthy love and relationships, so chances are this will be a very important time for my pile 2's. You will be focusing on self care and in turn this will attract so much good energy and people toward you, your self is most important after all.💗

💖Your future lover's energy: Myth, Song, South node, Street, Winter, Eros, Earth, 5th house, Vertex, Jupiter, 🌧🥊🙅‍♀️🤔 Alright lovely pile 2 your person is going to make you forget about your worries, this us someone who will sweep you off your feet and they just have so much to offer you😍 Sagittarius and Leo placements can be found, lots of fire and earth energy. Could be more masculine energy for some of you. Your future someone is so attractive and they may be like a certain type of person you thought didn't exist like "No that's not possible people just aren't like that in real life" that's what you thought at first but when you meet this person you will be so surprised that like there are people like this omg they exist😭💖 They go above and beyond for you like, they're almost over the top with their love for you lol💐🌹🎁🛍🤗 I'm talking thoughtful gifts, romantic gestures, surprises and hella smooth like they know just what to say to makes you blush.😘 Your future lover could be born in winter (january, february, march) or that season could he significant for this connection. They are really good at impressing you like almost too good it always so crazy how good they are to you. They could be creative or into music, they are the type to make you a playlist that reminds them of you <3 I'm not kidding like be prepared for a whirlwind romance omg😂❤ They could wear street style clothing or be into cool fashion, they like to experiment with their look. You guys will have so much fun together and this is someone you will not be able to forget~💫

Thank you my pile 2's! If you feel this resonated, you may tap the heart to claim this message!💌

I hope you enjoyed your reading! ପ(๑•ᴗ•๑)ଓ ♡ If you did be sure to let me know pile 2 with the telephone emoji~☎️ Thanks for scrolling through, Hugs hugs hugs!! See you in the next reading⭐

Pile 3☕

Sign energy: Lost in translation, Kiss, Chains, First impression, Water, Vertex, Fire, 8th house, Moon, 5th house, 🍭😍🟦💘

🌙Your energy: You have a very mysterious aura to you my pile 3's. Let's see I feel like you have a lot of emotions, you are more sensitive so to speak. I'm getting a soft vibe from you guys like you're very sweet and kind but also I feel like you're secretly really hot lol😂 Some of you could be Leo's, Scorpio's or Cancer's any of those <3 You might get lost in your own head and thoughts sometimes and it gets really hard to think straight. You have an intense desire for love and it means a lot to you, you don't want to be hurt.🤚 I'm sensing that for some you have been in a long term situationship or a one sided crush on someone, there's definitely someone on pile 3's mind already.🤭💗 Ahh okay you guys are really hoping you've already found love/the person you're looking for. You fantasize about a deeply romantic and intense partner. Some of you like the color blue, navy and could have heavy water energy. You like sweets and desserts, some of you could be foodies <3 When you're in love you're all in💞 lovestruck type for sure~ Valentines day is your jam. You guys are idealists and you have so many goals you want to achieve, you are interested in so many wonderful things too. You may really gravitate towards creative hobbies or supernatural things like spirits and the occult.🕯

⏳When will you find love: Blind, December, Unseen, Network, Ladder, Aries, Aquarius, 8th house, 10th house, 2nd house, 🥰💆‍♂️🧛‍♀️🎯 Omg so you guys are gonna find love when things get REAL lol you're going to be so successful during this time and this could be really soon omg like almost 3 months from now even.🙉💗 Ahh I'm so excited okay so you might find love when you start something, something BIG. I mean like a business or new job, for many of you I see social media fame and getting lots of money from that. (youtube channel, blog, online business, ect.💼💸) You are gonna be in your boss b*tch phase when you finally find love you guys.👏 I can see success in practically anything for my lovely pile 3 so be ready!! There might be something you've been working on like a project or hobby just something you have been building for some time now and this is gonna pay off so much during this time⭐ I see so much recognition for you guys and that's why you're gonna find love so easily omg this could happen very quickly too🚀 For some of you your future someone might be a secret admirer of you, someone you don't know yet when you achieve this success. Just know you will be on the right track you know exactly where you're going and how to get there so this person is going to be so ready to come into your life because they see you working so hard and they just really wanna be there for you like this is your moment to shine~☀️ Just know everyone will be watching you lol the tea is real☕ It's also likely that you will have many admirers when you find love.

💖Your future lover's energy: Reach out, Locked, Art, Collarbone, Actor, Sagittarius, Leo, Uranus, 12th house, 1st house, ♒🥴🌧🔦 Ooh your person is will be so into you😍 They have this really magnetic look about them that just pulls you in, they're outgoing but so creative and dreamy💘 They have this sparkle in their eyes and everyone really loves them. They are definitely gonna come to you first, that's why you won't realize when you find love right away until they step forward and get things moving between you two~😘 Your future love will have beautiful hair and a great smile that's so warm and god you just start fantasizing about it every time you think of them when this happens lol you will be so hooked on this person, like you can't even control it they're just so addictive to you. Also you are definitely coming together with this person when you are involved with online activities like it could be your job or maybe you're online famous you might even have a channel. The flashlight is giving me spotlight energy so like you will be in the spotlight maybe this person is also internet famous or works online, that could be how you two met. Your future love will be in the arts, think painter, actor/actress, heavy artist energy for them. They are probably known online for their artistic abilities, just know you have this person's heart like they're not going anywhere lol😂💫 They want you to pay attention to them and praise them because they will see you as this amazing person and they really want your validation aww. Could be an aquarius rising, this person is very unique and has such a special vibe about them.

If you feel this resonated, you may tap the heart to claim this message!💌

I hope you enjoyed your reading! ૮꒰ ˶• ༝ •˶꒱ა ♡ If you did be sure to let me know pile 1 with the tea emoji~☕ Thanks for scrolling through, Hugs hugs hugs!! See you in the next reading💗💕

Pile 4🌹

Sign energy: Soulmates, Children, Ankles, Tears, 4th house, Lilith, Jupiter, 10th house, Juno, Venus, 🍂🎆😒💙

🌙Your energy: I'm getting such an attractive vibe from this pile, like can I just say how pretty you are??😂😍 You have this gracefulness about you so delicate like a flower, you might have had people try to pick your petals though. It's like when a person picks a flower just because of it's beauty but they rip it from the ground😥 You wish others would ask you how you feel sometimes because you just want comfort and care.💓 You may have grown up with a bad experience with men or authority in your life. Your family life could have been hard for you, and it could have set your ideas of love and partnerships. You may be close to your mother or one of your parents is distant, you really just want love and affection but you were never used to receiving it.😭💗 You have a feminine energy (even if male) something about you is so aesthetically pleasing. You're emotional and you could be doing some shadow work right now, you are a spiritual person and you don't like when people take advantage of your kindness. Some of you may be born in the fall and could have sagittarius placements as well as pisces, cancer, libra and taurus(so beautiful)💓 Jupiter or Venus could be your dominant planet. My lovely pile 4 you have such delicate hearts so take care of them🩹

⏳When will you find love: Explosion, Money, Force, Soft spot, Inner thoughts, 5th house, Fire, South node, North node, Uranus, 🍷🎲💄🤐 Oml you guys things are going to be so fun when you find love!!! I'm getting like a sudden transformation for some of you during this time but nothing really says that it's just what I'm feeling for you guys. So you might be doing very creative hobbies during this time and omg you could be making things (lol I mean making money🤑). Now I feel like money isn't the reason for doing this hobby but it's just an after effect for sure like you'll be shocked at how sudden the money comes rolling in for you haha😂 For some of you finding love could be a result of looking inward within yourself, this could be self love🥺💗 You might have had trouble loving yourselves all this time but when you find love this will all change, you will feel so pretty and inspiring for yourself🙏😭 You may be caught up in a love affair with someone during this time and this could force you to think about your future, past and finances as well as your deepest self reflection. However this love manifests for you, there won't be a choice about it lol this love will force you to keep going and don't look back. You will be more of a risk taker then ever before and this could be with money. Oohhh for some of you I'm getting heavy casino vibes, you guys might find love casino or you might start gambling a little more in the future when you find love.🎲🍷❤

💖Your future love's energy: 1st house, Show, Special, Chains, My everything, Mercury, 5th house, 4th house, 2nd house, Water, 🐍🎀😁😴 My lovely pile 4 this is getting so good lemme just tell you.😍 Your person is a natural born star omg they're so special! You can't take your eyes off them so be prepared to not blink lol 👁👄👁 This is you when you see them it's just like wow who is they??? Haha you will he head over heels for them literally I also am getting either you or them may wear heels, this could be for fashion purposes and did I mention you guys this person will be such a fashionista oml. They will wear those glasses and chain necklaces all the good stuff🕶📿👞 They are so flirty but like you won't be able to tell if it's just their personality or if it's with you, but it will become SO obvious it's you omg pile 4🤭❤ Your future love is so attractive like they're really good looking if you're curious about that...💅 They have a very special appearance and they dress up real nice😳 They're gonna be all over you pile 4 get ready for physical affection they will always wanna have their hand on your shoulder haha because they think you're so pretty.🔥 Also this person has a really attractive voice, they could easily be a singer or voice actor with their range. Lol they might be the kind that wants you to "own" them and they'll do anything you ask. And they aren't cheap either like, they've got money and they wanna spoil you so bad💸 They wanna hug you tight and make you forget about everything and just have fun together. They're so comforting and healing for you because they're going to give you the romantic experience you thought would be painful.😭🩹🎀 They're literally gonna tell you "don't worry baby everything's okay"💋 The type to give you roses because they want you to think they're special and raise your standards for a romantic partner.🌹 My lovely pile 4 how does it feel being so loved😍🤩🥰

If you feel this resonated, you may tap the heart to claim this message!💌

I hope you enjoyed your reading! ♡⸜(˃ ᵕ ˂ )⸝ If you did be sure to let me know pile 1 with the rose emoji~🌹 Thanks for scrolling through, Hugs hugs hugs!! See you in the next reading💞

Wanna see more readings like this? Check out my tumblr for accurate readings for you!💗🌊🌸

Thanks for reading! \(*^w^)/💌 -Lunadream <3

[heartlesscorpse]

Hello!! I've been absolutely obsessed with homicipher lately, and I really love the fanfics and hcs you wrote for the characters so far!! You're a really great writer, your style and aesthetic is honestly so good!

I was curious if you had any headcanons for how Mr. Crawling, Mr. Hood, and Mr. Silvair would be with a cane-user reader that has severe leg pain? Like they typically use a cane to help them walk easier, but sometimes they can feel so much pain in their leg that it becomes too much to walk and they sometimes need to sit down or take a break?

Homicipher characters taking care of reader is one of my favorite types of things to read <3 I hope you have an amazing day!

Homicipher Boys w/ Cane!reader

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOHh YES I love the concept gbejbfj and I could def see this as a huge cute thing w/ Mr. Hood especially. 10/10, Homicipher boys taking care of the reader are the best HCs hands down gbejfjwj and tysm it makes me happy to hear that others rlly enjoy my work!!!! :D

Mr. Crawling 𖦹₊⊹

⭑.ᐟ — Mr. Crawling as the absolute fucking sweetheart he is would want to be the biggest help for you when getting around certain areas of the Ghost Apartments.

⭑.ᐟ — At the same time, Mr. Crawling is also disappointed in himself he can’t be much of a help, it’s difficult for him to stand on his own feet for any longer than a few minutes considering he’s used to crawling around.

⭑.ᐟ — Which also means he can’t carry you :((

⭑.ᐟ — The best he can do however is help avoid any places like the boardwalk room with all the water or anything with a ladder so you’re putting less stress on your muscles and your bad leg.

⭑.ᐟ — Mr. Crawling does his best to try in protect you from any hostile residents (eg. the time you got kidnapped by Mr. Stitch), he’s not trusting anybody that’s not Mr. Silvair, or any other residents you’re not familiar with.

⭑.ᐟ — Ofc break times are also a must have so whenever there’s a room that’s safe to take a breather, he’ll basically lead you by the hand to take a seat and give your bad leg a rest. Cuddles are also given for a bonus <3

Mr. Silvair 𖦹₊⊹

⭑.ᐟ — Mr. Silvair being kind of like the scientist/doctor, he’s pretty much the best source in getting any help you need for your leg.

⭑.ᐟ — Considering meds or painkillers aren’t things that exist in this ghostly dimension, Mr. Silvair tries finding other alternatives in order to alleviate your severe pain in your leg. Maybe try to work and figure out some sort of 'cure' with what resources and tools he has.

⭑.ᐟ — So with getting a few checkups/experiments done on your body (aka the weird thing going on with your body slowly changing due to staying in the Ghost Apartments), Mr. Silvair also checks in once in a while to see how your leg pain is going and suggests in resting whenever needed. You’re basically more than welcome to use his spare beds when you need them most.

⭑.ᐟ — Mr. Silvair might’ve found something better from the room with all the trashed items like a crutch for example so you can lean your weight on it a little and it’s somewhat easier to walk around.

⭑.ᐟ — Eventually Mr. Silvair found someway to help out with your leg pains, ofc having injections doesn’t look like to be the safest in normal people standards but yk, you’ll take anything you can get to be free from the pain even if it’s for a small while.

⭑.ᐟ — You might not get around much at this point, but whenever you’re in Mr. Silvair’s place you stay around for a little while during your breaks and Mr. Chopped’s just there keeping you company. :)

Mr. Hood 𖦹₊⊹

⭑.ᐟ — Mr. Hood sees this as no problem at all tbh (It’s practically a W in Mr. Hood’s books).

⭑.ᐟ — Also fuck your cane honestly, he’s not thinking that ofc, but there’s no reason in needing one if Mr. Hood’s going to carry you all the time??? You can always rely on him to bring you to places you want to go.

⭑.ᐟ — You feel bad and selfish for taking advantage of Mr. Hood this way, but he’s honestly not complaining at all if he gets to hold you close like this whenever he wants. He’s not sure what the fuzzy feeling is but he just likes having you in his arms.

⭑.ᐟ — Sometimes you’d insist you’re able to walk on your own with the cane and you don’t need to be carried, Mr. Hood doesn’t think so, and he’ll still carry you anyways even if you don’t want him to.

⭑.ᐟ — It’s just looks so difficult seeing you struggle to get around certain places in the Ghost Apartments, there’s like a handful of dangerous things and you can’t run at all with that bad leg of yours.

⭑.ᐟ — There’s no need to feel guilty, even if Mr. Hood’s not put together or understand what he’s feeling most of the time, he’ll do anything to help out, keep you safe and protected. :))

[goingmerryfics]

Hello!! I recently found your blog and I love it!! ❤️

I was wondering if I could request something!

Kid, Mihawk and Law with a partner who’s into gothic clothing. uwu

Gothic style S/O w/ Kid, Mihawk & Law

Content: Gender Neutral reader, SFW!

Notes* Glad to have you! Thanks for the request :) Out of anyone, I think these three would be the most accepting/understanding of someone with this style and even indulge in it a bit themselves so I tried to make this a little more personal to each character. That being said, I feel like they turned out a little shorter than normal, but I hope you still enjoy it!

Kid

He wouldn’t even bat an eye if this was a regular thing to be dressed in gothic style. It’s pretty common around the crew, and even if it wasn’t, Kid appreciates the aesthetic of the style

He also just doesn’t give a shit what you wear as long as you can do your job

Looking good while doing it is also a plus

For that reason, he would help you out with your makeup for sure. Not that he has much experience with it in the first place, but he just likes any excuse to look at your lips

On the other hand, if your weren’t introduced to him in black and chains, he wouldn’t recognize you if you just up and changed your wardrobe

You walk out of your room in your new style, the one you’ve been wanting to try for years and never had the bravery to out of fear of judgement

But after joining the Kid Pirates, it didn’t feel so scary to go outside of the world’s expectations

“Who the fuck are you!? How’d you get on my ship!?”

After managing to convince him not to just throw you overboard, he does the unthinkable

“Oh. You look good. Better than that boring shit you used to wear.”

He compliments you

Kid will pick at your outfits and give unsolicited advice on how to coordinate or style your clothing

He isn’t one for making jewelry, but he might try if you can’t find anything that would match your clothes

Mihawk

No comment from him. You’d have to outright ask him what he thought, and even then it would be a short answer

“Yes, it’s a good look on you.”

He isn’t actually looking at you when he answers, but it’s genuine

You’d find him staring at you quite often, though

He enjoys the style on you, especially since his style is very close/similar to gothic

He respects your backbone for sticking to what makes you happy, and he’ll encourage you to stick up for yourself if anyone has anything to say about your look

Honestly, he’s seen people look and dress a lot worse, so he doesn’t see why anyone should be making unnecessary comments

Despite being a man of few words, he would still compliment your outfits every time

He, having a eye for the fashion, would also help you coordinate and mix up your clothing items and accessories to freshen up the looks

“That won’t do. We need to get you some earrings that will match this.”

It’s such a sweet way to spend the time that you two have together

Law

Law gets whiplash at first

His emo phase is coming back to him all at once and he’s cringing internally

But despite his own emotional setbacks, he is happy if you feel comfortable dressing this way

He’s very level-headed, so there’s not going to be a very big reaction out of him right away

His perception of you hasn’t changed, and it won’t anytime soon

“Express yourself however you like, just make sure you don’t alter the uniform too much.”

He’ll warn you that the crew might ask some dumbass questions or make rude comments

He also will ask you some questions, very carefully, not wanting to sound ignorant

He would come to your aid if you needed support, especially within his own crew

If you’re the type to wear a lot of make-up, he’ll be on your ass about cleaning your face every night 

He’d even help you do a skin care routine to make sure you were taking care of yourself!

If you bother him enough, he’ll start to do it with you, too

Gets you stuff that remind him of you, things he believes may align with your style

All in all, he’s pretty indifferent to the style, and may even be open to dipping back into it a little bit

He looks great in eyeliner, but damn it he keeps smudging it

[plutocisms]

NSFW Alphabet for Erwin Smith

A (Aftercare) what are they like after sex?

He doesn’t really understand the concept. But is sweet enough to get you a towl and clean you up, after that it’s back to he schedule. May (deffly) steal glances of you perfectly laying there while getting some work done from his house desk

B (Body Part) favorite on themselves and of their partner

he enjoys his own physique and is happy to receive compliments on it. On you he appreciates it all, and will always tell you how perfect you are as it, he’s def a little into your feet.

C (Cum) anything to do w/ it basically

he it’s pretty neutral about it as long as it doesn’t stain any clothes. He loves finishing in your mouth fs. If that’s not an option tho he’ll opt for your torso. He loves the way yours tastes and enjoys making you taste some of your own after some finger action.

D (Dirty little secret) self explanatory

once while day dreaming of you in his office he got so hard to the point that it was actually a little uncomfortable for the remainder of his day, he never said anything because he was a little embarrassed at his lack of control, but he later expressed it that night.

E (Experience) also pretty self explanatory

As a very busy man he doesn’t have the most experience under his belt, and the experiences he has gained were more about him. But he’s learned a thing or two from discussing with friends and can surely please you.

F (Favorite postition) ^

very very into a position called Slope, he gets a great view and the angle is perfect for deep penetration and gets a great show of the faces you make and how well you can take him.

G (Goofy) are they more playful or serious in the moment?

this man is anything but goofy, it’s just not his style. Nothings funny about the way he lays it down, he might smirk to himself a little watching your faces when you take him in.

H (Hair) how are they groomed down there?

he’s not fully shaven because he doesn’t like the feeling when it starts to grow back, but well groomed.

I (Intimacy) are they more romantic or lustful in the moment?

very intimate seeing as he rarely gets time with you, he wants you to know you’re special and how happy you make him

J (Jack Off) masturbation headcanon

He doesn’t really have a lot of time to play around, but if it gets to the point where he’s in need of some attention he’ll have you come by the office or find a good meeting spot for the two of you.

K (Kink(s)) self explanatory :)

this is the Dom of all Doms. He loves when you submit to him but also when there’s a little resistance. He wants you just a little bratty. He especially loves being called by his title while he’s in it, wouldn’t admit it tho. Impact play too.

L (Location) where they like to do it

His office, his place or yours. Anywhere else he’d be on high alert of getting caught which would distract him a bit from pleasing you.

M (Motivation) what gets them in the mood?

this is a very simple man, he could just see you walk across the room and get a little hot or seeing you put your hair up. Prolonged eye contact is big for him as well as directness, telling him what you want him to do to you gets him a little unhinged. Grab him by the collar!!

N (No) what they wont do in the bedroom

he is really against the idea of a third and anything else that involves blood (excluding period sex bc I think he’d be down tbh) or potentially really hurting you.

O (Oral) do they enjoy giving/receiving?

he loves recieving, especially in his office chair, as for giving it’s something he’s working on getting better at and he’s a little more comfortable using his hand than his tongue just because he knows how to use them better.

P (Pace) how fast or slow are they during?

he typically enjoys a quicker pace whether it’s soft or hard, but if he’s had a long and or stressful day, know that you can’t run from it.

Q (Quickies) how do they feel about them?

while his preference would be to have a proper session he knows they’re unavoidable with his schedule and at times the passion that comes with them is exciting for him.

R (Risks) are they willing to take them?

while he may be known for taking risks on the battle field he really loves what’s tried and true unless you bring something up

S (Stamina) how long can they last?

his stamina is pretty standard. If there happens to be time for a few rounds he will need a little break between each.

T (Toys) are they into them, do they have any?

he’s pretty old school in the respect that he’d like to be all you need in the bedroom, but he’s not totally against cuffs, blind folds, or even a paddle.

U (Unfair) are they a tease basically

He plays pretty fair in bed, all though every once in a while he does enjoy teasing you especially when you least expect it—he loves it when it’s done to him but may want to ‘punish’ you for it. It drives him crazy.

V (Volume) how loud are they during

he isn’t terribly loud at all. Just deep grunts and breathy cussing but not a lot. He is obsessed with how you call out for him tho.

W (Wildcard) random headcanon

he writes dirty notes for you but loses his composure just a little at the thought of someone else finding them in his office.

X (X-Ray) what's it looking like under the hood

the commander is packing. A good 7.5 with nice girth too. + he has strong ass thighs

Y (Yearning) what's their sex drive like?

Considering it’s hard to come by, he wants it every chance he can get, otherwise it can be distracting to his work

Z (Zzz) how fast do they fall asleep after?

The type to collapse right on top of you afterwards in all of his sweaty glory

[deleteddewewted]

Doc Headcanons

A/n: Just some headcanons of mine about Doc. I love him so much!!!!

MDNI

W: NSFW under the cut, Writer has a body hair fetish

He’s not usually the most showy about his affection but he isn’t hiding it either. He just doesn’t see the point in being loud about how he feels about anyone or anything.

Has a temper. You might think age has brought him a tolerance for ignorant and stupid behavior but you’d be surprised when he snaps at someone for not taking his advice to heart when he explains they cannot combine two medications that do not react well.

Doesn’t know what rest or a moment of peace is. If it’s not one thing it’s another. There’s no such thing as being relaxed to him.

Spends too much of his time being a big brother to most of his colleges, especially GIGN. So when Twitch wants to show him a new gadget of hers he’s forcing himself to ask questions and act interest. It’s not for a lack of caring he’s just very tired and very busy.

When he was younger he used to experiment a lot. Sexually he’s secure and knows what he likes, he explored and tried a lot of what he wanted to do when he was younger but now that he’s older he wants to still try knew things but with a consistent partner.

Has briefly thought about getting married just to fulfill a dream he’s had. He’s not big on weddings but sharing the rest of his life with someone sounds nice.

Hairy. Very hairy. His arms, his chest, his stomach and his shoot trail. Maybe not all that much on his stomach but you can still see some thin hairs that get thicker under his belly button and leading to his public area.

Happy to listen to your problems even if they’re minute. If he likes you he’ll enjoy listening to anything that interests you. He might not share the same taste in music but he likes creating bonds with people so he’ll endure.

He’s not a self conscious person but when someone mentioned in passing that he was going to look handsome with grey hair he made an effort to take better care of his hair. Military regulations as well as medical ones require hair to be well kept and groomed so he’s always sported the same short and swept back hair style for years. He likes his grey hairs even if at first he thought it looked silly cause it was only at the side of his head.

If he could do anything other than his current job he would like to be a homebody. He technically could decided to retire right now but his need to help others trumps a desire to be at home doing nothing. He still tries to find opportunities to stay in his room with coffee and a book.

Gustave has a large family so he's used to being pulled in one direction and another while having his ear chatted off. He only minds this when he's visiting his family on leave and they begin trying to set him up on dates with people he has never meet before.

NSFW:

Very much the type to fall in love hard. His work brings him little to no time to himself, which means he will find himself fixating, daydreaming, and thinking about any and all interactions he's had with someone he is interested in.

Not the possessive or the jealous type but if he's dating you he will find it annoying if your attention is taken by someone else who's too handsy to you. He wants to spend time with you but he cant if someone else is having your full attention.

Kisses your hand all the time. Likes the feeling of your skin on his and he does it to reassure himself that you are there with him.

Likes it when you touch his body, makes him feel special and complete.

For however much he knows it is best to use a condom he cant help himself but want to fuck you raw. Lube, spit, whatever, he just wants to be inside you and fuck you till you're happy and tired out.

He likes seeing you come on done with his mouth. He loves giving oral so having your cum on his face or just dripping down his chin makes him even more aroused.

[pinkacademiaprincess]

Hiii I’m so sorry to bother you!, hope your day goes well <3 I just want to ask, how can I improve in maths? I’m preparing myself for the sat and I have trouble with understanding it. Any tips would be very much appreciated, thanku !! ♡

Become a Math Whiz: Acing Math Class & the SAT 📈✏️📚👩‍🏫

ty for the ask & the kind words! you are never a bother, i'm happy to help 🥰 i can def give some tips as someone who went from struggling w/ math to being good at it. and i’ve taken the SAT so i know that experience as well! i hope this helps 💗

take accountability

it’s very easy to try to shift blame & avoid taking responsibility for your grades/ performance. i used to think things like “the teacher is just bad!” or “i’m just not a math person!” but this mindset is just deflecting. some things are out of your control, like what teacher you have or preferring other subjects, but you have to step up & work hard to create your own success! remembering this will help you stay motivated and disciplined.

find your learning style

i talked about this in a previous post too, but there are different styles of learning - visual, auditory, hands-on, & reading/writing - and not all of them work for everyone. if you spend a ton of time studying and don’t see improvement or results, that’s a big sign that you’re studying wrong. a method that works for your friend or that your teacher uses might not actually be effective for you. so do some research into learning styles and study methods, and find implement strategies that work for you.

never fall behind

okay, easier said than done. but one of the biggest reasons i used to struggle is math is that i would get stuck on a concept, never fully master it, and then i’d stay behind. in math, a lot of topics build on each other. if you get stuck on a topic, it’s crucial that you figure it out asap or your confusion will snowball. you can’t build a solid structure on top of a wobbly foundation. the moment you encounter a problem area, study it until you’ve completely understood.

practice makes perfect

i try to steer clear of recommending specific study methods b/c everyone has different learning styles. but math is so dependent on problem solving & applications that you really have to master this skill in order to succeed. beyond just reviewing your notes & reading over concepts, you need to practice applying topics by solving problems. do the homework questions & do them for accuracy, even if it’s just graded for completion. find extra problems in the textbook, workbook, online, etc. redo questions from class or the hw that confused you until you can do them correctly without your notes. drill it until you can solve them AND understand how the steps work!

ask for help

i am clearly a big proponent of asking for help. in school, your teachers are gonna be one of the best resources you have. for one, they’re teachers for a reason, so even if you think they’re not too great at explaining stuff, they know the concepts. and besides that, your teachers the ones who are creating units, assigning your work, writing & grading your tests... they should be your go-to for questions. visit them during office hours or email to set up a meeting where you can discuss concepts. ask for extra practice problems, ask them to look over your work & let you know how it looks, talk through your work with them. aside from teachers, you can get help from a tutor, a classmate, whoever you can turn to. but pls don’t suffer alone! succeeding with help is still succeeding.

use the internet

so maybe your teacher truly sucks at explaining. maybe you don’t have classmates to help and can’t afford a tutor. or maybe you just wanna supplement your learning another way. i really really recommend utilizing free learning tools online!! khan academy is an obvious one for videos, practice problems, and more. you can also find tons of youtube videos explaining math topics. sometimes it helps to hear things explained another way. i also google “[math concept] practice problems” if i want extra questions to work through.

bonus: tips for SAT math

the SAT is a bit different b/c the math concepts aren’t actually too advanced. it’s all multiple choice so you don’t get to rely on partial points for showing your work. the SAT is testing your strategy & speed as much as it’s actually testing you on math concepts, so here are my best tips for that specifically:

use khan academy’s SAT prep tool - it’s free (!!!!!) and it links to your collegeboard account. it uses prior years’ SAT content so it’s very similar to the test itself. it helps you pace yourself, pinpoint your problem areas, learn & apply concepts, & track your progress. here's a screenshot from when i used it, as you can see my scores improved and i was able to ultimately get a superscore of 1450!

take practice tests - this helps you get familiar with the time constraint. khan academy has plenty!!

do a ton of SAT math practice questions - ideally, find a ton of questions used in prior SAT tests and just crank them out. the test's concepts are quite repetitive so if you just focus on the topics they usually test, you can master them

learn test-taking strategies - the SAT is multiple choice and has a tricky time constraint, so however you can save time will help. become good at using the process of elimination & other multiple choice test methods. you can find these sorts of tips online!

i hope this helps! know that you are completely capable of improving at math. i went from thinking i suck at it & doing poorly in math class to acing my calc courses & studying to enter a math-focused field. utilize your resources and figure out your best study style asap, and you WILL see improvements!

[subskz]

what kind of feminine panties would each member wear, and mtl likely to wear them?

i feel like felix would love frilly, floral, lacy, cutesy ones hehe. like especially pastel pink ones with small polka-dots and the little bow at the top and lacy trim.

jisung would definitely wear a g-string. or lacy crotchless ones, but i mainly see him as a g-string type of guy. he likes the aspect of it barely covering anything, and how it would be pretty easy for you to rip them off of him since it’s only a thin piece of string. he probably wore one of those candy g-string panties (https://images.app.goo.gl/DTc849PLjwbjk8pU9) once for shits and giggles, but actually gets pretty turned on when you start eating the candies to slowly reveal his cock

what a delicious question ♡_♡ for mtl i think it’d depend on a few things but here’s my tentative ranking!

felix -> jisung -> binnie -> jeongin -> hyunjin -> chan -> lino -> seungmin

felix in smth frilly and cute just feels so right, esp w a pretty silk bow just like you said! maybe long pretty ribbons on the edges or one right in the center over his bulge <3 i think he’d love a lace trim bc of the delicate, angelic quality it has, but he’d also want it to have a cute twist for an element of playfulness! maybe even sanrio-themed underwear or those panties that have a cute skirt attached to the waistband

jisung in a g-string 😭 i agree he’d love anything that gives you easy access and the panties being so tiny would make for a great visual of his dick peeking out or leaking through the material~ the edible candy one you mentioned would definitely turn him on an embarrassing amount lmao by the time ur done eating it he’d be seconds away from cumming untouched. i also love the idea of him in a garter belt for that tiny waist

binnie goes back and forth between being insanely shy and awkward abt it, to feeling so good abt himself that he’s harder than ever. you can see how giddy he gets when you fawn over him it makes him feel like the prettiest boy in the world, he’d definitely not-so-subtly show himself off just so you’ll keep praising him. i think he’d like either black lacey panties that have a dark, sexy look or the most ridiculously cute, girliest pink pair that you can imagine w a bunny/heart pattern, there’s no in between 😭

given how innie seems open to experimenting w more feminine styles like skirts/dresses i think he’d be very into it despite how embarrassed he might get at first bc he feels like a lil bit of a perv. but he cares a lot abt aesthetics so once he feels comfortable you’re in for the giggliest baby boy ever. i think he’d like smth kinda cute and trendy, in a bright color like pink or purple with some frills! he’d love having to look in the mirror while wearing them while you compliment him

god hyune would look gorgeous in literally anything but he is a little shy which makes him hold back a bit. he has such a natural sensuality to him but funnily enough he’s kinda awkward abt trying to be sexy. i think he’d lean for smth a bit less revealing since he’s not one to like showing off his body too much. lace seems a lot like his style, it’s seductive but also pretty and elegant at the same time, it makes him feel sexy n refined and satisfies his need for artistry in everything <3

i fully believe channie secretly loves to feel feminine and pretty, the only problem is he’s already so easy to fluster on a normal basis so wearing cute underwear would probably make the poor boy short circuit. unstoppable force (channie’s babygirlism) vs immovable object (channie’s shyness) he might like smth simple to start, maybe silk/satin panties bc he he can’t get enough of how nice the material feels <3 he’d go crazy if you snapped the waistband against his skin to tease him and he’d probably say smth like “is it *giggle* is it supposed to be so tight here?” (subtle way of drawing attention to his ass)

lino…do not be fooled by his placement on this list, when he’s in the right mood he’d very much enjoy wearing feminine underwear, esp once he learns how crazy it drives you. i think he’d like the kind w a garter belt attached to stockings/socks, a whole set to accentuate his gorgeous thighs (with cat ear cuffs of course!!!) he’d always prefer to wear thigh highs with his panties or smth sheer that covers a lot of skin bc he’s also kinda conservative abt showing off his body, he doesn’t like to feel too exposed

i’m kinda cheating w this one bc it’s not exactly feminine panties but ever since pink brought up the idea of seungminnie prefering lace boxers over traditional lingerie i have never been the same i cant get it out of my head 😭 i think it’s the perfect balance of pretty and delicate, but still boyish and not as revealing for our modest puppy seungmo ♡ he’s very shy and i think his embarrassment might overpower the thrill of looking pretty for you, so he might not be as into it as some of the other boys

[scnderlands]

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀𝒩𝒮𝐹𝒲 𝒜𝐿𝒫𝐻𝒜𝐵𝐸𝒯 — j.slaughter

warnings + tags — MINORS / AGELESS BLOGS DNI, female reader, mentions of sex, dacryphilia, blood kink, non-con kink, knife play, johnny slaughter being johnny slaughter, typical nsfw things

authors notes — I’ve been wanting to do an alphabet for some of the tcm characters forever, so why not kick it off with a dirty little johnny post? this is all for fun and games, so if you don’t agree w anything, that’s okay <3 I might make some more n/sfw alphabets if people want, too (also let’s pretend I’m not uploading this at 6am).

A = Aftercare (what they’re like after sex)

at first he wasn’t exactly understanding of aftercare, he was used to just fucking and leaving, you know, the whole family business. but once he got with you, you taught him what aftercare actually was and it became one of him favourite things — he’d actually look forward to it, not that he’d tell you that. the idea of holding you close to him, all sweaty and panting, both of you more relaxed than you ever could be, enjoying the silence and the come down from your shared high. what could be better?

B = Body part (their favorite body part of theirs and also their partner’s)

his favourite body part of yours is definitely your ass and thighs, doesn’t matter whether they’re big or small, he just loves the soft parts of your body. he loves squeezing them, slapping them, biting them, laying on them — whatever, he is just borderline obsessed with them. but in all honesty, every single part of your body is his favourite, he’s just so into you that he can barely contain himself.

his favourite part of himself is his arms and hands, his muscular biceps and large hands make him feel manly and give him extra confidence, plus when he’s choking someone, seeing his hands or arms cover them completely kinda gets him going. plus he knows how much you love those parts of him, and that makes him like himself just that little bit more.

C = Cum (anything to do with cum, basically)

he’s filthy when it comes to his cum, he’ll have it everywhere — he’ll cum on your face, your ass, in your mouth, and even forcing it into your cunt and breeding you like you deserve. he claims you as his and him having his cum in you or all over you just cements that fact. it tastes a little salty but mostly just normal, he likes to think he has a “good” diet just for your taste.

D = Dirty secret (pretty self explanatory, a dirty secret of theirs)

johnny is a dirty little panty stealer, especially dirty panties. any time you’re showering or have gotten changed, he’ll pick up a pretty pair and shove it into his pocket, and he’ll act completely innocent when you ask if he’s seen them anywhere — he’ll just claim he probably ripped them to shreds when he fucked you, or threw them behind something accidentally. he loves smelling them while he’s masturbating (which isn’t often) but when he really misses you, then it just brings him that much closer to you. he has a secret little stash of them in his shack, tucked away in the back of a drawer, all different colours and styles just for his pleasure.

E = Experience (how experienced are they? do they know what they’re doing?)

no surprise but he is pretty damn experienced, but in the beginning he only really fucked for his own pleasure, not really caring about the other person. but when he got you, then all he wanted was to hear you moaning, to hear his name tumbling from your pretty lips. so he focused on and used everything he knew best, and of course he listened and learnt what you enjoyed — he basically became a god of fucking you, knowing everything that made you break, the things that made you quiver and come without him barely touching you.

F = Favorite position (this goes without saying)

surprisingly, missionary is his favourite, mostly because he likes seeing your face while he’s fucking you, having his hands wrapped around your throat or pinning your hands above your head. there’s something intimate about the simplicity of missionary and he loves that. but he enjoys mixing it up a little, missionary that turns into a mating press, and whatnot.

his second favorite is doggy, but because he loves ass, and it makes it easy to wrap his arm around your neck and pull you back into his chest. a secret favourite as well is forcing you into the full nelson, because what wouldn’t be enjoyable about that?

G = Goofy (are they more serious in the moment? are they humorous? etc.)

he’s more serious but it’s because he gets lost in the moment, he’s so concentrated on making you come that he doesn’t really take the moment to be more relaxed. but it doesn’t mean he doesn’t know how to laugh and joke on during it, he’ll often say things that makes you chuckle, especially when he’s being “sweet” — but he doesn’t make a habit to go out of his way to make a joke unless it’s to lighten the mood after an intense session.

H = Hair (how well groomed are they? does the carpet match the drapes? etc.)

johnny is pretty well groomed, he often shaves his armpits and trims his pubes, mostly because of the hot weather so he likes to keep it shorter but also because he feels more comfortable. he definitely leaves hair down there though, and grows out his happy trail because he knows he looks good with it. and of course he leaves the little bit of chest hair he has. all of his hair is jet black, and pretty thick and straight.

I = Intimacy (how are they during the moment? the romantic aspect)

he can sometimes be nice and loving, slow and romantic. whispering sweet nothings into your ear, pumping in and out of you deeply, just showing how he loves you. but of course he has the moments, which is more likely, where he fucks you hard and rough, using you for his own pleasures. it all depends on the moment, the day, and his mood, but expect a bit of everything from him. but johnny has his own ways of intimacy, his own way of showing his love and being what he thinks is romantic, even if he is being rough the entire time.

J = Jack off (masturbation headcanon)

he rarely jacks off, instead he prefers having sex with you to relieve himself, but on the off times he does need to jack off, then he has specific things he’ll do. like stated he’ll sniff your panties or look at polaroids of naked pictures you took for him, picturing you riding him and moaning for him. he’ll edge himself a lot, too, your name always rolling off his tongue when he moves his hand nice and slow up and down his cock. other times he wants it over quickly, locking himself in the bathroom and fucking his hand hard and fast, just needing to come and get it over with so he can get back to his busy schedule.

K = Kink (one or more of their kinks)

blood kink — need I say more? he loves eating and tasting people, and your blood is something that he loves tasting, especially when he’s balls deep inside of you. there’s something so intimate about licking the blood trickling down your neck and making love to you at the same time, something so intimate about sharing something like blood with each other. he also loves having you taste his, whether it’s from biting his lip or even just licking his wound when he accidentally cuts himself.

knife kink — again, a pretty obvious one, the man who walks around with a knife and cuts people up basically for a living? he likes the way you flinch under the cool steel of his blade, cutting your clothes off your body with it, leaving lines and marks on you. he’ll cut you if you let him, not deep enough to scar, but enough to get a little blood from you, two kinks for the price of one.

non-con kink — he loves having his way with you, especially when you’re begging him to stop or when you’re whimpering and crying. of course he doesn’t hurt you, instead he pleasures until you can’t take it anymore, until you want it to stop but he just won’t. sometimes he’ll grab you from behind when you least expect it, blindfold and gag you, tie you up and fuck you senseless.

L = Location (favorite places to do the do)

he’s a simple man with simple pleasures, taking you on a bed or the sofa in his shack is good enough for him, anything with soft padding for him and you to be comfortable. but sometimes he likes to mix it up, fucking you in a victims car or bending you over a table in his mothers house and having his way with you. it depends on his mood like usual, it doesn’t matter where it is as long as he gets to cum in you — but he does have a preference for the risky areas, the outdoor places where you have the chance to be caught, or even just places where he didn’t bother locking the door.

M = Motivation (what turns them on, gets them going)

he’s a pretty simple man so a lot of things you do turn him on, it can be as simple as seeing you all warm and bothered on a hot summers day or seeing you bend over picking something up off the floor. but some other things are a little meaner, like seeing you cry when you’re upset or when you’re annoyed with him and you pout all cute like. his favourite thing though, is when you’re angry or really upset, shouting at him, pushing him away or pounding on his chest to get him away — that instantly sends the blood to his cock.

N = No (something they wouldn’t do, turn offs)

there isn’t much he wouldn’t do, or at least there isn’t really any hard no’s. but he isn’t a fan of threesomes, he doesn’t like the idea of anyone else touching you, pleasing you — he knows he’s enough for you and you’re enough for him, so why would you want to invite someone else into the bedroom? as for turn offs, there isn’t really many, something might turn his off once because of his mood or just how he’s feeling on that day but then it might not the next time.

O = Oral (preference in giving or receiving, skill, etc.)

just like most people, he loves recieving and seeing you on your knees, especially when you’re choking and gagging on him. but he absolutely loves going down on you, he loves to pleasure you and anything that gets you moaning his name, he loves. he’s really good at it too, he was already good before he met you but he’s learnt exactly what gets you going, and god knows he can work miracles with that tongue of his. there are times he’ll go down on you for the sake of it, not even expecting it to be foreplay for sex. he’ll just push you up against something and drop to his knees, pushing your panties to the side and eating you out, then he’ll just go about the rest of his day like normal after making you come on his face.

P = Pace (are they fast and rough? slow and sensual? etc.)

he goes between fast and rough and slow and sensual, but most of the time he likes it fast and rough. throwing you about and using you as a glorified fleshlight and making you come at his will is just too much to pass up. when he’s been more romantic or sensual, he likes to have you in missionary, his head buried in the crook of your neck where his moans and sighs are slightly muffled, and he can just push his cock into you nice and slowly.

Q = Quickie (their opinions on quickies, how often, etc.)

as much as he loves taking his time with you, he loves a good old fashioned quickie, bending you over some car or throwing you up against a wall when he needs to relieve himself. he’s worse with it when he’s had a bad day and something has annoyed him, he’ll practically hunt you down just to fuck you. he doesn’t have quickies every day, but it’ll be at least one or twice every couple of days.

R = Risk (are they game to experiment? do they take risks? etc.)

johnny is completely down for taking risks, fucking you in easily caught places and places that are pretty dangerous — the most noticeable place being near his mothers house, or even inside, he’ll drag you off somewhere when you’re visiting her and have his way with you then act like nothing happened when you can barely walk. he loves to experiment with you, too, after all he has some pretty out there kinks that you didn’t exactly like or ever think about trying, but he respects if you have hard no’s — he’s a lot more caring than he pretends to be.

S = Stamina (how many rounds can they go for? how long do they last?)

not so surprisingly, he has a lot of stamina, and can go a whole bunch of rounds, but usually he’ll tap out after two, or a very long session. he enjoys having multiple sessions throughout the day rather than all at once, because then he can burn off all that energy and anger he gets during the day. during a usual session, foreplay included, it’ll last around 45 minutes to an hour — after all, he really loves taking his time with you.

T = Toys (do they own toys? do they use them? on a partner or themselves?)

so he’s pretty hit and miss with toys, he didn’t exactly like them at first. he was kinda insulted when you brought up the idea of having a vibrator / when he found yours, because he took it that he wasn’t good enough for you and that you clearly needed to have something else make you come. after you finally convinced him to just use it on you during sex, his entire world lit up. watching how easy it was to have you a quivering, blubbering, sniveling mess sent blood rushing straight to his cock — and now a lot of the time, especially during longer sessions, he’ll use it on you to tease or give his hand a little bit of a break if he needs it. he also loves making you use it on yourself while he watches, sometimes wanking himself off while you make yourself come.

U = Unfair (how much they like to tease)

he’s a huuuuge tease, loves to edge you for as long as he can, it’s even better if he gets you to the edge of coming on a morning then he can leave for the day — but he tells you not to touch yourself, because he’ll know — sometimes he’ll even “check” during the day to make sure you haven’t made yourself come. if you’ve been good for him then he won’t tease you for too long, but it’s rare he goes a day without teasing you just a little bit. he just loves hearing you whimper and beg for him, and he gets off on being the only one that can make you come.

V = Volume (how loud they are, what sounds they make, etc.)

johnny grunts and cusses a lot during sex, or even when you’re just teasing / going down on him. he has no issue being vocal anymore, although he was a lot quieter when you first got together. now he’s completely fine with moaning into your ear, and he actually loves moaning your name, he doesn’t even care who hears — he likes you knowing how good you make him feel, plus he knows how much it turns you on having him moaning and cussing when he’s deep inside you.

W = Wild card (a random headcanon for the character)

okay I’ve said it a million times, and I’ll say it a million more, he’s actually really sweet to you, and treats you like an angel. at first he’d be a little mean, still saying things that would hurt your feelings or just scaring you by him being him — but once you’d been dating awhile, he’s the “hurt them and I kill you” type guy, the one that’ll kill for you, the one that’ll die for you. he’s so wrapped around your little finger it’s almost unbelievable, he’s so in love that he’d do nearly anything you ask — but he’s only like that when you’re alone, for the most part. when you’re around other people he’s super possessive and lets others know who you belong to, always having a hand around your waist or yanking you into the most sexually fuelled kiss when someone talks to you for too long. nonetheless, he’d protect you with his life and is actually really sweet, in his own way, of course.

X = X-ray (let’s see what’s going on under those clothes)

okay he’s got a pretty huge dick, it’s 7”-7.5”, and it’s girthy as all hell, to the point he needs to warm you up a lot before even thinking about trying to push himself into you. he’s not cut, and he’s got a big fat vein that runs along the underside of his cock and it’s super sensitive around there, too. the closer to the tip of his cock, the more reddish purple it turns, especially when he’s hard. oh and let’s not forget, he’s got big, heavy balls as well.

Y = Yearning (how high is their sex drive?)

he’s ridiculously horny, that man has a crazy sex drive and it was kinda hard to keep up with at first. he has a naturally high one anyway but it’s made worse by his obsession with you — he needs to be in you constantly, filling you, making you his. as soon as he wakes up he’s there being needy, he’s the exact same at night when you’re going to bed. and don’t be surprised if he doesn’t pull you round the back of a shack to fuck you during the day, too.

Z = Zzz (how quickly they fall asleep afterwards)

johnny falls asleep instantly, there’s not a single thought behind that man’s eyes. and it’s made even worse when he tires himself out fucking you senseless a good few rounds before finishing — he’s the type that as soon as his head hits the pillow, he’s passed out snoring, mouth open, twitching and kicking you all night. or sometimes he’s just so still that you’re not sure he’s alive anymore, just perfectly motionless, couldn’t even be woken up by the end of the world.

[batsplat]

This line made me sooooo insaneeeeee

BUT ITS TRUE

they did not expect it from each other

You mention that after sepang 2015 that marc refused to take it lying down and retaliated, would you say that one some level vale expected him to just take it?

And also could you please recount events in which marc also waged mind warfare on other people after the divorce™ I think that the psychological aspects of his style are so incredibly interesting like how in le mans, bezzechi kind of crashed out and how viñales mentioned in post race interview how " when he heard marc's bike he knew it was over"

Thank you for your very valuable contributions to motogpblr, you enrich the experiences of all

right. right! following on from this post... fair warning: 'what was valentino's plan in sepang 2015' and 'what mind games has marc cooked up over the years' are two questions that don't exactly lend themselves to concise responses, though I've done my best to edit this down to a somewhat more palpable length. so *cracks knuckles*. let's do this

first off, sepang 2015. yes, marc did very much refuse to lie down and, yes, he did instead very much retaliate. I'm not sure if I'd say valentino expected marc to 'take it' exactly, though the hope would have been that it would a) make him more cautious around valentino, b) throw him off-balance, and c) make him more error prone. I mean, certainly you'd have to assume he didn't expect marc to react like that because.... well. otherwise, why would valentino have done it? yes, he has repeatedly alluded to having wanted race direction or dorna or whoever to step in, but those guys infamously aren't particularly proactive. and, let's just pretend for a second here that marc really had been plotting to ruin valentino's title - what are you going to do about it if you're the ones responsible for enforcing the rules? even after sepang, when it was reasonable to suggest marc had been messing with valentino in that race specifically, there was only so much they could do. sure, the main reason they didn't penalise marc was because he'd crashed and had in essence already been penalised. but if you want a more drastic penalty, then you're going to have to show that marc is doing something emphatically illegal. I mean, it's not like race direction penalised valentino when he was racing jorge in what can only be described as a cheerfully malicious manner in motegi 2010, at a time when jorge was close to sealing that year's title and the two of them were racing for *squints at notes* p3. they can't actually stop you from being a little shit, you know

this line of argument might be ascribing too much rationality to valentino's actions - maybe he was hoping race direction would do something. it's worth pointing out that one of valentino's later comments (from march 2016) to my reading suggests that valentino had already spoken to race direction several races before sepang about marc's behaviour, but they didn't listen to him. the sepang presser then constitutes an attempt to publicly force their hand... except it still wasn't enough. and a part of valentino surely must have already known it was going to go wrong after saturday's qualifying. the incidents during the practise sessions that weekend weren't particularly egregious, but they involved two riders who were both clearly willing to play games with each other (including in some towing-related shenanigans). crucially it's not really the type of thing that would happen if one rider had been spooked so badly they're making sure to ride on eggshells around the other bloke. at the end of the day, valentino thought he could unnerve and disorientate and unsettle marc - and if you're being generous you could say he at least picked the right target. marc had broadly demonstrated he could be unsettled that year, which jorge had very much not

if you're being less generous you could say 'but it's crazy he's doing this to the bloke who isn't even his title rival'. which is the whole problem from valentino's perspective - he simply couldn't engage jorge in direct combat (and again, this does make it more remarkable he even got it to valencia given one of his big big strengths in title fights was being completely neutralised). jorge has been involved in plenty of great battles over the years, but his 2015 title was won purely on raw pace and having just enough tracks where he was fast and it wasn't raining for things to work out in his favour. it was marc who valentino was continually getting into fights with, whether at argentina or assen or silverstone or... well, even phillip island, valentino fights marc a hell of a lot more than he does jorge. which makes for a weird championship in a lot of ways, but also makes it a bit inevitable that valentino ends up disproportionately focused on a bloke who isn't actually his title rival

if you want to be even less generous, you can say it was a rather radical misread of marc's character from a man who (any conspiracy theories aside) has always seemed to understand marc pretty well. like, this is the thing right, obviously hindsight is 20/20 and all that but can you really imagine any universe in which marc hadn't done something roughly along the lines of what he did that weekend? in a way, this is probably the bit that bothers me the most about the whole thing, just feels like it couldn't have ever achieved what valentino intended it to. I can excuse breaking the heart of the kid who hero worships you, but I draw the line at being kind of dumb

the way I'd break it down is by looking at why he was in a headspace in which he wasn't making good choices, and then consider what his actual thought process (however irrational) might have been. so on the one hand, you've got all the contributing factors that explain the poor decision-making process, that explain why he wasn't thinking clearly. on the macro level, you have the arc of his career and what this title meant to him and how it fits into his desire to win on his own terms and prove everyone wrong and all of that. you have the pressures of that specific season and how it had gradually gotten more and more intense post-assen, the influence of the people around him and how they had allowed/contributed to him getting increasingly distracted from the actual riding as the season went on. this factor obviously includes the man who actually presented valentino with the phillip island telemetry and had seemingly been badmouthing marc for more than two years. you have the arc of valentino's relationship with marc, his belief that marc was a sore loser who only played nice with valentino while he was winning and who valentino thought he had been more than generous to in response to marc's lack of composure earlier that season. this eventually coalesced into a mental list of all the times that year valentino felt marc had fought him differently than he would anyone else, from argentina to assen to silverstone to misano to, of course, phillip island. you have the compressed time scale - four days from the race at phillip island to the presser in sepang, at a time at which valentino will have been at his most exhausted and spent after the travails of first motegi and then phillip island at the closing stages of the toughest season of his career. it's this that creates the sense of urgency, the need to do something now to stop the opportunity from slipping away. and then, of course, on the micro level you have the actual details of the supposed conspiracy that relied on the specifics of how the race at phillip island ended up unfolding... of tyre management and seagull murder and fluctuating lap times and suspicious late race pace and a perfect last lap

which, okay, I think it's fairly obvious that valentino wasn't thinking clearly. but he still must have been intending the presser to do something, something that was different from what it actually ended up doing. now, the way this works in my head is that valentino basically did the equivalent of pressing a big red button labelled 'chaos'. if you do what he does in the presser, that's the inevitable outcome, right: you're ensuring this entire weekend is going to be a complete mess. in theory, you're the one person who's had the chance to mentally prepare yourself for that mess, because you're the person who's pressing the button. you're hoping everyone else will be off-balance, distracted... to some extent it's less about wanting to intimidate marc per se (bad idea!) and more about making sure he has other stuff to worry about. maybe you're hoping marc's going to make some mistakes, crash in ways that aren't caused by a movement on your part that looks suspiciously like a kick, be a little out of it all weekend. I mean, marc did have a tendency to hit the deck when under pressure that year. the hope is at the very least he's going to be a little more cautious, so worried about ruining his reputation that he's not going to attack you too hard. basically, hope he does anything other than what he actually ended up doing, aka throwing himself at you again and again in the race in a sort of agonised fury that paid no consideration whatsoever to his reputation, ruined or otherwise

this is where the sepang 2004 parallel is at its most instructive to me. you're giving everyone something to talk about and you know it's going to be the centre of attention that weekend and you just kind of have to hope that the chaos ends up creating an opportunity. and, for a hot second there, it did look like valentino might have been onto something. he qualified on the front row for only the fifth time that season (y'know his qualifying actually got a fair bit better in 2016, presumably because he just wanted to maximise the number of awful vibes pressers) and he outqualified jorge for only the second time that season (again I don't mean to be rude but, jorge, how the fuck did you almost lose that title what were you DOING). it's pretty unfortunate that the very start of the sepang race played out in the exact perfect way to allow dani and jorge to escape while marc and valentino started divebombing each other. this is the thing right, there are lots of ways that race could have unfolded and it basically could not have gone any worse - and it's helped make valentino's initial decision to blow shit up age particularly horrendously

the other underlying explanation is a somewhat more opaque one. people want to feel good about themselves, they want to have a positive sense of identity along several different metrics like self-worth and moral virtue and so on. it doesn't feel good to lose, and it especially doesn't feel good to lose if you've tried really, really, really hard. a lot of sports psychology is about the challenge of managing vulnerability. there is something inherently vulnerable about competing in the public eye: you are trying hard to win but there is always the possibility that you will lose. if you lose with other people watching, you are making your inadequacy public knowledge. this is why athletes search for explanatory mechanisms - maybe they make a public show of how they weren't actually trying hard, about how they don't actually care that much, or maybe there's something they can blame like the machinery or injury or the team not being on their side or whatever. maybe there's someone to blame. a narrative of sabotage allows you to preserve belief in both your own ability and your own self-worth; it is the perfect explanatory mechanism. and to some extent, this type of thing is necessary - you're not going to be able to compete well unless you have high self-belief to the point of delusion, which means you do have to tell yourself all kinds of things to keep the faith. but paradoxically, these explanatory mechanisms are also incredibly dangerous, because you cannot compete to the fullest extent of your ability if you are not throwing yourself into what you are doing in your entirety, without any restraint or self-defence. you have to be open to experiencing the pain of defeat in its rawest form to be at your best. you have to be willing to go to those infamous 'dark places' within yourself to win. the moment you are thinking about how you will explain your defeat, chances are you've already lost

but hey, I've never competed in a motorbike race before, what would I know of the psychology of it all? let's get the words of someone who should know a little more than me:

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.

(sidebar: I find it funny how the bit about straight line speed reads like just an extremely obvious dig at casey in his ducati days but, published in 2005, your honour he's innocent)

what valentino describes in that passage is the awful, inescapable secret at the heart of all competition: at the end of the day, you do know. you can only do so much to protect yourself from the truth. you have to tell yourself a story, even if it's crazy, engage in all manner of self-delusion to throw yourself into the field of battle again and again and again - where inevitably you are going to lose, again and again and again. any great athlete has to start out at least a little delusional, for there is something inherently insane about thinking you will be one of the very best in the world in your field. eventually, much of that delusion may turn to reality for the chosen few, but the delusion never completely goes away because there is always more to win and always more losing to do along the way. when the delusion stops, so does your career. valentino's endless capacity for storytelling and self-delusion is inherent to his success - he would not have been as good as he was if he had not found all these stories to tell himself, all these reasons to believe, to keep motivating him, to wring special performances out of himself when he needed them most. he told stories that were ridiculous until he turned them into reality. if valentino were anyone other than the person who killed his tenth title in sepang, he would not have won the other nine in the first place

and yet, chances are, valentino already had lost headed into sepang. chances are, he knew as much. chances are, he chose the kindest possible story to make sense of it all. at the very least, what he wanted to do was expose the truth as he saw it - make sure that everyone in the world knew what marc had done to him even if it didn't end up saving his title campaign. but in exposing one truth, at the same time he managed to obscure a different one. because in the end, certainty never did meet truth in 2015, because we'll always have a question mark about what would have happened if valentino hadn't said what he had said in that press conference, what would have happened if marc had reacted differently, what would have happened if race direction hadn't handed out penalty points or if marc hadn't been so hurt and angry he was unwilling to take risks against jorge in valencia. yes, of course it's likely that jorge would have won anyway, but we don't know that. it's 2006 all over again, isn't it? there's a likely winner, there's maybe somebody who should be winning, but there's never any certainty. that's why we line up on sunday, or so the cliche goes. the main lasting success of that press conference is that it has cast a shadow over the whole championship - not just in the sense of making the whole thing unpleasant to think about, but in the more literal sense of concealing the realities of that title fight, of generating ambiguity as to how it all might otherwise have played out under more 'normal' circumstances

except, of course, valentino has told us himself that he does know the truth about all of his victories and defeats. of course he knows jorge was faster than him that year, which is why he wasn't trying to win that title on pace. by any reasonable standard, there's no shame to that, not at that stage of his career and not against that level of opposition. there's plenty of ways in which valentino was the stronger rider that year, still, somehow, and enough sliding doors moments that would have given valentino just enough points and granted him a completely deserved title. but of course it was still frustrating, and it was frustrating to be reminded constantly in the paddock - including by marc - of how jorge was the faster of the two of them. valentino knew he couldn't beat jorge on pace, which is why he never tried to, but it still wasn't easy. it still required him to just... put away his ego, ignore all the snide remarks about his speed, ignore marc's digs and jorge's cockiness, and just devote himself to winning the title in the only way he could. that's the heart of 2015: it's all about valentino suppressing his worse instincts right until the moment he doesn't. it's the pressure, it's all the blows his ego has taken that year...

and of course, it's also marc. at the end of the day, it'll always come back to that - the fact that marc had made himself into someone who had the power to genuinely hurt valentino and how he then managed to make himself a target of valentino's suspicions (topic for another post). going into sepang, valentino already knew that more likely than not he was going to lose the title, and he decided he blamed marc. at the very latest during the race, he knew he was almost certainly going to lose the title, and now he definitely blamed marc. that's how it goes, isn't it... valentino's reasons for saying what he said in the press conference were complicated, but marc's actions then proceeded to simplify everything. any uncertainty, for valentino, was removed by that race. it was stripped away even further, if possible, by how marc approached the valencia race and his decision that he wasn't going to risk anything - not when it could help valentino. their whole tragedy, of course, is that if you had placed valentino in marc's shoes that weekend at sepang, he would have done the exact same thing

which is unfortunately as smooth a transition as I can come up with to stop discussing valentino's psyche and starting discussing marc's. let's talk mind games

the first point that's worth stressing is this: most of the mental pressure that riders exert on each other happens on the track. I think this is where 'mind games' becomes a bit of a tricky term, because inherently the connotation there is that you're doing something a little sneaky, a little underhanded to get under the skin of your opponent. but valentino has said it himself: you need to be performing on-track for any of this to work. and it goes beyond that - the on-track performances are key in determining what kind of psychological pressures you are exerting on your opponent. ideally, this is a symbiotic relationship where, as valentino puts it, the off-track 'work' that makes the opponents 'suffer' is used to... well, just back up what you're doing on the track, to make sure they're getting the message. to just play with them a little in a way that is conducive to bringing about further on-track success

so, in the interest of not getting bogged down in semantic debates about what exactly counts as playing 'mind games', I'm going to throw out the term for now. I think it's interesting in itself that this phrase is how people refer to that kind of behaviour, something about how it comes across as just a little derogatory, a little suspect... but we're going to ignore that. it's completely useless to discuss 'mind games' as this kind of ethereal higher-plane tactic that only happens in press conference rooms and on three hour long podcasts, as if it's somehow disconnected from the reality of what's actually happening on-track. (on-track behaviour is also at times referred to as mind games - but less frequently, and it tends to be used more for behaviour in non-race sessions.) it's also a bit of a sleight of hand: there's not anything inherently more 'honest' or 'straightforward', anything less 'psychological', about deliberately bullying someone on the track versus saying something snide about them to the media. what we are interested in here is the question of mental pressure, how riders exert it on other riders, and how riders go about working on the suppression of their rivals. basically, for a more fun term, think of anything you'd consider to be psychological warfare and go from there (the ask does actually specify mind warfare, which feels like a happy middle ground)

and just to reiterate this, the vast majority of the psychological work valentino himself did on his opponents - including in ways that marc has gone on to emulate - was done on the track. a race like laguna seca 2008, which relies so heavily on tactics and valentino's assessment of casey as a person and what message valentino decided to send casey that day... well, it may have had its effects reinforced off-track, but fundamentally that's still a heavily 'psychological' victory that enraged and unnerved casey through what valentino was doing during the race. and if you're assessing valentino's 'mental game' while leaving out laguna 2008, you really might as well not bother

so what we're looking at here isn't going to be exhaustive, but it's still going to hopefully cover most of the major aspects in a way that gives a sense of that integration between the off- and on-track. now, coming up with a list of examples isn't all that easy, because first of all... man, marc's been around for a long time by now... if we recounted every minor incident with another rider, we'd still be here by the time twenty to thirty years have passed and valentino finally gives marc a call. second of all, marc does undeniably leave less of a paper trail than valentino. partly he has objectively gotten himself involved in fewer feuds (though I'd argue there are also circumstance-related factors there), partly he's also been warier of how he approaches this kind of thing as a direct result of sepang 2015, and partly it's just a question of personal style

valentino tries to suffocate you with the paper trail, leveraging his skills at manipulating the media to make your life unpleasant, to throw distractions in your direction, at times to make sure you are overwhelmed by the frenzy and the noise and the chaos. all this, obviously, he does in addition to making your life on-track as miserable as possible. marc prefers a slightly quieter approach, maybe an indirect dig here or there, a habit of letting you know on the track if he's decided he has a problem with you. which means that a lot of what people consider marc's 'mind games' basically go something like this: a) rider does something to piss marc off (this can just be 'beating him'), b) marc does something dubious to them on-track, c) rider complains about marc, and finally d) marc goes ?? idk why they're saying all that but not really my problem :) and goes along his way

but that does make it a little tougher to actually provide a good overview of what he's doing - because, at the end of the day, I too can only be so certain that he's attempting to fuck with rivals. that's the nice effect of it, right, you get these statements from other riders where they're complaining about marc and broadly speaking I do believe them when they say he's being a little shit again... but it's a little harder to prove that this is his intention. which means they also end up engaging in a form of shadowboxing, where they think he's messing with them and they say he's messing with them but it feels kind of one-sided and silly and like maybe they're simply imagining things. which must be just... incredibly annoying. god

in a way, the best proof we have that marc regularly fucks with his opponents is that everyone in the paddock is more or less agreed in their belief that he is constantly engaging in psychological warfare. you've got other riders saying that marc is continually dabbling in 'mind games', you've got journalists on their podcasts saying that marc is always messing with people and is an awful teammate to everyone who isn't his brother etc etc, and you kind of assume they'd be the ones to know. though, if anything, this can mean they sometimes have a tendency to overshoot, which is how we got endless speculation at the start of this year on whether marc was lying to people or sandbagging or whatever when he was busy adapting to a new bike. sepang isn't irrelevant here - marc became more closed off and private and secretive and circumspect about his real feelings as a direct result of how bad that whole experience was for him. sometimes it feels calculated to unnerve his competitors, and sometimes it does seem more about just protecting himself. but that's the thing, right - if you acquire a reputation for "mind games", then people will think you're fucking with them even when you're not. which can be useful! but, as should be obvious, it demonstrates that just because somebody is accusing marc of engaging in gamesmanship, doesn't mean it's actually true (which is also of course the case for valentino)

^'who's most likely to play mind games in a press conference?' winning here! alex rins hands on hips we will get to you in a bit

all that being said, we do have plenty of fairly clear examples of the ways marc tries to fuck with his opponents, so let's get to those. here are the elements I'll focus on: 1) an explanation of how the on-track exertion of psychological pressure works, in races as well as outside of them, 2) intra-team dynamics, and 3) some specific examples of how the on-track and off-track tactics are integrated. again, far from exhaustive - the examples are supposed to be more akin to illustrating marc's approach rather than definitively listing every instance in which marc has exhibited a particular behaviour. the streamlined approach, if you will

so, let's start with the actual racing. the aspect you bring up in the ask: the intimidation. bez doing his sad little crash out of p2 in the le mans sprint, maverick thinking it's so extremely over the moment marc came too close in the main race. I've edited this section down a lot to avoid getting too into the weeds here, but let's just give the brief sparknotes version of how this intimidation works:

speed: if you are not capable of performances that unnerve your opponents, obviously you will not unnerve your opponents. no shit. marc's sheer pace is terrifying in its own right... it makes you wonder if that cushy gap you have to him is quite as cushy as it looked a lap ago. how often he seems to be able to access something special, how it piles on pressure in the context of a title battle to know that he is fast pretty much everywhere. the speed does a lot of his work for him in the intimidation department, nothing fancy required

circumstance: so, say you've got an alien behind you. not to name any names... but there are some aliens where, if they are having a good weekend, they wouldn't be behind you in the first place. that doesn't mean the alien can't still be plenty scary... but when they're at their best, they're dominating out front and so are less 'threatening' when they're sitting on your rear tyre. when things aren't going their way in a given weekend, you maybe don't have quite so much reason to be worried. marc (similarly to valentino) is a lot more flexible in how he wins his races - which might mean he's looking very ominous from say p5 at the end of the first lap. there's less possibility of respite, less chance that if he qualified badly, he has the decency to still be slow come sunday. if you find yourself on the same bit of track as marc... that's probably not great news for you in any weekend

aggression: the obvious one. marc isn't as afraid to crash as everyone else is, he's willing to go for it if he's given half a chance - which he never fails to remind people of. he said it about half a dozen times at le mans this year, including with his competitors in the same room. convenient when you have such an immutable character trait you couldn't do anything about even if you wanted to, which also just happens to make you terrifying to fight with. sometimes he mixes up this rhetoric a bit - e.g. in 2016 after his messy 2015 he did talk plenty about his newfound maturity. still, not bad if his opponents are constantly reminded of how unyielding he is... which is of course part of the reason why he bangs on about it so much

(on the flip side, while it is obviously in his best interest to barely say a word against hard racing because it would make him come across as a massive hypocrite, marc has this nice little habit of reframing his opponent's moves as just not being particularly sensible in that situation. look at how he talked about the pecco portimao crash this year - sure, it's a racing incident, but it also wasn't "necessary" to fight like this for fifth/sixth place given pecco had a championship to consider. pecco's move was "too optimistic" - and, my favourite bit, he would "learn" from what had happened. which is nicely condescending, and a good way for marc to criticise aggression in a more circumspect manner: don't call your opponent dangerous, call them an idiot instead)

tactics: linked to the second point - part of the reason why valentino instantly recognised himself in marc and has always acknowledged what a clever and tactically astute rider he is. the other aliens to varying degrees tended to prefer the 'start fast and fuck off' approach to winning races. by contrast, it's hard to really pinpoint what an 'average' race win would look like for either valentino or marc. they are capable of the 'dominate out front' victory (marc historically more so than valentino), but they also have a bunch of other ways of winning races that all produce their own psychological effects on their opponents. to give a few brief examples, you've got the 'stalking and studying' approach, closely tailing opponents and gradually ramping up the pressure while you analyse where they're strong and where they're weak before eventually making your move. you've got the 'comeback ride', which is frustrating in how it means the field is basically never guaranteed a break from these assholes - this is all about relentlessness and generating a sense of inevitability. you've also got the 'fucking around before fucking off' approach, where you get involved in a scrap for much of the race and it looks like you and your opponent(s) are on equal footing... before suddenly pulling the pin and disappearing off into the sunset. there might be good reasons for marc and valentino to stick around that don't just amount to 'playing with their food' (though there is that too) like tyre preservation or figuring out grip levels in the wet or whatever. nevertheless, it's intensely demoralising for the competition, because it almost feels like the whole thing was a lie, an illusion of a fair fight... they've been tricked into thinking they had a hope of emerging victorious. obviously, all these different ways of winning are also investments for the future, so that next time your opponents are in xyz situation you generate uncertainty and doubt and preemptive frustration in their minds, as they wonder whether they can really get the better of you this time

now, obviously a lot of this is just about marc's natural strengths as a rider - but the point is that these operate on the psychological level as well... and you can gently encourage this with a little bit of extra off-track 'work'. what you say about your own aggressive riding, what you say about your opponents' aggressive riding, any impression you want to reinforce in the minds of your competitors. there's a lot of long-term reputation management involved here. (a little more about these reputations in the context of argentina 2015 in this post.) most of the 'intimidation' happens on-track, and it's also a result of deliberate riding choices that aren't just about winning any given race. of course, it's helpful if you are particularly adaptable to different race situations, if your flexibility allows you to reinforce the impression that you are always a threat. if successful, you can make sure your opponent is already mentally beaten by the time they know you're coming for them. (I'm not personally massively a fan of the term, but this kind of thing is what generally counts as the 'aura' an athlete has.) ideal, really - to be so intimidating your opponents can't even put up a proper fight

then, of course, there's the stuff that happens outside of races but in practise and qualifying instead. a perfect opportunity to be a dick to others on-track without the stresses of a race. which means... well, look, we can't ignore marc's habit of sitting on other riders' rear tyres when they're attempting to hook together a fast lap. the towing thing radically escalated when the honda was at its least competitive post-2020, but marc was definitely very much already at it before that. (incidentally, one of the cuntiest things he has ever said was when he pointed out in 2019 that he was leading so many laps in the actual races that he wasn't getting much chance to study the other riders there.) nobody really needs me to list every single towing-related controversy marc has involved himself in over the course of his career, but it might be a good idea to get the thoughts of somebody who knows a thing or two about fucking with his rivals. valentino himself has gotten the towing treatment a few times over the years courtesy of marc, and both pre- and post-sepang his stance has generally been 'listen it's a dick move but smart play, gotta hand it to him'. take this from catalunya 2019:

and y'know, he gets to the heart of the whole matter rather nicely -thanks to the local marc marquez understander for logging in years before the discourse about it became such a big thing. marc follows other riders around because it's a great way to study them and he also does it because he knows it's extremely annoying. it's annoying both because you know you're helping out another rider who you don't want to be helping out, and because it is just quite distracting to have someone that close to you, being able to hear their engine, etc etc. one thing that changed after 2019 was how necessary it was for marc to do this... marc went crazy with it at a time when it was often the only way he could put together a decent lap (and also because it played into the strengths of the honda, for a given value of the word 'strengths' - he's spoken a fair few times this year about how he finds it harder to follow other bikes on the ducati) (not for lack of trying). but valentino is also spot on in that marc is excellent at choosing his victims, how marc understands you have to pick someone who needs to put a good lap together and has no choice but to drag you along with them

I mean, think about why he just couldn't seem to leave poor pecco alone for a while there. first of all, pecco is fast, and marc clearly feels quite comfortable following him around. secondly, pecco tended to put himself in positions where he really needed a good lap because he'd gotten himself stranded in q1 or only had one more shot at a lap or whatever. plus he was fighting for championships, so he couldn't afford to fuck marc over out of sheer spite. thirdly, pecco has been fighting for titles for the past few seasons, making him one of the riders to beat. which means that marc was motivated to a) study him, and b) fuck with him - both of which were investments for a future in which he could fight pecco properly. makes complete sense! insanely irritating if you're the victim, which is half the point. also helps that pecco very obviously found the whole thing frustrating and tiring and really hated being asked about it, but also was equally obviously adverse to kicking up too much of a fuss about it for various reasons. the perfect victim

on the flip side, marc has been known in the past to be quite careful about who he is giving a tow, like for instance this from brno 2014 (ironically the first race that year marc did not win):

The two front row slots for the Ducatis were a problem for Rossi, dropping the Movistar Yamaha rider down to seventh, and the start of the third row. Rossi joked darkly about Marquez’s strategy, claiming that he was giving the Ducatis a tow to put them in between him and his main rivals. “For sure he is clever,” Rossi said. “He doesn’t pull Jorge, me or Dani, always a Ducati.” Marquez laughed at the suggestion, admitting only half of Rossi’s accusations. He certainly didn’t look for Ducatis to give a tow, but he would not give one to his rivals, he said. “It’s your decision to close the gas,” Marquez told the press conference. “If it’s Dani, Jorge, or Valentino behind me, for sure I will close the gas, but if it is another rider, it doesn’t matter.” That is in itself an admission of just how little competition Marquez sees. He is prepared to give anyone a tow, except for the other factory Honda and the two factory Yamahas. In effect, he is dismissing the threat from any other riders. Harsh, but fair.

and, y'know, if it were so easy then everyone would do it. you need a certain level of skill to actually pull off the towing bit, which marc is clearly very good at. you also need to have a good feel for picking your moments, who to bully, when to slot in behind them, all that kind of thing. and, lastly, you also need the sheer power of shamelessness on your side. which, that should more or less cover it... there are some real gems like mugello 2019 where marc accused ducati of ordering pirro to shadow him and then played a complicated game of chicken to catch a tow from dovi and snag pole, or mugello 2021 where marc was so determined to follow vinales through q1 that he was even alert enough to dive back into the pits with him as vinales tried to get rid of the small train of guys following him... but overall, I think valentino did a pretty good job at summing up the main points for me, so let's leave the towing discourse at that. returning to catalunya 2019, obviously it is also extremely valentino that he then had a sneaky little look at the honda's dashboard 'just out of curiosity'. truly a meeting of the greats, those two, we'll never find their like again

let's move on to intra-team fuckery - which is all about suppression of rivals. your first job is to beat your teammate, and the first arena of trying to fuck with your opponents is what happens within the team. my general assumption here is that marc's particular approach is less inspired by valentino and more just the result of his natural competitive instincts (which, to be clear I do think is true for much of the tactics described in this post). it's also not something... I know the ask specifies post-2015, but I don't think it's something that changed after sepang, except insofar as marc had won the most important teammate war of his career and didn't need to be quite as aggressive towards dani any more. given the continuity between the intra-team situation pre- and post-2015, I'm not going to make much of a distinction here and just rattle through some details about the intra-team dynamic from the start of marc's time in the premier class

so, the first bit of context that has to be acknowledged: a lot of the dani/marc war wasn't really fought between the two of them directly. both of them had... well, rather drama-happy managers, who a) were willing to do a lot of the mudslinging on the behalf of their charges, and b) were pursuing agendas of their own to establish themselves within the honda hierarchy. I think it's fair to say that not all of what they were getting up to was necessarily just about acting in the best interest of their riders - and it is an internal power struggle that could've had pretty disastrous consequences for marc in particular. here's a longer write up I quite like about the situation within honda in 2013, which came to a bit of a head with the phillip island fiasco (when marc was disqualified as a result of failing to change bikes early enough). just a few excerpts (though again I'd recommend reading the whole thing):

(gabbarini is pecco's crew chief these days by the way, small world.) so obviously a lot of this is kind of dumb, not least because marc came very close to losing that year's title to a yamaha rider as a result of all this behind the scenes bullshit. it also is just the kind of thing that happens when you lock a bunch of big egos into a small space within a competitive environment - and is a nice little insight into the early year machinations that were going on as marc and his team attempted to establish themselves within honda. which they did in part by pushing through key personnel changes that replaced anyone too closely associated with the old regime... and there's also the less pressing but interesting question of whether (as casey believes) marc's team pushed casey out the door because they felt 'threatened'. this sort of backroom manoeuvring is part of the game, albeit an unsavoury one, and great athletes do have a tendency to be ruthless in asserting themselves within team environments

of course, by 2014 marc was asserting himself ever more on the track. dani might not have yet fully accepted the number two status, but he was increasingly pushed into a position where he knew he had to play along, to not kick up too much of a fuss in his own best interest. did that perhaps play a role in how all those 2013 complaints about marc's aggressive riding - not least when it caused dani to crash in aragon and effectively ended his title bid - died down a little in the following years? who's to say! of course, marc has been pretty open in admitting his abrasive approach to the teammate dynamic, which he was kind enough to shed some light on more recently in marc marquez all in. I assume pretty much everyone reading this will have watched marc marquez all in, but for reference I've still included a transcript of the relevant bits of marc marquez all in. here's marc talking about the teammate relationship:

Dani and I, now we get along great, and he's an amazing person. But in 2013, 2014, there was a lot of tension. He was the king, the number one. People listened to what he said in the box. Everyone expected something from him... The team was focused on him. And out of nowhere comes this kid. A kid in his first year after Moto2. And well, first race and... boom. Second race, boom. And it's a hard pill to swallow. [...] I've never been a nice teammate. I've always liked to... You've got to make your teammate's life impossible, if you can.

and dani's take:

Those years there was a lot of tension because we were fighting for the same thing. He knew about my potential. That's why he always tried to stick to me, so I had no space to really take off. [...] He's very competitive. That's his strong suit, how competitive he's always been with everything.

and then at the end of that segment, marc says the following:

It is true that after 2015, 2016, everything calmed down, and we had a good, normal teammates relationship. After a while, I think you learn to accept the situation, right? It happens, and I'm sure it'll eventually happen to me too.

which I suppose is a fairly diplomatic way of saying the relationship got better when marc had won the war and dani had to 'accept' his lot in life. the king is dead long live the king, etc etc. intra-team competition is perfectly natural, but of course that doesn't mean all riders approach that dynamic in the same way. dani's "I had no space to really take off" is a nice way of putting it I feel, how he talks about marc 'sticking' to dani, marc's determination to just continually work away at his teammate... to suppress him, to smother him, to ensure that not only was marc winning the war but he would keep winning the war. marc made that team his own and he ensured that dani's continued presence in that team was happening on marc's terms. a job very well done

marc is also remarkably open in describing one of the specific tactics he utilised to achieve the desired effect in suppressing his teammate. in marc marquez all in, he admits to intentionally giving misleading bike feedback when it could give himself an advantage over dani:

But back then we had a great bike, everyone worked well. So if a replacement piece worked for him, I didn't like it, "This doesn't work. I want this one. I want this replacement piece, since I'm leading it. I want it. Don't give him this." "You want to try it?" "Yeah, sure." But I didn't want to.

now, listen, I'm sure this kind of thing does happen. that being said. marc, come on, not everyone is engaging in this degree of underhanded behaviour wherein you're intentionally hampering your teammate's efforts to improve the bike just to ensure you continue to have an edge over them. let's make a casey stoner comparison, given that I am legally obligated to mention him in most of my posts. he is actually relevant here though, as dani's pre-marc teammate and the bloke who would have more likely than not been marc's teammate if he hadn't retired. casey talks a bit in his autobiography about working with pedrosa at honda, mentioning how it was nice to have a teammate with a similar pace so they could actually develop the bike together. he also says this:

I never felt threatened by a teammate because I have never had one that I felt was consistently quicker than me and throughout my career our biggest competition always came from outside the garage. Still, I have great respect for Dani, our partnership was a fruitful one and I think we worked really well together to help Honda build their best ever bike in the RC213V.

while I do quite like the implication that casey would have felt 'threatened' by any teammate who could match him, I think it's fair to say that this is a pretty different approach from what marc's describing above. of course, casey could be misleading us... but, call me naive or gullible or whatever, I really just don't think casey was pulling that kind of shit on his teammates. I'd go so far as to say that this kind of thing is maybe not quite as widespread as marc portrays it as being. it might also be worth quickly bringing in casey's thoughts on such a combative style of teammate relationship (from 2009):

probably for the best we never got to see how that particular teammate dynamic would have played out! also, luckily enough, we do actually have somebody who can corroborate that casey and marc behaved differently as teammates. let's get the thoughts of dani himself (april 2023, so after marc marquez all in had been released):

“At least in the team we were in, HRC, it was like this: the one who goes the fastest is the number 1, the one who chooses the parts and the one who determines the direction a bit. “When [Marc] arrived, I was in that position and with the races and the championships he took that position and decided in his own way. When I was directing more the evolution of the bike I had the parts first and I never thought in [my] own way.  “My way has always been to do the best for the team, and if I have the best parts to make the bike the best, I'm not thinking about my rival right next door, but about Yamaha, Ducati... whoever the rival was, because I consider myself part of the brand. Later he had that other way of doing it.  “I don't think I was missing [the same way as Marquez], because my way of being was that one. For example, before Marc came in, with Casey Stoner, he never played that game either."

so, yeah, maybe not completely universal behaviour. I don't know, I do find it kind of charming that marc has this very 'ah well everyone does it' attitude. now quite honestly I personally would not admit to this sort of behaviour even in confessional amazon prime documentaries - and it's fascinating what kinds of things he has a filter about and at what times he just decides to be, uh, very candid. I mean, I suppose this is a nice way of publicly forewarning any teammate who isn't your brother that you're going to try and make their life miserable. so that's something. anyway, marc did obviously win the internal war - which is the kind of thing that does matter if you're trying to impose your will on bike development... even if you're just doing so to fuck with your teammate. so by 2016 you reportedly had a situation where marc's direction was being followed to the extent that it harmed all the other honda riders:

But Pedrosa claims he had no input in the decision, and is now paying the price of having to compete on a bike built around Marquez’s preferences. The 30-year-old also said that he knew he would be in for a difficult time in 2016 as early as the Valencia test last November. "In the end we didn't have many specs [of engines], but out of the ones we had I wouldn't have chosen the current one,” Pedrosa admitted. "When we picked the bike I already knew things would be very hard. I already knew how the bike handled in November. But it is what it is. The choice of bike that we have was [Marquez's], I had nothing to do with it. For the moment, he's ahead and he deserves to be. He likes the bike, he adapts better to it, while I struggle more. That's obvious, you can see it in the results and in the way we ride." Pedrosa said the poor performance of Honda’s satellite bikes this season in comparison to previous years was yet further evidence of how the RC213V has been designed around Marquez’s needs. Cal Crutchlow’s sixth place at Catalunya has been the best result for a Honda rider besides Marquez and Pedrosa of the campaign so far. “You have to think of the team, not only about yourself,” Pedrosa added. “If you look at the rest of the Hondas, they are a lot further behind than two or three years ago, when you had [Stefan] Bradl or [Alvaro] Bautista finishing fourth or fifth. Now they are 10th and further [back]. So we have to try to get the other teams to work too."

obviously, to some extent teams following the lead rider and prioritising their feedback is completely natural and even wise - they're the one who is winning for you. it does also end up being a bit of a self-perpetuating cycle that makes the rider already winning more likely to continue winning, which helps explain why these riders are even so invested in their internal bickering. all that being said, of course it's worth noting that different riders conceptualise that teammate relationship differently, and the extent of intra-team cooperation can vary drastically. marc has a very particular understanding of that relationship when he is paired with anyone who is not his brother - one that is generally speaking pretty far along the combative end of the scale

unfortunately, we never really got to see how bad the whole marc and jorge (also not the easiest of teammates) situation could have gotten. in 2018, their relationship was definitely better than say 2013, but also jorge was still perfectly happy to criticise marc - whether after argentina, or that whole aragon incident they had

(marc did call jorge afterwards to check in on him, which jorge did appreciate.) but jorge never had the pace in his honda days to threaten marc, so nothing really got going between the two of them. if memory serves, the closest we ever got was catalunya 2019, where they had a bit of a coming together in practise - incidentally the first (and in retrospect only) weekend that season where jorge had potentially dangerous pace

But Lorenzo’s apology seemed to clear the air. Marquez explained that once he “was calmer” and the fear of dropping outside the all-important top ten had subsided, he could see the #99’s point of view. Marquez also noted how he was twice penalised in 2018 for similar actions to Lorenzo’s in FP3. He then pointed out how neither his team-mate, nor Joan Mir, who blocked the reigning world champion at one point during the Mugello weekend, were punished. Speaking to Spanish journalists after Saturday’s press conference, Marquez, said, “He [Lorenzo] apologised to me, because he was in the middle of turn three. While people can say it's only free practice, it was the third one, in which the last laps are like qualifying. “I was so angry because I knew that my lap was the one to enter Q2 directly. In the end I finished ninth, the worst classification of the year. It’s clear that last year I was twice in the middle of the track and on both occasions I was penalised. At Mugello I came across [Joan] Mir, we touched and everything and then at the end of FP3 it happened again with Lorenzo. But this happens... When it does everyone has to be judged equally. There is no difference. He simply apologised. Logically [after the session finished] I was calmer and I understood, because no rider waits in the middle of the track – or at least I hope they don’t."

obviously, this isn't like, a big deal, but in the moment it was one of those 'oooh maybe this'll go somewhere' incidents and the eternal drama enthusiasts in the commentary box were talking about it at the start of the race. like I said, that was jorge's first honda weekend where he was showing actual pace, so it felt like this might be building to something. except then, uh, jorge decided to skittle all of marc's rivals in one go in the race itself and somewhat hilariously managed to just miss marc. and then jorge got injured again the next race and it all just kinda fizzled out after that, so we never really got to find out what dramatics could have been possible there

and that's it as far as teammates prime!marc had in the premier class go. childhood rival pol espargaro took on the mantle for two years in 2021-22, at a time in which there was much kerfuffle about honda's development direction and whether they'd followed marc's path for too long. espargaro did attempt to assert himself in that team and they did try to develop the bike in a way that suited all the riders better rather than just marc, which *gestures at honda post-2020* worked insofar as marc also ended up in the trenches. that being said, pol was never a particularly serious threat to marc - aside from that one race to start off 2022, which maybe prompted a little bit of needle from marc (based on what the podcasts™ were saying at the time in any case) but nothing dramatic - so, y'know, that was kind of that. in those two years plus the year where marc had joan mir as his teammate, of course you can go into the weeds and dig out minor disagreements... but apart from the conversations around development direction and how marquez-centric honda should be going forward, it's just a bit of a different vibe when you're beefing for pee one million or who gets to be the leader of that year's crash rankings. of course, if you really want to stop marc from tormenting you, maybe you should just try being his literal brother. pecco, if you want any more useful advice like that: I offer very reasonable rates, just give me a call and we can hash something out

so, we've covered how the on-track stuff works and looked at the intra-team dynamic - what's next? time to explore a little more how marc goes about unsettling his rivals, how he attempts to give himself the decisive edge over his opponents... and also, what purpose this all serves when it comes to his own psychology. intimidating rivals typically has another underlying goal: it's about motivating yourself. it's about proving to your rivals just how far you'll go to beat them while proving as much to yourself in the same breath

again, at times we're a little light in terms of an actual paper trail of this intimidation... given that marc does like to take on the role of the aggressor in on-track disputes, often he doesn't even have to be the one to comment - and instead the onus is on his rivals to voice their dissent. there's also the issue that marc did have a paucity post-2015 in terms of 'serious title threats over the course of multiple seasons' - which, I don't know, this does feel like a thing somehow, you just don't really build feuds in a single season. even valentino, known feud enjoyer, always needed a little longer to really get something going. looking at marc's career, obviously you do have dovi, with whom he had a very cordial rivalry between 2017 to 2019... but the only year in which dovi was a serious title threat was in the first year of that rivalry, in 2017. after dovi's poor results in the first half of 2018, that title bid was essentially dead on arrival, and the 2019 title fight generously lasts until catalunya when jorge skittled the field minus marc. there's a couple marc rivalries with young challengers that looked like they were just about to kick off after 2019... but, well, we'll never find out how those would have played out. and it might be worth pointing out that in his prime, valentino's disagreements with riders who weren't serious threats to him winning titles didn't really go beyond what marc had going on with assorted other riders from 2016 to 2019. it's a bit of an open question if you want to attribute marc's lower number of feuds primarily to his actual personality and how it differs from valentino's, or whether you think it just reflects their respective competitive situations. the boring answer is that it's probably a combination of both of those things

that being said, obviously you can engage in a wee spot of psychological warfare without it escalating to feud level. now, let's get the obvious out of the way: marc and valentino were still very much at it post-2015. of course they continued to be deeply invested in their attempts to undermine and mess with each other. but, let's be honest, they're their own special little thing and it's just going to derail this post if I pay too much attention to them. there's a certain level of feuding where it becomes increasingly detached from any sort of actual competitive calculus and is more about a fraught relationship between two people who have managed to severely hurt each other. that being said, it's worth pointing out that marc was perfectly capable of using that feud to spur himself on. for the easiest evidence of that, just look at some of his misano performances... in 2017, valentino had just nerfed himself out of the title fight, whereas in 2019 he was no longer a serious threat to marc on-track. and yet despite how valentino wasn't the on-track rival marc should be concerning himself with, in both cases marc ended up using his valentino-related rage to find that little bit extra within himself in order to steal the victory

^from the marc (+ dovi) race rec post

there's plenty to be said about the misano 2019 qualifying incident, but let's set aside the specifics for now (though, speaking of towing-related drama, marc had again during fp3 shadowed valentino around the track, which... why are you hounding this man in misano of all places, marc). the whole kerfuffle certainly didn't hurt marc's race performance, and it's fair to say he seemed particularly thrilled with that victory. obviously, these were pretty pointed celebrations, very in your face, big fuck you to the nation of italy and valentino rossi specifically. celebrations like this are important in both what they're signalling to the enemy and what they're signalling to yourself. if there's one thing you can learn from valentino, it's that a celebration is a public message, and can function as a statement of sorts about what the victory 'meant'. what's the story you're telling with your victory? what do you want to take away from this race? what do you want your opponents to take away from it?

misano that year had come after marc's struggles in last lap duels, with the two races directly preceding it featuring last lap losses to dovi and alex rins respectively. now, on the one hand it's not always catastrophic on a psychological level to be constantly losing last lap duels... because in marc's case they did help reinforce just how dangerous he was, where even at his weaker tracks he would hound his rivals until the very end. on the other hand, obviously it's preferable to have a reputation for winning last lap duels as opposed to losing them - not least because it adds to how intimidating you are when you are locked in another last lap duel. valentino of course had a reputation for being lethally effective in that sort of situation, and it's nicely helpful if your enemies assume they're fucked when you're in their postcode with around three laps to go. I discussed this dynamic a little bit in how it relates to the sete rivalry here and here, which links back to the discussion of how you exert psychological pressure on the track. some relevant excerpts, plus some of my race notes:

marc is obviously more than capable of adopting similar tactics in his racing, but the sete rivalry still holds up as a really good demonstration of the kind of rewards you can reap through a steady diet of psychological intimidation. this is why it's so important to keep an edge over your rivals: you want them to be haunted by the ghosts of all your past on-track encounters whenever you're fighting to the point where it's detrimental to their actual riding. anyway, let's quickly check who marc was actually fighting with during the last lap of misano 2019, and whether that might have had anything to do with why marc was so thrilled to get the victory. oh, the rookie revelation of 2019 and the guy marc quickly identified as the big big threat of the future, you say? poor little fabio quartararo who still hadn't won a race yet, but who marc managed to dramatically deny on two separate occasions that year on the final lap? getting in early on the mission of building up some crucial psychological baggage, are we now?

obviously, and pretty tragically, this future investment on marc's part has ended up being completely irrelevant (unless yamaha wants to do something so so crazy for me and build a functioning bike before marc's hair goes grey), but equally obviously none of us knew that at the time. and fabio was able to take away some positives from the misano experience:

“I knew he would try something, but you never know with Marc,” said the Frenchman. “He can overtake and pull away because I really don’t know if he really saved his tyre. “The good thing was I could overtake him back, and this going home gives me a lot of confidence, to say ‘he’s a seven-time world champion, but we can overtake him’. So, he’s a human like us.”

because that's what it's all about, isn't it. giving the opposition the impression that you're not even human - and, even if fabio is saying the experience gave him 'a lot of confidence', imagine how much more confidence he would've gotten if he'd won. also, check out fabio's comment about not knowing whether marc had been saving his tyre. that's why the 'fucking about before fucking off' approach to races is so effective: because of how it generates uncertainty, it generates doubt, it makes your rivals wonder even during races whether there's a chance you're just toying with them

we do have a bit of a sample size issue here when it comes to assessing marc's celebrations, in that his two last lap duels with fabio came a) in valentino's backyard, and b) when marc sealed that year's title. it means that if the celebrations seem excessive, there's still other plausible explanations for why marc was so happy to get one over the rookie that aren't related to trying to bully fabio into submission for as long as he still could. did marc really use them as a way of reminding everyone, including fabio, including himself, of who's really in charge? again, you'll have to draw your own conclusions

I'm doing my best not to cover anything that's happening this year too much, since this is the stuff I'm assuming people reading are basically familiar with. but of course, if we're talking 'pointed celebrations' then there's also a few from this year that stand out. this isn't to say that marc's joy at his ducati successes have been anything other than genuine, that he isn't happy or relieved or revitalised by his current season... but, well, part of being revitalised is also being back in the game where fighting for titles is concerned. take the jerez celebrations, ecstatic in spite of losing a tight battle, openly loved and adored by his home crowd. look at how he's done his thing repeatedly this year of engaging with all these crowds, getting them to celebrate with him specifically. a cynic might say it's a way of reminding his opponents that they might be winning right now... but they should never forget who the crowds have really come to see. which would be charmingly valentino of him. while marc (probably wisely) never went too far in mimicking valentino's unique style of celebrations, he is an avid enough student to understand the importance of the theatre of victory. like in his third ever premier class race (from the jerez post):

racing is one thing, but it's always important to consider how you're reacting in both defeat and victory. like valentino before him, marc prefers not to openly show his rage. like valentino, more often than not he will be publicly magnanimous in defeat. like valentino, he's not adverse to twisting in the blade a little further in victory. like valentino, he's very much aware of when a camera is watching him. with marc, you can also observe how determined he is to appear unaffected and unbothered by the effects of sepang 2015 on his public image (except in displays of very carefully managed vulnerability like marc marquez all in). there's plenty of examples of this, but most relevant here is how marc concerns himself with not being openly affected by fans booing him. take blowing kisses to the misano 2017 crowd after his warm up crash... which, looking at his post-race presser comments, whatever he may say clearly (and understandably) did bother him. likewise, see the glee of the misano 2019 celebrations. with those celebrations, he's trying to tell you that not only does it not bother him that they're booing, but instead he relishes it. the more they do this, the more he will win

one more case study before we wrap this post up, this time using a specific rival to illustrate some of his more common tactics and how the spats he gets himself involved in generally play out. said rival is alex rins, who especially in 2019 had emerged as one of marc's prime challengers. now, before we talk about any disagreements between those two, I do have to mention that rinsy has a bit of history with the marquez family (this from 2016):

in the end, dani stayed on for another year and was replaced by another ageing spaniard marc felt confident he'd have the measure of while rinsy signed for suzuki - so it's very unlikely marc had to play any active role in blocking him from taking the seat. that being said, obviously the main takeaway is the bad blood stemming from alex marquez's moto3 title campaign and how alzamora organised that team around the younger marquez. god knows how rins felt about this by 2019, but I doubt he'd just forgotten about it. there's also this from 2020, which to me reads as a little dismissive about someone who was your teammate in moto3? I don't know, judge for yourself:

anyway, back to marc. the 'biggest' incident between the pair of them was a coming together in qualifying at brno 2019 (one of the all time great qualifying performances from marc by the way, well worth a watch):

During qualifying at Brno, cameras picked up the end of a tense tussle between MotoGP champion Marc Marquez and Suzuki's Alex Rins. The pair were caught putting some close passes on each other before pulling into pit lane, where they continued to 'duel' - until Marquez reached out with his arm to put some space between their machines. Marquez then over swapped to slick tyres and romped to pole position on the drying track, with Rins claiming sixth on the grid. "It's a tricky thing because for sure [Marc] is now one step in front of everybody. He put the slick tyres and he was super-fast. But I think he has no respect for the other riders. He is riding on his way," said Rins. "I will explain to you what happened: On Corner 5, he went a little bit wide and behind him was Miller and me. When he went wide, he looked back and saw Jack and me. Jack passed him, but then he went back onto the line and sincerely he disturbed me. I was pushing. I was not super-fast, but I was pushing. "So on the next left corner I tried to do my line. He opened a little a bit the door and I go in. I touched him, but I think it's his fault; if he is riding slow he needs to open the door and that's it. But anyway, then on the last corner he braked super-hard to overtake me [back]. Then when we were coming into the box I was in front of him and I go straight and he has no space to go by my side. If I was him, I would cut the gas…" "I ran wide at Turn 5 and Jack overtook me because I checked behind and I only saw him, so I tried to follow Jack because I know he had good pace. Then I went a bit too wide and there was a small space, but enough and [Rins] ran into me…" said the Repsol Honda star. “The funny thing was when we entered the box and the tyre wall was there [in front of me] and I didn’t have the space [to get through] because he was going that way. I don’t know if that was intentional or not, but for me it wasn’t important. I lose zero time on these sort of things.” Told Rins had said he had no respect for other riders, Marquez responded: “Of course I don’t agree with this, it is his opinion." "It's not the first time," Rins had explained earlier. "Everybody knows Marquez and everybody knows that he has an incredible talent, but also what happened in FP1 with Vinales was more-or-less the same. Marc loves to play this game and try to get in the head of other riders. But in my case I'm really calm. I just tell the truth and that's it." Asked if he thought he needed to try and get into Marquez's head, Rins responded: "No, I don't think so…. For sure if I'm fighting for the world championship with him I will try to do something, but he's 80 points in front of me - maybe he's scared, I don't know!" Austin winner Rins, who has fallen in the last two races, is fourth in the world championship.

their most significant race clash was in silverstone 2019, where alex got the better of marc in a very dramatic last lap duel. I've heard journalists make vague reference to marc not taking that loss particularly well, though... again. hard to actually pin him down on a lot of this! but we do have more extensive comments rinsy provided in early 2020 to work with, and he at least seems to agree with that assessment:

"Marc is so good at these mental things, he plays a lot with all the riders," Rins told the official MotoGP website. "For example in Brno last year, I was on a fast lap, he looked behind at me and opened the line a little bit, but not too much. I was on the dry line and I touched him. I lost my lap, but I continued pushing. Then in the last chicane he overtook me so closely, we were so close to a crash, and then he went into pit lane. From that moment, I said to myself, Marc is considering me as a rival." Rins - who declared "Marquez has no respect for other riders" immediately after the incident - got his revenge in the form of a thrilling last-corner victory pass on Marquez a few weeks later at Silverstone. "Marc is the man to beat and the rivalry is so high," Rins said. "More in 2019, because I shared more moments on track with him. For sure whenever he finishes just in front of me, I'm a bit angry, I want to beat him. But also for him. I remember when I beat him in Silverstone he was so, so angry." Rins added: "I like this because it means that I'm doing a good job. Marc is an incredible rider, winning a lot of races and championships, and if he thinks of me as a rival, it means I'm there fighting him." Rins took two wins on his way to a best-yet fourth in the 2019 MotoGP standings.

now, yeah... the problem is that this is all very much hearsay (but no more so than plenty of similar comments valentino's rivals made about him!) and rinsy could just be lying about this or misinterpreting it or whatever. we are very low on actual evidence for the stuff he says here. if you watch silverstone 2019 and the aftermath, you will not see a marc who visibly looks angry - of course you won't, because he almost never looks visibly angry. unfortunately, we don't have the chance to grill alex on why exactly he was left with this impression. at the end of the day, like with valentino, when it comes to evaluating the honesty of a lot of these character references you will just have to make up your own mind. like with valentino, some of these men will either be exaggerating the extent of the harm or just straight up making shit up. then again, like with valentino, the number of people who do seem to have the impression marc was fucking with them maybe suggests that there is something to these allegations

just a few things to note here... to highlight some of the common features that tend to crop up in these marc incidents:

there's the accusation of lack of respect towards other riders - valentino is the one who most infamously made that accusation in the aftermath of argentina 2018, but of course he's far, far from alone in making comments along those lines. marc certainly has a tendency towards being... uncompromising in his approach, shall we say, which can at times lean towards treating his competitors mainly as obstacles and inconveniences

the anger that's being attributed to marc. which he doesn't tend to directly express towards his competitors off the track! but if he is angry, it may instead... seep into how he approaches instances where they share space on-track, as well as affect his general demeanour towards them

there's rinsy suggesting marc is known for playing these games, that he does it a lot, and he's also known for being very good at them... which again is often something we only hear about indirectly, but of course it's interesting if that's the general paddock consensus

there's also rinsy's insistence that marc's games don't bother him at all - he's just calmly noting that marc's engaging in them! again, it's quite hard when you're familiar enough with valentino's oeuvre to not be slapped in the face with the similarity in some of the rhetoric their rivals use. doesn't mean all of these different dynamics are directly analogous, but it does speak to how determined the rivals in question tend to be in... y'know. telling themselves that they're above the whole thing. unfortunately, sometimes it is just very, very hard to be unaffected... and sometimes you're already losing by talking about it, because it shows you've been thinking about it

which, check out marc's response. 'oh, obviously I don't agree I lack respect' 'ah, I lose zero time on these things' (for another example of him using similar language, you could of course look to his comments about bez last year in valencia). this is marc's go-to - he generally quite likes to deny the existence of a problem, makes it sound like the whole thing is very one-sided... he keeps his distance and can maintain his poise and this veneer of neutrality, where he is not causing any drama. maybe the other guy's just imagining things! that's really not marc's problem, is it now

lastly, you've got this notion of marc messing with other riders selectively, and specifically doing it when he's identified you as a potential threat. again, maybe you think alex is reading too much into it! but equally, it's worth noting that we have as much evidence for marc messing with rinsy as we do for, say, valentino messing with casey in practise sessions in 2006 (as casey's autobiography claims). it would have been completely competitively reasonable for marc to identify alex rins as one of his primary threats in the future... and it would also not be hugely surprising if marc wanted to maintain a psychological edge over him

incidentally, at 2020 jerez rins and marc had another little run in during a practise session - where alex was left 'visibly frustrated' after marc was slowing down on the racing line while rinsy was completing a flying lap, which he ended up having to back out of. this denied rinsy direct entry into q2 (though marc didn't end up being penalised for it). of course, marc's jerez race reached an unhappy conclusion and rins was too injured to even start it, and after that they've never been even remotely close to fighting for a championship. though there's still a little bit of needle between the pair of them, mainly resulting from how rinsy ended up joining lcr honda in 2023 after suzuki departed the scene. there's marc's reasonably innocent comments in 2022, on a day in which rinsy won another last lap duel for the victory in phillip island:

"I will not give any advice," said Marquez. "For me it is another opponent. It’s good that joining Honda is one world champion [Joan Mir] and one rider that is winning races with another manufacturer.  "Like this we will see exactly the level. I’m working really hard for the 2023 project with Honda and they are working really, really hard too. I don’t say I wish [him] the best. Let’s just go and see. He is another opponent, if not it would be fake’."

or here, take this from before mugello 2023, again mostly innocuous:

By contrast, Marquez believes Mugello is one of Rins’ best tracks and he wasn’t surprised to see the COTA winner at the sharp end. “No [I’m not surprised], because Rins, even with Suzuki, had 5-6 circuits where he is very fast and then others where he struggles more. Normally here with Suzuki, he was very fast and very consistent,” said Marquez, whose only premier-class win at Mugello was back in 2014. “He is really good in fast corners so, for example, in Le Mans he was struggling more than me and here he is very fast. It is good for Honda and Honda riders that someone is faster because like this you have more chance to look and compare the things.”

love being told I have "5-6 circuits" where I'm very fast. or take rinsy's innocent surprise that marc didn't end up winning at the sachsenring, and how he suggests it was maybe because of all the pressure marc had been feeling:

"It's hard, it tastes very bad to me because Marc has a fucking talent and it's not being easy at all,” Rins was quoted by DAZN. “But hey, in the end you have to turn the tables, you have to win, you have to build a winning bike. "Damn, I thought that Marc would also win in Germany. What happened? I don't know, I have no idea. Pressure, extra pressure, I have no idea.”

and then, of course, there was always that little hint of tension that came as a result of rinsy being honda's only race winner that year, at marc's beloved cota of all places... which became a bit of a discourse point (not always propagated by rinsy) to say that, hey, maybe the honda wasn't so bad after all... anyway, here's what marc said when rinsy signed for yamaha:

Repsol Honda rider Marquez was asked about Rins’ departure and answered: “I had an interview, they asked me about this rumour. I said ‘I don’t think so’ because Rins won a race and he said ‘it’s a good bike’.  “So I didn’t expect this move. But then the day after! I’m happy for him, it’s a good move, he’s moving from a satellite team to a factory team. Yamaha has power and energy from the past.”

marc had said 'surely not' but then the very next day he was left shocked and taken aback! he'd thought rinsy loved the bike so much! he'd thought rinsy felt it was actually a good bike! he'd thought rinsy would never want to leave! how unexpected this whole thing was to him!

(there was also talk about rinsy's unhappiness at how honda treated him and his development feedback - but as there is less than zero evidence marc had anything to do with that, let's leave it there)

did marc really behave differently towards alex rins because he saw him as a threat? probably! possibly? probably! but he hasn't really felt the need to say as much. sometimes, you can fuck with people by staying silent, and sometimes you can fuck with them just because you have a reputation for mind games - which marc, like valentino, has acquired over the years. ideally, your on-track plus off-track presence gets to the point where you don't really need to do anything and can let your opponents engage in shadowboxing while you can spend your time in more useful ways. think of that excellent clip from motogp unlimited where poor joan mir complains about marc's towing, freaks out when he realises the press has said he's complained about marc's towing, and then goes to explain to marc how he hadn't actually complained about marc's towing. and marc, with the air of a man who has been high on painkillers for the past week and hasn't given joan much thought beyond contemplating how well he'd pair with potatoes, graciously accepts this explanation - which joan is painfully, obviously relieved by. marc wasn't playing any 'mind games' in this clip, he was just standing there. but sometimes that's all you've got to do! call it a good return on prior investment. (partly this is also just a result of the status the sheer extent of marc and valentino's successes provides them and, relatedly, their power and influence within the sport.) here, from one of oxley's books:

Once you've established a reputation for trickery, you can confuse people without doing anything. At this year's [2009] German GP Casey Stoner accused Rossi of attempting to confuse his rivals by scrubbing the white sidewall paint from his front slick; the paint denoting Bridgestone's softer compound tyres. In fact Bridgestone had run out of white paint (no, really), but the reality didn't matter because Stoner was sat on the grid, convinced Rossi was playing tricks when he should've been getting himself in the zone, focusing on his race.

that's the ideal, right: you don't even have to do the dirty work yourself because it's the reputation doing the work for you. marc inspires a similar effect on riders, where he just gets them to the point where they're spending way too much time hyper-analysing whatever he's doing at any given moment. which means that he doesn't actually need to be trying to fuck with anyone for the effect to still be the same. free and easy, what's not to love

so, that's it, more or less. all the on-track stuff, from 'how to build up an intimidating presence 101', to just being extremely annoying in non-race sessions, to trying to mess with your teammate, to more generally how you go about handling disputes with other riders. managing your motivation, their motivation, everyone's motivation. of course marc's not quite scaled the heights (yet) of cursing another rider to never win another race again - which, hey, nobody's perfect, but I think he's built together a fairly decent resume for himself! there's plenty more stuff you could get into here, c.f. 'everything that's been going on with ducati internal politics this year'... but this post is more than long enough, and you can follow all that stuff while it's actually happening. a few more related topics I've deigned outside of the scope of this post include how he generally manages perceptions of himself and his performance potential in ways that aren't targeted at any specific rival, for instance how he talks about his injury and has a tendency to change his tune depending on what's convenient at any given time, or how in the past he managed perceptions of the competitiveness of his honda package. likewise, I also haven't discussed the actual success rate of these tactics: let's not forget that trying to fuck with your rivals doesn't... always produce the effects you want it to. (sometimes just in kind of dumb ways, like I get messing with the rookie sensation but please try not to crash when catching a tow, marc. "marc clearly tried to get into fabio's head and I think he hit his head himself quite big." "so, I think it's karma. fabio's on pole and I hope marc is uninjured of course. but he tried to get in his head because he knows fabio is fast." not ideal!) but, hey, the most important thing is he's trying hard and having fun. or something

because that's the thing, right. when you are attempting to exert psychological pressure on your opponents, when you're trying to weaken your rivals, inevitably this also has an effect on you. there are athletes who prefer to completely ignore their opponents and act as if they are essentially competing on their lonesome. neither valentino nor marc fall into this category. as a result, how you behave towards your rivals inevitably also becomes at least in part about motivating yourself. you are attempting to focus your mind in some way - whether it is to see your rival as an enemy or to simply distance yourself from them or otherwise. you may even be minded to treat your rival particularly warmly, knowing they are less likely to give you grief if you have ensured the interpersonal relationship has remained amicable... maybe even looking for a slight psychological edge if they are not sufficiently motivated to beat you. maybe that too is about managing your reputation and drawing a line under past unfriendlier rivalries, to distinguish your most beloathed rival from all the others. you may need to find a way to keep the fire within going, to reinvigorate yourself even in periods of relative competitive tranquillity by giving yourself something to be angry at, a reason to fight and to win out of spite... finding reasons to care, again and again and again. celebrating with exuberance not just because you are genuinely filled with joy but also because you need to be filled with joy - so that you can find it within yourself to keep fighting. there's never just one brain involved in the arena of psychological warfare. to succeed in sports the first person you have to play mind games on, after all, is yourse- *gets taken out by sniper rifle*

[stealingpotatoes]

can we get a rundown on the anakin-raises-leia au? i’m totally in love with (read: obsessed with) it but i missed most of the context and i’m so curious!

are they coparenting? was it a parent trap style agreement to split the twins? is it temporary, until the war ends? who decided who gets which twin? did mustafar just never happen?

the answers to ur questions in short are: not really, arguably, absolutely, i did, and no!

in longer, the main thing you need to know for context is it's an Anakin-doesn't-turn-to-the-darkside-but-Palps-still-succeeds AU!

Anakin chooses not to try save Palpatine from the Jedi council and instead goes to Padmé's to angst abt the fact he might be losing her -- only to feel a very solid Other loss in the Force and see the temple up in flames ): he tries to go help but gets his shit kicked enough he leaves when Bail shows up

obi-wan and yoda both return to coruscant, obi-wan shows up to Padmé's to ask her hey do you know where Anakin is??? except Padmé's not there either bc after Sidious made his Big Speech anidala realised Anakin's totally a fugitive so they decided to Leave

i'm not 100% on what happens around here (lbr we all know my focus is the kids) but i'm currently thinking they nearly get caught or smthn, fight happens (??), Obi-wan gets there just in time to help thanks to Dormé snitching -- and Padmé goes into labour w the shock/stress

whatever exactly happens, Obi-Wan is there when they get Padmé to a medical station and the normal rots ending group unite. Padmé gives birth (keeping her will to live) and a question hangs heavy in the air: what are they supposed to do with the twins?

Anidala are too caught up in the joy of being parents to think about it, but they're quickly and forcibly snapped out of that when the Survivors all have a chat like canon. Yoda's the (brave) one to say they need to be apart because their force signatures would be too strong together and in the dire case Palps finds them, he could NOT take both. He's probs initially like they shouldnt even be kept w you two, Anakin's too powerful himself and Padmé you're too visible (while I imagine Bail and Obi-wan know their respective besties and are like king they are NOT gonna take that well)

and theyre right! Padmé, fresh out of like three of the top ten most harrowing experiences of her life, is like stfu u little green bitch im not losing my kids. but after some convincing she sees the need for her to remain in the senate and anakin's need to fight/run. she knows they can't fight the empire effectively together and she knows it's too dangerous to put the twins together. both parents want more than ANYTHING to be with their kids -- but they also don't want their kids growing up in a galaxy eaten by tyranny or being stolen by palps.

so they made the hardest goddamn decision of their lives and each take a twin (probably chosen on "anakin thought the baby'd be a girl/padme thought it'd be a boy" or smthn) and after some time planning their next moves, Padmé and Anakin are forced to go their separate ways to save the galaxy for and with their kids ): knowing the better they fight, the sooner they free the galaxy from the empire's clutches, the sooner they can reunite and be a family

[shinestarhwaa]

WOOYOUNG NSFW ALPHABET

A - Aftercare (how is he after sex)

Wooyoung is a sweetheart and we know it, he will ask you if you need anything and he'll caress your hair while you're falling asleep together.

B- Bodypart (his favourite bodypart on you)

Your eyes. He goes crazy for those eyes, wether they look up at him innocently or if they're filled with lust, everything's sexy to him.

C - Cum (anything to do with cum)

He probably loves to cum on your body, preferably your chest (he might even lick it off)

D - Dirty secret (his dirty secret)

Wooyoung isn't very secretive about his dirty fantasies, he doesn't mind telling you at all, but he hasn't told you yet about the time he used your panties to jerk off on tour-

E - Experience (how experienced is he?)

Wooyoung is fairly experienced I think, he definitely knows how to play and what to do/not to do.

F - Favourite position

Missionary because he gets off on the expressions on your face, but also loves doggy style mirror sex.

G - Goofy (how he acts in the moment?)

He might be a bit goofy sometimes but not often, he's more of a smirking/teasing kind of guy.

H - Hair (how groomed is he?)

I think he's well groomed, he has some hair there because he's too lazy to shave all off and he probably thinks it's annoying but he makes sure to keep it neat and clean for you.

I - Intimacy (how passionate is he?)

Oh this man can get really intimate and passionate. You might forget because of his teasing and bratty persona but when you're alone he'll become more serious and really affectionate to you.

J - Jack off (how often does he masturbate?)

Probably 4-5 times a week but don't be surprised if it's more than that.

K - Kink

He probably enjoys a little bit of pain play because he loves to bite, he might enjoy spanking, but the biggest kink of all... *drum roll* DEGRADING KINK. (This man loves being degraded and we all know it like... he literally confessed it a thousand times).

L - Location (what's his favourite place to have sex?)

Everywhere around the house honestly, also loves it when you come blow him inbetween dance practices.

M - Motivation (what keeps him going?)

The pleasure expressions on your face do it for him.

N - NO (what is a no-go for him/turn-offs?)

I don't think he'll do role play in bed? It's not something he really hates or anything but he doesn't wanna make it an act, he just wants it to be reality between you two (does that make sense?).

O - Oral (giving or receiving, skill etc.)

He's more on the receiving side I think, but he'll make sure to give you your turn too, but he might use his hands more than his mouth (that doesn't mean he won't tho🤪).

P - Pace (fast and rough? slow and sensual?)

I see him as more of a fast&rough kind of guy cause he has no patience and he loves the chaos.

Q - Quickie (their opinion on quickies)

Loves quickies, he'll literally do anything to get in your pants at any place, any time.

R - Risk (experiments, taking risks etc.)

We know him. He loves this kind of shit. He'll gladly experiment with different kinks, will come up with new positions and would get kicks out of doing stuff at places he'll be caught (not like illegally but like...with members etc.)

S - Stamina (how long does he last?)

He lasts for about 2-3 rounds I think? Might need you to be on top for the 3rd round.

T - Toys (do they own toys? does he use them with his partner or himself?)

He doesn't mind toys at all. I don't think he owns them but he'll use it with you if you want to.

U - Unfair (how much do they like to tease?)

I don't even need to elaborate on how much of a tease this guy actually is. He'll play with your mind and body and make you go crazy before actually giving in and do something about what's going on between your legs.

V - Volume (how loud are they? what sounds do they make?)

Wooyoung is a loud mf and he will be in bed too. Loud moans, whines, any sound, honestly.

W - Wild Card (random headcanon)

Before you knew it Wooyoung had shoved you inside some sort of broom closet. His lips were all over your neck as his fingers unbuttoned your pants and slid into your underwear. "Wooyoung we gotta go back to your practice room, they'll come find us," you moaned as he played with your slick. "Then they'll find us. Gotta make my precious cum first."

X - X-Ray (what's going on in them pants?)

Probably average, more thick and girthy than it is long and probably has those sexy veins of his run along the shaft.

Y - Yearning (how high is their sexdrive?)

HIGH sexdrive. Like he can do it any day. Multiple times.

Z - ZZZ (how quickly they fall asleep afterwards?)

He won't pass out until he knows you're all good. He'll wanna sleep with you in his arms tho.

Taglist: @anyamaris @a-soft-hornytiny @whatudowhennooneseesyou @wooyoungmybelovedhusband @pyeonghongrie-main @woosanbby @dreamlesswonder86 @changbinslovelylegs @jonghostie @lovjensoo @1-800-shedevil @mjyungi @bratty-tingz @sugarnspice630

[blouisparadise]

Upon request, today we have a rec list of bottom Louis fics with twink Louis. If you enjoy our rec lists, please be sure to like and reblog the post to help spread the word. Happy reading!

1) Sweet Little Virgin | Explicit | 2,304 words

Harry and Louis are roommates and have been for years. Harry didn't know Louis was a virgin, until now.

2) Suspenders And Lace | Explicit | 2,784 words

Note: This fic is locked and can only be read by AO3 users.

Harry has a thing for suspenders and white lace. Louis happens to have a thing for being a good boy for his Daddy.

3) You're A Good Boy And You Know It. | Mature | 3,234 words

Harry Styles a big famous pornstar, a young alfa sensation. Big and strong with tattoos all over his body, and a big alfa cock. And Louis Tomlinson is just a barely legal omega who is about to make his big debut in the porn industry, about to be knotted for the first time by the one and only Harry Styles.

4) Just a One Night Stand | Not Rated | 3,250 words

He heard Harry hum then he felt his hands on his waist, his thumbs digging into his skin. The grip he had on his waist was so unbelievebly strong, and Louis couldn't wriggle out of his grasp. But maybe he didn't want to get away. Maybe he wanted this.

5) The Rich And Beautiful | Mature | 3,341 words

Louis Tomlinson aka: "Teasy Tommo" dances for the richest man in England and gets more than what he bargained for.

6) The Library | Mature | 5,088 words

Louis works at a library, and Harry really needs a biology textbook.

7) When You Die (I Become Alive) | Not Rated | 5,797 words

“Saw your twink in the staff room," Niall says as he enters the elevator. “Have to admit, that ass is big.” "He is not my twink-" Harry is looking at his reflection in the elevator, "-but I'll see if he works out."

8) Wicked Games | Not Rated | 6,996 words

Prompt: Louis is the socially awkward kid who has anxiety and self harms and just isn't popular. Harry's the really popular one who never picks on anybody but has some pretty assholey friends who pick on Louis a lot and one day they pull his pants down and see that he's wearing pink boxers and most people laugh and Louis is mortified so he runs out but Harry follows him because he thought it was really hot and then they have sex with Harry cherishing every part of Louis body and making him feel important.

9) Deflower Me | Explicit | 20,154 words

Louis is a proud virgin, and no matter how much society tries to make him feel like a freak for not acting on his natural urges, he doesn't suffer from his lack of experience. He has never felt drawn to someone in a way that made him want to get involved sexually with them, and he isn't planning on rushing himself so he can get some because people think it's what he should do. In walks Fratboy, the Serial Haunter of His (wet) Dreams, who thankfully has a little business going on that might be just what Louis needs.

10) A Couple Months Too Long | Mature | 21,291 words

"I mean who wouldn't be scared when a cute little twink comes to tell a famous rockstar that the great sex in a doorway they had ended with a baby." And yeah, now Louis is staring at him with wide eyes. Louis is a fan of Harry's and they fuck and end up with a child.

11) Heart Open, Bloodstain On My Sleeve | Explicit | 35,706 words

Note: This fic is locked and can only be read by AO3 users.

“I couldn’t help myself,” Harry admits, one hand coming to rub the back of his neck, “I stared at you for a good while before I finally got the guts to come up to you. You looked so pretty sitting there, with your little ankles and your pencil in your mouth, so enthralling… art in front of art.” Louis’ not sure what to say, so he just kind of sits there, eyes bugging out as he stares at Harry. “I mean, like you’re not an object!” Harry rushes out, babbling. “I just, there’s something about you that’s so captivating, and maybe it’s the way your eyes are like a watercolor painting of the sea, or how delicate your hands look when you draw, but I just wanted to get to know you. It’s not like I pick up random boys at art museums usually, I swear. Not that I’m trying to pick you up! Unless you want to be…God, fuck I’m sorry this is so awkward now. I can go, um, if you want."

12) Take My Pure (And Wash It All Away 'Til I'm Cured) | Explicit | 40,629 words

And Louis decides, as the boy slowly starts backing away with that cheeky grin lighting up that whole stupidly beautiful face, that he should sue him for emotional abuse just for the fact his pecs stretch the fabric of his shirt like that alone. He really should. He might even win the case.

13) Falling Out Of Fashion | Explicit | 42,123 words

Harry Styles has been the established face of the Grimshaw House of Design for two years. It’s a prestigious and coveted modeling contract Harry took away from once-famed supermodel Zayn Malik. With the model transition Grimshaw’s designs went from a more urban, Zayn-forward aesthetic, to a Harry-favoring flowery, flowing femininity in the Grimshaw designs for men. So when Harry sees a dress Grimshaw made for a famous Marvel actress, “only a tease”, Nick says, of the evolving look, Harry knows Grimshaw is shifting his aesthetic. Harry wonders if he can pull off the look. Or could Grimshaw be looking for a new face?

14) A Love Like This Won't Last Forever (And I Don't Mind At All) | Mature | 53,978 words

“I thought you’re a woman.” “Excuse me?” “Rumour has it that I’m about to have a new stepmother. Just didn’t expect it would be a man, though twink would give a much better description.” “I’m not a twink.” Louis crossed his hands in front of his chest defensively. The man looked at him from head to toe and gave him a sweet fake smile. “Yeah, you are.” “I’m not— hold on,” Louis loosened his arms and now playing with his thumbs, “what do you mean stepmother?” The man extended his hand and stupidly Louis reached for it. Once the bigger hand engulfed his own, the man shook it. “Harry Styles, pleasure to meet you. What should I call you? Stepmother or the mistress?” Harry tightened his grip. “Or maybe a homewrecker?” He gave him the most cruel smile a man could offer.

Check out our other fic rec lists by category here and by title here.

[esmereldapearl]

Random head-cannons for PJO (again):

- Nico loves music videos— like Lady Gaga’s Paparazzi MTV performance he would love. (Maybe too because if Lady Gaga played during his stay at the casino, it might remind him of good memories with his older sister.)

- Hazel has met Bianca. I like to think that Bianca sat with her before leaving because Nico was coming to save Hazel. Like Bianca knew that was her sister the same way Nico knew— but Bianca sort of knew it would happen but wanted to meet Hazel— have a sibling relationship with Hazel. (This is leading into AU stuff) I feel like Hazel wouldn’t know until she found a random photo of her when going through some of Nico’s stuff he had as a kid.

- I feel like Will is the type of character for when something insane happens this is his reaction:

Percy: Hey man, so uh, during Harleys maze, I may or may not have broken like- two bones? One is my arm, the other is Annabeth’s ankle.

Will: *one eye twitches as he sort of half glare, half not yet still shocked* Mkay Percy.

(Like just imagine Will on his last straw, that’s how I imagine this)

- Kayla and Michael were really close. Lee and Will were also very close.

- Michael hid a safe in the infirmary that had files and stuff that he wanted hidden— also like random possessions and letters/ stuff from Lee except nobody could find it and then when they did find it nobody knew the code. Kayla did some digging and found the code. (They refused to let anybody try to break the safe or have Hermes cabin try to pick the lock)

- I have quite a few headcannons for Kayla even though she hasn’t been seen much throughout the books. I feel like one of the bigger ones I have is that she has two older siblings who are twins- very random, but she doesn’t really have a cannon backstory (yet?).

- Once the Apollo cabin realizes that Nico has not seen like— a lot of pop culture stuff and Disney movies, they force him to watch a lot of them.

- Everyone, including Nico, forgets that Nico was born in like the 1930/1940s until they bring up some big historical fact and he’s like:

Will: Ya’ll up for watching this rocket take off? You can see it from our cabin, it’s gonna go to the moon.

Nico: What do you mean to the moon?

Will: ??? Wait do you not know about the moon landing?

Nico: PEOPLE HAVE GONE TO SPACE???

(This is the only historical event I could think of for some reason)

- Nico would 100% love video games and love like a 3DS

- Hazel cusses— like a lot— mostly when she’s annoyed/angry though.

- Frank is good with younger campers. He likes to reassure them that it’ll be okay and try’s to make them laugh

- Nico is less emo/dark and more just- random? I don’t think he has a set style, nor do I think he’s gloomy— I think of him more like a combo of Sam and Sebastian from Stardew Valley.

- Nico likes to hangout in the infirmary and goof off with Kayla and Austin. Will’s glad they get along

- Lee or Michael had set a rule where you can’t hang from the beams in the ceiling— Kayla disregards the rule quite a bit.

- Will 100% has a southern accent— not like a full blown accent but it mixes with his daily speech. Like specific words and phrases bring the accent back.

- Hazel and Nico like to draw— both have completely different styles though, and Nico draws more often while Hazel experiments with art.

- Hazel (and Nico) likes to visit Nico and talk to her brother often- so they hangout like once a month and talk very often. I feel like after Leo would create some device/adapter to make it so monsters wouldn’t attack every time you sent a text, they’d text more often than Iris message. (Ik not everyone has the best relationships w/their siblings but my sister and I are like this so I promise I’m speaking from experience lol) like every piece of gossip/major event, every “what would you do in this situation”, etc

Hazel: OMG NICO

Nico: WHAT???

Hazel: PERCY AND ANNABETH ARE ENGAGED— YOU’LL NEVER BELIEVE HOW.

Nico: OH GODS.