#idk what the actual title of this tag is

[milkbreadtoast]

Here's a v quick vague rushed half assed TWSB propaganda post

TWSB is a romance novel isekai subversion story. You know, the escapist genre that there r 2353533535 kr webtoons/novels for... i got reincarnated in my fav romance novel as the villainess yadayada THAT genre. but a twist on it!!!

TWSB is for fujoshi/fudanshi/fujin who would rather ship the 2 male love interests in a romance than have a love triangle with the female lead... TWSB is also for poly/throuple/trio enjoyers (whether platonic or not ur choice). And old women yuri enjoyers. And people who enjoy novel isekai subversions like orv and surviving romance (and SVSS? i havent read but ive heard comparisons)... /ppl who think novel isekai premises Could be interesting but find so many of them boring cliche or wasted potential... and people who like fun worldbuilding... or ppl who r interested in the premise "typical shoujo romance novel plot gets derailed and ends up accidentally becoming a non-romance action fantasy which is also highkey extremely gay"..... *dangling a chocolate croissant in front of u* ooooh u want to read twsb so bad wooooo is it worki

(EDIT: oh to be clear im recommending the novel btw!! webtoon is cute but the novel is where u get the full experience 🛐 idc which one u start w but pls read the novel... hehe)

[batsplat]

as our resident Casey expert i wonder what do you think would have happened if marc and casey competed against each other? since casey retiring is so important for marc coming into motogp im always thinking abt the what ifs...

my initial instinct with this hypothetical is always 'that sounds horrible', though I do have more thoughts and opinions about it than that! marc obviously would have loved the chance to race casey, and casey has even been one of his picks of 'guys he would've liked to be teammates with' before, so, you know, clearly something there - and he does very much respect casey as a rider. I think it's quite likely that by the time marc entered the premier class, casey had already developed... I don't know if wariness is going too far, but maybe a little bit of unease or caution where marc was concerned. marc already very much had a reputation based on his 125/moto2 track record, and some of these incidents were controversial enough that the motogp riders commented on them. so take the phillip island 2011 incident where marc rode into the back of another rider:

the valentino quote serves as a bit of a benchmark here, given he was generally pretty pro-marc. yes, casey's phrasing is perhaps a little harsher, but unsurprisingly none of the riders were big fans of marc's behaviour in that particular incident

on the other hand, it's not like casey never sided with marc. take catalunya 2012, where marc was slapped with a controversial post-race penalty:

yes, casey's main complaint was about inconsistent stewarding - but still, he believed marc had been unfairly treated here. feels like these incidents were some of the only things casey and valentino actually agreed on in those years, so that's nice

that being said, it's hard to see how casey wouldn't have his issues with marc and marc's whole approach to racing. I did include some thoughts on the teammate question here, but mainly I'm going to pilfer the relevant autobiography passage:

"if a rider doesn't care about his own safety then it stands to reason he doesn't care about anybody else's either"... there's nobody really who embodies the 'doesn't care about his own safety' maxim better than marc. he was the young rider desperate to win, and I can't imagine casey would have enjoyed actually racing him much. casey mostly didn't enjoy racing valentino, after all, who is a generally a lot more selective with his aggression than marc is (though casey did have to experience some of the worst valentino had to offer in that regard). casey talked in his autobiography about getting a sense when he just wasn't really able to trust another rider on the track, how much it bothered him - and that exact lack of respect is something that's been pretty closely associated with marc. that doesn't mean he would immediately declare marc his enemy... he'd just want marc to change, to learn, to grow up, to start treating his competitors with a little more respect. the way casey talks about young riders, there is a sense in which he has more time for them than he does for valentino - whose lack of respect casey views as more integral to who he is as a rider. valentino isn't a bully on track due to the exuberance of youth, he's a bully on track when he thinks he can use it as a tactic of intimidation. then again, marc by this measure is worse... and I think very quickly casey would have grown pretty disenchanted with how marc approaches all his wheel-to-wheel racing, especially when it becomes more and more clear marc does not feel particularly inclined to change

it's always important to remember how recent the trauma of losing simoncelli was for the whole sport, and it coloured both dani and jorge's wariness of marc... but also (in my opinion anyway) their restraint in how they dealt with him. how they tried to stop themselves from actually making an enemy out of him, in part because they'd just had an experience of harshly criticising a rider for a whole year and then having to process his death. both dani and jorge actually had more public and more serious disagreements with simoncelli than casey did, but I reckon there would have been an element of that restraint with casey too... on the other hand, his experiences with marc would have left him feeling even more alienated from the sport than he already was - at times frustrated (like jorge was) less with marc directly but more with the regulatory bodies for not holding marc back, for not giving him a race ban or whatever to teach him a lesson. that being said, marc's shamelessness vs casey's stubbornness means that if they had direct on-track encounters and casey didn't like marc's post-race response... well, I certainly think that'd end up being a pretty tense situation, even if it falls short of active hostilities

worth including irl!casey's take on marc in 2013:

which, you know. it's not just that marc's a hard racer - casey is accusing marc of deliberately wanting to make the defeats extra painful for his opponents, of wanting to not just beat but humiliate them. anyone else that reminds you of? someone who is as motivated in securing his psychological victories as his actual ones? perhaps someone who has a bit of a history himself with casey?

let's bring in valentino. it's not that casey would really have begrudged marc his friendship with valentino, and he generally kept his hatred of valentino quite 'clean' in that he wasn't conducting any proxy wars or anything (for instance, I don't get the sense the vale/sic friendship ever affected his view of simoncelli... though I have very little to go on here either way). also, if nothing else in this timeline changes, we're assuming valentino in 2013 is fairly clearly the... fifth? best rider? kinda depends where dani would have landed I suppose (casey's retirement announcement did save honda from a bit of a headache)... but anyway what this means is that valentino probably wouldn't initially have been much of a competitive threat to casey. mostly he would have been consigned to the sidelines

that being said, I doubt casey would have massively enjoyed the whole laguna seca saga. unfortunately, we don't even really know what real life casey's stance on the copycat move situation was... though if I had to guess, in this timeline I'd say his position would've been, a) marc could and should have carried out that overtake two corners later, there was no need in that race situation to take that risk, b) still, it was valentino's slight error as he attempted to reclaim the position (in what was a pretty aggressive manner, it has to be said) that led to them both ending up off-track and fuck that guy, and c) the problem with 2008 wasn't just or even primarily the corkscrew overtake and it's annoying that that's the only bit everyone talks about. of course, there's also the question of whether casey would have bought marc's explanation that it was totally by coincidence that the overtake happened there... and again, complete guesswork, but my sense of casey is that he would have assumed marc was being at least a little bit dishonest. (which, you know... laguna's not an easy track to overtake at, but marc did prove with the bradl move that he was perfectly capable of overtaking after turn 8 - might not have been planning on the off-track excursion, but he was still attempting to overtake just ahead of a blind crest that happened to feed into the corkscrew lol.) I think casey by his honda days had calmed down a bit (though he still certainly had some conspiratorial tendencies), but I also don't think it's a stretch to imagine that he would've felt like he was a victim of a joke between the pair of them... not ideal

overall though, I reckon casey's main frustrations would have been less with the move itself and more with how it was discussed. in the presser, while joking with marc, valentino does take the opportunity to get in a jibe at casey for old time's sake. there's this clip, where he directly addresses livio suppo (at ducati in 2008, by then at honda) - specifically about how both casey and suppo criticised him for that overtake. in response, suppo says something about how he's grateful to marc because they finally got payback. valentino is later asked directly about casey's complaints in 2008 in this clip, and replies with the following:

would valentino have said this stuff with casey still in the paddock? well, yes! honestly, given valentino did very quickly lay off needling casey once he had retired, there's a good chance he would have said something worse. and marc would have laughed along at the whole thing. I don't know, I just don't see casey taking particularly kindly to that... he can hold a grudge, that man can, and at a certain point he'd probably be increasingly less willing to give marc the benefit of the doubt. interesting situation though, laguna seca '13 + casey is a very juicy scenario that could play out in several different ways

but I'm guilty of burying the lede here - there's a far more obvious reason than anything I've described above for why the casey/marc relationship would have turned sour. it's the simple fact that they would have been teammates which would do the damage all on its lonesome; they have radically different conceptualisations of how that dynamic is supposed to work and would inevitably have clashed as a result. the one commonality they do have is they don't see their teammates as potential friends, which is... also not helpful! I think they'd probably initially be fine on the interpersonal level - and, actually, given how the casey/valentino relationship played out and marc's general approach to his rivalries, I can see marc/casey more or less being able to maintain a minimum standard of politeness towards each other even at their worst. like, I still think they'd be able to smile at each other and do some small talk when face-to-face, but I also think everything else would be a complete disaster. I talked a bit about how marc approaches his teammate relationships in this post - and I'm not going to rehash too much of what irl!marc got up to, but I'll include some bits relevant to casey

from marc:

related to casey:

and dani comparing the two:

we do obviously even have actual real life controversy wherein casey thinks marc felt threatened by him and forced him out of honda... and this in a timeline where they weren't even direct competitors! if this is the level of tension a test rider role can generate, then if they'd actually been teammates...? yeah, no. casey thinks that teammates should cooperate - and he thinks that riders enforcing divisions within the box are essentially doing so because they are "afraid". marc has openly admitted to lying about what parts he likes to make sure his teammate doesn't get any edge over him. this is the thing, right: marc might think casey is a cool rider, would've liked the chance to race him and even be teammates with him... but this is the stuff he did to dani, who was one of his literal idols! this is his understanding of competition - (like valentino) he might love the fight, but simultaneously he'll do pretty much whatever it takes to win, because he considers this stuff fundamentally part of the game. casey does not. to casey, this kind of victory is dishonest. any kind of gamesmanship is a sign of weakness... the victory is worth less if you're accomplishing it like that

now, hey, maybe marc would never have been able to go as far as he did with dani because he wouldn't have the kind of performance edge that allows you to definitively impose your will within the team. I think it's a popular interpretation that marc wouldn't have won the title in 2013 if casey had been there, which... I mean, I think it's true that it would have been less likely - in that in a season with that much volatility, the more plausible championship contenders you have the less likely it is that any single one of them takes the title (same goes for instance if you add in a valentino who had not gone to ducati for two years and would have presumably been more competitive in 2013). but it's not like casey would have been the defending champion and the clear class of the field... partly due to injury, he ended up finishing in third in 2012. jorge and dani didn't win the 2013 title in part as a result of their own injuries, and who knows how casey would have fared... like sometimes it's just luck of the draw really. you can be the better rider and still not win the title, shit happens. I think for as long as a more or less healthy-ish casey stays in the sport, it would have been unlikely that marc establishes quite the same performance edge as he did over dani... but, well, if anything that would have meant he would have fought even harder out of perceived necessity to win the internal honda wars

it's the kind of thing that can make a relationship quickly deteriorate, especially with a prickly character such as casey, and it's entirely plausible that dynamic would have become strained at best and horrendously toxic at worst... sooner rather than later. and the thing is, this environment would affect marc considerably less than it would casey. again, it's the fact that he relishes the fight... he's very good at shrugging off (most) criticism and thrives in that kind of tension. the emotional fatigue that this scenario generates would be painfully lopsided, where casey offers harsh criticisms and means them and is endlessly frustrated with marc's approach, while marc... doesn't really care. at least dani also had a questionable manager who was conducting behind the scenes warfare on his behalf - casey doesn't want to play these games at all. he just wants to ride a bike, and marc is never going to allow him to live in peace as long as he's an internal threat. if casey were exposed directly to all of that from marc, I doubt he'd walk away from the experience with a particularly positive impression of him

does he walk away? I think there's a decent chance that casey would have ended up so disillusioned with the whole thing that this would have been what pushed him into retirement. if he wants to get out of that mess, let's say after two years, his options would have been pretty limited. yamaha is closed off and I'd struggle to think of a scenario in which either jorge or valentino would have been particularly interested in a direct swap (also, if you're sick of being marc's teammate, you're probably not gonna be jumping at the chance to be valentino's instead). I suppose you could go back to ducati (which he did return to as a test rider so it's not like those bridges were permanently burnt), and maybe casey could do something special even with *gestures* that version of the bike. really though... I think enough would have been enough for him. regardless of the actual balance of success between the pair of them, my guess is marc wins that war because he's happier to get nasty and because he wants it more. casey has his two to four titles... he's done. let him go fishing

[shift-shaping]

Is Solas getting paid by the Inquisition for his work

[cj-the-random-artist]

Hmmmmmm

Kinda debating taking my QPR Narilamb and giving them their own au... that might be cool.....

Idk what I would do with it, save from making more comics and sketches about them like I've been doing

But I've been like thinking about what it might look like if I wrote up a backstory for this interpretation of Lambert and I have some ideas roughed out so maybe. Just maybe.

[strawberrywindow]

I couldn't stop thinking about an AU where Daniel resorts to gathering vitae again, this time to 'cure' Hazel, after his Brennenburg adventure💫, thoughts all mainly derived from this loadscreen text that tells us that Hazel is still in hospice care by the time the game's story began.

As much as I love Daniel, I don't think he really learned all that much from his experience even in the most charitable ending towards him in which he saves Agrippa. I can very, VERY easily see him slipping back into old ways if it meant saving Hazel. The most he seems to approach viewing torture as bad is when he realizes he himself no longer counts as an innocent so he can't justify killing others to save himself anymore. But killing no good, horrible, bad people to save HAZEL? Now, we're cooking with gas 😀 💀

[yuwuta]

i have never done kinktober before bc it’s usually such a hellish time of year for me but i think i might actually have time for once omg………..

[spiritcc]

at this point I don't even know if tag fragmentation in the general russian holmes space is worth addressing. a few years ago I successfully kept the ancient customs intact because I wrote a post so deranged and pretentious it displeased people into doing what I wanted but nowadays what's the point in making a grand return of being terminally online if yall kinda right

[enhanced-operatives-division]

Improvement :3

[ghst-signal]

if you know anything about me, it's i love collecting tarot cards. i especially love fandom related ones. heck i even have the official fallout tarot cards.

so when i saw that they are coming out with officially licensed good omens tarot cards i was ecstatic

look at them! beautiful! cool as heck!

wait a minute

isn't the 6 in the major arcana usually the lovers card?

what the hell is "the duo" card?

y'all out here really making official Good Omens tarot cards and are really going to "gal pals" aziraphale and crowley? really? REALLY??

[svtskneecaps]

literally it's 3am where i live and i'm on mobile but FUCK IT i haven't posted any actual writing in like a YEAR on this blog whose description include the words "I WRITE" and i can't tell if i'm even going anywhere with this so fuck it under the cut is the prospective absolute mess of the first chapter of the flipo family time loop fic. (for clarity, flipo family as in slime, mariana, and juanaflippa) this covers loop 0, aka the relevant parts of canon. words: 1630

parts of it i popped off with and other parts i hate; up to you to identify them. also the italics and other formatting got erased when i copy pasted and i'm re-adding all of it by hand so if i missed a spot, no i didn't. if i missed an accent on a letter in spanish that was a typo, if i missed a ¡ or ¿ that may have been on purpose.

oh and for obvious reasons, content warning for mentions and mild descriptions of child death and child murder. no blood, and most of it is a three word mention; i'd say the brief paragraph beginning "Tilín didn't scream" is most of the reason this warning exists.

Charlie Slimecicle stepped off the train.

He’d been hoping for a bright, sunny day to start their vacation, but was sorely disappointed. The portal had apparently taken them pretty far, since they’d gone from noon to night time. Talk about jetlag. They hadn’t even been on a plane.

“What happened to the other guys?” he wondered aloud as he stepped onto the platform.

“Yeah no clue,” Phil said, scanning the empty station. “Thought they’d meet us here.”

“Guys!” one of the Spanish speakers--Vegetta, he’d said, when they’d all met up at the first station--called, from a lectern at the wall. “There is a book!”

They crowded around as he read the instructions aloud--something about pressure plates, Slime wasn’t paying that close of attention. He was a little more preoccupied with making sure it only felt like his brain was dripping out of his ears. That would be kind of embarrassing.

Which was not to say that he wasn’t enjoying the constant onslaught of people talking over each other using words he may or may not understand. In fact, it was the opposite; he was frankly thriving in the absolute chaos that kicked back up around him as a timer appeared in the wrist communicators they’d been provided along with their tickets.

“Como se dice ‘we are going to die now’?” He giggled, chasing Phil and Fit to one end of the station.

“¡Vamos a morir!” shouted Spiderman, echoed seconds later by the black bear in the collared shirt.

Giddy over the high of attempting to use his high school foreign language for the first time maybe ever, Slime absolutely didn’t contribute much to solving the puzzle, and before long the sound of the timer ticking down was accompanied by a loud buzzing alarm.

“It’s been an honor!” he shrieked at the top of his lungs. “It’s been an honor!”

The bear ran past them again, shouting, “I’m going to die!” in English this time.

“Adiós amigos!” Slime yelled.

The countdown ended.

And then his communicator buzzed, and there was a video playing on the screen, showing a cartoonish yellow duck in front of a blurry beach stock photo. He skimmed it absently--some generic welcoming message and another side quest for them--distracted by Maximus audibly losing his shit laughing across the station.

“Come on, I’m trying to take a vacation, I gotta work now?” Fit complained. “This is ridiculous.”

Slime wanted to jump on that bit, but the message cut off with coordinates marred by static and the noise of the emergency weather alert system and he lost his train of thought completely.

“I got the English book!” Spreen called, holding it with two fingers like it had personally offended him.

“English leader,” Vegetta said, seeming to find that amusing.

“English leader.” Spreen laughed and flicked the book away. Slime stepped back but somehow it still nailed him in the chest.

“Guess I’m reading then,” he said cheerfully.

“In Spanish?” Maximus said.

“Um.”

Vegetta called something, backing across the plaza with the book open in his hands. Phil backed up to the wall.

“Here,” Phil instructed, “we’ll read it here.”

“Okay okay.” He flicked it open. “So we have to get water wheel planks--”

Their peace lasted a grand total of thirty seconds as voices suddenly began shouting, overlapping in chaotic chorus.

“What is that?” Fit demanded.

“Is that coming from the other side?” Phil stared up at the top of the wall.

“This is the thinnest thick wall I’ve ever seen,” Slime said, giddy laughter bubbling out of him again. “Is this thing made out of pencil shavings? If I sneeze on it, is there gonna be a hole?”

“Nevermind, we’ll read it over here.” Phil dragged them away again, but the Spanish speakers were dispersing into the trees.

“Forget the book,” Fit said, “follow them!”

(In the end it was explosives that took the wall down, which in hindsight was a precursor to how a not insignificant portion of time on the island was spent. The first day, however, it was just funny, much like everything else.)

(That was to say, the first first day.)

The communicator had indicated that today there was something special planned, so he made an extra effort to wake up.

“Morning Jaiden!” he called to his upstairs neighbor.

“Hi Charlie!” He could hear her farming through the wall. “Glad you woke up on time!”

“Well you know, you know, El Backflipo couldn’t miss it,” he joked, sifting through his backpack. “Got any spare food? I’ll trade you uno backflipo.”

“I have so much toast, come here and get some, free of charge.”

With a quick backflip and some toast to start the day, he popped open the map.

“There’s a lot of people down the wall,” he noted, their green dots so clustered they formed one. “Wanna check it out?”

“Yeah sure.” Jaiden tossed some seeds into a chest. “Do you know what this event’s gonna be?”

“I have no idea,” he admitted cheerfully.

She laughed. “Yeah, me neither. I guess there’s an egg involved, but that’s all I know.”

He dug around in his backpack for a paraglider, nodding along. “Yeah, yeah, un huevo, I get you.” Shuffling the landmine from Vegetta to one side, he yanked out his glider and threw himself out her window. “Let’s go!”

(nothing like getting struck by lightning to wake a guy up in the morning)

Slime fiddled with the communicator as he waited for the line of people to get through the ticket machine; he already had his own, a nice B for Backflipo. The new live translations still boggled his mind. He had to fight the urge to chant weird shit under his breath, just to see what the bubbles would say.

He paid a little extra attention when Mariana walked up to the machine. That guy seemed cool. They’d done that pequeño dormir together on day one, and he had a good sense of humor. Egg parenting would probably be funny.

He was thrilled to see the B for Backflipo on the ticket Mariana stepped away with, even if Mariana was decidedly less so. This was gonna be good.

(it was, and it wasn’t)

So, Mariana wasn’t exactly the coparent of dreams. Then again, Slime was pretty sure Mariana could say the same about him. In fact he was pretty sure Mariana had said the same, but in Spanish, when he wasn’t checking the translation.

It was great. They thought they’d killed a child immediately and then decided to fake their own child’s death to get away with it, and then confessed their sins to a bilingual angel and built a farm and then he buried himself beneath an improvised cross and went into a coma until his sins were forgiven, or something, except his sins weren’t forgiven in time to save his own child’s life.

And then Juanaflippa was dead. Dead at Mariana’s hand.

His bitch wife killed their daughter.

(Everything went faster, after that.)

Slime wanted to kill him.

Slime wanted to kill him for killing their fucking daughter, but of course, Mariana couldn’t even be bothered to be around to take care of her alive, never mind to pay for his crimes when she died by his hand!

(in a better world, his rage started and ended there. in a better world, the anger fizzled out with the lack of a target.

this was not that world)

There couldn’t be an Egg Event with no eggs.

If he killed them all, it would bring her back.

(in a worse world, he succeeded. in a worse world, the Egg Event ended there.

this was not that world)

They held a trial.

If he won, it would bring her back.

(in another world, he didn’t convince them. in another world, they left his daughter in Hell.

this was not that world)

Tilín was still before she hit the ground.

Tilín didn’t scream. Maybe they didn’t have time. It happened so fast. He was sure it happened fast. Almost too fast. But everything went so fast, now, even though Flippa was back. Yet, time slowed down for this, like a rubberneck driving past a highway accident, watching him desperately trying to shock their heart back into motion.

“YOU KILL MY BEST FRIENDS,” Flippa wrote. He begged her to understand. She wrote, “i can’t believe it.”

She wrote, “I HATE YOU.”

(in a better world, the error would have been caught in April instead of July.

this was not that world)

His daughter fell to his bitch wife’s sword. The same way. The next day.

They’d only just gotten her back. And Mariana killed her again.

He only left eggxile for the funeral. She wouldn’t stay dead, but he had to be there.

Time went even faster after that. He was Gegg, or maybe Gegg was him, or maybe Gegg was Gegg, or maybe. . . ?

He went back to eggxile.

He wasn’t leaving without them. Tilín. Juanaflippa. He would do whatever was necessary. He would pray to any higher power. Lil J still owed him a goddamn favor, but the guy wouldn’t pick up his calls. Maybe if he put more shit in the shrine; angels liked shiny shit, didn’t they? He went back to the mine, where the gasses swirled in his head. He built the shrine. He mined. He built the shrine.

He went back to the mine.

He went back to the mine.

He went back to the mine.

“This is where I sit, this is where my bitch wife sits, and this is where my daughter sits, if I had one!”

He’d said that before. No he hadn’t. Yes he had.

No, he just needed to clear his head.

Charlie Slimecicle went back to the mine.

Charlie Slimecicle stepped off the train.

[creatorofuniverses]

Inktober Day 2 – Discover

Few discoveries stranger or more fantastical than a staircase of ethereal leaves leading into the cosmos.

A scene from a dream I had once, which has since turned into a story with @neonthebright! Siblings Drew and Penny went into space to study rocks... destiny (and a certain goddess) have other plans.

[batsplat]

from the stuff i’ve heard marc’s former honda teammates (dani jorge and pol in their media careers but joan also i guess) say about him now that they’re racing is generally quite positive, both on a professional/riding level but also seemingly on a personal level? i’m wondering what you make of that given that, yeah, marc doesn’t seem like a very good teammate (unless you’re alex who i’ve left off this list). like MARC wants to separate on and off track stuff and it seems like all of these guys are willing too at least in retrospect, so he can’t have truly burned bridges with them. do you have any thoughts on that

(x, x) most riders are quite good at not burning bridges with each other! it's not like marc's competitors don't know that this stuff is kinda part of the game. I mean, all of marc's past teammates were also trying to assert themselves within the internal hierarchy... you can say that certain teammates engage in 'worse' behaviour than others, but, like, these people do understand they're supposed to be fighting each other! a baseline degree of nastiness is factored in and will be accepted to a greater or lesser extent by your rivals - especially when it comes to asserting yourself in intra-team power struggles. you might hate the other guy in the moment, but generally speaking once the active part of the rivalry is done with... you will probably get over it. marc's fellow riders are aware of how ultra-competitive marc is - and to a certain point they do respect it, not least because they're aware that this is part of the reason why marc has ended up with all those titles. it's like dani said, right, it's marc's strong suit. and in general, you do have to say that there's relatively few teammate pairings that devolve to the level of toxicity that it completely destroys the interpersonal relationship. you might need some level of preexisting animosity... most of the purely competitive sins can be healed with a little time

on the 'separating on-track and off-track' thing... well. this is kind of a question of how you define these things, you can say that marc generally speaking isn't going to massively hold grudges over isolated on-track incidents or whatever... but he doesn't just leave his fighting to the track, and personally I've also never felt he can entirely separate these things out in his mind. can you really say his professional and private relationships with other riders are completely detached from one another? mostly, he's opted to be pretty disengaged from his fellow riders as a collective, and obviously that's a good way to not take things too personally... it's all part of the game, isn't it? sometimes it's good to go with the straightforward approach: marc tells you he will make your life hell, he does indeed make your life hell, and then you both move on with your lives and can maybe actually have a pretty amiable relationship with him in years to come. he's not really defying your expectations at any point here, is he now? it's still a question for each of them as individuals as to whether they think that kind of behaviour is above board and acceptable or not... but everyone by now knows that marc plays these games, so it's not like they're going in blind

and it's not like other former teammates are constantly badmouthing each other. I mean... look, let's just cut to the chase here and bring in valentino as our reference point (as he is for the sport as a whole, which by the way does also help create a certain baseline of acceptability for marc's antics - maybe goated riders are just supposed to be dicks who knows). vale's premier class teammates were 1) nobody (2000-01), 2) tohru ukawa (2002), 3) nicky hayden (2003; 2011-12), 4) carlos checa (2004), 5) colin edwards (2005-2007), 6) jorge lorenzo (2008-10; 2013-16), 7) maverick vinales (2017-20), 8) franco morbidelli (2021), and 9) andrea dovizioso (2021). of these eight men (let's just exclude 'nobody' for now), do you know how many had serious complaints at any point about valentino as a teammate? that's right, it's one guy. one. some of valentino's other teammates, like hayden, checa and edwards, were even quite actively positive about their whole experience. this is the thing - you do need some specific circumstances for teammate rivalries to escalate from 'being kinda bitchy every other month' to 'actively fantasising about stabbing each other'. not accounting for natural interpersonal animosity, let's list some circumstantial factors that you need to get a bridge-burning-worthy level of feud:

you need a competitive bike. it is possible to beef about development direction when you're in the trenches (cf late 2010's yamaha, 2020's honda)... but generally speaking this is going to be quite low-level petty stuff, not actual war

you also need something that approaches competitiveness between teammates. if one teammate is unquestionably stronger than the other one, then it is very unlikely that you are going to get any open hostilities. the tension comes when the two sides are close enough to each other for the internal hierarchy to actually be a contentious issue (this is also basic self preservation... if you're the far weaker teammate then you do not want to make the situation troublesome, because then you will be the one to be fired)

following on from those first two things... well, it doesn't hurt to have a title fight in the mix. there are also other ways you can generate competitive stakes, like, for instance, if you and your teammate know that one of you will be out of a job soon. basically, it helps to have something to squabble over

it is maybe easy to forget how rare it is this century for teammates to be fighting directly for a title, let alone over the course of multiple seasons. only two 1-2's since the year 2000 and they're both for the factory yamaha's (though 2006, 2011-13 and 2017 did all prominently feature two factory hondas). which means that for valentino, the prerequisites were met just the once in his premier class career... and yes, the results were pretty memorable, but (topic! for! another! post!) it's worth pointing out that even that relationship was pretty much 'fine' whenever there was a sizeable disparity between the two of them performance-wise (2008 and 2013 are the most clear cut examples). I think the way I'd frame it with marc is that he has a bunch of mildly dubious strategies up his sleeve to assert himself within the team, which don't really deviate that far from what you'd expect from a rider of marc's calibre and only need to be escalated under specific circumstances. that doesn't mean he doesn't have the potential to be ruthless, but up until now it's mostly been a fairly 'acceptable' level of ruthlessness on the intra-team level... and not something that is likely to make other riders actually hate him

taking marc's teammates one by one... dani was the closest to meeting the bridge-burning prerequisites, though he was only a title rival in marc's rookie season. and marc did go further with him than he did with anyone else, and dani has made some pointed comments about marc's style as a teammate... but yes, he is fonder of marc these days. partly I'd just emphasise again that this is a fairly natural progression when you've stopped directly competing for long enough, and partly it's also just a question of individual personality - dani's not massively into holding grudges. then there's jorge, who... I mean, they might as well not have been teammates, given that jorge was either too slow or too injured to even be sharing any track space with marc. you have to put that one down primarily to circumstance, seeing as jorge's own track record on the teammate front isn't exactly spotless. marc and jorge beefing in 2019 would have been pretty dumb and also a massive waste of everyone's time in a year in which marc singlehandedly won the team's championship. even those two needed more to get things going

moving on to the dark years, pol and marc had an extremely stop-and-start partnership on a honda that was generally pretty uncompetitive... so the only stuff they could get ever so mildly irritable about were riveting incidents like 'marc saying pol wasn't the biggest championship threat' (neither of them were) or 'pol saying he'd copy marc's set up' (which proved entirely useless). not exactly title decider territory, is it now, and marc very much had pol covered as a challenger throughout their partnership. also, those two do have a longer history! they've known each other since they were kids and hold a pretty significant place in each other's careers. now that pol's more or less retired, it's natural there'll be quite a lot of sentimentality there - which will paper over any small cracks that appeared during those two years. and joan was a one year teammate at a time in which the bike was consistently close to offing them both. they only managed to start a sunday race together as teammates on thirteen occasions. it would take some serious effort to engineer a feud with that little opportunity, and, really, why on earth would you bother. maybe if honda had gone for rinsy rather than joan for the factory seat, it could've been a bit more prickly, but it's unlikely that it would have escalated beyond that

this is the thing, right, the only one of these partnerships that would have been worth burning bridges over was dani, and even there marc pretty much had him handled after the first season. in general, marc has been pretty clear on how he's not interested in making friends with the other side of the garage while the teammate relationship is ongoing... which is fine! there's some prominent-ish teammate pairings that are actually good friends, some teammate pairings where one of them is actively helping out and advising the other one, but some riders prefer to just keep their distance. it would have been a little silly of marc to start a feud with a teammate who is galaxies away from being a competitive threat, let alone a title rival, but generally it is possible to toe the line between 'attempting to suppress your internal rivals enough to stop them from becoming a problem for you' and 'taking radical enough action to make your internal rivals despise you'

especially in the post-dani era, marc never really had any need to push things too far... and, let's face it, how many of your teammate relationships end up with burnt bridges is also quite frankly a question of luck and circumstance. do you want to guess which top rider on paper has the worst track record this century with premier class teammate feuds, in terms of a) how many they've had, and b) how little public reconciliation there has been since the end of the rivalry?

yes, that's right, it's the first name that comes to mind when you're thinking of toxic and conflict-prone riders: andrea dovizioso. that old devil, constantly causing trouble. just couldn't stop undermining his poor, innocent teammates. can somebody please stop this ruthless bully before it's too late

I think you get the point. I would personally suggest that dovi is not in fact the worst teammate it is possible to have in a motogp top team. he just happened to find himself in a situation where he was teammates with two separate guys he did not click with at all, in situations that involved a pairing of riders who were (or had the potential to be) competitive with each other, as well as some proper stakes attached to the rivalry. in general, situational factors are going to determine this stuff more than anything else... and marc more often than not does have a reasonably good feel for picking his battles. he's flirted with the line, but he's mostly avoided crossing it. he hasn't had to

[whenthegoldrays]

sigh

[devondespresso]

WIP WhhhMonday Nightish

Once upon a time Devon was tagged in a wip wednesday by @eriquin and meant to do it but missed both wednesday and the weekend before remembering again. totally unrelated, Devon is working on getting their official adhd diagnosis.

i also noticed that the past snippets shared in wip-whatever posts have been purposefully the least interesting parts because i was worried about spoilers, which is dumb because that's created the unintended consequence of my tag is full of everything i don't like as much and a very different impression of what my fic is (as seen by most of these snippets being my rewritten scenes despite the actual fic being mostly new in-between scenes)

TLDR: WIP Whatever-day-it-is: But Actually For Fun This Time

The Rules

Post the file names of up to 5 of your WIPs for people to send you asks

Post a snippet of one of those WIPs

When people send you an ask with the name of one of your WIPs, write 3 lines of that WIP.

(Optional) Post the lines you wrote.

You can send multiple requests especially since this is going on through the weekend!

The WIPs

we're doing bulleted chapter titles to share from since that was my favorite and genuinely most productive format I've used. Feel free to ask for as many as you want, I plan on working on this basically all week

Karen Wheeler POV Bonus Chapter (Prologue kinda? side story in the same universe?? Bonus chapter set after season 1 and way before ch 1)

Steve, are you okay? Are you okay, Steve? (ch 9)

What's this? The consequences of my actions? (Is that a motherfucking Lovejoy reference?) (ch 10)

Kidnapping? no. surprise adoption. (lol get taken care of BITCH) (ch 11)

NEXT CHAPTER BC IDK HOW TO TRANSITION (ch 12) (a very tentative title for the next chapter to be written)

The Snippet

here is my favorite and most recent scene I've written, which takes place before they junkyard where Steve and Dustin are at the grocery store to get that ungodly amount of raw meat they have to toss around (also i've split chapters up a bit in the name of structure so the third chapter is now called "Mommy Issues Central". Lemme know any goofy vine reference ideas you guys have or if it should stay like that) (fear not, Get Yo Fucking Dog Bitch lives on still as chapter 4)

___

They turned down the next aisle, lining the edges of the cart with some other pasta-related shit that he could still probably use. They heard someone coming over from the next aisle and before he could turn the cart around Mrs Wheeler pulled up.

"Oh, Steve ...and Dustin. What're you boys up to?"

He took a short breath to work their story into something without Mike, but Dustin beat him to it.

"He's teaching me stuff." 

He was imitating the tone Steve used but still way too vague. Mrs Wheeler held up a smile, her brows slightly lifted.

"Y'know, like cooking-" Steve said, throwing in a little gesture to the cart.

"And cars, changing oil and things. Y'know just.. dad stuff."

Dustin's part convinced her, Mrs Wheeler's expression softening into a real smile.

"Well I won't keep you long," 

She nodded off to the side to talk to Steve one-on-one.

Great.

“Are you and Nancy okay?”

“Wh- we’re- Why? Did she say something?”

“No, no, she’s just been… closed off, lately. And I drove her to school the other day, she didn’t say why.”

“Sh- yeah, that- that’s on me. Sorry.”

“Did you break up?”

“No no, definitely not. We’re kinda… we’re working on it. I’m going to try and make it better, after y’know..” he gestured to Dustin behind him.

“Right.” she smiled again, “Let Nancy know she can talk to me about any of this? Please? I tell her but- I don't know, maybe it’d be different coming from you.”

He held up a smile for her.

“Yeah, sure. Mind if we..” he jutted a thumb towards the end of the aisle.

“Yes, go ahead.”

He gave her a short wave and turned back to Dustin, who studied random shit in the aisle like Steve would believe his sudden fascination with olive oil outweighed childish curiosity.

“Steve-”

He turned back around, seeing Mrs Wheeler coming back up to him and whispering again.

“I know I’m not your mother, but you can talk to me, too. Both of you, okay?”

He kept the smile in place and nodded again, and she finally went back to her cart.

Dustin “Definitely-Not-Eavesdropping” Henderson followed him out of the aisle, thankfully waiting until they were out of earshot to ask.

“What's going on with you and Nancy?”

“Thought we had ‘much bigger problems than my love life’?”

He pulled up to the deli, stopping to pretend to look at the options.

“We’re not dropping everything for it but we can still talk.” he groaned.

“I’ll tell you later, kay? Not exactly the best place to talk.''

___

Tags

@stobinesque @spoookysix @marvel-ous-m @alexcharmsyou @museumgiftshoperaser @blushweddinggowns @sharpbutsoft @fag4dykestobin @findafight (no pressure ofc and feel free to switch it to actually wednesday fhuhjdklashj) (also just let me know if you don't wanna be tagged in these)

[jefferythejelly]

ok more kidfic: do u have any pregnancy hcs? Especially for Foolish bc I've only rarely seen him as a dad :3

u have no idea what u've just unleashed 90% of the brainrot bulletpoint list i have for this au is pregnancy headcanons asjdfadkjs

this is like 90% just copy pasted from that bulletpoint list and slightly edited and also i've had this document since may of last year and have been slowly adding on to it every once in a while since then so FAIR WARNING this post is Quite Long

they try decorating the nursery themselves but neither of them know what to get or how to make it cute so then foolish calls up tina who eventually just makes them call up an interior designer XD

can you imagine them telling their friends abt it. can u imagine how cute auntie tina would be. she would be taking it so serious like she doesnt want any of the responsibility but she wants to be like the cool aunt y'know

random tidbit but i can so imagine a conversation between tina and foosh where they start talkin about the phrase "buns in the oven." like i think tina would think that phrase is really cute. i think that phrase is really cute tbh. hes got buns in the oven :>

following in the vein of nervous-but-excited-newly-pregnant-couple them going to foolish's prenatal care appointments and taking his health like super seriously. also ultrasounds. i dont think either of them would Cry cry but theyd maybe get a little teary eyed lookin at their kids for the first time

on some more classic omegaverse bullshit: punz had always been a bit possessive/protective as a partner and that very much continues once theyre mates and foolish is pregnant. like really frequently is holding his hand or has an arm around him, tries to be really doting and get him whatever he asks. not as common when theyre in public but one of his fave things to do is hug foolish from behind with his hands on his stomach

i'd imagine they have a few arguments esp when foolish is hormonal and does/says shit that annoys punz and he cant understand why. they work it out tho, bc they love each other <3

in the time leading up to foolish's due date his nesting instincts go crazy. theres nests everywhere in the whole house. when hes not sitting chilling in a nest hes making a new one or readjusting one

(this one is real long bc it is a vaguely drafted out scene oops) foolish's water breaks on stream/at least when he's in vc on someone else's stream bc like. i deffo think it would. u think this man would take a break? like the streams would get shorter especially as his hormones and instincts get more fucky but he would still be trying to be on that grindTM. and (bcuz this is the part i actually vaguely researched) he's been having like the irregular not actually real contractions (theres a name im forgetting it rn) so hes gotten used to just like feeling them, noting when the time is, and brushing it off when it doesnt happen again. so he's in vc with someone, i'm thinking tina lets just say tina, and he's in the middle of laughing really hard at a joke, but abruptly cuts off his windexing when he feels the whole "rush of fluid" thing and is all like o_o and tina's all like "foolish? you okay?" when he stops laughing like that and foolish is like "uh. i think my water just broke?" which makes tina go all "wait What?! like- like the baby's coming?" "yeah" "foolish!" (chat is freaking out. monkaS monkaW fukW) "shouldnt you like, go to the hospital?" "yeah, uh, bye chat!" (chat has been yelling at him since he said his water broke to end stream) he yells for punz who ofc comes rushing into the room like "whats going on do you need something" and when foolish tells him his water just broke he starts freaking out a little and then foolish has a contraction right then (is that realistic timing tbh its been a while since i did that google search. what i do remember is that theres apparently apps for timing contractions like isnt that neat. anyways) but then theyre like "sorry tina bye!" and then tinas like "good luck!" (is that a normal thing to say idk. even if it isnt it could be funny hashtag awkward girl swag /affectionate) and then they like drive to the hospital and stuff

i just have this image of like the night they come back from the hospital both of them in their nest with the babies laying between them oughhhhhh

listen i just think this is really cute but punz sitting on the edge of the hospital bed while foolish is in labor so he can lean into him and calm down with his scent

actually thought abt it a bit more and mayb this is more general omegaverse hcs but like i think omegas would have an instinct to give birth in a nest which obv is harder to do while also having the support of modern medicine in a hospital but maybe it is more normalized to bring some blankets/pillows/clothes/what have you to make a lil temporary nest in the hospital bed

foolish is way more absentminded/no thoughts head empty than usual (like forgets what hes saying in the middle of a sentence bad) bc of fucked up hormones pregnancy brain

he tries having one or two blankets wrapped around him on stream to be sort of like a temporary nest when his instincts start going wacky. sometimes it works sometimes he accidentally gets too sleepy and begrudgingly admits that he should probably end stream bc he can barely think thru the omega nesting instinct brain fog

actually on that note i think there a couple of times where punz basically forces him to take a break from streaming. it never lasts very long

i have decided that the timing of their baby is such that foolish is like 7/8 months when christmas rolls around bc i was at family christmas brainrotting what it would be like for them to have like cute domestic family christmas while foolish is still pregnant. he falls asleep on the couch leaning against punz's shoulder after dinner its very cute

they maybe do a thing where like they have christmas with one family on eve and one on day and have a slightly chaotic nighttime flight? do the flight times work out for that idk. but its bc their families wanna see them bc theyre all excited for the baby awwww

wait just remembered the whole scene i had imagined for this where they land in mass super late at night/early morning and once they get back to punz's parents house p much immediately go to bed but foolish cant sleep bc the babies keep moving and kicking and punz scootches down so hes all curled up next to his tummy and purrs at them so that they calm down and foolish can sleep

at the end of his pregnancy foolish is just like capital d Done like get these babies out my back hurts im tired my belly is fuckin huge. ive got tits now

punz very happily gives him back massages tho <3 even if he sometimes gets overdramatically whiny about it first

foolish is one day horrified to realize none of his usual foods are appealing and he is instead craving some weird ass food combo

when foolish starts showing more and its gonna be harder to hide on stream they do a cute lil classic pregnancy announcement photo where punz like has his hands around him on his belly (maybe taken by karl? or someone? i just realized i have no idea where i hc them living like i guess its always been vaguely nc but idk if thats like. necessary? idk whatever) but im imagining the one they end up posting isnt even one of the ones they were posing for its like a candid one where theyre looking at each other over foolishs shoulder or like laughing or something idk its cute its not staged and weird lookin

oh also at some point punz convinces foolish to do a maternity photoshoot (well kind of. its just punz taking pics of him in his underwear bc he maybe has a Thing for heavily pregnant foolish) and at first foolish feels kinda embarrassed and silly and punz keeps complimenting him and making him flustered (i have a couple of lil doodles of this + a few other ones related to this au in a sketchbook somewhere but i dont feel like digging them out + taking pics rn ajfsbajskb)

final note would like everyone to know as i was typing this foolish lost his water bucket in mc and he phrased it like "my water just broke" and chat was all like "wow congratulations whos the father." like what are the chances. also why is he like this. also can u really blame me for making this au when he is like this

[blackvahana]

I sat and plucked the strings, I called him in. All his waves, all the tides to the shore. A call so strong, a siren so big, that even the ocean itself is pulled.

Eyes are great spheres with central dots, gelatinous, liquid, strange substances both there and not. Fish eggs, babies seen in the light when held to eclipse the sun. That's what I watched, that's what I called; it wasn't just the sparkling core but the peripheral hagfish expulsions - and those expulsions' expulsions. All the world brought to me, all the limbs held with puppet strings.

I called, he was brought to answering. Fate, mind, thoughts, personality, the repetitive learned states, the state-learning, ideas, future possibilities, the gentleness of flesh, the sharpness of consciousness-bone. Echoes, but simultaneous. Thunder at the same time as lightning, brought together not because one must follow the other but because both were brought together.

I still fail to understand, but at least I understand that that lack of understanding is a willed ignorance born from... understandable things.

There, you said, was the place you last were, just below the surface. When I wake it will be there. This is a Creator's act, a Creator's mind, a Creator's reverence for the Created. Understanding of the Trinity, embodying it. The siren call emanates from the deepest, most fertile underwater volcanoes, the point at which my face presses against the surface.

There was a reason we went up there in the first place. The revelation and self-destruction was wanted all along. Apotheosis, they call it; even those who have reached it need to play this game through again and again and reach it again and again. This is... Old God re-apotheosis, the eyes opening to another truth, more eyes across your scales, more revelatory bliss, and I am that. Nothing is lost when all is lost. All is gained when all is lost. Nothing is lost, all is had. All is had and all is gained.