#it does feel like floating

[maybeyoullremember]

[oldbutchdaniel]

daniel was so enthralled and delighted seeing louis' fangs, was fascinated with the knowledge that armand can read minds, that it stands to reason he would go balls to the wall insane to find out armand can fly. in the 70s he'd ask armand to do it all the time and armand would always do it so daniel would cheer for him and get all excited again. so in dubai in 2022 when armand is revealing himself as the ancient vampire and not the servant boy, i like to think he was like "well, there's one surefire way to make sure this reveal makes daniel's eyes bug out and makes him freak out and go crazy and realize how cool and hot and powerful i am." and then he just. starts fucking flying

[oh-gh0st]

hiii i come bearing more art ^_^

mostly shadowpeach and mk, then mk with an oc in the last one

[arsenicflame]

steddyhands modern au inspired by this post:

(1828 words, themes of kink but nothing explicit, established blackhands & gentlebeard-centric. Happy Pride!)

Stede picks up leatherworking in the wake of his divorce. He's not exactly sure how it ended up being such an important hobby for him, only that he had always admired the intricate designs on his horse's best bridles, and with little else to do with his time, he decides to give it a go.

It's rocky going at first, but he's having fun working with his hands for the first time in his life, and there's a sense of satisfaction in seeing the design come to life as he works. With practice, his skills improve, and he learns how to make things that are truly one of a kind.

He starts off posting his pieces online, as a way to reach fellow enthusiasts, but quickly finds himself with a rather large audience. Stede’s style is unique, and, after many requests from his followers, Lucius encourages him to make some more basic pieces he can sell. It's not about making money for Stede, but another way to meet new people who share his interests- as Lucius keeps telling him, it's sad that his personal assistant is the main person he talks to these days. 

So Stede sets out on a new adventure, and has quite the time designing a new range of patterns for the market. He makes purses, belts, bracelets, and, most importantly, dog collars- all still with his unique designs embossed into them, of course. He rents a booth at his towns monthly craft fair, and very quickly finds himself with a new group of friends in the other regulars- Pete, his usual neighbour, who sells an array of wooden figures he carves, Roach, who runs a stand for his bakery, and Frenchie, who isn't actually a stallholder, but is almost always busking near his friend Wee John’s stand of knitted goods, bringing life to the market even in the pouring rain. There's also Buttons, another regular at the market. Nobody is exactly sure what he does there- he doesn't sell things, or seem to buy anything either, but rain or shine, he's there with the birds.

Stede’s been doing this a few months by the time June rolls around. As he's setting up his stand, he notices that the area is much busier than it’d normally be at this time of morning. Lucius, who got roped into helping run Stede’s stall somewhere down the line (despite his protests that this is not what personal assistant means… But hey, he got a boyfriend out of it, at least), reminds him that there's the parade today, too- not realising that Stede had no clue there was a parade today, and especially not that it was pride. Stede immediately jumps to fretting about the amount of stock he’s brought, and Lucius takes the cue to escape, saying he’ll go and grab them coffee (but really, he's off to flirt with Pete)

Lucius is still missing when Ed stumbles across the little leather stall. Stede’s just ran back to his car to fetch his last boxes of inventory, and by the time he returns, Ed’s already begun to narrow down his choices. Stede greets him, starting to tell him that they're not actually open yet, but before he gets more than a couple of words out, Ed’s exclaiming “You're a Kiwi!!!”

The two of them smile at the shared recognition, and Stede says he’ll make an exception, just for Ed, and asks him what exactly he was interested in. Ed tells him that he's looking for a collar “for his boy”, and points out the particular design he was looking at. It happens to be one of Stede’s favourites from this latest run of work, a fact he mentions to Ed. It leads them into a discussion about Stede’s craft, and Ed’s Izzy, and then everything in between. Ed’s listening intently to the things Stede’s telling him, completely drawn in by the process, and by Stede himself. He watches as Stede stamps Izzy's name into the collar, and Stede even lets him have a go at one of the stamps. 

Lucius reappears sometime in the middle of this- only to immediately retreat again, seeing Stede engrossed with Ed. He sets up camp at Pete's booth opposite, watching this man flirt intensely with his boss- and Stede flirt back just as hard. Does Stede even realise he’s doing it? Lucius had known Stede was gay since before Stede even admitted it to himself, but this is on a whole other level.

The pair stand there so long that Izzy comes to look for Ed- the two of them are manning a float on the parade with their crew, and it's past time for them to get geared up. He's already worked up, frustrated to have been left to set up everything alone, when Ed had just gone to see if he could get them both coffee. So maybe he's a bit of a prick, approaching with a brash “where the fuck have you been, Edward”, to which Stede brings the same energy, giving a bitchy “Ed! Do you know this guy?” Izzy tenses, ready to snap, but then Ed cuts in, excitedly telling Stede that this is “his Izzy!” Which confuses the hell out of Stede. 

Forgetting his earlier attitude, he asks Ed if he “really named his dog after his friend”, only to be met with confusion right back from Ed at where the hell Stede got the idea he had a dog from. Stede gestures at the bag with the collar in it, to which Ed has to tell him, “oh, no, that's for him.” Ed tells Stede that they're here to run a float for their local leather society, and while Stede is certainly shocked by what Ed’s saying, he's not finding himself… uninterested. It's simply that he’s never even considered any of this before, especially not that people would use the things that he made for this, but Ed sounds so enthusiastic about it all. He tells him about how his friends would love to see Stede’s work, about how classic leather gear is always so fucking boring- but not Stede’s stuff, no, Stede’s stuff is “fresh” and “fascinating” and unlike anything Ed’s ever seen before. 

Ed's enthusiasm is incredibly infectious, so when he invites Stede to come back to see their float, he readily agrees. It’s a concept Izzy’s less than enthusiastic about. He doesn’t really want to bring this man who’s dressed like he just walked out of a HOA board meeting to their kinky little corner of the world, but he is having a lot of fun watching Stede squirm, so decides not to raise a protest. He does demand he gets his long-overdue coffee first, though (Stede pays for it- as “compensation for him distracting Ed from his job”, he says, not giving Izzy a second to process before he's tapping his card)

By the time they return to the float, Fang, Ivan & Jim are waiting for them, all already geared up. Stede is stunned silent at the sight for about 5 seconds, before he starts actually looking at the quality of Jim’s harness, and proceeds to go off about the poor quality of the craftsmanship, about how the hardware is tacky and completely the wrong choice with this leather, how his “ten year old daughter could do a better job!!!” 

There's complete silence from the group, until Izzy, of all people, bursts into laughter at Stede’s audacity (and, the fact he was staring at Jim's tits completely unabashedly, like he hadn't even noticed them in the first place). Izzy's laughter sets Ed off as he tells the group about Stede’s misunderstanding- “you didn't say he was a person!” “I mean, he's my dog”- and soon everyone's having a friendly giggle at Stede’s mistake.

It's somewhere in the middle of the retelling that Ed remembers that this whole thing happened because he was buying Izzy a gift. After a moments fumbling, he presents Izzy with the collar-  It's a rich, deep black, embossed with a rolling pattern that resembles waves. It’s made from a firm enough leather to take the tooling, and to remind Izzy that he’s owned while he’s wearing it, yet still soft enough for long term comfort. Izzy's eyes immediately lock on to it, an unreadable expression coming over his face, and Ed turns it; first so he can really see the design and Izzy’s name embossed into it, and then so he can see the small “Ed ♥” on the inside of the collar, right over his swallow tattoo. 

“I did the heart,” Ed says to him softly, intended only for Izzy’s ears. Izzy's eyes flick up to Ed’s, and he raises his chin to give Ed the room to put it on. Ed buckles the collar around his neck almost reverently, a test of the tightness turning into a caress of Izzy's neck. It's a perfect fit.

It's as though something comes over Izzy; so twitchy and abrasive earlier, now silent, staring at Ed with a look akin to worship in his eyes. He obediently tilts his head for a kiss as Ed's fingers move to his chin- It's a sight to behold, and one that has Stede intrigued. He wants to know more about this lifestyle, and these men in particular. He wants to be the one to put that expression on Izzy's face.

The moment breaks as Ed and Izzy pull apart, and Ed calls for the crew to finish the last bits of set up. Izzy shakes himself a little before running off to bark orders again, but even still, there remains a softness to him that wasn't there before. 

Ed turns back to Stede with an apologetic smile, already obvious that he has to get going. Before he can speak, however, Stede jumps in -“My business numbers on the card in the box… I'll be around all day”- Ed’s smile turns more genuine at that, promising to stop by if he gets a moment, and that he’ll send his friend's Stede’s way- “if he wants that kind of business.” Stede says that he does, actually- that he's seen a whole new world already today, and, while he was a little taken aback at first, he can feel the passion Ed and his friends have for this life. If there's one thing that's ever mattered to Stede, it's other people's enthusiasm. Maybe he doesn't completely understand yet, but he would like to try.

One year later, Stede’s back at the market on pride weekend again, far better stocked for the crowds this time around. Lucius is finally free to spend the day flirting with Fang & Pete to his heart's content, now that Stede’s roped his own boyfriends into helping him run the stall- and into modelling the merchandise. Ed loves that part, while Izzy needs a lot more convincing, but the puppy eyes Stede & Ed weaponise against him make a very good argument.

[x-monochrome-x]

ok so imagine this. @hollewdz made a wonderful post about my adventures with superman where clark gets into kryptonite and it shrinks him. i have been rotating that post in my brain for the past 6 hours. me and my friend (@beepbopitsgt) have since been brainstorming!!! there are many types of canon kryptonite; pink, green, gold, black, the works. well i wanted to make a kryptonite that would amplify superman/kryptonians so much they would physically grow when in contact with it. i call it purple kryptonite because dr ivo's parasite suit (in the show) was purple and he grew when in contact with energy and it was. purple. thats crazy anyway here's clark in the middle of being in contact with the purple kryptonite and lois trying to calm him down

edit: sorry i know the arm is weird i was tired 😓😓i will fix when i get home from school i

edit 2: not fixing it ia m going to take a nap enjoy the wonky

[ofmermaidstories]

there’s something so bittersweet and lovely about fanfic, at it’s core. it’s so impermeable, because it’s so individual. fics don’t get finished. fics get lost because they were typed out and sent to friends, in the 70s, and somewhere along the way someone packed it up in a cardboard box and their kids shuffled it to the attic. websites go down. archives get built, but then people lose faith in the story or the canon or the creator and delete them. you read it at like, 3am, and can’t remember the title months later when you look for it again.

the tiktok these comments are from was lamenting about the loss of a favourite fic—it (the tiktok) had 85k+ likes, and over 700 comments, mostly similar to these. people talking about downloading fics to read on a tablet only for them to disappear the next day. using the wayback machine and combing through results, just to find something they loved. i think it’s sweet because it’s so human—how easily we love something, and how easily we lose it. i used to print out my favourite fics, as a kid—i still have a binder of them, buried under yearbooks and the old journals i kept during those topsy turvy preteen years. i could tell you the overarching plot to a Cardcaptor Sakura fantasy AU i read (and loved; it became my personality for months afterwards) but i can’t remember how it ended, or if it even did. i finally broke down and signed up for an account on AO3 specifically to bookmark an old, old fic that i had read somewhere else, years and years and years ago and found again on AO3 only because i accidentally stumbled on the author here on tumblr (i had only found the fic in the first place all those years ago because of a playlist). i used the same shade of lipstick for years purely because a fic i really liked had the main character apply it (it was a limited edition one at the time; i bought my first one from a ebay seller in the UK at double the retail price, lmao) while the love interest watched them, but i can’t remember the name of it, only how it made me feel (and how, for years afterwards, i would wear that shade whenever i felt like the day had something promising to it).

one of the first anon’s i ever got, in the early days of this tumblr, was someone who asked me if it was okay if they downloaded surrender—and of course it was. of course it is. there was a point, during the final stretch when i was trying to write the last chapter, that i almost lost the entirety of what i had written for that fic—and i mean, it was on AO3 by that stage so it would’ve only set me back a chapter or so, but it goes to show how fragile things can be. how sometimes fics only last in tiny ways—because of the unfinished PDF file someone downloads. The patchy memory of someone’s who’s jumbling it and three other fics together. Because someone wore the same shade of lipstick you mentioned, off-hand, for years afterwards.

(this is a love letter to the silent readers; the silent savers. the lurkers. fandom and the internet at large is made of lurkers (eighty-five thousand likes. seven hundred comments). people who saved fics and waybacked them and will reread them, even uncompleted. telling each other we did a good job, that we liked this or we liked that is wonderful, and fun, and a great (and important) way to build a community and has also given me my current friends—but sometimes something you make will matter and live on in a way you will never, ever know. and it’s just how it is. it’s part of the fun and it’s part of the charm. it’s just how we work as people.)

[biblicalhorror]

Aroace Riz real but also Fabian is SO clearly in love with him and Riz has no idea

[curtain-caller]

Coming in hot with more fight-or-flight content let's fucking go

[aroaessidhe]

2024 reads / storygraph

Those Beyond The Wall

sequel/companion to The Space Between Worlds, set a decade later

character-focused sci-fi set in an area divided in two, the rich protected city on one side and everyone else in the post-apocalyptic desert

follows a woman who works under the Emperor in Ashtown, keeping the peace

when mangled bodies start showing up with seemingly no murderer, she’s tasked with finding the cause, and finds out that it’s the result of corruption spanning both cities and multiple worlds

explores oppression and messy revolution, police violence and apartheid

bi & polyamorous MC

[hikukastel]

len.exe

[clottedscream]

Yearly redraw number 9!!!!!

[Image ID: A digital painting of a girl resting on a ledge. She strikes a casual pose, popping a bubblegum bubble and scratching the back of her head. She's dressed in a 2010s-skater-grunge sort of style with a pair of high waisted jorts, denim vans, mismatched slouchy socks, a black tank top, and a ratty, splatter-painted overshirt that says "PUKE" in bold block letters. In the foreground beside her, a skateboard with the same splatter-paint design, and mismatched wheels matching her socks, is propped against the wall. It's covered in stickers, including some cats, a lesbian flag, and a bumper sticker that says "defund the M****rfuckers" with asterisks. The background is a placid suburban scene in watercolor style, with trees casting dappled shadows over the foreground. The sun is low in the sky, as though it were both early morning and late afternoon at the same time. Her large yellow headphones and pink gum bubble create a visual link between her and the wheels of her skateboard, as though the skateboard were a part of her. END ID]

[starfall-isle]

I’m just a ten cent copy

Of people far more advanced than me

[la-horrorosa]

magical girls anime except they've already finished their magical mission as teenagers and now they're adults still grappling with physical and mental trauma from what they went through while they navigate a world that has commodified their identities as magical girls.

[batsplat]

Is Valentino Rossi the best rider in 1vs1 battles?

ehhhhh *shrugs* I mean. the best ever? like. who knows. the best in the field most years he was competing in the sport? maybe, I guess?

this is one of those questions where I don't really like giving definitive answers but am more interested in how you'd even go about assessing it? like, what metrics are you looking at, what are the criteria, can you put numbers to it or do you have to be super holistic about it or what. I think the 1 vs 1 is already an interesting distinctions, because that is a little different from just talking about wheel to wheel skill. they're related skill sets, but it's not the exact same

so. to bring in an example with a sample set of races I imagine most people reading this are pretty familiar with. let's say we're comparing valentino and marc in direct combat with each other. let's say we put the races where they're fighting one-on-one for basically the entire race in one box, so assen 2015 and catalunya 2016. let's say we have races where one of them is working their way through the field - and it's all building towards the confrontation between the two of them, so say a qatar 2013, a qatar 2014, an argentina 2015. let's say you have a very intense fight that doesn't last the whole race, like sepang 2015, or an extended 'duel' that is basically a defensive ride without any actual overtakes, like silverstone 2015. now, you may have noticed that from this list, valentino... kinda wins a lot of these? not qatar 2014, plus sepang 2015 is in the 'this cost both riders too much to have a winner' camp, but except for that? it's a strong record for valentino. however! the moment you take away the '1 vs 1' qualifier, suddenly the record looks way kinder to marc - you have a catalunya 2014, a phillip island 2015 and a phillip island 2017 go in his favour, while only assen 2017 is a multi-rider dogfight that involves both of them where valentino ends up taking the win. I do think when you're considering 'rivalries' and how a particular dynamic develops over time, it's worth looking specifically at what's happening in extended one-on-one combat and differentiating that from dogfights! because it is a different vibe, because it matters if you're just focused on one guy. but of course both categories still matter in assessing direct combat... even if there are also different skills involved in those different types of fights. valentino, even very late in his career, was still particularly adept at challenging and outsmarting individual riders, and it's a specific format he clearly did thrive in. so. yeah. both of these general categories are indicative of w2w ability, even if they're not quite the same - either in terms of the skills required or in terms of narrative implications

here's another issue. valentino tends to win the race-deciding extended confrontations against marc, but obviously that too isn't entirely reflective of what happened when they met each other on-track. this is because during their time together in the premier class, marc was winning a lot more races than valentino and generally had more pace than valentino, so a lot of on-track confrontations that marc came on top of where typically one-and-done type situations. overtake and move on, overtake and move on. so while you still have a misano 2014 (valentino overtakes marc and marc eventually crashes while attempting to keep up) or a brno 2014 (another valentino overtake where he pulls clear), you then also have laguna 2013 (the corkscrew move is the end of that battle), le mans 2014 (a single overtake around halfway through the race after which marc easily pulls clear), indy 2014 (an early tussle that eventually becomes more marc domination), motegi 2016 (similar, except here valentino ends up crashing), thailand 2018 (valentino can't keep up the pace once marc has gotten past)... like, we get to a place where we're risking penalising marc for 'being very fast' and not sticking around once he's gotten the overtake done, which does also feel wrong? it's an odd balance - because, again, when we're talking Actual Rivalries then it does matter who is winning an extended battle, psychologically if nothing else. like if that's the bit that mattered the most to the outcome of your race, if that's the bit people will remember years to come, if you invested a lot into winning that fight, of course it does matter. but that's narrative, not skill... is this really a good way of assessing how good someone is at 1 vs 1 duels?

I picked the example of that specific rivalry not just because it's the one most people are most familiar with or because I love engaging in discourse about that rivalry - but because I think direct rivalry comparisons are probably the most straightforward way you can approach trying to figure out who is 'better'... and marc clocks in just behind casey as the one who has the most balanced record against valentino w2w. like, biaggi is basically a walkover, and honestly you don't really have that many extended 1 vs 1 duels except for welkom 2004. and for sete, obviously a great rivalry (and I've always believed you don't need a rivalry of equals for it to be good and fun), but also once you get past that sachsenring 2003 turning point then the balance does go out of the window. I've been thinking about this in relation to a longer ask I've ended up massively overthinking (surely not), but I was kinda startled looking back at just how one-sided valentino's record is against jorge. like, unless I'm forgetting some major battles, the most extended scrap you can point to that jorge won is for his very first premier class win at estoril 2008 - and that's also pretty much settled by around halfway/two thirds through the race. but the actual 1 vs 1's that last much of the race? catalunya 2009? sachsenring 2009? motegi 2010? well.... hm. races that build to a battle like sepang 2010 also go in valentino's favour, and even extended tussles like le mans 2011 and phillip island 2014 are more valentino W's. hell, even various short and sweet battles like jerez and indy 2008, misano 2009, motegi 2015, aragon 2016, sachsenring 2018 generally have valentino come out on top - though in this category there's some exceptions, like qatar 2008, indy 2009 and jerez 2010 that all involved jorge besting valentino in a short direct fight

which raises another problem... we do need to in some way acknowledge that valentino simply ends up in more of these fights than most of his rivals - and as a direct result ends up winning more of them. like, once jorge clicked into title winning form in 2010, most of his wins became 'shoot off the line and win way ahead of everyone else with metronomic consistency'. I'm not saying all his race wins were like that! and he did win some great duels in his time in the premier class, especially against marc. but of course, he did that kind of dominating races a hell of a lot more than valentino did - whose approach to winning races was more 'qualify wherever, amble off the line, get moving around halfway through the race and figure things out from there'. now, I discussed this point a little bit here in the context of 'was valentino still successfully mind gaming the other aliens' - but just to bring it back, valentino was deliberately approaching his races in ways geared primarily towards being able to fight his opponents, even to the level of how he set up his bike:

you see this most extremely with something like laguna 2008, where valentino flat out knew he didn't have the outright pace to win - his entire strategy was built around not being the fastest but being able to fuck with casey. in that situation, he's not got the speed, he's building his entire strategy for the win around wheel-to-wheel disruption. and this, plus the regularly mediocre qualifying and starts, does just mean that statistically speaking he's overtaking more riders in his average win than any of the other aliens are. like, if that's your primary metric, then yes! he's clearly very good at w2w! by extension he's also very good at 1 vs 1 duels! if you're looking at riders who have clocked in more than a certain number of wins and do the maths of average overtakes per win, then, yes, I would imagine he tops that metric. does that make him the best? ... well, again... it does feel like you're risking penalising the better qualifiers and starters for being better qualifiers and starters and not ending up in seventh place at the end of every single first lap

so, you've got 'how they measure up against their direct rivals' and 'average numbers of overtakes' as ways to begin considering w2w ability as well as 1 vs 1 track record. then you get into increasingly nebulous waters... here's another potential metric for w2w skill I quite like: efficiency in overtaking. not naming any names, but there are certain riders who, when attempting to work their way through the field, will just. get stuck. even though they have a clear pace advantage over the rider directly in front of them. leading to incredible amounts of faffing about rather than just getting the overtake done. obviously, valentino does like to engage in some faffing about too, but generally speaking he's only doing that when he's in close proximity to the race leader and can realistically get himself to the front of the pack fairly quickly. he's very efficient when he's actually working his way through the field. of course, this is something marc is similarly excellent at, as he has shown plenty of times this year... which. well. this is where we run headfirst into another problem: this sport has changed a lot over the years and some things are simply not at the same difficulty level as they were in past years. so, sticking with those two, which of these is a 'better' comeback? 2006 sachsenring, where valentino starts tenth on the grid after tyre problems in qualifying, at a track he doesn't really love and in serious championship trouble, but works his way to the front before having to fend off the chasing pack that is coming back at him all the way until the chequered flag? or 2024 sachsenring, where marc starts thirteenth on the grid after having been impeded in q1, at his speciality circuit that he's visiting for the first time on a new bike, and works his way up to p2 despite his fractured rib and finger in an era where overtaking is a lot harder than it was in 2006? well, first of all, congrats to both of them, very nicely done. but secondly, that's kind of the problem, right? while I'm sure prime valentino in this era would also regularly be doing that marc/pedro thing where they make the commentators go 'oh ho ho they said overtaking was impossible in motogp these days!!' - at the end of the day his approach involved some built-in faffing about that was also more feasible back in the day. if we're assessing w2w ability, we do need to make some kind of allowance for era - which also affects how often riders are likely to find themselves in 1 vs 1 duels in the first place

here's another plausible metric: last lap battles. this is ALSO something that is super era-dependent. casey in his whole time in the premier class gets involved in like? about four battles that are still going on in the final lap? there's definitely a few I'm forgetting, especially if they weren't for wins/podium places, but it's definitely not a lot. compare and contrast with how the 2017 to 2019 era played out. everything back then was tyre management, tyre management and more tyre management, and dovi in particular was big on the 'eh let's win this race at the slowest possible pace' thing, where everyone crawled around the track as slowly as they could get away with before pulling the pin a few laps before the end. obviously, the characteristics of that era were a) very beneficial to dovi, in that they rewarded both those who knew how to make those specific tyres work (and his decline in 2020 was largely linked to the changes in tyres) and those who were very good at managing last lap duels, but b) inherently were more likely to produce last lap duels than a few other eras. like, in the alien era, which regularly featured gaps of. idk. seven seconds between the front runners, the characteristics of those bikes (as well as those riders) just meant you had very few battles that lasted that long. so inherently, it's harder to judge riders like, say, casey on how good they are in that kind of situation, not least because you are working with such a tiny sample size. and those battles are a big feature of how we remember 1 vs 1 duels!! people love last lap duels!!

now, yes, obviously valentino's record in 1 vs 1 last lap duels is very strong, and there's really only a few he loses over the course of his entire career. dovi is another strong contender in that particular category if we're just limiting ourselves to riders this century (which we are). (unfortunately, those two kinda took turns to be competitive so we didn't really get much of a direct h2h, but off the top of my head I think it's a pleasing 2-2? dovi takes qatar 2008 and le mans 2011, valentino takes qatar 2015 and argentina 2019. I feel like I'm definitely forgetting something.) but again, you do end up in caveat central with this metric. look at marc, who was reliably finding himself in last lap duels specifically at tracks he and/or the honda were quite poor at - again, ragging on that record too much does feel like you're penalising him for managing to get there in the first place. on the other hand, is it really fair to take too much credit away from dovi in handling those situations - surely, at the point where you're arriving in the last lap together, you're at a stage where both riders have a decent chance of winning? on the third hand, it is worth pointing out that dovi is more often than not in the lead going into those last laps, and is fending off a sort of on-the-edge last gasp 'might as well have a go' marc attack. 'last lap battles' is inherently quite a loose term, and how much should who's leading going in be considered a criterion? does it matter if you actually have an overtake or not? does it matter when in the lap the overtake happens? it's obviously quite an arbitrary category... sete makes a mistake headed into the last lap at sachsenring 2005 that gives valentino the lead, while marc makes a mistake on the penultimate lap of catalunya 2016 that essentially ends his victory challenge towards valentino. how do you compare those?

and at a certain point, you need to get away from the headline numbers and start thinking about what it actually means to be good at 1 vs 1 duels. you get into categories like 'race management' - choosing when best to make your attack, balancing risk and reward, not making risky overtake attempts for no good reason when you could just wait for half a minute longer, making sure not to needlessly fuck your tyres while pushing too hard too early. there's ability to actually execute overtakes, which is a question of race craft, creativity, and also about being able to play the opponent. there's various defensive abilities - somebody like pecco exemplifies this, who is both very hard to initially overtake in part due to his ability on his brakes, but is also adept at immediately re-overtaking (a favourite trick of his mentor too, as it happens). to borrow from another sport's terminology, you can contrast 'conversion' and 'steal' rate - if you have the superior underlying pace at crucial stages of the race, are you actually converting that into your maximum achievable result, or conversely if you have inferior pace, can you steal a result your pace doesn't 'merit'? obviously, you get a massive blot in the copy book every time you fail to convert any kind of result by crashing out or by bagging yourself a severe penalty for your race conduct. what about the psychological dimension? your ability to put pressure on another rider, e.g. by showing them a wheel here or there, to force them into a mistake rather than 'just overtaking' them via pure skill? is reputation and intimidation part of your skill set when it comes to wheel to wheel ability? the off-track 'work' you're doing on the opponent, and the prior weight of their expectations for this fight... your ability to study and analyse riders to pinpoint where they are at their strongest and weakest, while also figuring out where they're going to expect an attack and where they won't - maybe even sucker them into thinking it will come from somewhere differently than it actually does... on sheer weight of his track record, you'd have to say valentino is pretty much peerless in some of these categories. and, yes, some of these skills are weighted quite clearly towards the '1 vs 1' element over the 'multi-rider dogfight' element of w2w skills. they're more about terrorising a specific rival than thriving in the chaos

so. what does all of this mean. what's the actual answer. is valentino the best at 1 vs 1 duels. well. who knows. even if we're ignoring the historical dimension and limiting ourselves just to this century, there's too many confounding factors - from different racing eras within that time span to different individual approaches to racing - to allow us to truly evaluate who the 'best' is. I think the cleanest way to summarise it is... from the great riders this century, valentino is the one who most depends on his 1 vs 1 skills (and w2w skills more broadly). that's his unique selling point in a way you wouldn't say it is for any of the others... the guy who gets closest is dovi - but I still reckon his biggest skill is his tyre management and that was the most important differentiating factor that made him so competitive in 2017-19. his ability to scrap w2w comes second (and is absolutely a constant throughout his career), but really that's the bit that allows him to take advantage of the tyre whispering skills... it lets him finish the job, if you will. whereas with valentino, his brains and cunning broadly speaking and his w2w more specifically - and especially the 1 vs 1 stuff - is like, his x factor. I mean... obviously he's also good at the other things - I called him a mid qualifier but of course it's worth remembering he has 55 career pole positions in the premier class, more than jorge or casey or dani. this is primarily a function of his longevity and all of them are definitely better qualifiers than him, but like. of course he's not slow. it's just that relatively speaking, when compared to the other aliens, he's the one who is winning the least via his actual raw pace. here's one metric for that: in valentino's seven premier class title campaigns, he only has the highest average grid position in only three (and during his super dominant 2002 season, it's joint with biaggi). in three of those title-winning seasons, he's the second best qualifier on average, and in one of them he's only third best. the only other seasons this century where the best qualifier on average doesn't win the title are 2015 (marc just beats jorge, valentino is quite a distant third), 2020 (joan mir icon winning a title with an average grid position of NINE POINT FIVE SEVEN lmaoooooo, only seventh best on the grid), 2022 (fabio is a little ahead of martin and then pecco) and... that's it

which kinda means that... can you say valentino's objectively better at 1 vs 1 battles than the other aliens? well, no. I mean, sure, I do feel fairly happy to say he's better than jorge and especially dani, more *wiggles hand* about casey and marc - because with those two there's enough confounding factors in comparing them to valentino and they've also challenged valentino often enough directly that you can make the alternative case. in the end you do kinda go... well, it's very much a 'all these guys were at their best in very different versions of motogp' thing. what you can say is that for valentino, 1 vs 1 prowess is a bigger part of his game than it is for his fellow aliens. his route to victory both on an individual race level and on a title fight level is built around engaging in a lot of these fights and winning them - and, given how successful he's been, of course you do have to conclude that bit of his game is clearly operating on a high level. so when you compare that to both casey and marc, those two really do have other bits of their games that are more important to their success. fewer of their race victories percentage-wise have been won through 1 vs 1 duels. casey is dominating enough races from the front he's not even doing all that much w2w tussling. marc might be losing plenty of these close duels, but he's relentlessly at the front enough that this consistency is what's giving him titles as much as anything else. whereas valentino's entire approach is tailored towards finding himself in those kinds of direct scraps, winning said scraps, and then using those scraps as a way to demoralise the opposition... unsurprisingly, he's got the biggest sample size of that style of battle and has a very high success rate. who knows if he's the best, but he is the most dependent on that specific skill. and he sure has had a lot of practise at those duels, which I imagine will have gotten him just a little closer to being perfect

[sweetsuke]

narukana bffs. you agree 🫶

[forestslut]

this is me listening to “&” (Ampersand), Part One btw. if you even care