#it’s funny how my interest like to line up like that

[spockandawe]

Oh, this is interesting. To me. I'm not sure it's interesting to anyone else! But I'm on my computer for once and FULL of words again, and I'm delighted to talk to myself given half an excuse.

So, I made a post about Long Live Evil! Because I cracked open the book and was absolutely taken aback by how transparently it seemed to be an SVSSS reskin. I wrote up a goodreads thing (it's whatever, I'm going to rehash the main points here too), because I was also full of words and beans after finishing the book yesterday, and after polling online friends, I was surprised to see that the comparison didn't seem to have organically occurred to anyone else, when it was so naked to me. I know there’s a TON of transmigration and isekai stories out in the universe, and pointing at one single book was a big claim, so I just had to assemble all my thoughts! I find this so interesting! And I reblogged my initial one-off post with a little more elaboration about some of the things that jumped out at me, then got on with live and went back to chipping at ORV and GHG, and shotgunned MADK this afternoon.

This is a subtle nod and a wink to my passionate love for these kind of... morally grey main characters! Calling them villains might be a bit much, I don't think there are many true villain protagonists out there (LLE included), and even Devil Venerable has a demonic cultivator who's doing demonic shit and killing loads of people... but with the ultimate balance of the heavens and earth as his priority. This kind of story is my jam. I was recced this book on the basis of transmigration and sketchy protagonists being my thing. I can't rightfully call SVSSS the best cnovel I've ever read, but it is my favorite. And I've probably reread it more times than any other cnovel.

So, that SRB post, huh? I put Long Live Evil behind me, and honestly even following up on the sequel is mmmmmdoubtful, but THIS snagged my attention again. First, the comparisons she's calling out as incorrect are wild to me. Draco and Harry? What? Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian?? (I had to ponder that one for a hot minute, but I bet you anything it's about 'the golden cobra' and 'the last hope' and that's just silly, they're not wangxian, they're MOSHANG)

I was recced LLE in one friend group, but I had an anti-rec from my book club friend group. My book club friend hadn't been at all impressed by it! And she's cool, and I talk up svsss and mxtx to that crowd every so often, without really expecting them to read it. I talk about transmigration as a plot device that I love, and the things that can be done with it! But with that connection in mind between the books, as I started LLE, I was jokingly defending the honor of SVSSS to this crowd, so I admit I was primed to recognize similarities.

I really truly did not make it far in the book before locking it down. I was getting vibes basically from the moment Rae started gushing about her problematic fictional fave, I referenced 95% certainty shortly after she makes the jump to the fictional universe, the golden cobra was 98%, Lia Mingyan's, I mean Liu Mingyan's lack of sex scenes was 99%, and the first pov section for Marius-jun was where I gave up and called it as a sure thing.

It'll be very funny if I'm wrong! I don't think I'm wrong.

Plenty of spoilers to follow, because I identified this inspiration early, I guessed basically every plot twist early, I don't have the patience to dance around spoilers while explaining how it all lines up.

Now, I said this elsewhere, but it bears repeating: I don't think this is plagiarism. I think it's tasteless to accuse an author of stealing and repurposing characters to her face. But I think it's also tasteless to repurpose characters as nakedly as happened here! Again? If I'm wrong? That's why I'm talking to myself on my blog and not messaging her directly (?????? who even does that). What are the stakes for me being wrong here? I look like a clown online? That would be terrible, I've never done that before! It's not a crime to write in ways I find distasteful. It's not a crime to write a book I think is not good, even apart from the use of fictional influences. But I like talking about my feelings online, and I can't be stopped!

But there's two aspects of this that make me somewhat uncomfortable in a less fun way. Both are contingent on the big IF. If this is inspired by svsss, I think it's not a classy move to take a Chinese story in a Chinese setting, inspired by the modern Chinese literary scene and classical Chinese fantasy, and just dump the characters into a generic western setting. Fanfic? Have fun and try to be respectful. Profic, making money off it? Ehhhhh. The question of how much change is necessary is a tricky one! It's not one I'm equipped to answer, this is not my wheelhouse or my place to speak. But it doesn't make me feel good!

However, here's where I have more personal stake:

Again, if this is inspired by svsss. It really doesn't feel great to see a queer story (a smash hit in more than one country!) stripped down for parts and made into a heterosexual story. It's not all heterosexual, we get side lesbians, we get men with homoerotic tension. But the central ship is now a guy and a girl. And it... stings a little extra, because in the story of svsss, the idea of assumptions about default (hetero)sexuality are such a central theme. A queer man has written a trashy, oversexed stallion novel where the hottest guy in the universe collects the hottest women like pokemon, and it sells so much better than the more personal stories he tried to write. He has to write this pandering trash to make money to live, he can't live on the more authentic stories he tried to tell before. The protagonist is the projection of his own insecurities and self-hate, and the protagonist's right hand man is his projection of his own ideal man. Another man transmigrates into the book, assuming that he himself is straight, assuming the protagonist is straight, and the force of their love changes the course of the entire narrative. In retrospect, it's upsetting to see those load-bearing themes casually carved out of the story and the hollowed-out remains used like this.

Anyways, in their place, now we've got running gags about how the heroine's tits are BIGHUGE now and she can't keep her balance because her GIANT HONKERS keep tipping her over.

I'm a little more bothered than I was yesterday! On the other hand, since I saw SRB's post, I've been chewing on that central ship. Full disclosure, it was one of my favorite aspects of the novel! My other favorite aspect is the dynamic between the golden cobra and the last hope (the moshang, which I think some people misdiagnosed as wangxian).

I know that the central ship here is the thing that's LEAST comparable to svsss, and the biggest roadblock in the way of my theory. On the other hand, I think it was the thing that HAD to change if this story was going to repurpose svsss without getting called out for being a classic 'bro can i copy your homework' adventure.

For this section, let's assume that I'm right and let's roleplay an author trying to figure out how to change Bingqiu into something not-obviously-Bingqiu. How do we need to differentiate Rae and Key from Shen Qingqiu and Luo Binghe.

First, we eliminate the martial sect thing. Easy peasy! That's a wuxia concept, and this book goes full nondescript western fantasy. She's not his teacher, he's not her student. And if she's not his teacher and he's not her student, why does this woman have power over this man, to build up the resentment that inspires him to turn the tables on her later? Well, in nondescript western fantasy, she's a noblewoman of some kind, and he's a servant of some kind. Noble lady treats servant like garbage, servant resents her. Doing great.

And to loop back around to the beginning of this a little, I think it really is key to this reskinning that Rae is a SHE. If the central ship remained queer, it would be so, so hard to pull away from the most identifiable thematic aspects of svsss. And pieces of what remain are... kind of bizarre for a normie heterosexual ship where our protagonist is aware that she's transmigrated into an impossibly desirable sexpot character!

Shen Qingqiu never considers that Luo Binghe might be interested in him because Luo Binghe is about to have a HAREM of beautiful women, he's the most heterosexual man of all time, and Shen Qingqiu is straight too! Besides, Shen Qingqiu is his teacher! He half-raised Luo Binghe! Even if Luo Binghe was bent, he wouldn't be interested in an old man like Shen Qingqiu!

Rae is 20, occupying a 24-year-old body. Her character's sexiness is relentlessly remarked upon from start to finish. Key is 18. Why is Rae so sure that he looks up to her as... a mentor, as an older woman? He almost goes down on her! He makes out with her! And she's like 'ah yes, it means nothing. lol. so funny how these things happen.' Bruh, at least after Luo Binghe kissed Shen Qingqiu, Shen Qingqiu finally got hit with the clue stick. Binghe didn't try to blow him only for Shen Qingqiu to keep noodling on about how Binghe definitely isn't into him in any sense, even the most oblivious man in the universe managed to catch on.

Why doesn’t Rae think there’s any chance of genuine attraction here? Yeah, I get that she's coming back from terminal cancer. She's doing great. She knows that the fictional character she occupies is one of the most desirable ladies in the land. He’s a teenager. He’s not expressing disinterest. A lack of horny for sexy lady ought to be more surprising for her. But I guess she’s slightly older than him and that small age gap has been magnified by the transmigration, so she conceptualizes herself only as his teacher, I mean mentor.

I’m not even mad at this dynamic. I love their chemistry, the ‘boss’ thing is cute, but lordt, I have to wonder if it’s meant to substitute for ‘shizun.’ But you know where this comparison really falls apart? Key isn’t really THAT much Luo Binghe.

At least, he isn’t in terms of personality. I mean, we’ve got the mysterious magical heritage, the healing factor, the unbeatable fighting skills, being beaten repeatedly because of the protagonist (tbh it’s sexier when she’s responsible, rather than just being a bystander), being yeeted into the abyss, I mean the ravine, to rise again and assume power as the merciless ruler of all the land. Oh, and he comes back from the dead still bearing the scar that represents her betrayal. In the original novel, he turned on her the moment he got his opening and was responsible for coming up with her gruesome torment.

(Also, Shen Qingqiu being terminally ill isn’t canon, but it’s very popular fanon, and it’s hard to ignore that with how hard the narrative lingers over Rae’s terminal illness as her gateway into this fictional world)

But! But the things that are different! Luo Binghe is a smart and sweet teenager, who had a rough start on the streets and has a tragically deceased single adoptive parent, but that’s their only backstory parallel, he doesn’t blacken until he’s thrown into the abyss. Not like Key, Key is a murder-happy sociopath, a former street kid who fought the odds and made good, and who’s a lot sharper and cleverer than the upper classes think someone like him should be. He utterly destroyed a righteous cultivator clan, I mean glassblowing guild, for the sake of revenge. Once our heroine scores a number of trust points with him, we unlock secret backstory about how as a small child, he experienced deeply formative hand trauma.

He’s Xue Yang.

It took me a moment to process the wangxian allegations SRB mentions in her post, because I was trying to figure out how someone would be aware of wangxian, and read that backstory, and somehow miss it. But it’s fine, I’m pretty sure they were actually talking about the golden cobra and the last hope! So LET’S TALK MOSHANG.

It was so funny. I was liveblogging the book to friends, because honestly, I do not jive with the buffy-esque joss whedon relentless quip-quip-quip writing style. I was struggling to stay engaged when the narrative never took a moment to breathe. And I perked up at the introduction of this new character! He seemed kind of fun, kind of meta, Key came over to share Secret Info with him, and I messaged the friend who recced this to me (also an svsss appreciator) ‘lol, what if he’s shang qinghua. just straight from svsss shang qinghua.'

Reader, a second transmigrator has hit the narrative.

Now, in some ways, he’s a disappointment to me. He’s not nearly as interesting as Shang Qinghua. Adding the author to their own narrative is way more fascinating to me than just dropping a rando into the story. But I’ll take what I can get, I think multiple transmigrators are almost always a fun decision. And for the queer reasons I mentioned above, I think Shang Qinghua ties into the themes of his novel a lot more strongly than Eric does here. I don’t want to call him ‘the golden cobra’ every time, I get more self-conscious every time I write it. And honestly, the reveal of Eric’s full Eric Whatever name feels a little awkward and… pointed compared to the sheer opacity of Shang Qinghua’s existence. Never mind what his name was in the real world, we don’t even know his name before he was a Peak Lord. I’m not upset we got a name or anything, it would make certain fannish activities a lot easier if Shang Qinghua had additional canon names, but it was an interesting detail in light of how parallel the characters are.

Okay! He’s not the author! He’s still a super-fan. He transmigrated into the book years before the LLE main character, and has settled in pretty well. According to canon as Rae knows it, he’s fated to be killed by his own favorite character. He’s fast-thinking and fast-talking, and scattered and all over the place, but dangerous when cornered and more competent than he looks. He deals in information and manages a network of spies. He’s a creative! He and the main character banter relentlessly and get along like a house on fire. He and the king’s trusted ice-cold right hand man share a weird codependent dynamic that’s part hostile, part homoerotic.

Marius has complicated feelings about not-shang-qinghua. Eric is a coward, he’d rather talk fast and lie than stand up for anything, he cowers and cringes and isn’t honorable. He and Mobei-jun also shared a deeply formative experience in their youth, where as a teenager in distress, Eric/Shang Qinghua appeared before them and announced their devotion. In Shang Qinghua’s case, it was offering to serve him (and saving him from huan hua injuries), and in Eric’s case, it was declaring him to be his favorite character (and saving him from sad teenaged isolation), but man. And in the end, after a long, fraught relationship, Marius/Mobei-jun is furious and strangely distraught when Eric/Shang Qinghua abandons him.

Guys, it’s not wangxian.

I think it hits less hard when Marius’s themes of family violence aren’t allowed to sit directly in the narrative, and when it seems like some vague berserker rage thing rather than Linguang-jun just bluntly wanting to murder him for practical reasons, but hey! This was still, genuinely, one of my favorite parts of the story. I wanted more more more of them, I would read this moshang au any day.

After that, the parallels get a little more nebulous! The comparisons between the abyss and the ravine are pretty obvious. I’m not sure why we decided to build our city and palace right on top of the pit of people-eating ghouls rather than literally anywhere else, but it means we don’t need to take a special field trip to Jue Di Gorge, which means we can do the bait and switch where it turns out Key was a heavenly demon all along. The temperamental King Octavian, the young master of the palace, one might even say the xiao gongzhu if they were feeling spicy, jealously tries to romantically monopolize half our main ship and has the other half flogged with a magic whip.

I already mentioned that Rae brings up that Liu Mingyan — wait, I said I’d change some answers so it wasn’t obvious I copied — Lia doesn’t get a sex scene in the books even though loads of other people did, just like Shen Qingqiu praises Liu Mingyan for her untouchable image in such an oversexed, gratuitous book. I don’t think it would be right to call Liu Mingyan a white lotus heroine in either SVSSS or PIDW, but her archetype is in that wheelhouse, and Lia is just a white lotus rival played straight (and played deliberately, another touch I liked). We don’t have made up animals like black moon rhinoceros pythons in LLE, but we do have leucrotas, which are like a lion and a hyena and serve no narrative purpose.

Oh, you know what else I forgot to mention? Rae gives Key one of her red ruby earrings, and he refuses to sell it, and stubbornly holds onto it until the bitter end. Is this Xue Yang holding onto the last piece of candy Xiao Xingchen gave him, or is it Hua Cheng determinedly keeping Xie Lian’s red coral earring with him even through his own death? Por que no los dos?

There are things that are original in here. I know that this presentation undersells how much of the book is original. The trouble is, almost everything I thought was good is something that either was lifted from another person’s creative endeavors, or is being tainted by association with all the other naked lifts. Some of the noble ladies have an archery contest! That’s pretty new and fresh, huh? We didn’t have any archery contests in SVSSS!

Yeah, but we sure did in MDZS. And MDZS is already in play, because we’ve already got one character who’s just copy and paste Xue Yang.

There’s a thermocline of trust in this book that fell off for me sharply, and it turned a lot of this into a guessing game of ‘wait NOW what the refrance? owo'

I’m probably on a hair trigger by now, but I’ve also probably missed some things. And I’m sure this is a synthesis of multiple influences, because most stories are. But this feels like cooking and trying to season your dish with a little salt and then the container lid just falls off.

Emer isn’t a clear parallel to an existing character! Love that for her! Love a lady with an axe, especially if she gets a nice girlfriend! On the other hand, in terms of backstory? Wow, she’s been raised with our protagonist since early childhood, as not-quite-foster-siblings, but she was always the clear unfavorite and harbors a lot of resentment over that. Oh, and once Rae entered the story, Rae started trying to speedrun an enemies to 'hello hiiii we should bestiessss' arc with her. I think she had to have an axe, because a whip or a sword would make the Jiang Cheng and/or Liu Qingge vibes a little uncomfortably strong. She doesn’t follow their character arcs! But the disappointing thing is that it felt like she was just there to facilitate pasting the frankenstein patchwork of the narrative together rather than having an arc of her own.

(why did Marius stop to give her a sword lesson? Why did she immediately sneak onto the roof to eavesdrop on the king?? It’s hard to give her credit for being an original character when none of her original actions make sense in the greater universe)

Oh, I almost forgot, we’ve even got magic plot macguffin plants. While Binghe is in the abyss, Shen Qingqiu needs to get the Sun And Moon Dew Flower Seed so he can build an escape hatch for himself before Binghe wrecks his shit. Rae, on the other hand, needs to secure the Flower of Life and Death by an arbitrary deadline as an escape hatch so she can go back to her original life rather than being trapped here forever. Very different! There’s even little side tangents about how these plants can be so beneficial to others, Zhuzhi-lang is desperately trying to secure a seed to build a new body for Tianlang-jun (which Shen Qingqiu enables him to do, despite not knowing what he wants it for), and Rae thinks about how the flower could “save someone on the very doorstep of death,” and gives it away for that exact purpose. So different!

I need to cut myself off, otherwise I’ll keep going. Truly, there is original content in here. It was just all the stuff I didn’t like. The character quipping was. God. There sure was a lot of it! By sheer volume, that’s a lot of original content. Some of the extended cast was interesting, I enjoyed the Horrors and their brothers, I liked Valencia. Now, I didn’t like how basically every girl ADULT WOMAN in this cast was in shitty teen mean girl mode. I didn’t like how immature every character interaction period was. I lost track of how many times Rae was going around in sexy clothes and rando servants were like “HARLOT,” out loud about a favored noblewoman, you know, as you do. Especially when her bodyguard is pulling against his choke chain just waiting for an excuse to do a murder. I don’t need Rae to be the picture of flawless maturity. But nobody is mature, full stop, not even the set dressing servants.

For a less loaded example, the cumplane friendship dynamic is here, practically intact. Shen Qingqiu can't snipe about authorial choices, because Eric isn't the author, so instead Rae and Eric squabble about favorite scenes and favorite ships and such. But it isn't nearly as charming when we don't see these two characters dropping their dignified Peak Lord cultivator roleplay to talk shit with each other. Rae and Eric never have a filter once in this book. They are always Like This, it isn't a secret face that gets unlocked when they're bouncing off each other, they are never circumspect, never have a filter, never have any idea they shouldn't be speaking their full thoughts at full volume 24/7. Even after this starts to have material consequences when they're inevitably overheard! It's an immersion-breaking level of immaturity, which is terribly frustrating when the original dynamic that I loved is only changed in such minor ways.

And another thing that actually tastes way more sour than it did on first reading – Valencia is probably the least mean girl of all the women in the cast. She’s delightful. Too bad that in every scene but her last one, Rae, who repeatedly references her own experiences having her body and appearance ravaged by cancer, cannot for love or money stop talking about how uggo Valencia is.

I know this is an adult novel. The characters are, by age, adults. There’s almost an oral scene. God, I wish we’d gotten the oral scene. But by every other metric, the characters are all high schoolers and I’m an exhausted adult muttering to myself ‘they’ll grow out of it, please GOD let them grow out of it.’

Again, none of this is a crime! Nobody forced me to finish the book! And I did enjoy the book. Parts of it! But that very distinct partial enjoyment experience almost forced me to dissect my own emotional response. And truly, other than a few flashes like Valencia, almost everything I enjoyed about the book was something I could trace directly back to one author, and mostly to one book by that one author. I… enjoyed half of the book. And if I can track most of that half back to mxtx and svsss, I really think that says something about how much wasn’t done to make the inspiration behind this book the author’s own.

It's disappointing! I read this book because I like svsss, I read it because I want more books like svsss, I read it because I trawl the novelupdates tags looking for more books that will hit me the way svsss did. It doesn’t taste good to be served reheated svsss with expired buffy sauce drizzled on top. It tastes even less good once I have a minute to think about what turning an m/m meditation on sexuality and self-image and assumptions about others into a m/f snooze does to the themes I loved so much. It stings to see an author rehash a book that was/is so important to me, and see what they kept and what they threw out, and be like ‘oh, so… these were the elements that mattered to you?’

Again, I hate to be redundant with this, but. I think calling this book plagiarism would be overdoing it. I think it’s tasteless. I don’t think being tasteless is a crime. It remains wild to me that she’s getting messages calling out her supposed inspiration, even if I’m simultaneously criticizing the judgment of the people making those specific comparisons. And I ABSOLUTELY understand why she’s reluctant to own up to the specific inspirations behind this book, because good lord. If it was me, I’d be professionally embarrassed too.

It’s not my job to be the book quality police, but I think someone as experienced as this should be able to do a better job of synthesizing inspirations into something original. I dropped ‘can’t afford to offend my scheming disciple’ earlier this year, because that narrative couldn’t shake the taste of stale svsss fanfic, and it was much more subtle than this is. Once again, if I’m wrong, this post will be retroactively VERY funny and I’ll be all ears to see what her inspirations actually were. I don’t think I’m wrong.

[cynthiav06]

With Percy, we know that he hates going to school and his goals don’t really line up with Annabeth’s, but Annabeth is kind of forcing him to do it with her because he can’t say no to her. Say Rick didn’t make Annabeth Percy’s entire personality, what do you think he would’ve done in the mortal world rather than go to university?

I was checking my drafts cause I am trying to catch up on all the asks in my inbox ( as I said in one of my earlier posts I was in middle of a medical situation so I have at least a month of backlog) and found this draft.

The funny thing is I had already written most of the post in the draft version, and this ask wasn't even being displayed in my inbox, so I was very confused as to when it was from.

But it's such a good prompt and a sort of controversial question in the fandom, so I wanted to post it asap.

Percy doesn't like studies, but he knows the importance of it, so I am sure he will finish his initial college, probably either in the science or arts section. We know at one point he got better grades than Annabeth at one point so he certainly isn't quitting studies and doing way better than what people expect. He also wouldn't like just staying at home and doing nothing (I am looking at certain Percabeth stans here), so he definitely would be doing one job or another.

1.

I don't think he would study marine biology like most believe. After a conversation I had with someone who had taken the course, I am convinced Percy wouldn't like it. It's heavily based on chemistry, and we know how much Percy is affected by sea creatures being mistreated or caged, so having to study marine biology wouldn't really be something he would choose.

2.

An interesting twist would be if he chose to be a writer like his mother.

We all know that Percy writes or at least dictates and narrates the first five books, which are written and narrated entirely from his perspective. Moreover, there are books on Percy just narrating his own sarcastic takes on Greek gods and Greek heroes. What if he did actually catalogue his own adventures in those books as a sort of manual for other demigods on how to deal with certain monsters and gods and such.

Through Percy's thoughts, even as 12 years old, we can certainly say he has advanced vocabulary despite being dyslexic and given how much he admires Sally, why wouldn't he be interested in following her footsteps. Sure, he has trouble reading, but that's not to say he wouldn't love expressing his thoughts through humorous retelling of his own adventures which he can pass as fiction to normal readers but actual experiences in demigod world. Who doesn't want to know the exploits of Percy Jackson?

Plus, it's a good money hack. And don't for a second tell me he wouldn't. Sally petrified Gabe, and then they sold his statute to a museum as a sculpture and earned money off of that. So Sally would definitely encourage it, and Percy would even follow through on it just for shits and giggles and the added benefit of helping demigods and earning money.

[I literally want this to happen just for the Godly reactions. I am all for god slander, especially Zeus slander. Poseidon would be half laughing at the book and half worried cause of the sheer catastrophes his son seems to fall into almost on a daily basis.

Apollo would be having a grand time, and Hermes will be half depressed and half impressed throughout. Overall, it would be hilarious all around, and it might finally make the gods feel a bit more accountable . It's literally the Reading Percy Jackson Series trope, and that's always fun.]

3.

One other option is that Percy will get into environmental preservation, specifically the protection of Rivers and Seas from pollution by actively involving himself and others in its cleanliness and purification. He would also run Beach cleanliness programs.

I think he and Grover would become environmental activists and would definitely get into preserving forest areas and other places where nature spirits dwell frequently. I can see them doing it a lot, long-term wise, too.

4.

I think he would kind of like marine explorations, but that might cause his powers to be somewhat exposed, so he might not do that, but it's a possibility.

That's all I can think of. I would like to hear everyone else's opinions on this.

[ninyard]

i am a BIG supporter of create what you want for your own joy, so absolutely do what you would like to do for the trial!! no one should be pressuring you to do it a specific way unless that’s how you Want to do it.

but if you were asking about what we’d like… personally i would love to see the whole trial as much as possible (i really don’t want you to overwhelm yourself) especially for higgin’s and nicky’s parts!! i like when we see more than just Big Main Parts, especially bc you flesh it out so well <3 sometimes it’s even more hard hitting when it’s Not from the people we expect, you know?

also, thank you for making the socmed aus!! they make me giggle and kick my feet every time, and also wail in agony and clutch at my chest… you have the range <3

GOD i wrote a whole long ass response to this and i didn't realise until too late that my phone was going to die </3 and it died </3

But it was something along the lines of I'm really glad that the general consensus seems to be to do all five days of the trial, or however many days it ends up being, from start to finish. For me personally it'd feel unfinished if I skipped parts just to get to the ~interesting~ parts, and I think if I'm going to make something like this then I want to show it all.

It's not this deep, but I guess it's like... It's fucked up. People are making memes about a murder trial involving rape and other things that are just not funny at all. And skipping parts just to get to "GOD NEIL IS SO CHAOTIC ON THE STAND" or whatever feels,,, insensitive? Unjust?? I don't know

but people are also doing that shit in real life. About real people, real trials, with real victims and real perpetrators. Sensationalising trials just because it's a celebrity on the stand, or it's an "interesting" murder trial or whatever. People are making memes and jokes about them. And people are making their own minds up about the verdict because of it. I want to show people who think Aaron's guilty because of something the cop who arrested him said. I want to show people who think Andrew is an unreliable witness because of something Higgins says, somebody who thinks Aaron isn't guilty because a forensics team mentioned something about the crime scene that they don't think sounds right. I want to make this from the outsider view on the publics reaction to a trial, and specifically people who almost idolise Aaron, or Kevin, or Neil, or Andrew. People who don't see them as human, but as celebrities, as people who are supposed to be perfect. People who see a trial like this and think, "it's okay for me to make jokes about this, or to post about this, because they're just famous people. They're not like real people to me."

People are at home becoming twitter lawyers and making up their minds based on what they read or see online, and it almost separates the reality of the situation from the "characters" that people create out of defendants and victims. You see people hopping on bandwagons or hate trains or whatever when it comes to these kind of public trials. People making clips of something "funny" a lawyer or witness said for the sake of content. People making temporary celebrities out of the judge and jury and legal representation. For what? For likes?

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I want to show the different sides of how people actually react to trials like this without becoming insensitive to the fact that trials like this,,, do actually happen. But by making a fan tweet a joke about murder, I'm making that, I'm thinking of the words that go into the tweet. So it's tough. And again I know it's not that deep, but that's kind of... most of the reason why I've been putting it off? Because it's hard. It's hard not to feel like it sensationalises those kinds of things. It's hard not to feel like "God, am I just making fun of this situation here?" while also being reminded that yeah, maybe, but people actually react like that.

So is it worth the tumblr post to make memes and tweets out of something that happens irl, and affects real people? Is it insensitive, or is it just fandom stuff that isn't perceived in an insensitive way at all, because it is just that, a fandom post?

[aylacavebear]

Soulmates? Yeah, right, pft. - Ch. 15

When you turn sixteen, and your soulmate's name doesn’t appear anywhere on your body that you can find, you figure you had to be the only person on the planet who didn’t have one. Most of the town shuns you, so you stick close to family. Your Aunt Ellen raised you after your parents died in a car crash when you were two, but what happens when the Winchesters return to town and buried secrets begin to come to light?

Pairing: Mechanic Dean Winchester x OC Reader/You

Word Count: 2615

Warnings: Angst, suspense, emotional situations, The Tension is Growing, Premonitions.

A/N: This is my non-Supernatural fic I'm attempting. Please let me know what you think, as I always love hearing from my readers.

----------------------------------------- Chapter 15

For a while, you just sat there, your emotions running completely rampant as your thoughts ran laps around your mind. They all knew something that you hadn’t been told. Whatever it was, it wasn’t in your parent's letters, and it was more than Dean had already told you, which you thought had been everything.

Even if you still weren’t convinced he was your soul mate, you had kept your distance from him, only keeping things to friendship. The thought of the whole soul mate thing made your mind snap back to how you’d ended up alone in this room and looked around for a mirror. Finding one hanging over the dresser, you walked over to it and moved your dress so you could see what had only been incoherent lines.

You felt a knot in your stomach as you looked at it. The only letter that had come in was the last one, an n. 

There are other names that end with the letter ‘n.’

You needed to write down every tidbit of information you had at the moment. Quickly scanning the room, you found a notepad and a pen on one of the nightstands. 

No mark at 16. Parents killed at 2. Wounded soul. Shunned by town. Winchesters showed up 3 months before my 25th birthday. Promotion at garage and became Dean’s boss. They joked about him not doing anything funny with me. Sam and Dean knew I didn’t get my mark. Have to fully heal to get my mark. Dean knew something when he met me, and so did the boys at the garage. I could talk to Dean, easily, honestly. He saw me at school. Lisa isn’t Dean’s soulmate. Bobby had us work together on Dean’s first day, and we became friends, quickly. Dean was always thinking of me. The adults knew about the marriage contract and never told me, and they knew my parents hid key documents. Bobby and John were thankful Dean and I hit it off so quickly and became friends.

The more you wrote out, the faster your heart began beating. Most of that had only happened within the first month of meeting the Winchesters. There was so much more that was there, and you needed to see how it all fit together, like the parts of a car. That was how your mind worked, slowly seeing the connections. You’d never wanted to hope to find your soulmate, even after what Dean had said.

My parents left me letters, telling me about the Vaughts. The Vaughts knew what would happen if I lost my parents. They knew about my lineage. They knew I would be an empath.

That last line made you stop and think further.

Wait. Why would that matter? What would be the purpose of making me marry Cole? Why is that important? What about an empath, don’t I know?

You pulled out your phone and began searching online for anything related to empaths and why they’d be important, other than in specific jobs that helped people. There were more things you probably should have written down, but with the questions plaguing your mind, you had to find answers.

Nearly an hour, perhaps longer, passed, and you were still attempting to find anything that would answer your questions. You’d made a few notes, but it was only tiny pieces. One interesting thing was that if an empath found their soulmate, they could hear each other’s thoughts, but there was no conclusive evidence on the distance that worked. That didn’t help your other questions when it came to the Vaught family.

Frustrated, you tossed your phone on the bed and looked back at the list you’d been making. Reluctantly, you picked up the pen and jotted down other things. 

Dean seemed to know what I was feeling even if I hid it. He was always there when I had a nightmare. He never pushed anything intimate. All he ever did was try to comfort me and be there for me. He said he knew I was his soulmate at 16. The Vaughts

At that moment, goosebumps ran down your entire body. The Vaughts knew he was your soulmate. Dean had explained what had happened with that woman, Lisa. Even in your parents' letters, they had told you what the Vaughts were capable of. Now you had new questions, on top of the ones before.

Why didn’t Dean get closer to you? What was holding him back? Why wouldn’t he want to help you heal by being intimately close? What did your twenty-fifth birthday have to do with it all, and why was that date so important? 

That’s when you remembered Sam had told you that the powers that be were keeping this sort of thing from making it to the regular news. You glanced at the closed door of that bedroom and sighed, setting the pen down on the notepad. Yeah, you could storm back down there and demand answers, but what would it accomplish? 

You reluctantly got up and went through your bag, finding some comfortable pajama pants and a tank top. After changing and brushing out your hair, you laid on your back on the bed. You wanted to be alone, but you wanted so badly to have Dean there holding you like he would when you typically felt like this. The fact that he hadn’t come, hurt a bit, but you told yourself he was just busy hanging out with those he hadn’t seen in a while. You’d been the one to storm off.

My life sucks.

The thought made you roll onto your side, pull one of the pillows out from under the covers, and cuddle up to it. Your mark burned again, but you ignored it, no matter how badly it stung. You didn’t want to deal with anything, feeling as overwhelmed as you did. There were far too many questions circling your mind and just as many emotions coursing through your body to let you focus on any one thing, let alone deal with any of them.

With a heavy sigh, you closed your eyes, exhausted in every sense of the word. Your body, mind, and soul needed rest. So, you let the heaviness in your eyes win, slowly closing them as your body relaxed into the mattress, letting sleep take you.

The sounds of hounds woke you sometime in the middle of the night or perhaps very early morning, pulling you from another nightmare. Your heart was pounding, and your breathing was ragged, but you forced yourself off the bed and to the window as the house seemed eerily quiet. The stillness outside on the grounds of Crowley’s property made you think the shadows were moving, watching you. A shiver ran down your body as you watched three large dogs dart across a section of lawn where a lamppost stood.

He’s here…

The thought scared you, and it was hard to breathe, as if something was pressing against your chest.

Dean…

Without thinking, you ran out of your room, needing to find him, more to reassure yourself that he was okay. Halfway down another hall, you stopped dead in your tracks as an image began forming in your mind. 

It was somewhere outside, on Crowley’s land, around his home. Four men in tactical gear were slowly making their way closer to the house, using the shadows to stay hidden. They almost reminded you of what a SWAT team looked like, guns and all. Now you saw dogs, big, black, fierce dogs, more than a dozen of them, moving in packs of three. They were hunting. They, too, were using the shadows to move, just as silently as the four men. Broken glass and a silent gunshot in one of the rooms of the house. The room was blurry, and hard to make out the details. Someone was sitting on the edge of the bed, and there was a dart on the person's neck, but you couldn’t make out enough details.

You shook your head a bit, pushing the images away. With the emotions swirling through your mind and body, you took a shaky breath, steadying your nerves. Something you had read online teased its way through your mind. 

Follow the thread.

For a moment, you closed your eyes, taking slow, deep breaths and letting them out just as slowly. You knew that in order to find it, you had to accept that Dean was your soul mate, which both terrified you and brought you a sense of peace. When you opened your eyes again, you turned to the direction you’d come from, feeling a strange pull.

The darkness in Crowley’s mansion wasn’t what brought the feelings of dread that seemed to seep into your nerves. It was the eerie silence, not even the dogs outside making a sound. The shadows seemed to dance or move of their own accord. You set your hand on the wall, letting it guide you through the darkness.

You tried to find that thread, but it eluded you. Some light came in through the large windows near the stairs that led down the main room. For a moment, you looked outside. The grounds were still, and that stillness felt out of place. A shiver ran down your spine as the hair on the back of your neck stood on end. It was like someone was watching you.

When you were able to pull your gaze from the window, you continued down the stairs, creeping quietly through the main entrance. Cautiously, you opened the dining area doors. You almost felt like a mouse thrown into a game of cat and mouse that you had no control over. Swallowing hard, you looked under the table. You let out a sigh of relief, having found nothing there. Finally managing a deep breath, you pushed yourself through the dining room and into the kitchen. 

The light wasn’t on, none of them were, and you hadn’t come across anyone, not even servants. For a moment, you thought you’d seen the flash of a light outside one of the kitchen windows. Slowly, you crept closer to it, cautiously glancing around. Your heart was pounding so loud you were sure it would give away your location. 

A shadow that moved in the darkness outside the window sent a wave of fear throughout your body. Slowly, your hand covered your mouth, and you began backing up just as slowly. Someone came up behind you when you reached the center of the kitchen, wrapping one arm around you and putting a hand over your mouth. Just as you were about to scream, he spoke.

“Shhh, it’s me, Sweetheart,” he whispered softly, slowly taking his hand from your mouth.

You swung around in his arms and wrapped yours over his shoulders. “I was so worried something had happened to you,” you whispered, keeping your voice down.

“I’m okay,” Dean quietly tried to reassure you, holding you close, while also keeping a watchful eye. “Come on, it’s not safe here.”

Dean quietly but quickly led you to what looked like a study. There were no windows here, but the entire staff, Crowley, and Benny were there. There were also a couple of other men, although you hadn’t met them before. Dean pulled you into his arms after he closed and locked the door, wanting to help calm your nerves.

“Good, you found her,” Crowley said, both relieved and pleased, but he wasn’t happy that Dean had gone looking for you.

Dean just shot him a glare but stayed quiet; his focus was only on you now. Benny stayed leaning against a nearby wall, his arms crossed, unhappy with the situation.

“What’s going on?” you finally asked in a whisper, not wanting to mention the images you’d seen from earlier.

“Nick isn’t one to follow the orders of anyone,” Crowley sighed. “It’s why I arranged to have the three of you brought here until the next court date. The FBI isn’t capable of keeping anyone safe from that family.” 

Slowly, you looked over at him but stayed in Dean’s arms. “You knew they’d come after me?” you asked, a little confused.

“Love, he’s not just after you. He needs leverage, to make you comply. Figured you would have realized that already.” Crowley stated as he shot Dean a knowing look, which you didn’t miss. “That whole family knows they only have so much time before you’re useless to them.”

That made your brow furrow in complete confusion. You pulled away from Dean, looking up at him, now needing answers. “What haven’t you told me?” you asked him bluntly, but also were terrified of the answer.

You saw the sadness flash across his eyes before he hid it, even if he couldn’t look at you. “If Cole marries you before your mark comes in, it won’t matter who your soulmate is, your mark will change to his name, because you’re an empath.” Dean finally confessed quietly.

The silence in the room was deafening, but your heart was pounding, and again, it felt like you could barely breathe. For several moments, all you could do was stand there in a state of shock. It was the final piece to the puzzle that made everything else make sense, and the thought of that terrified you. 

“How do I make my mark come in all the way?” you asked quietly, your voice shaky, and your nerves felt like they were all exposed and firing all at once.

Dean finally met your gaze, as it had never left him. There was pain and hurt in his eyes, but you also saw a hint of hope. You could see his hesitation like he wanted desperately to give you the answer, but something was holding him back.

“Bloody hell,” Crowley’s exasperated words broke the silence. “If you don’t tell her, I will.”

That made both you and Dean jump a little, but you never looked away from him, even when he shot Crowley another glare before looking at you again. He managed a deep breath, but it was shaky. Before he could open his mouth to say anything, the man who had been standing near Crowley, watching monitors, spoke up.

“The Hellhounds have done their job. I’ll inform the police and the FBI,” the man told Crowley, his British accent thick.

Crowley took an annoyed breath, “Thank you, Ketch. You may all return to your rooms. The situation has been handled.”

With a heavy heart, you went to the door first, unlocked it, and headed toward your room. The staff followed you out, Ketch bringing up the rear, but Dean and Benny stayed behind with Crowley. You rubbed the place where your mark was, your gaze on the floor as you slowly made your way back to your room.

Dean’s words seemed to play on repeat through your mind. At least now you understood why the powers that be had kept something like this under wraps. If it got out, there were far too many grim possibilities that could happen. What was bugging you was that Dean knew more; they all did, and you still hadn’t gotten all the answers you needed.

You closed your bedroom door but couldn’t relax, so you paced a few feet from the foot of the bed. Your mind swam with questions. After several minutes, you finally just plopped down on the foot of your bed, frustrated, when you felt a sharp stinging feeling on the side of your neck. Just as you reached for it and your vision went blurry, someone came into view as they stepped out of the closet, and then everything went black.

----------------------------------------- Chapter 16 - Coming soon

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[kierancaz]

GUESS WHOS WATCHING THE HOBBIT AGAIN 💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪

[puppyeared]

my brothers been playing elden ring recently and he let me draw his character ^_^

[kheprriverse]

I might be a little obsessed with this design...

[ohitslen]

College (uni??) AU catering to my own interests as it should always be hehe :)

[batsplat]

wait, is there a dovi/jorge feud???? i didn't know this!! also thank you so much for all you do for this community ❤️

not the only ask I've gotten about this and... look, rather than doing a proper write up that would take forever, I'm just gonna give my top ten fun... facts? bits of trivia. tidbits related to the two of them. quite long tidbits, on second glance. the highlight reel, if you will

(1) that time andrea dovizioso made 14 year old jorge lorenzo cry

the two of them already raced each other before the start of their grand prix careers, competing for the first time in 2001 in the cev when dovi was around 15 and jorge around 14. in riveras tobia's biography, here's jorge talking about their first fight:

I led the way at the start and Dovizioso and I escaped. It was our first head-to-head encounter, the first time we raced each other. My dad had heard that Dovi was a really clever rider and he warned me before the race. But just like in 1998 at Jerez, with Olive, I acted like a dummy and pushed for the whole race. I kept looking behind me to see the bastard still there! It was impossible to shake him off, he was watching me the whole race until the last lap. Three comers from the end I could hear his engine getting closer and I saw his shadow to my left, but he didn't come past. I thought to myself "This guy is going to try something in a second!" I decided I had to on a tighter line and close the door. Sure enough, Dovi went wider through that comer and then dived up the inside. I didn't close the door in time and tried to get in his slipstream, desperately hoping I could get him the next corner, but I ran wide and he won. I came back in tears, I didn't even want to go to the podium, I felt so cheated. I'd been on the limit for the whole race and I felt like I deserved the win more than he did.

so that's a nice and positive start! there's something charming about how even fifteen year old dovi was an absolute menace on last laps

also about that race:

'Jorge beat Dovi in Braga but in the previous race at Most, what a tantrum!' recalls Juanito, laughing. 'He didn't even want to go to the podium, he was crying like a baby! I can still see Dani (Antatriain) talking to him, trying to convince him. In the end he went but he didn't want to look at anybody.'

(2) the photo finish

in 2004, they were rivals in 125cc - a year in which dovi claimed the title and jorge was p4 in the standings. in the very first grand prix ever at the lusail circuit (pretty eventful weekend, you have to say), jorge and dovi crossed the line at the exact same moment

(3) dovi's top three favourite career win

dovi and jorge progressed through the categories at the exact same rate, and after their 125cc rivalry they continued fighting in 250cc. they were title rivals in both 2006 and 2007, with jorge's aprilia winning out both times against dovi's underpowered honda. (the general pattern was that dovi clawed back a bunch of points from jorge in the wet - jorge, with perhaps the exception of a few years in the premier class until around 2013, has never been much of a wet weather racers, while it's always been one of dovi's strongest traits.) for dovi's 300th career start in 2019, he was asked what his top three wins were - and one of his picks was from way back when in 2007

I'd recommend the race! which... well, I did in the race rec post - and I can only reiterate that these two kids do not acknowledge each other, not good vibes at all

(4) jorge's thoughts on young dovi from 2008

Jorge has a lot of respect for Andrea Dovizioso and feels that his two 250cc world titles have even more prestige because he had to beat the Italian to win them. 'You wouldn't label Dovizioso as fast, particularly, but he's much faster than he looks. He doesn't set many pole positions but he is always up front in a race, fighting to win. He is very intelligent and you can't trust him an inch on the last lap. He has been faithful to Honda, he has great belief in them. His negative side is that he tends to play the victim too much. He'll say that if his bike had a better engine or if it was a bit faster he would win. He's even said that if he was on the same bike as me he'd give me a hiding. I think he looks for excuses too often sometimes, but as a rider and a person I don't have a bad word to say about him.'

some dovi traits read as very familiar, from how he's a better racer than qualifier to the intelligence to the last lap prowess. as for jorge saying dovi plays victim too much? well

also this:

ER: Don't you think that Dovizioso wanted to be World Champion too in 2006 and 2007? Don't you think he gave everything to achieve it? JL: He will think he gave his maximum but he will be lying to himself because nobody does that. Nobody gets close to their maximum, not even me. He will think that he didn't win because he was riding a Honda. There are very few sportsmen who will say, I deserve what happened to me and there are no excuses. I didn't know how to do any better and I've done things wrong.' That is the only way to be the best, the only way. People who make excuses don't get to the top. I know riders who haven't made it for just that reason.

plus ça change

(5) jorge's thoughts on young dovi from 2018

when they were doing their thing as ducati teammates (bickering), here is one of the things jorge said about dovi:

dovi's been trying to undermine jorge's morale his WHOLE career... even when they were but teenagers... love it when you can really tell someone's been sitting on something for over a decade

(6) "also lorenzo is not my friend"

both of them moved up to motogp in 2008, jorge with factory yamaha and dovi with satellite honda. dovi had a very strong rookie season and finished in p5, only sixteen points behind jorge in p4 (who after a promising first few races had spent a lot of time that season crashing). after that, their fortunes diverged. dovi did not have a particularly happy time in the factory honda team and needed to do some shrewd negotiating to be retained by them for 2011 in that three-man squad, while jorge of course won the championship in 2010

here's a deep cut from 2011, a season where much of the excitement and drama was caused by marco simoncelli alone. jorge had exchanged tense words with sic in estoril, one race before simoncelli was responsible for a crash where dani broke his collarbone. the crash and sic's subsequent penalty meant that the three-way fight between jorge, dovi and valentino became one for the podium, with dovi and valentino eventually grabbing the two remaining spots behind casey. but during the race, jorge had executed a... questionable manoeuvre on dovi, one that did have some similarities to the sic/dani incident. given jorge's strong previous comments on racing standards, unsurprisingly the journalists pounced on this incident in the post-race presser and ask the podium sitters about it. here is the clip:

in this clip, dovi essentially says it was a dangerous move from jorge, but he wasn't sure what jorge's intent had been and he needs to watch the footage again. valentino (who had been the most outspokenly critical of sic of the three of them earlier in the presser) takes the opportunity presented to him to have a bit of a potshot at jorge. he says that dovi doesn't have the best relationship with sic but jorge had done something pretty similar in the race... at which point dovi goes "also lorenzo is not my friend"

which, you know. not exactly a major incident, but I find it very charming dovi felt the need to clarify that, actually, he doesn't like either of them. valentino also adds that by jorge's own standards, surely he too should have gotten a penalty. not exactly a meeting of jorge's biggest fans hm

(7) mapping eight-gate

well I can't leave it out, can I

so in 2017 jorge switches from yamaha to ducati and does not have a great time of it. a lot of weekends, he's just too slow, other times he shoots to the front of a race at the start (typically not great news for the rest of the field in his yamaha days) and then chews up his tyres before gradually dropping like a stone back through the field. at some point that year it became a bit of a running gag - especially when you saw he was the only big name to be picking a soft tyre and just went... buddy we ALL know how this is gonna end....

while this was happening, his teammate dovi was for the first time in his premier class career in championship contention. an extremely close title fight throughout the year with five protagonists until pretty late in the season, it eventually went to a title decider in valencia between dovi and marc. you know, the kind of year where every point counts. the race where marc put a bit of daylight between himself and dovi was phillip island, with marc winning a great dogfight out front while dovi had a bit of a horror show of a weekend. this meant that a lot would have to go right for dovi to have a chance of still winning the title... and sepang was already a match point race for marc

ducati had not won a championship since their 2007 title, courtesy of one casey stoner. after that year, their bike became steadily less competitive every season, reaching a nadir around the 2011-13-ish period. so by the time 2017 rolled around, they wanted this so so badly - even if they wouldn't have expected dovi to lead the charge. dovi had only narrowly beaten out iannone in the 'who's going to be fired for our shiny new lorenzo hire' contest of 2016, and really it was supposed to be jorge who was carrying ducati's dreams on his shoulders. but, never mind, they were throwing everything behind dovi now... no stone left unturned

which brings us, of course, to the subject of team orders. this discourse really took off at the penultimate race of the season at sepang, but was already brewing before that - and in phillip island, satellite ducati rider redding had been told early in the race to let dovi past

here from marc at sepang:

dovi had been in great form all weekend at sepang - and with his wet weather prowess being what it was, really there shouldn't have been any need for team orders at all. but he got a sluggish start, and the race unfolded from there... until eventually jorge was in first, dovi was in second and marc in fourth. in those positions, marc would have clinched the title there

and then, jorge got a message on his dashboard. suggested mapping: mapping 8. pit boards and dashboards and all sorts of boards will feature various codes during races, most of them completely innocuous - but of course they are a healthy source of all sorts of conspiracies. the timing of this one was certainly... notable, and speculation immediately started about how it might be a way of telling jorge that he should swap positions with dovi

jorge didn't end up letting dovi pass - it is questionable whether he really would have done so with what would have been his first ducati win on the line. in the end, he made a mistake that let dovi through so that dovi claimed the win anyway, keeping himself in mathematical contention in valencia. and jorge did say afterwards he was keeping dovi's title hopes in mind, kind of

jorge also said he hadn't gotten any message indicating team orders, and of course nobody at ducati confirmed that mapping eight did have anything to do with team orders

for what it's worth, this is what dovi said about their relationship at this stage:

lovely! let's see what the vibes are like a few months later

anyway, onto valencia. this race was pretty boring despite being a title decider, but the jorge/dovi bits were just unequivocally the weekend's most enjoyable aspect and rather nicely spiced up the whole thing. dovi's chances were always slim going in, given he'd have to win the race and marc would have to barely get any points at all... but still, you never know, right? marc could always crash (narrator: he did almost crash). jorge plays coy early in the weekend about the whole 'helping dovi out thing', and basically just started putting in place...? ... very specific conditions...? under which he'd help:

so during the actual race, dovi got stuck behind jorge in p5, with marc ahead of both of them. valencia is traditionally not a fantastic track to overtake at... so even if dovi had been faster, it's not like he'd have an easy time clearing jorge and cracking on. but they were beginning to drift further away from dani in p3 as ducati watched on, increasingly unamused by what was happening - and the tv cameras were of course kind enough to repeatedly show the ducati box looking deeply unamused. again, they went for the good old mapping eight message, which, hey, that could mean anything! they sure did keep showing it to jorge though, almost like he wasn't paying attention to it

eventually, they abandon all subtlety and go for a pit board message that does just straight-up tell jorge to swap positions. jorge kept ignoring the messages, lap after lap, and he never ended up letting dovi past. eventually they both crashed and marc claimed the title with a p3 finish, so it wouldn't have mattered anyway, but... still. the feeling was that this might things rather awkward inside of ducati

publicly, ducati was extremely keen to smooth over the whole controversy, saying they totally weren't mad at jorge blatantly ignoring team orders. jorge had, after all, explained to them (and the media, repeatedly) that he had totally been intending to help dovi by dragging him closer to dani

Giving his take on events, Lorenzo acknowledged that he ignored Ducati’s instruction because he felt Dovizioso’s chances would be boosted by having him directly ahead. “Even looking at this [dashboard] suggestion, I keep pushing until the end, because I knew it was the best thing for me, for Ducati and for Dovi,” said Lorenzo. “I helped him to improve his pace by one or two tenths, to be as close as possible to the first group. My intention was, and it was the case, that we arrive at the first group. If he had the option to win, I would have gone wide and let him pass. But unfortunately it was not like that. Maybe in some corners Dovi was close and I slow down a little bit his pace, but in general terms, having my wheel in front of him made him improve slightly his pace. I helped him stayed closer to the front group. “I knew Dovi was struggling, I knew his pace during all the weekend, and I knew he was making the best pace of the weekend just in the race. It was [because of the] help from my wheel. I’m happy because I was not wrong. If I was wrong and slowing him, I would be very sorry. But it’s not like that, my feeling was true.”

which, you know. is it really that easy to tell how much faster you are than someone who's sitting on your rear tyre? who's to say. dovi did certainly seem rather keen to get past

anyhow, of course there were plenty of fun dramatics post-race:

'our rider ignored team suggestions not team orders' is a great line, fairs. there's plenty more of this from ducati, some excellent spin doctoring - and dovi was extremely magnanimous about what had happened:

the whole thing was pretty undignified from all non-dovi parties, but it was also very funny so who's to say if it was bad or not

(8) runner-up-gate

let's check in on them in 2018, the second and ultimately last year in which they were teammates. remember that 'undermining morale' quote from above? those are from early 2018, after dovi says he wouldn't be surprised to see jorge elsewhere the following season. so, once jorge has complained that dovi had been trying to put him down his entire career, comes this:

so that's something. jorge, dovi and dani have a three-in-one crash in jerez, after which some fingers are pointed but it all remains fairly civil, and a bit later dovi says that jorge's approach doesn't work at ducati:

by the summer break, jorge's results had gotten better, but it was already too late to save the relationship with ducati and they parted ways. anyway, here's dovi and jorge having another go at it:

And while a rough patch for Dovizioso coupled with breakthrough back-to-back wins for Lorenzo in Mugello and Barcelona have now left the pair just three points apart in the standings, Dovizioso refused to back down from his claim when speaking to Spanish sports daily Marca ahead of the upcoming Brno race. “He’s won two races,” Dovizioso said. “Winning two races does not solve the problem of a year and a half. Lorenzo was not signed to win two races. Therefore I do not change my mind.” When the comments were put to Lorenzo, the three-time champion offered an ardent retort, stating that Dovizioso's rhetoric was proof of the claim he'd made back in April. “I'm a bit fed up with this situation, mainly because when I had trouble and he was winning, I was down there applauding,” Lorenzo told Spanish broadcaster Movistar. “What I said in Argentina - and the comments caused a big surprise - you can see that I was right. “He tried to undermine me, or downplay what I achieve or just attack me. As you can see, I wasn't lying. He's still doing it and now he says my method is not good, according to him.” Lorenzo intimated that Dovizioso was in no position to criticise him, as the Italian could do no better than runner-up to Marc Marquez in a 'perfect' 2017 season. He said: “I think my method has not worked too bad in my career. I've won three MotoGP titles and have 46 wins.” “In my second year in Ducati I'm usually faster than him, but maybe I should look at his method closer if in his best season, with everything going perfectly, he was second. Otherwise he's fourth or seventh usually. I'd tell him to leave me to go my way and to focus on his own and everything will be better, because when you have an angry Lorenzo it's usually worse for you.” 

fair to say that by this point the pretence at civility has mostly been dropped. I'm rather fond of the "lorenzo was not signed to win two races" line, though "when you have an angry lorenzo it's usually worse for you" is also really strong stuff. dovi tries to restore a little bit of peace:

Responding in turn to Lorenzo's tirade, Dovizioso sought to play down the conflict. “Jorge has his ideas and I think they are based on particular things. I don't think like him, but it's not a problem,” he told Movistar. “Everybody creates their own ideas based on what they see and how they live. “I don't think he has everything clear in his head about what's happened, but we continue the relationship that we started last year with respect, there's no particular problem. If he thinks this way, that's his problem."

so basically the classic 'idk what he's on about but it's not my problem' approach to attempting to defuse feuds

(9) twitter-gate

there's a few more on-track battles where it's nicely obvious how badly they want to beat each other, with jorge beating marc just ahead of dovi in austria and then dovi beating jorge in brno. jorge's season is increasingly derailed by injuries, which sets the stage for their next big spat:

The row was sparked by Dovizioso's comments to Sky Italia after qualifying at Sepang on Saturday, as he was asked what he thought of Lorenzo having to pull out of the Malaysian GP weekend with injury. "I don't know the details, I don't want to get into this, it's a bit of a strange situation," said Dovizioso."It happens often in Ducati or to certain riders, but I don't understand the details and I don't want to get into it and give my opinion." When it was put to him he was offering 'cryptic words', he added: "I leave things there, it's not my problem."

pretty vague, yeah. but anyway, I'm sure jorge had a proportionate response to this

Dovizioso's comments prompted a series of irate posts from Lorenzo on Twitter, with his first reaction being "Thank you very much @AndreaDovizioso! You are a real gentleman!". In his next post, he went on to call Dovizioso "an exemplary teammate", adding: "You applaud him under the podium when he wins and then... (That's right, he does not give his opinion, it's not his problem)." After that, Lorenzo labelled Dovizioso "envious" and described him as "a world champion... in 125cc."

the podium thing really bothered him, don't you think. their ducati in-fighting follows that general pattern where dovi says something... a little shady, a little ambiguous, where his intentions aren't entirely obvious... at which point jorge goes all in at fighting back and has a go at dovi - often not as much for what dovi is actually saying, but what jorge thinks dovi is implying. which is based on his understanding of dovi, the image of dovi he's built up in his head over the years, so that he is... predisposed to think ill of the intentions of the 'intelligent' dovi who always knows exactly what he's saying

again, dovi tried to downplay the argument, while simultaneously not exhibiting much patience for jorge's stance:

After the Malaysian GP, Dovizioso was asked about Lorenzo's responses to his comments, and the Italian accused his teammate of reading too much into headlines. He said: “Why should I talk to Lorenzo? I do not waste time on these things. He makes the usual mistake of giving too much importance to what is written, even without the context. "I have not pointed my finger at anyone and I have no problem with Jorge."

if I were ducati, I probably would've let the whole thing blow over given jorge was off soon anyway. but they decided the whole thing was so bad they had to organise a peace summit

Asked about the situation, Ducati sporting director Paolo Ciabatti admitted to Motorsport.com that the Bologna marque has already planned to sit its two riders on Tuesday in Milan to make it clear what its priorities are. Ciabatti said: “It is clear that the interests of Ducati come before personal problems between riders. On Tuesday we will be together in Milan, for the EICMA [motorcycle show] and we have in mind to spend half an hour to sit and talk to Jorge and Andrea. "We want to avoid similar things to what happened last weekend. "I understand that these kinds of situations can happen. Sometimes riders get nervous during a Grand Prix weekend and on a rainy day, with tricky conditions, sometimes they say things they shouldn’t have said."

god knows how that turned out

(10) wow, you guys aren't gonna let this go, huh

late 2020 and jorge's career is already over, while dovi's looks like it will be... paused, at the very least. which is always a good time to check in with riders on how they feel about their rivals - if they're still being nasty you know that shit was personal. from december:

some quality petty material here. "I can't understand his somewhat peculiar mind" vs "he was envious of me since 250cc, but I wanted to give our relationship a chance". note too jorge talking again about how generous he had been in the face of dovi's 2017 successes, and how he feels like this was not reciprocated at all. jorge's complaints don't stop there:

merry christmas!

not the only rider jorge has beefed with post-retirement, but compare and contrast with how he really hasn't been doing any of that with some of his biggest career rivals. valentino, marc, dani - sure, he still talks about the controversies he's had with them pretty regularly (to put it lightly), and he's hardly free of complaints... but mostly it's a distinctly nostalgic tone he's adopting with these guys. admittedly, it helps that none of those three have gone out of their way to say anything particularly inflammatory about jorge. still, the absolute lack of any sort of rapprochement with dovi of all people is pretty funny

bonus: that time when jorge skittled all of marc's rivals

you know how in catalunya 2019, jorge took out like? all of marc's major rivals in that era including himself in one go? with half a decade of hindsight, this was kind of hilarious, and it did also feature jorge having to eat a hell of a lot of humble pie and go to the three other blokes to apologise. anyway I have a lovingly assembled set of screenshots of all three of them emoting in their boxes after the incident, all suffering some form of an existential crisis. here is dovi contemplating the bleak realities of our brief lives on this planet:

truly one of the world's least enthusiastic waves

bonus 2: another one for old time's sake

already posted this elsewhere, but this from late 2023 made me laugh

"jorge came to ducati and thought he was going to beat everything, but in the end he didn't" uh huh

[sillyfudgemonkeys]

Yangchen and Aang: *trying to hold onto what Air Nation qualities they have while still performing their duties* Disha, to Roku: You are a spirit of NO Nation. Me: ??????

[grassbreads]

im curious, whats your favorite longfic??

Oh my god anon you are enabling me so hard right now. Are we sure you're not some deep splintered section of my subconscious that split off just for the sake of sending me this ask?

Anyway, my favorite fanfiction is a Homestuck fic by oxfordroulette called Vanitas Vanitatum. This mildly pornographic novel-length fantasy au dirkjohn fic is genuinely, independent of actual Homestuck, one of my all time favorite written stories.

Vanitas Vanitatum is the third fic in a long series, but it's technically a standalone. The first fic in the series is a jadekat fantasy road trip adventure, the second one is about jadekat getting dragged into a bunch of mysterious royal intrigue at Jade's arranged marriage to Eridan, and Vanitas Vanitatum is about the aftermath of that intrigue. John Egbert ascends to the throne of their country after the death of his and Jade's evil mother in the previous fic, and he's totally fine guys! He's definitely absolutely having zero mental health troubles!

Dirk, our pov character, enters as a new member of John's secret police. He slowly befriends his new king/boss and, in doing so, begins to discover the extent to which John is totally definitely okay! He's fine Dirk so you can stop asking! And because he's Dirk Strider, when he discovers how John is struggling, he immediately wants to Fix Him. Enter a twisted mess of genuinely falling in love and horrible shadowy puppet master schemes.

Vanitas Vanitatum is the ultimate "I can fix him" romance. It is an "I can fix him" romance to the extent that Dirk's desire to "fix" John becomes one of the fic's main conflicts—in addition to John's genuine mental health crisis and the political crisis that's happening around them. If you know anything about my taste in fiction, you're probably looking at "dark fantasy story about a guy trying to unravel and understand his crush's mental health problems" and going "okay yeah. I see why Andie is obsessed with this."

If you're a Homestuck fan, even if you're not usually a DirkJohn person, I cannot recommend Vanitas Vanitatum highly enough. It's well-written, it's funny, it's heartwarming, and it's absolutely heartbreaking. The plot is twisty and, especially if you've read the rest of the series, absolutely filled with delicious dramatic irony. The way oxfordroulette writes Dirk's pov is an absolute treat. And while the fic is fairly nsfw (there's only three actual sex scenes if I remember right, but lot of discussion and thinking about sex in the interim), the real porn in this fic is the food and costume porn. The author knows what the people want, and it's decadent food descriptions and crazy fantasy royalty outfits. It's also illustrated!

Honestly, if the fic didn't require an understanding of troll romance quadrants to make any goddamn sense, I'd be recommending it to non Homestuck fans as well. It's just a really good story.

Here's the official summary:

You've determined the hobbies of the monarch you serve are as follows: 1. Ill-timed pranks. 2. Cooking. 3. Subconsciously pulling elaborate political schemes off perfectly, ad infinitum, every one of which inches his mind closer to some ineffable dark chasm you're curious to find the depth of. Anyway, he makes damn good lasagna.

Read it here :)

[dimiclaudeblaigan]

No but something I love is how fucking loyal Miklan really is (in Hopes specifically since we don't have enough information in Houses).

At the camp, he takes his job seriously. Very seriously. He doesn't act begrudging or like he's just doing anything by force. As the chapters go on he not only goes from relatively aloof to a full fledged commander (which is great development in that span of chapters btw considering how fast the story has to progress) and one who fights for Faerghus because he wants to (why would he reassure the player that he's going to, literally, hold down the fort? Why doesn't he flee when his life is in immediate danger despite that Dimtiri prefers his allies to flee and save their lives over sacrificing themselves? Why does he like helping citizens who had their lands destroyed by the war, despite being a bandit who used to plunge towns just like those?).

At any time when the Empire was attacking, he could've surrendered and even joined their side because of not liking Faerghus and its people... if he didn't like Faerghus and its people. Also, someone brought this up to me once that Miklan likely has family in the Empire still, because his mother was from the Empire. He had a perfectly good out that wouldn't even necessarily be considered treason to Faerghus, i.e. surrendering and going to the Empire to protect that side of his family.

He doesn't. He dies for Faerghus. It was both a matter of honor due to the fact that he was finally living the life he always should've been and wanted to be respected for that, and also his loyalty that followed in the past's wrongs being righted. No matter what you think of Miklan post disinheritance, he was the heir who was removed because he didn't have a Crest. All over just that, despite that Sylvain having a Crest never meant they didn't still have someone capable of fighting off Sreng invasions.

They had someone able to wield the Lance of Ruin, so why did it matter if he was officially the heir? Miklan felt like his life was stolen from him (and I'm not saying what he did to Sylvain was okay either). Dimitri gave him all of that back and he started to become loyal to Faerghus and its king because Dimitri was giving the chance even the man's own father never gave him from the moment Sylvain was determined to have a Crest.

What happened in his life before Dimitri had him brought to him as soon as he became king is, in a way, almost like it never happened as far as Miklan's behavior. It was obviously there at first, but over time it's like it never happened. That is, if someone met him and didn't know about his past, by chapter 9 they'd never even know he'd had that history. He was the person he would've been years ago if he hadn't been disinherited, which led to the mess that led to him being disowned (and he says he just "left", but Matthias doesn't mince facts. At all. If that had been the case he wouldn't just say he disowned him. He would admit Miklan ran away. That means Miklan claims he left as a means of coping and trying to convince other people that it was his choice and not forced on him).

Miklan became a lot more loyal than he's ever given credit for, both in the game and in the fandom. Gwendal did recognize it, but that's about all we're given.

Gwendal corrected himself when Miklan died, referring to him instead as Sir Miklan instead of the insults he was spewing during their fight which were very clearly pissing Miklan off; but Miklan kept fighting and defending the fort, not just because he wanted to prove Gwendal wrong but because he was here because he was pulled out of his life as a bandit. The people he was defending the fort for were the people who effectively gave him his life back.

Basically, he would've been there in that fort defending it anyway if he had lived the life he should have to begin with. If his value was acknowledged all along, he would've been defending the most important fort in Faerghus all along (if this exact scenario occurred and everything was the same except him being disowned in the first place). He would be there being the commander and fighter he was supposed to be.

Mind you, it was the king himself who gave him that chance, meaning the person who reigns over Faerghus and has the most power to change whatever the hell he wants - including how people with Crests and without are treated. Miklan was part of a fight to better their society and be part of the new generation taking over. Nobody could truly change things unless the king - the top power - had the thought to change them (not saying Lambert thought the political climate was good the way it was, but he clearly had other priorities and it didn't seem to be something weighing on his mind. He may not have even truly noticed the problems and power discrepancies because he was so focused on other things).

However, the moment the king thought to change all that old stuff, Miklan was one of the first people who came to mind, and one of the first people he took action regarding, to integrate into his new army (and he even mentioned completely rearranging his army and whatnot, and then we find out he had Miklan located basically right after becoming king. We had a two year timeskip and Miklan had been there for those two years because of how soon after Dimitri was crowned that he had decided to bring Miklan back and give him another chance).

If the king sought to change things and was taking active action to prove it, that was something Miklan could see and realize was actually going to happen. It wasn't a blind trust - he could see Dimitri was actually doing it. He had a reason to be able to trust him with this.

He was also able to trust the people who were watching over him, i.e. the people Dimitri had making sure he didn't revert back to any sort of banditry. Those people could have easily faked it, made up that he did something and that they had killed him on the spot. Dimitri trusted those people not to do that of course, but those people were not told to bring him to Dimitri if he did anything. They were told to apprehend him and kill him immediately (which is reasonable, given what he'd done in the past, and they wouldn't want to try to wait to get Dimitri over to wherever they were. If Miklan escaped in that time, they'd just have a big problem on their hands).

So that is to say, those people could've just faked it at any point and killed him. They didn't. They, like Dimitri, were willing to give him another chance provided he didn't do anything bad.

The same goes for Felix and everyone else who had qualms about him being allowed into their army. Dimitri explicitly stated if anyone had issues with his appointment as a commander to "by all means" kill him themselves. He literally made it an open option for his friends to just up and kill him if they truly couldn't forgive him (which at that point was more reasonable of a time because the war was still new and people didn't know if they could trust him with this specific appointment yet. By later in the story I don't think it would have been as reasonable for someone to try to kill him after he'd already been proving himself).

In other words, nobody did it. Everyone, literally everyone, backed off and respected Dimitri's decision (and technically Sylvain and Matthias' as well). None of those people, even when given open opportunity, turned a weapon on him. Not one. These people all gave him a chance. These are the same people he died fighting for, and for himself to be able to feel like he was fighting and dying for what he would have to begin with if he hadn't been disinherited - Faerghus and its people.

In the end Miklan was in both rank and heart a top ranking commander of Faerghus and he both appreciated it and knew he appreciated it. He was looking forward to the future Dimitri would bring, basically saying that he thinks Dimitri is a fool ("weak-willed") for it but that he now believes in it too. If anyone wants to try arguing those points, I have receipts as the young folk call them, fresh from Miklan himself about his feelings about it as spoken to Catherine and Shamir!

Miklan fought for the future he was hoping to see, and he died protecting that future. Again, not something he by any means whatsoever had to do. He was tasked with guarding the fortress, but was never told to lay down his life defending it. After years and years of being hateful and angry, he finally had some peace of mind and hope for what he could be. He was loyal to Dimitri in the end because Dimitri was loyal to him - that is, he kept his word and Miklan was able to thrive in Dimitri's society without being a bandit or having to worry about his future because of his status.

Like Dimitri said, the only thing holding him down by that point were his past mistakes. It was up to Miklan to do something about that for himself with the opportunity he was given to fix it. Dimitri said here, fix it, and Miklan said okay, and worked to fix it. For me the saddest part is that he didn't even get enough time to properly fix it and be able to be free of his past. He died for Faerghus though, with his dying words being that he was able to buy them time (to arrive and fight back against the attacking Empire). That's not something someone who holds a resentful grudge would say in their last moments. He was grateful he managed to buy the other fighters time, even though it cost him his life.

hopes was a dumpster fire a whole lot of times but its incorporation of miklan into the plot was not one of them. miklan fire emblem my love you will live on in my heart and in my fics. i am also deeply grateful to hopes for uh i guess hopes-canonizing (hopesonizing???) basically every one of my headcanons about him before the game came out.

[minakoaiinos]

Lost my original post of this from the other day but I genuinely don't understand how Black Butler discourse ever shifted into the does Sebastian ~really~ like Ciel or is Ciel just dinner line of conversation that is pervasive as it is because Sebastian is the one that has absorbed his whole existence into Ciel's. Sebastian's face is what Ciel wants Sebastian's whole purpose is doing things for Ciel Sebastian's every hell of a butler yes my lord speech is about how he's Ciel's and Ciel is the one going around saying shit like whatever Sebastian is just my pawn 💅

[a-s-levynn]

You know what.. one of the many things i can be thankful for ST is that in the past few years i was unlearning a lot of thing and being apologetic over what i like is one for them. And i was progressively better and better at it, but like lately it just blew through the stratosphere because one cannot talk about Sleep Token and not sound kind of mental at least a bit. And at this point i don't give a shit. I like what i like, it doesn't hurt anyone. If someone laughs at me for it? Good for them at least i made them smile.

[sysig]

But would you tho (Patreon)

[thepandalion]

not to be annoying or anything but it's been 9 years since the release of indie game undertale