#murray can go

[kurokoros]

the duffers were cowards for not killing hopper, but I get it because I'm also unable to commit to killing any of the main characters in my planned rewrite

[shushmal]

okay pacrim au (it's gonna be steddie bear with me here)

nancy is the best jaeger pilot the world's ever seen, her and barb are an unstoppable force. but then barb dies, gets completely ripped from their mech. so they pair nancy with steve, a pilot known for being generally drift compatible with everyone to a degree. it's not perfect, but nancy who is full of fury needs someone that can roll with her punches, keep her going. and they do well. they aren't the best, but he's the only one that can handle nancy's force. steve's good at taking hits. they mange it for about two years. and steve had been doing such a good job hiding it, absorbing all of nancy's internal grief and fury so she could keep doing her job.

but he breaks. the two of them are force-retired, and nancy lashes out so intensely, steve goes into a depression, completely severs ties with the jager program and disappears.

then there's eddie, a street rat by birth, but a guy so inherently good with the jaeger technology, he's managed to build his own on scavenged scraps—part of it from the jaeger barbara holland died in. he's used his lil jaeger to defend his little forgotten part of the world best he could, mostly luring kaiju away towards the actual military and stealthily escaping before any government detects him. but it's hard to do alone.

and then he meets steve.

[bluespring864]

As usual, Andy Roddick gets it.

(Comments from right after Andy Murray's match, so they didn't know about the injury at that point.)

"Since 2019, with the hip issue, he will tell you he hasn't been the same. But the guts of him have been the same. Even if he used to turn around these matches, and lately he hasn't been able to - the drama's still there, the fight is still there. In a weird way, I think this kind of compromised version of Murray almost adds to his legacy, the way he's grinded out the last four, five years. I certainly respect it, I don't know that I could've done it. I don't know if a lot of us could've done it, so props to him if it is the last time we see him in Miami. Hell of a run, pal.”

Source: tennischannel

[sinnerenjoyer]

ignoring andy murray's retirement because if i don't think about it it'll just go away. he's winning the us open guys i expect all of you to be cheering for him come september

[lucassinclaer-archive]

jancy in their just friends era giving each other exorbitant amounts of personal space

for @musicalchaos07

[skippydiesposting]

we don't talk enough about how that article about the metaverse that went viral on tumblr was written by the author of Skippy Dies

[thealieninhiding]

Mina’s love language is touch

Mina holding Lucy’s hand throughout the first part of the hospital scene, before Lucy’s mea culpa.

Lucy pulls away almost immediately but Mina is insistent. She wanted her ‘friend’ back 😭

The way Mina looks at and cares for Lucy makes it hard for me to stay angry at her. She broke my poor Lucy’s heart but I know she loves her just as I do.

Also Jonathan can go to hell, that was literally textbook fawning. She was terrified and he without a word backed her into a wall, pushed her up against it and forcefully kissed her. And poor Lucy blamed herself, like so many victims do 😭😭😭😭

[cal4hysteria]

im never going to shut up about jonah and adam ever ever ever. i REFUSE to believe adams edgy ass doesnt miss jonah. jonah knew about adams dead mother and how he was searching for her, and jonah could only know that if adam had told jonah. adam DID open up to jonah at some point, being forced to or not, he did. he told jonah about his mother and most likely that he missed her and wanted to know why she was gone from his life. like they were supposedly 'best friends' for 2 years. i don't know how you can know someone for that long and spend so much time with them and actually hate them. that part could be from adams alternate half, but he's still half human too. he still has human emotions and thoughts. and jonah was the FIRST person to provoke guilt and sadness in him. when adam heard jonahs screams and cries he felt something outside of his alternate emotions. alternates are drawn to those types of things, but instead of that adam felt guilty. thats a HUGE deal. adam misses jonah and he wont say it because he spent 2 years hating jonah. he doesnt feel like he deserves to miss jonah.

[ifwebefriends]

“I wonder where Jonathan is and if he is thinking of me! I wish he were here.”

[immediatebreakfast]

One thing that it is noteworthy regarding Mina's words about the New Woman vs her own internalized misogyny is how it was framed between being a "haha aren't all of these ideas silly?" And a "how come this silly ideas can possibly affect my future" moment.

"she will do the proposing herself. And a nice job she will make of it, too! There's some consolation in that."

I know that I may be grasping too tight at meanings that do not bear a lot on the context of the narrative. But why does Mina writes with such resentment at the idea of women proposing to men? Why it would be consolation that at least the New Woman would be able to propose to her beloved?

Maybe Mina feels resentment over the boiling point of women's rights, which are something that she doesn't fully understand, so in her mind they don't make sense? We are in the 21st century, and there are still women who see feminism as this weird thing™ which is not that important, but it also has the potential to turn society upside down, while also being there.

Maybe it could be that Mina rejects the ideas of the New Woman because she sees these ideas meddling with her future marriage with Jonathan (if he still is alive) since a core part of this movement was the demonstration of how women could be independent.

But, here is the thing, Mina sees herself as an equal to Jonathan in their marriage. She wishes to rescue him herself, and never implies that this wish could emasculate him. Then why is she poking fun at this possibility?

So, it could be why this rant does not feel like the same dissonant tone of last year despite being the same. Mina is a New Woman archetype, there is no deny in that, but her internalized misogyny doesn't let her realize the puzzle between her actions, and her thoughts.

I think this flaw of Mina really benefits for not having a strong watsonian vs doylist explanation element. Mina means every single word she wrote down in her personal diary, and Bram Stoker wrote her thoughts that fit the type of characterization she has.

And it's a really good flaw too. We may see how this conflict between Mina's innate "do it yourself" personality, and her deep internalized misogyny may clash at some point of the novel.

[steddiesupportgroup]

Hm. For a mountain of reasons it looks like I won’t be watching s5

[lioniheart]

Random AU's that I like to imagine for gender swap steddie:

Female!Steve, Robin, Male!Nancy and Jonathan are in a cover band for Abba while Female!Eddie and the corred coffin boys are a cover of Joan Jett and the blackhearts. It's set in the 2010's and they end up competing in a reality show type of program to see who gets a record label. It's enemies to lovers, it's a slow burn, it's messy and I love it. It's the bedtime story I make before bed lmao

[another-chaotic-bisexual-vampire]

Mina: Nice day, isn't it?

Mr. Swales: You know you're sitting over the empty grave of a suicide? The perfect hidey-hole for some unholy creature?

Lucy: Excuse me, sir, but what the fuck

[jonathanbyersphd]

Jancy The Cutting Edge AU

[ducktracy]

my original characters are Funny Animal Characters because a) i like funny animal characters! and b) more range for versatility and caricature, but it’s always fun to do the occasional reverse, too… i’d like to draw more humans in 2023 and get a li’l more experimental overall

[batsplat]

your negative takes on recent tennis rivalries pleaseeee🙏🙏🙏

ps. you’re a treasure

okay so I'll do the copy paste thing from what I did just cut from the initial post, which was my polite 'I'm attempting to write a reasonably neutral post' approach

so, this may come as a shock, but obviously I'm a bit of a fan of rivalries. we do have some bangers in tennis history, rich narrative texts, but... well. the landscape out there hasn't been great for the past decade or so. sometimes you can get invested in match-ups between specific players that are fun to watch and interesting tennis-wise, but it's all very much about the sport rather than the personal relationships between the different players. I enjoy matches between all three or ryba, sabs and iga!! but also. they are coworkers. you do kindaaaa get the sense sabs and iga aren't particularly fond of each of other, but it's all perfectly cordial. again, the tennis is great, I support them in all their endeavours, but it's very much the tennis itself you need to look for for the drama (also they don't play each other as much as I'd like, but that's a conversation for a different day)

you do still sometimes get some fun beef but it's very much isolated dumb stuff like the fritz/rinderknech "have a nice flight home" thing. this isn't going anywhere story-wise but it's fun in the moment

speaking of men. obviously the most important rivalries for the last however many years have been between various big three/four members, and federer/nadal specifically is extremely popular. tennis-wise, I still think federer/djokovic was the most fun match-up, and at least there was a little tension there because federer used to hate djokovic. they've played a lot of matches that are worth watching!! also they've finally mostly retired so it's not super relevant any more, but well tennis fans as a collective are very big three-pilled so you'll hear a lot about these blokes

and now there's alcaraz/sinner. they've only really had one match that was good start to finish (uso 2022), but definitely some fun ones (miami 2023 and wimbledon 2022 are probably the other ones that stand out, their most recent match was very much in the 'long does not equal good' category). plus, they're quite good at producing highlight reel content, like this one point everyone remembers (shown here from every angle... tennistv produces longer videos for single points than the wta releases for most finals). it's an interpersonally warm rivalry between two young guys who are both very successful and will presumably win everything for the next decade. again, I'd suggest trying to become a fan of one of those two

this was the polite way of phrasing it!! everything below here is quite rude and negative, peace and love to all

okay, let's ditch the thin veneer of neutrality, here's what I actually think: it is completely baffling to me how popular quite a few of these rivalries are, I don't get it, I have never understood it, I will never understand it. tennis went 'what if we had rivalries without narrative tension' and everyone just kinda rolled with that? mind you federer/nadal early confrontations were happening at the same time as clijsters/henin, who were like?? dude it got so bad henin said she had never been friends with clijsters so nothing clijsters and her father said could hurt her ("nothing was broken between us because there was nothing to break" ???? ffs). which is obviously not true!! but it's so... she denied the friendship ever existed and called it all pr like that's so SAD! look, this is beside the point, I'm not talking about henin/clijsters here, I do understand why people aren't that into a rivalry that was at its peak like two decades ago and federer/nadal were still playing slam finals in 2k17 (a dark dark time for some fans, federer had already HAD his decline and then he was suddenly winning slams again like tf). and to some extent I go 'well clearly people will just be into anything if you have two successful blokes' but there's clearly quite a lot of genuine passion there? like I'm not denying the passion EXISTS, people do clearly care about these guys, it's not all a psyop by Big Fedal who have suckered people into caring for these two dudes. and I'm not denying the tennis is great! I still personally prefer the match-ups that involve djokovic, and also the match-ups that involve none of those three, but fundamentally I have been watching these matches for like!! so many years! it's part of my childhood, I have enjoyed plenty of these matches, the tennis is obviously otherworldly. I have hot takes on a bunch of their matches, I can have the goat debate with you, I can give you the rundown on surface-specific match-ups and how long since nadal won a set on hard court against djokovic and federer's peak year domination rate and what they all did at madrid and blue clay and yec and golden masters and all that shit, of course it's part of my dna as a tennis viewer too!! I did usually have a slight order of preference in my head when I was watching big three match ups to have someone to root for (it's different now but back when I was a kid it was djokovic > nadal > federer, these days federer's redeemed himself a little bit in my eyes by having the decency to retire and I was radicalised against nadal). but like!! what's the narrative hook! I need somebody to explain to me what the story here is. these guys are all very good at tennis and they are racking up their titles and it's so!! whatever!! no tension no arc no real interpersonal development once federer stopped being so bitchy about djokovic. twenty plus slams who CARES, what are they doing this for! it's all so?? ugh

anyway now that I've taken a potshot at the most popular rivalry in men's tennis, I should quickly back it up by saying I feel almost the exact same way about the second most popular one (at least on tumblr) and also feel nothing for alcaraz/sinner. that one was still like... vaguely palpable? when alcaraz was clearly a way better player but struggled in that match up and also was way more invested in the rivalry than sinner was. but well, sinner is world number one now so THAT'S been ruined. again, sit me down and explain to me what the narrative stakes here are. like, if sinner wins that roland garros match, he'll be fine? alcaraz will be fine? everyone will be fine? their relationship is basically 'friendly coworkers', zero chance of anything more substantial developing there. now, don't get me wrong, I'm not gonna pretend like I'm massively into the current state of the women's game when it comes to rivalries either, but at least I have a base level of fondness there for the top players and am ideologically inclined to hype up any rivalries there whenever they come along. also, quite frankly, it DOES matter viscerally more to them!! iga spends a lot of her time kinda like,,, on the edge, the way she was in tears when getting physio after the naomi match, united cup last year, a bunch of her 2021 matches, like she's so intense and so tightly strung on the court that you do really get the sense that a loss could just cause her to have an existential crisis. there's so many unanswered questions about her ultimate potential off clay, I'm still proper curious about her story develops. and then with aryna, she's obviously ALSO so intense but in a different way, and she feels every single emotion so completely and entirely and iga has beaten her in one of those infamous semifinal chokes and it's kinda... you know, aryna also feels like she has something to prove, and you can tell they both really really want to beat each other. there's something there!! it's something real! I'm always seated whenever we actually get to see them play

that being said, yes, obviously I do think we're not exactly peak rivalry potential in either gender. the men's is more egregious because the way the game has shaken out since like,,,, 2004, is incredible top level domination by just a few guys. and now, yes, I'm aware I'm a fan of another sport where this was also incredibly true. but. the key difference is that the aliens had the decency to not be so fucking boring about it. sure on paper they were as a PACK winning everything, but good lord were they screaming crying throwing up whenever things went mildly wrong for them. like!! they despised each other and they needed to beat each other, which makes ME care!! I'm not saying I NEED rivals to hate each other, though it sure does help for my investment levels, but I need a narrative hook! borg/mcenroe had a narrative hook, evert/navratilova had a narrative hook (unfortunately that narrative hook these days is 'being united in transphobia'), agassi/sampras had one HELL of a narrative hook. noughties wta tennis about fifty million narrative hooks!! when I watch alcaraz/sinner, I just try and enjoy the tennis (though their roland garros match was mid as shit so what's that all about) but like... I don't care? or I care because one of them has pissed me off recently. I do fundamentally watch most of men's tennis as a hater, and admittedly this is accumulated bitterness over way too many years, but I do also think it's frustrating! tennis gets in its own way with this whole gentleman's sport business, the amount of wanking people do over federer/nadal in particular is truly insufferable... this is a sport filled with millionaire tax evaders and they'll have you believe that smashing a racquet is not only not fun (obviously it is) but also some kind of arbiter of morality. congrats to nadal for not smashing a racquet in his career!! could we please get his thoughts on gender equality in prize money? oh... okay. hm. this isn't supposed to be some gotcha, these guys all suck. but ultimately I would prefer not to engage with this sanitising and pearl clutching, given they do all suck, over shit that fundamentally does not matter while giving them a pass over all the stuff that DOES and instead maybe just have some fun. maybe you need to be single-minded and kind of dull to be good at men's tennis these days, maybe it's inevitable, doesn't mean I don't find them boring and pointless. there's some people who just enjoy like,,, watching greatness, endlessly racking up numbers and reaching the pinnacle of the sport or whatever, that's not me, I need there to be a story

thing is, right, obviously I'll still watch these matches (though I have massively turned it down this year, especially on the men's side - I did have a kind of breaking point this january where I was like 'wow I don't think I can ever care about anything any more?' and broadly speaking this has proved to be correct). I've tried hard to like a lot of these men because, god knows, it'd be a way more pleasant experience if I could trick my brain into it, but I can't! I think they're dull! fundamentally I'm too embedded in this world to ever be able to leave it. but I think it's funny when fans go 'oh people who are into drama don't appreciate the actual sport' like buddy I can basically guarantee I know more about the sport than you do. I Just Think that actually interpersonal relationships do also enhance the actual sports, like this shit is a conversation right,,, it has its history, it's a development over time in terms of your tactics and your knowledge of your opponent's tactics and so on, your expectations going into every match. when you have an interesting interpersonal dynamic, the sport also becomes more interesting... it's actually pretty straightforward lol. a lot of tennis is in the head, rivalries are also in the head, you're playing the other guy (gender neutral) as much as you are the actual ball. I get super annoyed by fans who are too busy being nostalgic to actually enjoy the players we have now, and I really don't like it when people call iga boring for instance, but I do also have a little bit of that. love the game, hate a lot of the players, simple as. bring back agassi calling his pet parrot more interesting than sampras in his autobiography, we used to be a proper sport