#so if its kind of eh then eh

[kulai]

DAY 1: First Kiss for Wenclairtober :3

check this out on twt ! this is based on ch12 (i think?) of "The Dead and the Dancing" on ao3. A HEAVY recommended for sure

[s0fter-sin]

soap's whole deal being sniper and demolitions gets me going bc on the surface they sound so different but when you get into it, you realise it's bc soap's smart

sniping is all math; calculating distances and wind interference and bullet drop. something i think people overlook is he was listed as a sniper first so it can be implied that he's better at it than demolitions. he does more sniping in both campaigns than demolitions work; in capture or kill, ghost specifically calls on him to take down the aq snipers

and demolitions is math with a hit of chemistry; knowing what mixes with what, knowing how much to use, recognising environmental factors and adjusting accordingly. it's not just about the boom; so much work goes into contained/ planned explosions. especially when having enough power for a breacher charge and not bringing down the whole building is the difference between mission success and failure

the chemical bombs he makes in alone can't just be any old cleaners, they have to have the correct reaction to each other; he just knew off the top of his head what would mix with what to create what reaction. he would also potentially have to recognise them by sight/smell bc they would’ve been written in spanish

soap would also have to know architecture; recognising structural integrity and weak points so he knows exactly where to plant a charge to bring it down and how it'll come down

he has an incredible soldier's mind people just forget that bc he's sociable which itself is a skill

we know he tends to buck against orders he doesn't agree with like when he pushes back against ghost in capture or kill and shepherd when he tells them to release hassan

he gets closer to people and sees if he can trust them and that's when he follows them without question. really think about how he talks to alejandro and rudy; he asks about their home and alejandro's family and rudy's relationship with him. those aren't questions you ask a stranger after a few hours of knowing them. that's not even touching on his relationship with ghost

he also deliberately brings people of higher ranks down to his level; talking informally with ghost and giving him a shoulder punch, addressing alejandro (a colonel!!) by his first name and rudy by his nickname despite literally just meeting them. he personalises all of them and it’s in direct opposition to the reason most characters do that; it’s not due to insubordination or lack of respect, the more he respects and trusts someone, the more casual he is with them

he digs into people; he wants to know what makes them tick and that determines if he can one, trust them and two, follow their orders. once he decides that, he's the ultimate soldier; he bleeds loyalty which makes him vicious when that loyalty is taken for granted

he isn't naive or bubbly or insecure; he's an incredibly smart and aware soldier. he's aggressive and bloodthirsty and loyal and intuitive and i love him so much

[mercurymacaroons]

arrives 15 min late with a latte

......sup

[lovesickeros]

now that natlan is out it's tsaritsa yearning hours again because i am one nation closer to either being horribly disappointed or foaming at the mouth!

creator!reader w a little side of conflicted tsaritsa is such good food I can't not yap about it. a woman who has dedicated so much of her life to severing herself from "love" of all kinds and succeeding and. just being so confident that when she meets you she's bitter and angry and mean. because she can't stand you. she isn't supposed to love yet you worm your way into her heart anyway and you don't even know it.

especially in smth like an imposter au. she tells herself your just a tool for her to use but your treated like the Divine you really are, pampered and spoiled every step. tells herself it means nothing when she indulges you – let's you hold her hand in private, eventually let's you move aside the veil, just a little.

and she hates it. hates how easy it is to let you break down the ice she's built up for years.

all you do is smile and she feels like she can't breathe. because despite how violently she rejects love in all aspects, it always bleeds through eventually. she despises it but the way you brush your thumbs over her cheeks makes her bitter and warm and it infuriates her to no end.

she hates you and she loves you and she can't stand you and if you were ever taken from her she'd destroy every inch of teyvat if she had to go get you back.

and ironically enough I think she'd also be the one to initiate any first kiss. maybe she's still trying to convince herself it's just a fluke and itll make her realize it meant nothing, it means nothing. desperate to fix whatever you've done to her and instead it just makes it worse.

a horrible mess of a woman who gave up on love just to be confronted with it when she finally accepted it's absence.

[likesdoodling]

Just an au idea I thought up a while ago :D

[spasikonik]

hey i noticed that we happy few fandom is still alive on here and IT'S FILLING ME WITH INCREDIBLE JOY

[rapidhighway]

dsffsfdgaf ok here's this. it was all just one giant excuse to draw a really pissed off metal

[spacemothes]

Anyways so this was what I was working on while missing all those days of drawing Siffrin

[t3fut3fu]

the (almost) yearly dmc!dante redraw

[solei-eclipse]

dramatic ass jiu from the VC video

[mealfreak]

this cannot continue.

[goji-pilled]

man maybe that is just me, but everytime i see someone say that radahn only cared about fighting i get the urge to tear my hair out

like yes, he did enjoy the thrill of battle greatly but that isn't all! it never was!!

he may have inherited his father's flaming red hair, but he is also a carian, he is also rennala's son.... because dear god, this man holds much love in his heart still.

he loved his horse, so much so he learned gravity magic and made it a significant part of his fighting style.

he loved rykard, or else why would he have the abductor virgin (though rykard may have overshot the line of what was needed with the amount he sent... clearly as seen in that cave lol) in redmane castel? why else would his painting be proudly displayed in volcano manor, if not because he and his brother loved eachother??

he clearly loved messmer and gaius too, as they too are like brothers to him.

and ranni... oh when it comes to ranni people love to paint it like they couldn't stand eachother, and perhaps there is some truth to it. perhaps they did argue over their difference in ideals and the topic of the golden order. and yet, radahn held back the very stars that determine the fate of the carians... including ranni's, a fate that was bound to her status as an empyrean and the two fingers, something she hated, something he must have had known.

some may claim it a coincidence, but the connection is too obvious for that. so i call bullshit. sure, perhaps the thrill of such a battle was a motivator, but i say he also very much, perhaps most of all even, did this for ranni.

yes, general radahn the great starscourge was a warrior, a lion bred for battle, one who idolized godfrey greatly.

but he remains a carian, a child of rennala, to love and care is as much in his nature as it is in his mother's, aunt's, brother's and sister's.

[batsplat]

I saw the post about assen 2016 and Marc cutting the chicane and was wondering if Marc did that a lot to his competitors like the imitation of mind games. Cause I’ve always thought of Vale as the one who used the mind games more. Did Marc use mind games a lot and was just more subtle?

(assen '16)

if you're interested in reading more about marc marquez mind games, then boy do I have a post for you

anyway, I can't really think of anything that's all that similar to assen 2016 because that's such a specific situation... not every day that you have something as memorable and as easy to visibly imitate and as controversial as cutting the final chicane. of course, if we're talking about imitation, it's pretty hard to avoid mentioning how marc did infamously copy two out of valentino's three most well known career overtakes within half a year of joining the premier class, and was also pretty shameless about the whole thing. but at least there you can say it's all about the race situation marc happened to find himself in - and there will only have been so much premeditation possible with both incidents

more broadly speaking, then, targeted behaviour where he's trying to send a message to one of his competitors during non-race sessions... well, that's fairly common. he loves using non-race sessions to study and stalk and at times deliberately harass his competitors. I'll give a little more details on one specific incident here to demonstrate what I'm talking about. it's related to towing, as it so often is with marc, and I ended up only briefly mentioning it in the post linked above. for context, marc spent a fair bit of time in 2019 trying to mess with the rookie revelation fabio quartararo, sometimes during the races themselves and sometimes outside of them. nothing wrong with hazing your young challengers, right? so one of the more widely discussed incidents took place in sepang 2019 qualifying (tw crash):

big fan of how the article very strongly implies that when marc says the words "honestly speaking", he was not, in fact, honestly speaking. did a single person on this planet believe marc when he said he just happened to end up right behind fabio? who knows, maybe there's someone out there, who knows...

obviously, marc and his team weren't really trying to hide what they were doing, which makes it even funnier that marc just goes for this completely shameless 'oh it was all just a coincidence' routine. and of course, this entire episode ended on a pretty sour note for marc. even though he tried to shrug it off in the moment, this incident did come with consequences for him:

which, yeah. lot's to be said here, lots to be said. but let's return to the actual point of the post, the mind games

in the end marc did do a rather nice salvage job in the race, p11 to p2 - and fabio didn't win the race, which I'm sure was appreciated. here's a nicely in-depth description of the incident that I'm going to liberally steal excerpts from. it's a good bit of extra insight on both the episode itself and what it represented in the broader context of the dynamic between the pair of them

it's part of the established playbook when it comes to dealing with promising young talent: you try to rough them up in the races and you try to rough them up outside of them. you try to make them nervous, maybe you even try to scare them. and so the cycle continues

this is the thing, right, marc really does view all on-track sessions as time to 'work' on his rivals. he's never been focused solely on himself during these sessions - and the towing thing has never just been a matter of practicality for him. 'the race doesn't just happen on sunday' 'great riders, champions, are bullies' 'they don't just want to win, they want to rub the rest of the world's noses in it'... marc has always adopted that philosophy in his racing (and he learnt from the best). he's never been shy in his tactics of intimidation - in his efforts to undermine his rivals' confidence and make them suffer. it's all part of the game

and then, of course, there's the bit of insight we get about how marc was reportedly worried about fabio because of his talent and fearlessness... a rookie who hadn't even won a race yet. and yet marc's "been doing his best to instil fear" into fabio. unfortunately it's not always easy to spook young talent, especially when they're so very brave... it's a tricky line to toe - by marking out your rivals like that, you are also letting them implicitly know you see them as a threat. which if anything can help motivate them and make them more confident. inconvenient

anyway, l'll include some more of the description of the incident, which helps illustrate just how little effort marc was going to in attempting to hide his underhanded behaviour (and how that may have been the whole point):

inherently, right, this 'battle of nerves' is a really important element of the whole towing strategy. it's about your read of the other rider, your analysis of their character, how you think they will play the situation... how much you think they're willing to risk, how much you think they'd be motivated to just fuck you over regardless, how prepared they will be to call your bluff. and in the context of sepang 2019, with that year's title very much sealed up, marc decided that he was prepared to play this game for as long as he had to. marc had won the last five races, fabio was still searching for his first ever win... marc knew young and hungry fabio would blink before he did

which, yeah. less than ideal to engage in mind games in a way that ends up getting you injured. this whole incident does serve as a good illustration of marc's overall approach, but obviously this specific episode wasn't particularly successful or indeed wise from marc's side. all in all, it probably wasn't all that intimidating for fabio when marc crashed behind him

anyway, here's some more bits talking about how marc was perhaps not being 100% honest in his post-qualifying interview:

even though in this specific example marc did admittedly fuck it, a lot of this kind of behaviour isn't bad long-term investment because it's meant to be cumulative, where you're just consistently putting pressure on someone... as it says above, "every ounce of energy spent worrying about you is one which can't be spent on trying to go faster". so you're hoping to distract your opponents, you're hoping that this constant tension will eventually unsettle them - or that you've spent so much time studying and analysing them that you can figure out how to bother them more effectively (*coughs* 2008 *coughs again*). or maybe you just can't help yourself in messing with your opponents and sometimes it is counterproductive because you've shown them how seriously you take them as a rival. maybe sometimes it's a bit of all of those things!

on fabio's reaction:

which is a pretty friendly response, it has to be said! but anyway, of course 'if he wants to follow us we are doing a good job' is probably the most healthy and useful takeaway from the whole thing. that's the thing with bullies, isn't it, you do have to figure out a way to stand up to them. fabio might have been annoyed while marc was picking on him, but he's not picking a fight with marc after the fact. he's just making it clear that he's not been intimidated - and has bagged himself pole in the process while marc started from eleventh place. as fabio says, "it's a little bit part of the game". but it is a game, and it's one that marc has always been more than happy to play

[greasydumbfuck]

thinking about frank and sex (in a sad way)

[arinmoss]

gouache painting practice :3

[caravanlurker]

shout out to that one time I watched the PRISMCorps Magical Girl lore video and the first few episodes of TGAMM in veeery close proximity. too much time on this xP loong ramble in the tags