#so they all go grocery shopping

[folkbreeze]

meet toddler Saffy at her best... or her worst

transcript:

Saffron screams

Elvis: No, no, Saffy, please

Lazza: what's going on?

...

Elvis: she wanted cake. Ok, Saffy, enough.

Lazza: Por favor [please], make it stop.

Elvis: I'm trying! Come on Saf, get up.

...

Elvis: Jesus... Come on, shhh.

Lazza: Just put her on the cart!

...

Elvis: see? now mama's angry. We won't be getting kisses today.

[marzipanandminutiae]

Notable reactions I've gotten as a museum docent who wears full-on Victorian clothing every day, but not as a work thing; that's just how I dress

(museums in my area being pretty lenient on aesthetics as long as you're decent for public activities)

"Are you in period attire?" This is probably the most common; I always wonder what they think about seeing one (1) staff member in historical clothing and Literally Nobody Else, but I get the assumption. normally I say "not for work; this is just my clothing" and steer the conversation back towards the history at hand

"Reeeeeally?" [disbelieving and slightly smug look]

"So like, at the grocery store?" "Yep!" [two full rooms of guided tour pass] "Wait, like, running errands, too?" "Yes." [remainder of the tour passes] "Oh come on, that has to be a costume! Let me take your picture!"

"So what do you normally? Like what's your normal job?" This one confused me- even the actually costumed Freedom Trail tour guides are paid professionals. I don't know if he assumed everyone Dressed Funny was a volunteer or what

[a man has his camera pointed in my direction while I'm talking. thinking he's trying to photograph the object next to me, I move aside to give him a clearer shot] [he follows me with his camera, takes my picture, and I see it on social media the next day. the object is not in it; it's just me. no permission was asked- he doesn't legally have to, but come on, man]

"Yo, I love you guys' tours!" This was shouted to me on the street while I wandered over to get Tatte on my break, so not technically at work. I WAS a bit surprised still- none of the costumed tour guides around do Victorian that I've seen, and it just looks so monumentally different from 18th century that I struggle to see how they could get mixed up. but that's just me being like those XKCD scientists, I guess

[evilkaeya]

Do you guys think Chuuya is well known amongst regular citizens too. Like in PM he’s Nakahara Chuuya, the mafia executive, the gravity manipulator, one half of double black and on the streets he’s the senior citizens care community volunteer. The guy who donates to the local animal shelter every week. Every highschooler's street crush.

[coolnonsenseworld]

Last piece ❤️💙

There are still leftovers of the Calendar as well as some A5 prints with calendar pieces 💞

linktr.ee/Mezzy (or check my Tumblr for links)

[todayisafridaynight]

[puppypeter]

I want to read about Jamie courting the hell out of Roy, wining and dining him, bringing him coffee in the morning, leaving him pastries on his desk with a sweet post it note, buying him flowers, making him hella flustered and panicky at the lack of control because that's always been Roy's role when dating someone

[padawansuggest]

Okay so once more, I ask of assistance. Not like… required but I’m not gonna lie, this could improve my life to such a significant degree that I’m asking anyways.

So. I have a lot of disabilities that make it hard to get around, but what I’m asking for is help with getting a bike… not really, I need a trike… I know that’s to embarrassing to say as an adult but with my instability I don’t have the ability to keep upright on a bike. I need a trike.

I live in a VERY bike friendly town. It’s small (tho I’m still limited to very small parts of the town because I can only walk for so long and in this heat that’s a very short amount of time) and we actually have dedicated bike lanes here. We even have started construction on multiple bike lanes with center dividers to keep cars out of them, that’s how much this town is friendly to bikes.

And frankly the price isn’t that high either. Like 280$ or so, and I can order one on Amazon (no I cannot buy a trike in this town) and they have them with the giant baskets in the back for groceries and I can get a personal shopping basket for the front of the cart and that would bet. Awesome.

So. Ultimately, I would like a better quality of life and being restricted to a very small part of town because of mobility is kind of sad… I will accept any help you guys wanna give and drop into my PayPal in the bio.

[caitlynmeow]

Bela: I have the sharpest memory ! Name one time I forgot something.

Cassandra: You left me in a Walmart parking slot like, two weeks ago.

Bela: I did that on purpose, try again.

Bela would absolutely do this on purpose!

Like Cass can be an ass and annoy Bela to the point where her sister just finishes what she came for and leave.

Or something like 'I'm leaving in ten minutes' and Cass looooves pushing the limits but the joke's on her Bela isn't playing around.

[applestorms]

ok, well. if last time i talked about parallels between near & light, i guess it’s only fair that this time i talk about parallels between mello & misa. yap central on this blog lately.

the main thing that stands out the most about mello & misa, and the reason why i will forever Defend them and their place in the story, is that in my mind they both function in a similar way on a narrative level: namely, both of them are incredibly active wild-card characters that keep the action going and the story moving forward when the other main characters like light, L, & near start getting too passive.

notably, while i often see this trait praised in mello, usually in the context of a comparative criticism of near for his overly-abundant passivity, i have also seen it used as a criticism of misa's character, that she breaks up the status quo of DN too significantly and thereby makes the story feel less realistic. this last point in particular is an odd argument to make imo, as if anything misa's presence only increases the realism of DN by adding some extra luck/random chance into the story in a way that is ultimately still character-motivated and thus easier for the audience to go along with-- something DN in general is very good at, often introducing elements through pure chance but keeping them grounded in characters enough that you almost don't even notice.

take light meeting naomi misora, for example: the only reason he runs across her at all is because he offers to run an errand for his mom on a bored laundry day, literally stumbling across her right at the exact moment she is divulging important insights she is literally the only person capable of making about kira. yet this moment does not stand out as particularly aggravating or out of place in the story, as ultimately the only reason why light is able to get out of that situation is his own quick thinking and ability to calm himself while under immense pressure, squeezing his way out of a potentially run-ending situation he didn't even know existed moments prior.

(not a fan of that big joel video, if you couldn't tell. lmao.)

point is, mello & misa both fulfill about the same narrative function in the story by being so aggressive in their actions, catching the others off guard even if their plans aren't as well thought out or careful as they could otherwise be. they're both incredibly passionate, dedicated characters as well, tough enough to take the hit when it inevitably comes, and in my opinion neither of them are nearly as stupid as the other MCs like to make them out to be. to some degree, i think both of them are aware of the fact that they can't win at the Mind Game Cold War Bullshit the others are inclined to get involved in, so they instead choose to carve out their own place in the story through sheer perseverance alone.

which, speaking of passion: one of the most interesting parallels i think you can make between mello & misa is the ways in which they idolize their respective heroes, misa's obviously being light while mello's is L. allow me to elaborate.

as this post points out, DN has some very interesting use of its religious imagery & theming, and in particular its use of christian/catholic gothic imagery in its story and especially its art. however, as op notes, a lot of this is quite superficial, ascribing to an aesthetic of "kitschy Catholicism," that was characteristic of a lot of early 2000s japanese goth style. yet, while i admit that a more serious consideration of religious elements in the art & story could add some interesting flavor to the story, i also think that, regardless of intention, the superficiality of DN's religious elements works really well in the context of this particular story. as i stated in my tags on that post: light is a superficial god. he is a fake, a scam, some idiot human that stumbled across the powers of a real shinigami and got his head up his ass about it. and a lot of the arcs of other characters in DN is about their reaction to light's claims-- whether they choose to follow him (e.g. misa, mikami), follow somebody else (e.g. mello), or follow nobody at all (e.g. near, also kinda soichiro?), and the implications that has for their lives and personalities.

this is all to say that while you can, on a surface level, connect misa & mello pretty easily as the two aggressive, fashionable blondes of the series, i also think that these somewhat superficial traits betray a greater connection between the two of them. if we understand the christian/catholic elements of misa & mello's fashion as a demonstration of their connection to not just a higher power but a lie, a superficial deity simply reflecting the sunlight of powers greater than himself, then i think we have great insight into another key element of both their characters.

do not forget: in the world of DN, heaven & hell do not exist. at least in the context of death itself, the realm & lore of the shinigami reign supreme, a point which the DN musical makes even more overt: "Isn't it a laugh? / Isn't it a shame? / Thinking there is someone in heaven to blame?" and "Going through the motions / as if there will be a reward / Oh, while we stay eternally bored!" (BEST SONGGG.) everyone is destined for the same fate of MU, the same void of nothingness awaits all. no reward, no punishment, no greater deity looking down upon us than the bored, slothful shinigami, lazing about in their realm and picking people off only when necessary (for the most part).

misa & mello are thus dedicating themselves to false idols, and we can see the negative effects this has on them in almost every facet of their character-- particularly for mello, who is perhaps more self-aware and has more of a mixed emotional outlook on his idol, but maybe even to a more extreme degree for misa. i keep going back to this idea of equating boredom with depression in DN, but where light/L/near are all "bored" in a very quiet, passive, stewing-in-bed late at night kinda way, misa & mello are characteristically a lot more aggressive and intense about it-- while neither of them are super overtly suicidal, necessarily, their actions still betray a distinct lack of care for their own safety or lives, expressing the same thematic sentiment as the others. even if they still don't straight up say it, through their actions they're a lot louder about not liking themselves, and seem to take the problems they see in the world more personally, shouldering the blame as a failure within themselves instead of projecting it outward like the others: e.g. light taking his unhappiness at the emptiness of his life at the start of the story & placing the blame on the world for "going to shit" & humanity's moral failings, versus misa being willing to literally & figuratively give up her life for KIRA the second he demands it, whether that be in the form of shinigami eyes or killing her own friends w/o second thought-- all because he was the only thing to bring justice to her own parents' deaths, an almost undoubtedly traumatizing/horrible experience for her considering how much value she places on KIRA/light afterwards.

to clarify, this is not to say that all of these characters are actually and literally depressed and/or suicidal, though you could certainly make that argument for some/all of them-- this is just one way that i think you could interpret their roles in the plot, and their thematic attachment to the story. even if DN isn't all that interested in considering the True Moral Answer to ethics/the justice system/human society/etc, it definitely takes at least some interest in the emotional viewpoints of characters in relation to those concepts, so i think this is a fair enough approach to take. or to say this another way, it's less about justifying the claim that "the world is shit," and more about trying to understand the emotional motivation & experience of feeling like the world is shit, if that makes sense.

that being said...speaking more on the whole "not liking themselves," thing: even if she doesn't say it aloud often, if ever, i think that misa is deeply aware of the fact that she was not supposed to live this long, that her existence at all is a pure stroke of luck that let her live on past her destined date. she dedicates herself to light so fully, not even necessarily expecting reciprocation (though she at least reserves herself the possibility of such), because being a disciple to her god at least gives her life some kind of purpose. similarly, i think mello is also aware of just how out of reach the one thing he wants is, how his desperation in and of itself is ironically the one thing keeping him from surpassing near and truly being #1. it's important to note that pre-time skip misa & post-skip mello are almost exactly the same age, around 20 years old at the time of their main arcs. they're immature, and in the case of mello especially, are lashing out at the world in whatever way they can because they know they don't quite fit into it in the way that they want to or should. regardless of the intent behind it, mello & misa both still make the conscious decision to kill with the DN-- perhaps in a way that still keeps their humanity, at least following near's logic, but it's a decision to end a human life either way.

anyways, going back to my previous point, this "worshiping of false idols," idea has some interesting implications-- for misa & mello yes, but also for L and the ways in which he contrasts again light, as under this logic mello's treatment kind of inherently gives L a similar status as a sort of false god/idol. which-- actually makes a lot of sense? or at the very least, viewing wammy's house as a kind of mystery cult a la the eleusinian mysteries is a neat approach to take. L & light's mutual alienation from humanity fits them both filling a false god status, anyway. also there's another thread of analysis you could follow here where near is instead fit into the role of the person mello is fixated on which AAAAAAAAA has interesting implications but jesus fucking christ, this post is long. some thoughts for another time, i suppose.

[thebluestbluewords]

places where you shouldn’t be (where you could be anyway)

“This was a mistake.” Carlos says under his breath. “We’re gonna die here, right? This is where it ends.”

“Yeah,” Jay agrees, equally quietly. “Biggest mistake we’ve made in a while. Nice knowing you, but we’re not getting out of this one.” 

Their cart squeals as Evie navigates them smoothly around a turn. 

It’s fine. They’re all fine and great and surviving, thriving adults. 

Who totally know how to do grocery shopping. 

“Do we even have money for this?” 

Jay shrugs. “Dude. I don’t know. I didn’t even bring a wallet.” 

“What’s in your pockets?” 

Jay’s wearing a jacket with at least six hidden pockets. It’s one of the most honest, upstanding items of clothing he owns. “Nothing. Literally. It’s like, physically painful.” 

“Take some gum or something,” Carlos says, flicking a silver wrapper at Jay’s head. It falls on the floor. It’s a testament to the way that respectable Auradon adults seem to gloss over the VKs when they’re not actively shouting that nobody in the store even blinks an eye at them. “Nobody's gonna care about that. It’ll keep your hands busy if there’s something to fidget with, yeah?” 

“I can’t.” 

Carlos shoves the gum into his mouth. “Why the fuck not?” 

“Dude. We’re being good. I have to keep being good, or we’re gonna get shipped back and the girls would never forgive us. Do you want that on your conscience? Me being shipped back to the isle forever because I couldn’t keep my hands to myself in the fuckin’ grocery store?” 

“Nobody’s gonna care.” Carlos points out. He’s wearing a jacket that’s more rips than fabric, and the four of them are the only people in the store not wearing pastels. “The cameras only cover the door and the health food display. Stores like this bake a certain amount of loss into their profit margins. They don’t give a shit if we take some gum.” 

Jay shoves his hands in his pockets. There’s tiny little cheese rounds in the side cooler they’re walking past, and they would fit so neatly in his hand. 

He could fit like seven of them in his pocket without blinking.  “Nope. I’m not doing it.” 

“I’ll start moving my shit to your pockets.” Carlos says, chomping his gum so aggressively that one of the adults who’s pushing a cart in the opposite direction almost looks at them. “I’m gonna run out of space.” 

Jay twirls a bottle opening keychain around his finger before tossing it back on the shelf. “You wouldn’t.” 

“Mine’re gonna be full before we get halfway through. You’ve got a lot more space.” 

“Yeah,” Jay says, still casually, slouching so that they’re shoulder to shoulder. “Because I’m not fucking four feet tall, and I’m not wearing skinny jeans.” 

“You’re just jealous of my incredible calves.” Carlos says, shoulder-checking him towards the side of the aisle. The subsequent noise is a great cover for the transfer between their pockets,  not that they need it. They’re a polished ducking team, and the plastic-wrapped candy bars don’t even crinkle. 

Evie’s going to kill them both. 

[vaguely-concerned]

it really is hilarious how little objective quality has to do with how much I'll love an RPG. larian makes games that are objectively very good, but don't really resonate with me personally when I play them, for whatever reason. bioware makes games of wildly erratic levels of quality that cause my soul to vibrate at pitches heard only by dolphins and god.

[that-foul-legacy-lover]

today just will not let me rest huh. reasons are in the tags but i get very emotional just be warned

[batsplat]

new casey podcast have you seen it

https://m.youtube.com/watch?si=ye8wNfrvaPDjtpDV&v=IuwZN6aP8sg&feature=youtu.be

(link to the podcast) yeah I did, cheers!

there's not that much 'new information' per se within this podcast, though there's a bunch of nice tidbits about teenage casey. what stood out to me is how the framing of his journey to becoming a racer is... well, it's kinda new? it's not exactly surprising, because you could get a lot of this stuff from reading between the lines in his autobiography. the question of 'is this your dream or your parents' dream' is a very common one with athletes, and it's often a thin line... but, y'know, this podcast interview in particular is quite a noticeable shift in how casey himself talks about this issue. it's a shift in how he portrays his 'dream' of becoming a professional rider back when he was formulating his autobiography, versus how he's answering questions in this episode. his autobiography isn't free from criticism of his parents - but casey is always stressing his own desire to race. so you do get stuff like this (from the autobiography):

At this point things were getting serious. Dad used to say, 'If you want to become World Champion you can't be that much better than local competition,' holding his finger and thumb an inch apart. 'You have to be this much better,' he'd say, holding his arms wide open. Dad confirms this feeling still today: 'I know it's a harsh way to look at things but that's the difference between a champion and the rest. Just look at the careers of Dani Pedrosa and Jorge Lorenzo. Dani had Alberto Puig and Jorge had his old man, both of them hard as nails. If you want to make it to the top I think it takes somebody with an unforgiving view on life to help get you there. So I said those things to Casey, particularly when we went to the UK, because to keep moving up a level he couldn't just be happy with winning a race. If he wasn't winning by a margin that represented his maximum performance then he wasn't showing people how much better he was than the rest.' There's no denying that Dani, Jorge and I became successful with that kind of upbringing and sometimes you probably do need it. As far as I'm concerned Alberto was nowhere near as tough on Dani as my dad was on me or Jorge's dad was on him. That kind of intensity and expectation puts a lot of extra pressure on a father-son relationship that isn't always healthy. We definitely had our moments and there were a few major blow-ups to come. But at the time, rightly or wrongly, it was proving to be a good system for us and I was eager to continue impressing my dad and others with my performances on the track.

(quick reminder, jorge's review of his father's style of parenting was describing him as "a kind of hitler")

but in general the emphasis is very much on how much casey enjoyed racing, on how single-minded casey was when it came to racing. he might have been isolated by his racing (again this is from the autobiography, in the context of discussing being bullied by kids in school until he got 'protection' from his dirt track friends):

School life was a whole lot better after that but I still hated it. All my real friends were from dirt-track; they were the only people I had anything in common with.

and he's talked about how other parents misinterpreted his shyness as him not actually wanting to race, which meant they were judging casey's parents as a result (autobiography):

Mum tells me that the other parents thought she and Dad were awful because I cried as I lined up on the start line. She remembers: 'I was putting his gloves on his hands and pushing his helmet over his head. The thing was, I knew Casey wasn't crying because he didn't want to ride or because he was scared. He just didn't like the attention of being stared at by all these people!'

but like. overall racing for him was still something he portrayed as a very positive aspect of his childhood. something he always clung onto, something that was his choice to pursue

so... let's play compare and contrast with some specific passages of the autobiography and this podcast, you decide for yourself. take this from his autobiography:

After I started winning more times than not, and it was obvious my passion for bikes wasn't wavering, Mum and Dad decided that seeking out sponsors could be a great idea to help offset some of the costs of travelling to meets and keeping the bikes in good order.

and here, in a longer excerpt about what a sickly child casey was, what his mother said (autobiography):

'They tested him for cystic fibrosis and he was on all kinds of medication; you name it, he was on it. But Casey still raced, we couldn't stop him.' I know I was sick but Mum was right, I wasn't going to let that stop me.

versus this from the podcast, when he's responding to a completely open question about how he got into riding:

To be honest, I don't know if I was allowed to have any other attraction to be honest. I think it was, you know, you're going to be a bike rider from when I was a very very young age - and I'm not the only one to think that. I think my parents have stated that enough times to certain people and you know I was sort of pushed in that direction. My elder sister who's six and a half years older than me, she actually raced a little bit of dirt bikes and dirt track before I was born and when I was very young, so it was sort of a natural progression to go and do a little bit more of that and I think because at the time road racing was a lot more similar to dirt track. That was our sort of way in.

this was one of the very first questions in the interview, it basically just consisted of asking casey how he got into biking in the first place - whether it had come through his family or whatever. casey chose to take the response in that direction... it's not an answer that is just about his own internal passion, how he loved riding the second he touched a bike, how he loved it throughout his childhood etc etc (which is how it's framed in the autobiography) - but instead he says he wasn't allowed to do anything else. he says that he was pushed in that direction, that his parents have openly said as much to others. that he feels vindicated in the belief he was never given another choice

let's play another round. here from the autobiography:

Mum and Dad used to stand at the side for hours on end watching me practise at different tracks. They'd sometimes clock laps with a stopwatch as I went round and round. Other parents couldn't see the point in taking it so seriously but they didn't realise it was what I wanted. I was having fun. Working out how to go faster was how I got my kicks and I couldn't stop until I had taken a tenth or two of a second off my best time on any day. If another kid came out onto the track with me I would be all over them, practising passing them in different ways and in different corners, but most of the time they avoided riding with me and I would be out there on my own, racing the clock.

and this (autobiography):

I enjoyed racing so much that even when I was at home riding on my own I would set up different track configurations to challenge myself. I'd find myself a rock here, a tree there, a gatepost over there and maybe move a branch and that would be my track.

versus here, in the podcast:

Q: And did you realise at the time that you were - not groomed, is not the word but well you were being groomed to be a professional motorcycle racer, or obviously that was your only one reference point, that was the norm. Did that just feel the norm or did you think actually this feels a bit intense or how did you feel about it? A: I think it's hard, it's not until I sort of reached my mid teens where I started to have a bit of a reality check on what I was actually doing. Before then, you know I was competitive. I'm not as competitive as people think, I'm a lot more competitive internally rather than externally versus other people. I always challenge myself to things, so all those younger years was just getting the job done that I was expected to do. I enjoyed winning, I loved it, but you know I enjoyed perfect laps, perfect races, as close as I could get to that and you know from a young age I always sort of challenged myself constantly to be better. So I didn't just win races, I tried to win them - you know, if I won races by five seconds in a [...] race I'd try and win, you know I'd try and get to double that by the end of the day if I could. So you know that always kept me sharp and it stopped me from being sort of, you know, complacent in the position I was at. And it wasn't until sort of you know 16, 17, 18 that reality kicked in. I'd had a couple years road racing in the UK and Spain, been rather successful and then you get to world championships and you know maybe an engineer that was sort of - didn't have your best interests at hear. And, you know, I nearly finished my career right there after my first year of world championships just because of the reality of how hard it was in comparison to everything else I'd experienced up to that point. And, you know, it was a real reality check for me and I think it was then that I started to - you know consider everything around me and consider how and why I got to the position that I was in and that's when the mind started to change a little bit and realise that you know I really was being groomed my whole life just to sort of be here and be put on a track and try and win. And, you know, that was my seemingly most of my existence.

in all the excerpts, he stresses how much he enjoys his perfect laps, how much he enjoys riding, how there is genuine passion there, how dedicated he is to this pursuit... but then in the podcast, he's adding something else - how he'd been groomed his whole life into that role of 'professional bike racer'. that it was only in his late teens (when he was in 125cc/250cc) where he had this moment of 'man I never really had a choice in all this'

and another round. here's him talking in the autobiography about how all the money he got through racing went back into racing - but it was fine because it was the only thing he cared about anyway:

I don't remember seeing any of the money I earned because it all went back into my racing, although I guess at the time that's all I really cared about anyway. I didn't know anything else. Mum and Dad always said to me: 'If you put in the effort, we'll put in the effort.'

and here in the autobiography on how he just wanted to ride all day:

I couldn't ride my bike all day, though, as much as I would have liked to.

and him talking in the autobiography about his parents encouraging him and his sister to 'chase their dreams':

Mum and Dad encouraged both Kelly and me to follow our passions and work hard to chase our dreams. That might sound strange when you are talking about a seven-year-old but I don't think you are never too young to know that if you want something you have to earn it.

versus this in the podcast:

Q: And I've never asked you this before, but did you want to? A: Um... I think I'd been convinced of a dream I suppose. You know, yes I loved riding bikes and you know I really did enjoy racing... but there was lots of other things that I - I really enjoyed as well but just never had the opportunity or never was allowed to do anything else, so... You know, motorbikes for our budget everything fortunately dirt track was probably the cheapest way that you could go motorbike racing. You could survive on very very little in dirt track and show your potential in other ways. You know, yes, having good bikes and good tyres and all that sort of thing made a difference but it wasn't the be all end all, you could always make a difference in other ways, so... I think it was, you know - the best thing we could have done, racing through that. Like I said I enjoyed it, it wasn't until late teens, early 20s where I sort of was like, I don't know if I would have been a bike racer had I actually had a choice.

was riding really all he cared about? or were there other things he was interested in, things he just never had the opportunity to pursue? things he wasn't allowed to pursue? from the autobiography, you get the sense that his parents always deliberately portrayed it as casey's dream, something he was expected to work hard for in order to be allowed to fulfil. in the podcast, casey says it was a dream he was 'convinced' of. without wanting to speak too much on the specifics of this parenting relationship we only have limited knowledge of, this kinda does all sound like athlete parent 101: getting it into their kids' heads that this is the dream of the child, not the parent, before holding it over them when they fail to perform when their parents have invested so so much in their child's success. casey's family was financially completely dependent on his racing results when they moved to the uk - he was fourteen at the time. he was painfully conscious of his parents' 'sacrifice' to make 'his dream' possible. can you imagine what kind of pressure that must be for a teenager?

to be clear, this isn't supposed to be a gotcha, I'm not trying to uncover contradictions between what casey said back then and what he's saying now. obviously, this is all very... thorny, complicated stuff, and casey has had to figure out for himself how he feels about it, how he feels about how his parents approached his upbringing. but it is worth pointing out that this isn't necessarily just a question of his feelings changing over time - if the internal timeline he provides in the podcast is correct, he was really having that realisation in his late teens, early 20s, so on the verge of joining the premier class. that is when he says he had the thought "I don't know if I would have been a bike racer had I actually had a choice"... which is a pretty major admission, you have to say, especially given how rough those premier class years often ended up being on him. but then that realisation would have already come years and years before he wrote his autobiography, it would've been something he carried with him for most of his career. given that, you do look at his autobiography and think that he did make the decision to frame things pretty differently back then, that he decided to exclude certain things from his narrative. if this really is already something that's been festering within him for years, if he does feel like he wants to be a bit more open about all of that now than back then... well, hopefully it shows he's been able to work through all of it a bit more in the intervening years

(this is somehow an even thornier topic than his relationship with parents, but relatedly there is a bit of a discrepancy between how bullish he is in his autobiography about how mentally unaffected he was by his results, versus how he's since opened up since then about his anxiety. again, I want to stress, this is not a gotcha, he's under no obligation to share this stuff with the world - especially given the amount of discourse during his career about his supposed 'mental weakness'. it is still important in understanding him, though, how he consciously decided to tell his own story in the autobiography and how he's somewhat changed his approach in the subsequent years)

this is the rest of his answer to that podcast question I relayed above:

But at the same time you know I felt that no matter what I would have done, I sort of have a - my mentality of self-punishment, you know, of never being good enough that always drove me to try and be better and any single thing that I did, I didn't like it when I wasn't not perfect. I don't believe in the word perfect but I really didn't enjoy when I wasn't, you know, in my own terms considered a good enough level at anything I did so I would always sort of try to get up as high as I could regardless of what for.

at which point hodgson says exactly what I was thinking and goes 'god what a line' about the "mentality of self-punishment" thing. it is one hell of a line!

what's really interesting about this podcast is how these two big themes of 'this wasn't my choice' and 'self-punishment' end up kinda being linked together when casey talks about how the motogp world reacted to him... so again I'm gonna quickly toss in a bit from the autobiography (where he's talking about casual motorcycling events he went to as a kid), because it does read similarly in how for him the joy and competitive aspects of riding are closely linked:

It was a competition but it wasn't highly competitive; it was just for fun, really. Of course, I didn't see it that way, though, and I had dirt and stones flying everywhere. I don't think anyone expected the park to be shredded like it was. When I was on my bike, if I wasn't competing to my maximum level then I wasn't having as much fun.

and back to the podcast:

And also because people truly didn't understand me, that I'm not there just to enjoy the racing. As we're explaining, before that, you know it was sort of a road paved for me... And so the results were all important, not the enjoyment of it. And then you cop the flak for everything you do. I'm also very self-punishing, so it was kind of a - just a lose lose lose and it was all very very heavy on myself, so... It, you know, it took me till my later years to realise I could take the pressure off myself a little bit and go look you've done all the work you've done everything you can, you got to be proud of what you've done, so... Not necessarily go out there and enjoy it, because I don't believe you should just be going out in a sport where you're paid as much as we are expect to get results and just - you know - oh I'm just going to go and have fun it's like... yeah, nah, if you're just going to go and have fun then you're not putting in the work. And that's when we see inconsistencies etc. So I was very very harsh on myself and so even when I won races, if I made mistakes or I wasn't happy with the way I rode, well then yeah I'm happy I won but there's work to do. There was more to get out of myself and so that's where I copped a lot of bad... um, let's say bad press because of those kind of things and then they sort of attack you even more because they didn't like the fact that you didn't celebrate these wins like they wanted you to they expect you to I suppose treat every victory like almost a championship and you know it's not that I expected these wins but I expected more of myself and therefore maybe I didn't celebrate them as much as you know other people do.

kind of brings together a lot of different things, doesn't it? this whole profession was a path that was chosen for him... which he links here to how the results were 'all important' for him, how it just couldn't ever be about enjoyment. he always punished himself for his mistakes, he was under constant pressure, which also affected how he communicated with the outside world... he was so committed to self-flagellation that he made it tough for himself to actually celebrate his victories, which in turn wasn't appreciated by the fans or the press. so on the one hand, casey's obviously still not particularly thrilled about how much of a hard time he was given over his particular approach to being a rider. but on the other hand, he's also describing how all of this can be traced back to how becoming a rider was never actually his 'choice'. he's detailed his perfectionism before, including in his autobiography, including in discussing his anxiety disorder more recently - but this is explicitly establishing that link between the pressure he'd felt during his childhood to how he'd been pushed into this direction to how he then had to perform. he couldn't afford to be anything less than perfect, so he wasn't, and at times he made his own life even tougher as a result of his own exacting standards. this just wasn't stuff he's said in such straightforward, explicit terms before... and now he is

my general thing with casey is that his reputation as a straight shooter or whatever means people aren't really paying enough attention to how he's telling his own story. like, I kinda feel the perception is 'oh he used to be more closed off because the media ragged on him but since retirement he's been able to tell it like it really is' or whatever. and I'm not saying that's necessarily wrong, but it's not quite as simple as that. because he's not a natural at dealing with the media, he's put a fair bit of thought into how to communicate better with them (which he does also say in the podcast), and he's explicitly acknowledged this is something he looked to valentino for in order to learn how to better handle. because casey has felt misunderstood for quite a long time, he's quite invested in selling his story in certain ways - and it's interesting how what he's chosen to reveal or emphasise or conceal or downplay has changed over time. which means there will be plenty of slight discrepancies that pop up over time that will be as revealing as anything he explicitly says... and it tells you something, what his own idea of what 'his story' is at any given time. this podcast isn't just interesting as a sort of, y'know, one to one, 'this is casey telling the truth' or whatever - it's reflecting where his mind is at currently, what he wants to share and in what way, and how that compares to his past outlook. the framing of his childhood was really something that popped out about this particular interview... it's not like it's exactly surprising that this is how he feels, but more that he decided to say all of this so openly. some pretty heavy stuff in there! hope the years really have helped him... man, I don't know. figure it all out, for himself. something like that

[everysongineverykey]

begging people to realize that the back warehouse of a grocery store is not a second, secret grocery store that has everything you need plus some extra secret items the first grocery store does not have

[tamagotchikgs]

my mom keeps listing off things i need to do and accusatorily asking why i never do anything like art anymore n i am just. so exhausted. ive never been more tired i just want to burrow myself in the earth n disappear in the cold dirt

[ingravinoveritas]

cloud-based-and-rainpilled replied to your post "Don't know if it means anything but GT's post on…“

It reeks of vaguebooking to me, a la MS posting an “uwu i like a boy” twitter post after publically having a swooping dramatic hug with DT. the “awks” is prob a bit of self deprecating self awareness, but in a light way, but I wouldn’t put it past actors of all people to still vaguebook as fullass adults and not 12 year olds on livejournal circa 2007 lol

@cloud-based-and-rainpilled I am honestly floored at the number of people who responded to this post saying that it was just a joke/accusing me of having no sense of humor. At no point did I say that Georgia sharing that Insta story wasn't a joke or her being self-deprecating. I'm sure that it was, but to your point about it being vaguebooking, the "Awks" is ambiguous enough to where it could be read as either "Awks because David and I are happy and I post about him often but we're proof that this isn't true" or as "Awks because I post about him often and this actually is true." To me it felt like a version of that meme that shows multiple choice answers to a question with "I'm in this picture and I don't like it" checked off. Which is to say that yes, it was self-deprecating, but that doesn't mean it can't also be true.

Adding to the point about senses of humor and jokes not being readily apparent, I have posted previously on my blog about things Georgia has said/done that I thought were hilarious and enjoyed, because sometimes she is quite funny. So I am perplexed as to why I can readily acknowledge when Georgia is funny, but so many other folks seem hesitant or unwilling to acknowledge when she isn't? Echoing a comment left by @angelsadvocate96, there does seem to be a facet of British comedy that borders on cruel, but there is a marked difference between when that comedy comes at the expense of the person joking, or the expense of others. Again, in this case, Georgia was being self-deprecating, but some of her humor does come at the expense of others, and that is what I ultimately dislike. And for some reason that I don't fully understand, it seems so controversial to point out something very simple and obvious...