#somethings were VERY questionable

[lazylittledragon]

I've been loving ur mombin comics, but where is the other mom? what trans hottie is not paying her child support out here? (this is said with a lot of love and affection, im very curious abt how she got into that situation, if you have thoughts abt it <3)

ajsjhsdfh i wasn't going to answer this because it's explained in the next comic but kudos to you for being the only person to say 'who's the other mom' instead of 'WHO'S THE DAD'

also the way this is worded made me laugh for like 5 minutes thank you so much xx

[sysig]

Experimentation (Patreon)

[sskk-manifesto]

Bungou Stray Dogs: Dead Apple and how “ability users” (opposite to “normal people”) learning to accept themselves through the acceptance of their own abilities is a queer metaphor of acceptance of own's sexual orientation and gender: an essay by me

[ingravinoveritas]

So, in honor of David hosting the BAFTAs this year, The Guardian is soliciting questions for him to answer, and I just needed to share a selection of them...

(Sharing this last one only because the secondhand embarrassment is so strong, and why would you even ask David this. Also agreeing with someone else who said this question is so clearly made for Michael Sheen...)

[perfectly-clear-from-here]

i swear to jesus, his mother and all the angels in fecking heaven if ONE more alex turner x reader oneshot comes up on my feed i'm going to go BALLISTIC. that man does not need me, he needs a lad sculpted by the gods with incredible guitar skills to throw him around till the sun comes up. preferably by the name of miles kane.

[twentyfivemiceinatrenchcoat]

i guess it’s less that they Completely Understood each other and more that . just. they met each other at the perfect time . they had a bond that could never be replaced . they could be their true selves around each other, even if it only lasted for a year or two . but it still meant so much to the both of them !!! those two years alone meant so much more than the ten years they spent apart and that completely fucking Destroys me . they had something that neither one of them would ever find again and if it’s not Total Understanding then i truly believe it was unconditional love . soulmatism. the feeling of finding your other half . they had each other for two little years and it was the single most vibrant blue spring of their lives

[eir-trixa]

One thing that gets me everytime is that Stoick would have absolutely LOVED Zephyr. And Nuffink of course but I have this weird feeling that he wouldve doted non stop on Zephyr specifically. She wouldve been spoiled rotten by her grandfather, taken everywhere on top of his shoulders or the crook of his elbow. He would be reading her stories before bed. He would have learned to braid her hair and sat down with her on tea parties. He wouldve gone with her troll hunting. He would be there for her and her brother in the way he never got to be with Hiccup because the times were different now and then. He would absolutely be her best friend and Im SAD they never got to meet.

[habken]

I've been rigging in harmony for almost five years and have done so on TV and streaming productions so if you have any immediate questions or anything lmk!

oh wow that’s so cool :0 and thank you!!

Honestly I think I need to mess around a bit more before I have any decent questions to ask haha, but if there’s any general tips or like “remember to do this” type advice you have, that would be so great !!

[sukibenders]

Jace, sweetie, you never did anything wrong no matter what some in the fandom are saying, and you are entitled to question your mother because even if she proclaims you as her heir, the stark differences between you and your younger siblings are very apparent and when she dies who knows what will happen to the throne you were supposed to sit on, what will happen to you? Especially given that you are now mirroring your mother when she was younger, being anointed as her father's heir but met with uncertainty at every turn because said father did little to reassure her as well as those she would be ruling over. So no, I don't think you're making things more difficult, especially because the questions you are asking also tie into the succession crisis you and your family are currently fighting. Just because you get a little touchy with your mother doesn't make you wrong!

[ferronickel]

Thinking bout the time someone yelled at me because they didn't understand butches.

[nyankonui]

"it came to me in a dream" except it actually came to me in a dream.

a few nights ago i had a pretty coherent dream where these five were younger kids and living on an ARK-type research facility as test subjects. this might be a stupid concept, but im planning on spending the next few days playing with the idea. more information coming soon :3c (maybe) (also in the tags pls read the tags)

this will probably be tagged with 'lab au' depending on if i come up with a better name

[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

[legallybrunettedotcom]

when i look at the way some people talk about religion online, i think a lot of those takes are prompted by them seeing discussions about faith and religion as inherently anti-intellectual. and i suppose it's understandable if you've never seen or been in an environment where people discussed and argued about religion and sacred texts in a more academic and like critical and intelligent way, but not everyone religious is some bigoted asshole out there trying to indoctrinate you. it takes all sorts to make a world.

[divinekangaroo]

Movies/books which seared me:

hana-bi

melancholia

the aunt (patrick white)

never let me go (ishiguro)

[tlgtw]

Man that DLC's final boss has got me feeling kinda fucked. I'm kinda depressed about it now that I'm done. Everything else is, was, so good. But I do not like that plot development. I honestly think it is bad. Why did they choose not to foreshadow this in literally any way? Why did Miquella attempt to resurrect Godwyn at all in the first place, then? Practice? Was this really what was originally planned? There's no actual evidence to the contrary so you gotta assume it must've been.

So yeowch...