#that fans want their fave to be like him

[shedontlovehuhself]

The way folks weren't paying attention to Edlund when he was talking about Cas for years. But now he's mentioning Dean and all of a sudden he's y'all's bestie.

[spitedemon]

i really don’t think it’s “typical dragon age fandom nonsense” for people to be genuinely upset about the world state choices. combat, level design, art direction, gameplay gimmicks, those have all varied across each dragon age game. the one thing that’s remained constant are nods to our previous choices.

i wasn’t expecting my HoF to come riding in on a griffon, but i can’t find a monument dedicated to warden tabris somewhere around the anderfels? lucanis couldn’t have some lines about the time that one arainai boy was stirring up trouble in antiva city? you’re gonna tell me that making a mage the new divine wouldn’t have some impact on nevarra and antiva? on the anderfels, the supposed most devout militant andrastian nation in thedas? you’re saying nobody in the north is paying attention to who rules orlais or ferelden? come on.

[tinyfantasminha]

would u guys beat me up and throw me in a ditch if I said that i've been thinking about leona for a worryingly amount

[persimmontea]

A small gif set of *that* part of Shoma's programs the past few seasons ⋆˙⟡♡

Happy birthday Shoma! Your skating is truly special and unmatched. Wishing you the best in your journey towards finding your self-satisfaction~ Hope you have a great year ahead of you! ⋆˙⟡♡

[ywpd-translations]

Ride 778: “Hakogaku's sprinter”

Pag 1

1: Izumida-san!!

2: I'll use it

“Hurakan”!!

Pag 4

1: This year's May

2: Ibaraki Prefecture

West Tsukuba

3: Tsukushiba University, located at the foot of the sacred eastern mountain, Mount Tsukuba, at 887m above the sea level

4: In front of the second dormitory building on the campus

5: Basically, Doubashi

You mean you want to race me in a serious sprint battle...

Pag 5

1: Yes, please

This might be a weird way to say it, but

2: In Hakone Academy... among our team, there's no one who can be my opponent!!

3: Alright, then I'll gladly accept!!

4: I, Izumida Touichirou of Tsukushiba University racing club!!

First year at Tsukushiba University, department of science and engineering, former Hakone Academy captain

Pag 6

1: Former Hakone Academy ace sprinter

2: The area around the university is a town, but if you go out of it it's really easy to ride, Izumida-san

3: There's both flats and mountains, it's a good place for biking

4: Did it take long to come to Ibaraki?

5: Coming here from Kanagawa, you have to cross Tokyo, so... yeah

Honestly, I had to change so many trains...!!

Pag 7

1: Is Manami doing alright?

Yeah, he's so carefree, but sometimes he says something serious too!!... I guess?

Sounds like Manami

2: Ngh....!!

3: Dammit.... this is so fun!!

What's this!! We're just riding our bikes and talking, but I've missed this feeling!!

4: When I was a second year and Izumida-san was a third years, we practiced like this every day!!

5: Sometimes Izumida-san was the one who attacked, sometimes it was me, and we pushed each other to our limits

7: It's not the time to smile about this!! I've come here to become stronger!!

Pag 8

1: Sorry, Izumida-san!!

I got too relaxed for a moment!!

3: It's good to relax

That's important, too

5: There's as many roads to ride as we want!!

So, which one is better? You can choose

For today's menu!!

6: An easy course with a 100km run along the roads of Ibaraki and a sprint at the end

Pag 9

1: Or the hard course, cut into section, with a final sprint when we're giving our all!!

4: Of course!! The hard one!!

6: Since it's you

Pag 10

1: I knew it would come to this!!

Abs, read?

2: Go!!

Pag 11

1: Abs, abs, abs, abs, abs!!

Buoooorah!!

Pag 12

1: Buah!!

2: Doubashi!!

You've really gotten stronger!!

3: If it were you from last year, you wouldn't have been able of getting ahead on a short climb like that before!!

4: Izumida-san, you're the one who has powered up!!

I seriously think I'm gonna be torn apart right now!!

5: But this is what I wanted

Pag 13

1: An opponent to race against in a fierce and close battle!!

During that you become stronger, and move to the next stage!!

2: Abs, Doubashi!!

Rise!! With that body!!

3: More....

4: Give me more, Izumida-san!!

6: Alright, I'll show you a sprint that will make you regret those words!!

Pag 14

1: Abs!!

Come!! Masakiyo!!

2: Buooorah!!

Izumida-saaan!!

4: Today was fun

Pag 15

1: Thank you

Well, I'm beat, Izumida-san

2: In the end, I lost at the final sprint

You rode well, you drove me in a corner until then!!

3: Did you see it? Your next stage

Yeah... well, little by little, but...

4: But I'm just a little closer, I feel like I can grasp something, but I can't

5: That's because you're too serious

6: And you're an hardworker

7: You know, there are two types of “right”

Huh

Pag 16

1: There's what's socially right

And what's right for yourself

3: Rules and norms, things that must be observed when living together, are what's socially right

The other

4: are the feelings in your heart you won't give up

6: Actually, both of these are “right”

Pag 17

1: But, sometimes these two go into conflict

2: Feelings....!!

“Feelings are strength”.... Izumida-san said that before

3: When something wrong happens, you end up resorting to violence, you reflexively curse at people

However, what should be restrained is the “action”

4: Not the feelings themselves

5: If you don't like something, you can get angry

6: No but, Izumida-san, if I just blindly do that.....

7: And when you're happy

Pag 18

1: you can honestly smile

2: I got too relaxed for a moment!!

4: There's no need to deny it

Those obvious “feelings” that are boiling inside you!! You can smile because you've missed something

5: The feelings that came out amidst of your own study and research and suffering

Where is the mistakes in that?

6: Even if you took a detour, there's no lie in your hard work!!

8: Release yourself more

Lead the path of your own heart

Pag 19

1: Polish what's right for you!!

2: What's “right”.... for me....!!

3: I understood it riding together with you today

You're already good enough for the next stage

You

Pag 20

1: will become much stronger!!

Buoooo!! Smash through!! “Hurakan”!!

[meruz]

robin and griffin from babel. also a doodle of the main 4 that i did back while i was reading. I wanna draw more from this book...hopefully sooner rather than later

[batsplat]

pecco rant please please

*spins wheel on possible topics* absurdly underrated but in a dumb way. you'd think you can stumble your way into two premier class titles. I don't care he's on the best bike - let's be honest, how often this century have the title winners not been on the best bike? 2004 and to a lesser extent 2005 you can say clearly weaker bike, 2007 late 2010s 2021 there's a clear enough disparity with anyone else riding the bike that you can say clearly the rider is making the difference/it's an unrideable wreck one guy is making respectable, then there's a few seasons where it's at least very close whose machinery is best or they're fighting with people on equal equipment, which pecco has done! but generally speaking, good/promising riders end up on good bikes and then they win. that's how the game works!

the thing about 2022 is that it had such a massive mid-season swing that overhauling a ninety something point margin cannot come down to any single factor. is it fair to say fabio lost that title? on balance, it's a bit harsh - yes, there were a few too many errors post-sachsenring, yes, some were driven by desperation, but also you can't really expect anyone to ride a flawless season. but pecco did win that title as much as yamaha lost it. I don't care if you're riding a literal rocketship with two wheels, you can't win four races in a row if you're not extremely good at what you do! if we're saying that title was worth less because the yamaha turned to shit in the second half of the season, then let's keep going. let's put an asterisk next to 2013 because jorge and dani both got injured (let's not even get into the 'if marc hadn't been injured' asterisks because that's where you get into truly silly territory). is 2006 not a legit title because of all the bad luck valentino faced that year? let's say all titles between 2007 to 2015 were worth less because at any one time only 4-6 bikes had a realistic chance of winning races. throw out any title before 2009 because they were constantly fucking about with the tyres and there wasn't a level playing field. if you're motivated enough, you can play this game with basically anything, but it's dumb and pointless because that's not how sports works! you can only win against whoever you're facing. it has always been thus and it will always be thus

it's narratively fun and juicy that pecco has these insecurities himself - but within the context of everyone else doing discourse over it, the whole thing is massively overblown! linked to some of the worst sports discourse about how much people love to disparage late bloomers, because they need every single successful athlete to fit the same mould of the ultra-talented wunderkind, apparently. it's more interesting when it's not always the most 'talented' (whatever tf that means), naturally gifted, *fast the second he touches a bike* bloke who wins. sometimes they have to work hard for it, sometimes they have to improve themselves year on year and be smart about how they do it, sometimes they have to be in the right place and right time, sometimes they have to be very lucky. sports is all about competition, and competition is all about contrast. it's a contrast that can be generated in a whole lot of ways, and in fairness to motogp they have come up with a bunch of interesting narratively tense contests that don't rely on a massive fundamental 'talent' differential - but at the end of the day, that's one of the best ones you can have! the more ways you can have to win in any given sport, the better, both in the literal sense of how you go about the actual process of winning and how you even become a winner. none of this means that pecco isn't very very good, it means he got there in a different way than every other multiple champ this century has. it fundamentally flattens the sport if you want every top-level competitor to be an alien-level talent... one of the best things about this current era is that it has given us something new and exciting in that regard, where you well and truly believe some very different blokes might have what it takes to eventually be champion

anyway, pecco is absurdly adept at digging himself into holes and absurdly adept at digging himself out of them. he's one of the worst frontrunners imaginable in every sense, biologically incapable of dominating without at least a perpetual hint of jeopardy, both in the context of a race and a season. but when his back is against the wall, somehow he keeps finding performances you never imagined he was capable of. his mixed up and slightly odd skillset, his strengths and weaknesses, how he's better and worse than he has any right to be... all of it lends itself to perpetual momentum shifts and thrilling seasons - because you never quite know what you're going to get. love him or hate him, he's a gift to the overall competitive landscape! god knows the racing hasn't been much to write home about these last few years (though, yes, we did have a good little run this season), but somehow he's managed to get himself involved in two out of the six title deciders this century back-to-back. is that not the dream for the viewer, to have a bloke at the top of the sport with a little self-combust chip in his head every time he builds too much of an advantage? build a hundred of those guys! throw a marc marquez at him and see what he does! I can't wait to see what he'll come up with next

[kentuckyfriedmegumi]

megumi pencil sketch

[coconut530]

AND THEY WERE ROOMMATES

[recallback-art]

Exposing my cringe on main also. I absolutely love Mr. Michael Afton FNAF and impulsively made a headcanon design for him while experiencing a particularly strong bout of feeling sick in the head.

Maybe he's not as ourple as some people go for, but I felt pretty smart for making the ourple be extensive bruising and rot.

[drvwing]

omfg they killed him

[butwhatifidothis]

Do people really not see the inherent disconnect of the claim that Houses Claude is genuinely an amoral opportunist when his dream is to break down barriers to foster unity and peace? Like, is there not a fundamental incompatibility in having a desire for everyone to get along yet being a backstabber that throws people under the bus for their own benefit? From a personality/character standpoint, all that does is make Claude look like a ginormous ignorant hypocrite, and an idiot even though he's supposed to be smart. Because if his end goal is to create a diverse and harmonious community, how is he going to bring people together if he constantly betrays every side? And from a writing perspective, it makes no sense to have a character's actions and goals be completely contradictory and never address it.

Also for someone who is amoral, it sure is interesting in Balthus' Classroom QA Part 2 that Claude likes "ensure the fewest casualties" and dislikes "do anything to eradicate the enemy" when the question was "the war has been dragging for long so let's end it quickly". It's kinda like he has some principles or something.

Like, the idea of Claude being an untrustworthy backstabber who opportunistically takes advantage of everyone without ever growing close to them is just Hubert minus Lady Edelgard could be an interpretation of his character that aligns with at least his initial showing, or a surface level understanding of him. He calls himself the embodiment of distrust, he never fully opens up to anyone, he can in fact be fairly manipulative and callous; the crumbs are there, for sure.

But it also has to ignore how far he's willing to go to protect his people (putting himself in high danger when he is not sacrificial like, say, Dimitri is), or how he supports others having dreams for themselves (Goddess Tower), or how open he is to criticisms against what he thought (Cyril's support), or how he tries to be there for his friends (Marianne's support), or how he's open-minded enough to listen to people he initially thought needed to be his enemy (Rhea), or how violence is not just not something he considers but is something he actively rejects as a means of getting what he wants (The Alliance Leader's Ambitions, near the end), or how putting the people's lives in danger is something he is adamantly against (as you point out, Balthus' classroom question). A staggering amount of Claude's character has to be deliberately ignored in order to come to the conclusion that he's just a backstabbing opportunist who does anything to get what he wants (who magically gets fixed by Byleth's mere presence), because a backstabbing opportunist who does anything to get what he wants who magically gets fixed by Byleth's mere presence does not describe Claude.

Even if one were to take the game's writing failure of properly presenting Claude tackling racial issues (like never addressing Petra's situation despite having supports with her) you can't really deny that Claude is, in fact, a caring person after taking everything in his character into account. For all his flaws, he never abuses the trust people have in him to the extent that they are actively put in danger, nor is it ever the case that the "doesn't truly tackle racial issues" ever translate to anything so drastic as "which means he'll actively worsen relations between two countries." And, well, yes; you still do have to take into account that his dreams are of bringing people together and disregarding past bad blood. He never stops trying to achieve this dream, and he wants it to come true so badly that he is willing to let other people that he trusts rule Fodlan to work together with him to achieve it, shown in VW and even AM. That means a lot for someone like Claude, who is otherwise pretty slow to trust other people so deeply.

That's not someone who would use Leicester's bad history with Faerghus as fuel to violently invade it. That's not someone who would use Almyra's navy to make it look to Sreng like Faerghus tried to invade it. That's not someone who wants to conquer other nations and make his own come out on top. Those things describe Hopes!Claude, which 3H!Claude is not.

It's like. You know how some 3H's fans see 3H as "Edelgard, Dimitri, and the third guy that justifies my fave"? How a lot of people in 3H's fandom don't really see Claude as his own character with his own perspective and ideals and beliefs and morals that are unique to him, and only see him as a battering ram to try and knock down one of the other two lords? And so don't really care how he's characterized in other things (like fanfiction, fanart, meta, or in this case spinoff media) because they never really cared about him as his own character? But then get really, really, really defensive when you point out the flaws in their perception of him, saying that you're the one who never understood or liked Claude, because if you did you'd "realize" that he was always [insert vague, bland description that happens to prop up the lord they actually like]?

Yeah that's basically what's going on here. Most people who prefer Claude as their fave lord do not like Hopes!Claude, some of the loudest voices in the JPN Amazon reviews were of people who hated Hopes!Claude and were literally trying to warn Claude/GD fans away from Hopes as a game because of how awful their writing is, while nearly every Hopes!Claude fan that I've seen vastly prefers Edelgard as their fave lord and are - you guessed it! - very defensive when it comes to Claude fans venting their frustrations over Claude's shit-end-of-the-stick treatment he got in Hopes.

So like, yeah. It's less that people aren't directly computing that Claude's ambitions and character don't match how he's depicted in Hopes, but that they just don't care that it doesn't since 1) it justifies their fave and 2) they never really gave a shit about Claude anyway

[murderous-coffeebean]

Touch

Some Vetvimes for y'all~

Discworld © Terry Pratchett / art © Murderous-Coffeebean (tumblr & dA)

[daily-linkclick]

when i made the "who's your favorite character?" poll a while ago, lu guang won fan favorite overall and i was surprised because i thought cheng xiaoshi would win but after the new ep. i get it. i really do. i was cheering screaming for him. go white(haired) boy GO!!

[abigail]

btw besties !!! i did meet my favourite musician and he did write the thing for me that i wanna get as a tattoo :-) yippie !!! ♡ ♡ ♡

[saturnsorbits]

Okay, so I know we all hate him, but Mahito is a legitimately brilliant villain...