have a snippet from the lil kwami swap thing i'm working on!
High above the streets of Paris, Mister Bug and Lady Noire talk about love.
It's a dangerous topic, to be sure; one that has to be tiptoed around with utmost care. A balancing act for Mister Bug. For Lady Noire too, perhaps, but she never seems like it affects her quite as much. Maybe that's why she's the one who brings it up.
"Are you in love, Mister Bug?"
His feet, from where they'd been kicking back and forth rhythmically, come to a stop. "Huh?"
"I'm just curious," says Lady Noire. On the rooftop they sit, there's more than a few centimeters of space between them. A gap that they're both waiting for Mister Bug to bridge. He only wishes he could. "Are you?"
Mister Bug tries to catch her eye. "Are you sure you want to talk about this? We... we don't have to--"
She waves a clawed hand in the air dismissively. "It's fine," she says, even though he knows it's not. He wonders what it is that's fine: talking about love, or talking about love when they both know he won't -- he can't -- reciprocate her feelings? "I wanna know. Is there anyone you love?"
There is.
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Was contemplating the whole ‘Tommy has no friends except Alfie’ thing/thought (it’s my own internal running joke too) but it can't really be true?
Tommy appears to have this huge social network, groups of people he’s still in touch with from the war, including internationally, and including in the officer class; these supposed very reliable contacts in Ireland which I can only assume ties back to the family connections to Ireland and maybe some visit across in his past; the huge respect (and edge of fear) network in Small Heath extending broader into Birmingham; seemingly a very *useful* social-climbing networking he's developed to be able to get the mayor and various politicians to the Grace Shelby charity opening in S3, a society networking which he maintains and builds upon all the way through to Tommy being able to invite actual upper crust society to a ballet at his house (and people attend!)
I mean, there's a level of reserve (rank/war respect) or transactional basis (professional tit for tat society networks), but he also had more friend style connections with say Barney, Freddie (even if it’s soured by the time we see it) and Danny (again, changed by Danny’s own PTSD into that Sergeant-Major thing, but lots of hints it wasn't always like that).
I’ve imagined Tommy puts a significant effort into his social (and society) networking as he does into his business - staying in touch, staying useful, even to the point of using Arthur (or let's imagine his secretaries, his ministerial aides, Polly; picking the right 'hand' who can maintain that relationship for him) to ensure letters and communications keep happening so people remain aware of him, and he stays alive in people’s minds at any possible level of class. He'd have to be maintaining that network like a garden.
The party for Lizzie also didn’t seem like a first time thing for them so I also imagine he hosts quite a lot of social affairs to remain current and connected, which becomes vitally imperative in a different way as a politician compared to a businessman.
But I think that default inner joke, Tommy has no friends and is isolated, is sometimes the claustrophobia of the actual seasons/scenes we see, which are so zoomed into him, into the family, into the worst, that I sometimes double think myself. Just...there’s no way he’s as successful as he is without pouring buckets of effort into society. Admittedly, maybe hardly any of these networking connections are deep connections in the odd way Alfie became one, or Ben Younger could have been one, but Tommy would be talking and meeting and greeting and hosting and writing letters allllllll the time
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from the stuff i’ve heard marc’s former honda teammates (dani jorge and pol in their media careers but joan also i guess) say about him now that they’re racing is generally quite positive, both on a professional/riding level but also seemingly on a personal level? i’m wondering what you make of that given that, yeah, marc doesn’t seem like a very good teammate (unless you’re alex who i’ve left off this list). like MARC wants to separate on and off track stuff and it seems like all of these guys are willing too at least in retrospect, so he can’t have truly burned bridges with them. do you have any thoughts on that
(x, x) most riders are quite good at not burning bridges with each other! it's not like marc's competitors don't know that this stuff is kinda part of the game. I mean, all of marc's past teammates were also trying to assert themselves within the internal hierarchy... you can say that certain teammates engage in 'worse' behaviour than others, but, like, these people do understand they're supposed to be fighting each other! a baseline degree of nastiness is factored in and will be accepted to a greater or lesser extent by your rivals - especially when it comes to asserting yourself in intra-team power struggles. you might hate the other guy in the moment, but generally speaking once the active part of the rivalry is done with... you will probably get over it. marc's fellow riders are aware of how ultra-competitive marc is - and to a certain point they do respect it, not least because they're aware that this is part of the reason why marc has ended up with all those titles. it's like dani said, right, it's marc's strong suit. and in general, you do have to say that there's relatively few teammate pairings that devolve to the level of toxicity that it completely destroys the interpersonal relationship. you might need some level of preexisting animosity... most of the purely competitive sins can be healed with a little time
on the 'separating on-track and off-track' thing... well. this is kind of a question of how you define these things, you can say that marc generally speaking isn't going to massively hold grudges over isolated on-track incidents or whatever... but he doesn't just leave his fighting to the track, and personally I've also never felt he can entirely separate these things out in his mind. can you really say his professional and private relationships with other riders are completely detached from one another? mostly, he's opted to be pretty disengaged from his fellow riders as a collective, and obviously that's a good way to not take things too personally... it's all part of the game, isn't it? sometimes it's good to go with the straightforward approach: marc tells you he will make your life hell, he does indeed make your life hell, and then you both move on with your lives and can maybe actually have a pretty amiable relationship with him in years to come. he's not really defying your expectations at any point here, is he now? it's still a question for each of them as individuals as to whether they think that kind of behaviour is above board and acceptable or not... but everyone by now knows that marc plays these games, so it's not like they're going in blind
and it's not like other former teammates are constantly badmouthing each other. I mean... look, let's just cut to the chase here and bring in valentino as our reference point (as he is for the sport as a whole, which by the way does also help create a certain baseline of acceptability for marc's antics - maybe goated riders are just supposed to be dicks who knows). vale's premier class teammates were 1) nobody (2000-01), 2) tohru ukawa (2002), 3) nicky hayden (2003; 2011-12), 4) carlos checa (2004), 5) colin edwards (2005-2007), 6) jorge lorenzo (2008-10; 2013-16), 7) maverick vinales (2017-20), 8) franco morbidelli (2021), and 9) andrea dovizioso (2021). of these eight men (let's just exclude 'nobody' for now), do you know how many had serious complaints at any point about valentino as a teammate? that's right, it's one guy. one. some of valentino's other teammates, like hayden, checa and edwards, were even quite actively positive about their whole experience. this is the thing - you do need some specific circumstances for teammate rivalries to escalate from 'being kinda bitchy every other month' to 'actively fantasising about stabbing each other'. not accounting for natural interpersonal animosity, let's list some circumstantial factors that you need to get a bridge-burning-worthy level of feud:
you need a competitive bike. it is possible to beef about development direction when you're in the trenches (cf late 2010's yamaha, 2020's honda)... but generally speaking this is going to be quite low-level petty stuff, not actual war
you also need something that approaches competitiveness between teammates. if one teammate is unquestionably stronger than the other one, then it is very unlikely that you are going to get any open hostilities. the tension comes when the two sides are close enough to each other for the internal hierarchy to actually be a contentious issue (this is also basic self preservation... if you're the far weaker teammate then you do not want to make the situation troublesome, because then you will be the one to be fired)
following on from those first two things... well, it doesn't hurt to have a title fight in the mix. there are also other ways you can generate competitive stakes, like, for instance, if you and your teammate know that one of you will be out of a job soon. basically, it helps to have something to squabble over
it is maybe easy to forget how rare it is this century for teammates to be fighting directly for a title, let alone over the course of multiple seasons. only two 1-2's since the year 2000 and they're both for the factory yamaha's (though 2006, 2011-13 and 2017 did all prominently feature two factory hondas). which means that for valentino, the prerequisites were met just the once in his premier class career... and yes, the results were pretty memorable, but (topic! for! another! post!) it's worth pointing out that even that relationship was pretty much 'fine' whenever there was a sizeable disparity between the two of them performance-wise (2008 and 2013 are the most clear cut examples). I think the way I'd frame it with marc is that he has a bunch of mildly dubious strategies up his sleeve to assert himself within the team, which don't really deviate that far from what you'd expect from a rider of marc's calibre and only need to be escalated under specific circumstances. that doesn't mean he doesn't have the potential to be ruthless, but up until now it's mostly been a fairly 'acceptable' level of ruthlessness on the intra-team level... and not something that is likely to make other riders actually hate him
taking marc's teammates one by one... dani was the closest to meeting the bridge-burning prerequisites, though he was only a title rival in marc's rookie season. and marc did go further with him than he did with anyone else, and dani has made some pointed comments about marc's style as a teammate... but yes, he is fonder of marc these days. partly I'd just emphasise again that this is a fairly natural progression when you've stopped directly competing for long enough, and partly it's also just a question of individual personality - dani's not massively into holding grudges. then there's jorge, who... I mean, they might as well not have been teammates, given that jorge was either too slow or too injured to even be sharing any track space with marc. you have to put that one down primarily to circumstance, seeing as jorge's own track record on the teammate front isn't exactly spotless. marc and jorge beefing in 2019 would have been pretty dumb and also a massive waste of everyone's time in a year in which marc singlehandedly won the team's championship. even those two needed more to get things going
moving on to the dark years, pol and marc had an extremely stop-and-start partnership on a honda that was generally pretty uncompetitive... so the only stuff they could get ever so mildly irritable about were riveting incidents like 'marc saying pol wasn't the biggest championship threat' (neither of them were) or 'pol saying he'd copy marc's set up' (which proved entirely useless). not exactly title decider territory, is it now, and marc very much had pol covered as a challenger throughout their partnership. also, those two do have a longer history! they've known each other since they were kids and hold a pretty significant place in each other's careers. now that pol's more or less retired, it's natural there'll be quite a lot of sentimentality there - which will paper over any small cracks that appeared during those two years. and joan was a one year teammate at a time in which the bike was consistently close to offing them both. they only managed to start a sunday race together as teammates on thirteen occasions. it would take some serious effort to engineer a feud with that little opportunity, and, really, why on earth would you bother. maybe if honda had gone for rinsy rather than joan for the factory seat, it could've been a bit more prickly, but it's unlikely that it would have escalated beyond that
this is the thing, right, the only one of these partnerships that would have been worth burning bridges over was dani, and even there marc pretty much had him handled after the first season. in general, marc has been pretty clear on how he's not interested in making friends with the other side of the garage while the teammate relationship is ongoing... which is fine! there's some prominent-ish teammate pairings that are actually good friends, some teammate pairings where one of them is actively helping out and advising the other one, but some riders prefer to just keep their distance. it would have been a little silly of marc to start a feud with a teammate who is galaxies away from being a competitive threat, let alone a title rival, but generally it is possible to toe the line between 'attempting to suppress your internal rivals enough to stop them from becoming a problem for you' and 'taking radical enough action to make your internal rivals despise you'
especially in the post-dani era, marc never really had any need to push things too far... and, let's face it, how many of your teammate relationships end up with burnt bridges is also quite frankly a question of luck and circumstance. do you want to guess which top rider on paper has the worst track record this century with premier class teammate feuds, in terms of a) how many they've had, and b) how little public reconciliation there has been since the end of the rivalry?
yes, that's right, it's the first name that comes to mind when you're thinking of toxic and conflict-prone riders: andrea dovizioso. that old devil, constantly causing trouble. just couldn't stop undermining his poor, innocent teammates. can somebody please stop this ruthless bully before it's too late
I think you get the point. I would personally suggest that dovi is not in fact the worst teammate it is possible to have in a motogp top team. he just happened to find himself in a situation where he was teammates with two separate guys he did not click with at all, in situations that involved a pairing of riders who were (or had the potential to be) competitive with each other, as well as some proper stakes attached to the rivalry. in general, situational factors are going to determine this stuff more than anything else... and marc more often than not does have a reasonably good feel for picking his battles. he's flirted with the line, but he's mostly avoided crossing it. he hasn't had to
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your perception of itafushi. my beloved. my favorite little barbie dolls that gege loves to wind up. i miss them.
like the idea of yuuji being so jealous over megumi? the sunshine himbo…losing it at the sight of megumi smiling at this perfect little asshole who is totally hiding under an anxious mess facade. there’s no way someone could have it all and their this good guy. yuuji is waiting for the day yuuta messes up i just know it.
even with yuuji finally understands their dynamic i just know that those two have subtle competitions over megumi attention. like…it gets to the point where throwing cars at each other is the norm. (cue nanami being horrified at his legal and emotional children throwing cars at each other over a child of gojo. like yes he adores megumi. but somehow this is all gojo fault. don’t ask nanami how.)
BUT THE IDEA OF THE ZENINS BEING SO YUUJIPHOBIC? like the idea of them shuddering at the idea of megumi fucking around with the vessel of sukuna? that they had to set a bounty on him just to keep him away from their precious runaway heir? i just know mai pops out to the school just to bitch about megumi and his boyfriend being like modern day romeo and juliet.
i also love to imagine sukuna being a firm zenin hater. like he’s not even willing to eat them. he firmly believes that all of them taste like shit. especially naoya.
See I just love the idea of Yuuji being jealous over Megumi but exclusively when it comes to Okkotsu Yuuta. He’s legitimately not a jealous person. He’s never been jealous of anyone before in his life. He’s deeply secure in what he has with Megumi and knows that Megumi likes him back and that there’s no need to be worried or upset about Megumi having close relationships with other people. He wants Megumi to have close relationships outside of him.
But the universe fucking bends to give that perfect beautiful bastard everything Yuuji has ever dreamed of.
It’s a new experience for yuuji. He’s not used to experiencing jealousy. He’s literally never done it before. But there’s this impossibly gorgeous and perfect man swanning around out there getting his death sentence overturned and having his curse royalty unattach from his body in sparkling globes of light and having Nanamin legally adopt him as his actual child and having Megumi be His Boy and apparently it’s universally acknowledged* that Megumi is still Yuuta’s Boy despite Yuuji going to Herculean efforts to lock that shit down. He has assassins trying to kill him because it’s universally agreed** that his boyfriend is out of his league, apparently, and his boyfriend is still someone else’s Boy.
It does not help that when the Assassin Problem first appears yuuji wants to go to Gojo and Megumi decides he cannot take that level of humiliation and suggests going to Yuuta first. Which makes Yuuji insist that no no, he can handle a few assassins. No need to bother any impossibly beautiful upperclassman about it who are apparently better than Yuuji in every way. He’s got this on his own. Nooo problem.
Megumi stares at him for three unbroken seconds and goes to ask Yuuta for advice about it, which results in the second years going off to unilaterally threaten the Zenin clan, which none of the first years ever find out about.
Sukuna absolutely does hate the Zenin clan and it’s specifically because they did not consider him when putting a bounty on yuujis head. He’s a firm believer in knowing your worth and he knows his fucking worth. Sorcerers used to have style. They used to have respect. What the fuck is this. The Zenin are not worth dog shit on his heel. He’ll kill them all.
*universally acknowledged by everyone except Megumi, who still does not know that people call him that
** universally agreed by everyone except Todo, who thinks his brother is a beautiful beautiful man that anyone would be lucky to court and that Fushiguro is a boring child with a nonexistent ass who has inexplicably bewitched a gorgeous specimen of manhood.
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