#there are such worse plays that happen both in football AND other sports.

[ilikeyoshi]

😭😭😭😭😭😭💞💞

damar had the breathing tube for his ventilator removed and is 100% breathing on his own!!!!! :') i am SO relieved and amazed by his recovery so far..... just miraculous

[pedriscroquettes]

awww poor gavi being so stressed i was wondering is the only reason he pushes himself so hard for studying too bc he wants to compete with reader or are there other deeper reasons? you dont have to answer if its spoilery im just curious !

another academic rival!gavi blurb for y’all 🫶🏽

warnings. injury trauma & lowkey suggestive content.

a/n. guys i’ve gotten attached to them i’m afraid…

the bond that had formed between the two of you had caused the two of you to begin studying together. your dad has once walked in on the two of you staring intently at your professor’s old lectures trying to figure out what part of the solution method you had missed. he was so confused but you simply glared at him and he never brought up the topic again. to be honest even if he has asked anyways you wouldn’t have known what to tell him. you couldn’t just tell your father that you were hooking up with the boy next door because it was the only thing helping you from losing your sanity.

currently gavi was trying to finish his research paper for his sports medicine class. he was quite frustrated that his professor had also asked his class to not only write about the physical effects of an acl tear but the psychological effects as well. you were too engrossed in your own work that you didn’t notice how intensely he was looking at images he was using for reference. the picture of the player in pain brought back memories he had hoped to have forgotten about.

for his fifteenth birthday his father had gifted him lower section tickets to a real betis match. he remembered how excited he was to see his hometown team play, to see them on the pitch. he also was looking forward to entering the stadium and getting that fuzzy feeling in his stomach as he analyzed every inch of the stadium hoping to play a match in there in the future.

the game had started off slow with both of the teams not allowing each other to score. that is until things heated up between both teams. one moment the ball would be in real betis’s box and the next in the opposing team. gavi was excited that the game was building up, he just wanted to see someone score a goal already. then it happened a player from the opposing team had finally gotten fed up with the defense and how they couldn’t keep the ball away from their goalpost. so he did the job himself tackling the real betis forward.

the crowd immediately burst out into chants yelling at the referee to give him a red card, which he did. but gavi could only stare as the player lay on the ground screaming in pain. his screams replayed in his mind from time to time. he had never been able to shake off the image of the player being taken away in a stretcher. he thought that had been the worse thing to happen that night but then the next day he saw on the news how it was confirmed the player would never play again. the injury forcing him into early retirement.

that day he realized that if he did achieve his dreams they could always be stripped away from him. so he spent hours studying. he didn’t miss a single class from then on out. fearing that if one day his career was taken from him he wouldn’t have nothing to do. he’d just be gavi the failed football star with nothing to his name except a bunch of “what if’s?”

“pablo?” you called his name for the fifth time.

“huh? oh hmm?” he perked his head up noticing your concerned glare.

“what happened?” you sat up on his bed.

“nothing just daydreaming.” he was lying and you could tell.

you stood up and walked towards his desk. the cold floor making you tingle as you made your way towards him. careful to not cause a mess on his desk you slip into his lap. he welcomes you as he scoots you closer to his body. he doesn’t realize he’s grinning like a little kid until you tease him about it. his cheeks going pink at your teasing.

“nothing? pablo you’ve been staring at your laptop for like ten minutes without writing anything and you’re going to lie to me? yeah okay.” you playfully confront him about his lying.

“really it’s nothing! can’t a boy live?” he smiles up at you.

“okay fine don’t tell me.” his hand begins roaming your back trying to discreetly make its way to your ass. which you simply shove away. “no. if you can’t be honest with me you can keep your hands to yourself.”

“oh so it’s like that now?” he laughs but quickly stops once he realizes you’re being for real. “oh come on!”

“you can do whatever you want as long as you tell me what’s wrong.” you reply.

so he does. he tells you about his fears and you tell him about yours. you assure him that he’ll be fine and he assures you that you’ll eventually figure out what you want to do after school. his kisses change that night, they have feelings to them now. you even stay for dinner, the paéz family happily welcoming you. aurora teases his brother that night but she also notices the way her brother looks at you. with the same look she looks at her boyfriend.

[woso-fan13]

Sicktember 2023: 6

Sick & Injured

Soccer- or football, since you play in London now- is more of a contact sport than one would think. It wasn’t uncommon to leave practice sporting a few new bruises, sometimes worse. You’re glad you play at Arsenal, facing Katie in practice is hard enough, you knew you would be constantly injured if you had to play her. 

Apparently, though, it’s not just Katie you have to worry about. Because right as you go to head a beautiful cross right into the back of the net, Mary decides to clear the ball by punching it. Either would have worked individually, but when the actions are done together, it ends with you getting punched right in the side of the head. Really, really hard. 

Impressively, you land on your feet. Almost instantly though, you begin stumbling as you try and maintain your balance. Thankfully the goalie gets a firm grip on your arms, guiding you to sit on the turf instead of face plant. 

You can hear voices shouting indistinctly, but your head is too fuzzy to be able to make out words or voices. You try instead to focus on keeping your eyes open, your vision blurry as you watch two identical opposing goalies squatting in front of you. (Spoiler- there was, in fact, only one goalie.)

What you couldn’t see was Leah, Beth, and Viv on the sidelines, shouting frantically to their teammates. They were begging for any updates as to how you were. You had become somewhat of a little sister to them, and you were a constant third wheel whenever Beth and Viv went out. 

Eventually, after you fail your concussion test instantly, you’re escorted off the pitch and led to a medical room. The three players follow, crowding in the doorway as they watch the medical staff flit around you. They knew how important it was that you were assessed and treated, but the three of them wanted nothing more than to rush into the room and push them away. 

The next while is a blur for everyone involved, a slew of tests, instructions, and explanations. Finally though, the four of you are leaving the stadium, five working ACLs and three working brains between you all. 

Leah insists that she is more than capable of taking you home and taking care of you. She eventually manages to convince Beth and Viv, only after promising that she would text frequent updates and that they could visit you in the morning. 

The three women get you settled in Leah’s car, Beth and Viv standing in the doorway to say their goodbyes. 

“Bye, little love. You get some sleep tonight and we’ll see you in the morning. Tell Leah if you need anything, and if you want us, we can be with you in 15 minutes, okay?”

You nod slightly at Beth, instantly regretting it and screwing your eyes shut. She frowns slightly, grabbing your hand and squeezing it. When you reopen your eyes, she gives you a kiss on the forehead before backing up and allowing Viv to take her place. 

“Be good, Schatje, and I’ll see you tomorrow,” she keeps her goodbye simple. 

You don’t make the same mistake again and you remember not to nod your head. You say a final goodbye to both women, assuring them that you’re okay, and then watch as they shut the car door gently. 

Leah climbs into the driver’s seat, buckling her seatbelt before looking over at you. She reaches up and grabs her sunglasses, opening them and slipping them onto your face to block some of the light. She strokes a few of your flyaway hairs back, before setting off to get you home. 

—-

Later that evening, you had settled into bed. Leah stubbornly insisted on you staying in her bed with her, just in case. You managed to fall asleep for about an hour before your eyes shot open upon feeling an all too familiar feeling. 

Leah’s on the other side of the bed, scrolling through her phone. She notices as you suddenly wake up, and she knows what’s going to happen next. She watches as you close your eyes and take deep breaths through your nose, trying to fight through the concussion-induced nausea. From experience, she knows you will not be successful. 

Your hand grabs the edge of the blanket, moving to pull it off of yourself. Your head is killing you, and the last thing you want to do is stand up, but it seems like your stomach is insistent. 

Leah notices your actions, stopping you with a firm hand. She scoots next to you and sits propped against the bed frame. She tugs you up, allowing you to settle in a similar position leaning against her. 

“No, Le,” you murmur, trying to move out of her grasp, “‘m gonna be sick.”

“Shh,” she soothes, “I know. Just hold on one second, you’ll be alright.”

Before you know it, she’s pressing something into your hand. Opening your eyes to a squint, you look down to an emesis bag, very clearly stolen from somewhere. Finally, you give in, allowing yourself to be sick as the pressure in your head builds. 

Leah keeps her arm slung around you, rubbing her hand up and down your arm and whispering sweet words to you. You eventually stop, pulling the bag away and breathing heavily. 

Leah grabs a tissue from the nightstand, gently wiping your face and throwing it in the bag before tying it and throwing that into the bin she had placed beside the bed. 

“Alright?” she asks, keeping her voice low. 

“Yeah,” you breathe out, clearly not alright. 

A second later, “God, Leah, I’m so sorry. I just threw up in your bed.”

You feel more than hear the rumble of laughter. 

“You did,” she agrees, “but I kind of made you, no? I knew you were going to be sick, that’s why I grabbed some bags from the medical team. It’s okay, we’ve all been here.”

“You’ve thrown up in your teammates bed before?”

“Well, no, I haven’t done that. I was so hungover once that I threw up on a teammate though. I meant that I’ve had concussions make me sick before, I know how awful it is. I doubt you’d be steady enough to get to the bathroom, and I won’t be much help moving quickly, so I figured you could just throw up in my bed.”

You’re quiet for a while, thinking. Leah had thought you’d fallen back asleep before you quietly said.

“Thanks, Leah. I love you, you know that, right?”

She presses her lips to your head and holds you just a bit tighter. 

“I know, I love you too, bubba. Let’s get some sleep now, Beth and Viv are going to be over in a few hours.”

She lays the two of you back down in bed, your injured head resting on her. She uses her fingers to gently massage your temples, taking away some of the pain. She continues even after she feels your body relax and hears your breathing even out. Once she’s sure you’re deeply asleep, she brushes back the hair that she had messed up, and allows herself to fall asleep. 

[gachagon]

I don't think Kaiser and Ness would be good together

Which is why i think about their relationship constantly despite that, i love these freaky little soccer dudes and their obsessive codependency

If there's one ship in bllk that I absolutely adore the content for and think about constantly besides Kunigiri, it's Kainess. And it's not because I think "Oh they'd be such a wonderful couple" or "They look good together", this is one of those ships where if they ever got together I feel like they'd actively make each other worse because they have so much internal stuff to work on alone first, you know? And just thinking about that potential train wreck of a relationship is enough to keep me entertained for weeks on end.

I've said before that Kaiser and Ness are a Bachira and Isagi parallel in that they show the toxic bad sides of a codependent relationship, but I think there's more to it than that. Like Kaiser and Ness are reliant on each other for both ego and attention, but they're also both deeply lonely people at the end of the day. Even in the scenes where it's just the two of them, they never let up the act of trying to surpass everyone and be at the top.

They have no silly banter or back and forth, even in this panel Ness looks more like Kaiser's personal servant than his friend or partner.

Where as everyone else in the Blue Lock compound has some healthy way of destressing after a match, these two weirdos (affectionate) sit in dark rooms and watch the same matches over and over again while plotting like saturday morning cartoon villains on what to do next game. I mean, even Itoshi Rin has a destress activity he does that's NOT soccer related that helps him not morph into some soccer obsessed monolouging freak, so to see these guys just constantly always planning and thinking and practicing it really puts into perspective how much of the time that they spend together is them not having a fun time casually. And if you compare what they do on their down time with what the other "partners" in Blue Lock do, this difference becomes even more apparent.

And I don't know, I find that to be a really interesting aspect of their relationship just because even though they are so clearly missing all of the key elements meant to make a healthy partnership, it still works on the field anyways because they're both equally obsessed with the same thing. Kaiser loves football and wants to be the best. Ness want's to see Kaiser become the best because he loves football. Their devotion to the game drives them closer to one another, but it's clear only one side holds any real "affection" for the other directly outside of the game.

Now, I do NOT think Kaiser hates Ness which I think people assume if you say "Kaiser doesn't hold a lot of empathy for Ness, or cares for him" that it translates to "Kaiser hates him".

I think Kaiser keeps Ness around because deep down he knows that at the end of the day the only person who would be willing to follow him even if he couldn't become the worlds best is Ness. And I think that's because Ness loves soccer in a different way than Kaiser does. To Ness, soccer is a really magical sport and one where amazing things can happen. And Kaiser is the only character who has done the most insane feats in the manga so far. Kaiser does things on the field that seem impossible until he pulls it off, which is the whole crux of his ego anyways: Making the impossible, Possible.

So as long as Kaiser plays that way and does all of the amazing things he's been doing, Ness would follow him literally anywhere because that's what drives him.

But Kaiser is different, it's clear that to him soccer/football is not something that is grounded in the fantastical, but something that's tangible and real to him. He takes it seriously even if he goes about it in the most dramatic and campy way possible. Looking at old chapters of Blue Lock when Kaiser was first introduced is so interesting to me because I forgot about Kaiser's whole "king" attitude where he pretty much talks and acts like some nobleman with a crown and scepter.

He even makes Ness "bow" to others or makes Ness physically lower than him like a king does with some peasant. You could chalk it up to him making Ness "apologize" in the Japanese way by also bowing, but I don't think that's why he does it just because his entire character is just so "king" coded.

It's worth noting that he also makes Ness "bow" whenever Ness seems to lose any kind of faith in them winning. Which is why I don't think the above two times was him making Ness apologize, but that its something he does to ground himself or make Ness fall more in line with how he's thinking at the moment. Notice how he seems to only do it when Ness isn't sticking to the right "script" or seems to show the wrong reaction openly etc.

But anyways, Kaiser and Ness love soccer but they don't love it for the same reasons and that is what ultimately conflicts with their relationship in the end. That, and they've both got their own issues to work out.

I feel like if they did ever get together, it just wouldn't work because in order for it to work, Kaiser has to first realize that he can still be an amazing player and have people regard him as the best without obsessing over where he sits in the rankings. That he can perform things nobody else can and never will and that is the thing that will separate him from the rest of the crop, not a trophy saying "Number 1" on it.

Maybe before when they first met things could've worked out well, but even still I think Kaiser was dead set on his goals of becoming number 1 long before he ever met Ness. We will definitely get to see the extent of that next week for sure I hope, when we learn more about Kaiser's past.

[xe-n4]

love in learning

feat. oliver, nagi & sae note: i wrote this ages ago (reupload) contains: i don't remember & i'm not rereading it total: 1,303

—OLIVER

He knew he shouldn’t. But it was right there. The blue notebook you’ve been scribbling in for the last few weeks. It seemed like you were researching something because you had your laptop with you. But you never let Oliver know the contents of it, slamming both the book and laptop shut whenever you saw him. 

He was curious. 

Oliver’s fingers danced around the notebook. He debated with himself. Open it or leave it alone. He may never know what’s inside that book. But you would tell when you were ready, right? 

So he opened it. 

Oliver flicked through the pages, eyes scanning the words. He didn’t understand what he was looking at until he saw the word ‘centre-back’. A grin crept onto his face when he noticed the little doodle of himself next to it. 

You filled the pages with information about football and his favourite players. His heart swelled with joy as he continued to peruse through it. The rules, the positions and their purposes. He couldn’t believe it. 

“Hey, Oli, have you seen—” 

You cut yourself off upon seeing your boyfriend with your notebook. Wave after wave of embarrassment hit you with no mercy, not allowing you time to breathe. Heat spread from your chest to your neck and your hands balled into fists at your sides. 

Oliver stared—you stared as well. The silence was killing you, but the smirk that played on his lips made it worse. You wanted the floor to swallow you whole. Maybe living underground wouldn’t be so bad. 

“Care to explain?” he teased as he gestured to the book. 

You shook your head. 

“No? Okay then, let’s read from it, shall we?” His eyes glinted as he flipped to the next page. “If the score is equal—” 

Something went off in you and you went over to cover his mouth, snatching the book away. Oliver moved your hand off of his face and laughed at your pouting face. 

He wrapped his arms around your torso and leaned in. “Aw, my baby’s so cute,” he spoke as if he was talking to a child. 

“Shut up, old man.” You buried your face in his neck to run away from his teasing. 

“Are you embarrassed?” Oliver leaned back and his hands caressed your chin. His grip was firm but gentle and the feeling brought you a sense of familiarity. But it couldn’t get rid of how humiliated you felt. 

“Y/n, thank you,” Oliver said with a smile. Not one to tease you with, but a genuine smile from a place of happiness. 

Confusion plastered itself all over your features. “What... did I do?” 

“The book.” Your eyes widened, and he hurried to clear the air. “Thank you for trying to understand me and the sport I love. You didn’t have to, going to the games is enough.” 

“The games are kinda boring when you don’t know what’s happening,” you mumbled. 

“Maybe. But thank you anyway.” Oliver planted a kiss on your forehead.

—NAGI

Nagi was lying on his stomach with his phone in hand. He was watching video compilations of traps and other defensive moves. Normally, you’d have no interest in it. Football was Nagi’s thing. But you felt different about it today. 

Once you crawled onto the bed next to him, you rested your head on his shoulder. “Hey, Sei?” He hummed. “What’s a trap?” 

He answered without looking away from the screen. “It’s a move to keep control of the ball.” 

“Cool.” 

This was going nowhere. 

You didn’t know how to ask him, but he also didn’t seem interested. Maybe I’ll try later. You moved off the bed to leave when a hand gripped your wrist tightly. Nagi pulled you back effortlessly. You landed on his chest and he kept you there, putting one arm encompassing you. His other hand still held his phone and resumed the video. 

“Where’re you going?” he mumbled. Nagi didn’t really want an answer. “Stay.” 

“I thought you were busy—”   

“I can multitask.” Nagi nuzzled into you. “What d’you wanna know?” 

“Um... I guess I didn’t really think this through,” you chuckled nervously and Nagi pinched your side in response. 

“So unprepared,” he jokingly scolded. 

Nagi clicked through his phone before setting it in front of you. The video began with the camera scanning through the crowd. People of all different backgrounds cheering from the sidelines with flags, banners and some even had face paint on them. 

The camera then showed the players walking on the field in their flashy uniforms, and the crowd cheered and screamed even louder. The bright lights above the stadium made the grass look lighter than it was. 

“Sei, what’s this?” 

“Football game,” he replied. “I’ll talk you through it.”  

“I like that you want to know more. It made me feel something inside. I liked it.” 

You laughed at his simplistic way of describing his emotions, then he shushed you when the game started. Nagi pointed to each of the players when he talked about their positions. He explained the moves they did and why someone got a yellow card. 

His soft voice brought you comfort, which made it easier to concentrate on the sport, though you barely understood it. 

After the game ended, Nagi stared at you expectantly, silently asking for your opinion. “It was fun.” was your only response. 

It was. Maybe your judgement before was biased, but now you had a better understanding of why your boyfriend loved it so much. 

—SAE

“I thought you didn’t like football,” Sae said with a straight face, looking up from his laptop 

“Well... I thought it would be fun if you taught me some stuff,” you replied, rubbing the back of your neck. His stare made your heart race and your ears sting. Not in a good way. 

“What’s the point if you don’t care about it,” he grumbled as he went back to what he was doing. A very obvious tell that he didn’t want the conversation to continue. 

You sat down in the chair next to him and interlocked your pinkies. “I care about you though.” 

Sae’s eyes flicked from your joined hands to your face a few times before he sighed. A small smile made its way onto his face. He properly intertwined your hands and leaned down to kiss them.  

“Get changed, we’re going out.” was the only instruction he gave. Though he implied that wearing anything fancy would be a terrible idea. 

And he was right. 

Sae took you to the nearest football centre and rented out a small field. Goals stood tall and mighty on each side, and white lines ran across the grass. The sun was still beaming down, and you wished that you’d just kept it to yourself. 

“Is this really necessary?” you whined before walking onto the grass. 

Your boyfriend was ahead, holding a ball against his hip. “This is the only way you’ll learn, Y/n.” 

“Or is it the only way you can teach?” you mocked under your breath as you followed behind him. 

And with your horrible luck, he heard every word. Sae turned around once he got to the centre and set down the ball. “Four laps.” 

“Huh?” 

“What’d you mean ‘huh’?” He settled his hands on his hips with a—fake—frown. “Fine then. Five laps. Hurry!” 

During that ‘warm up’, you gained a stitch in your side and sweat soaked through your clothes. After that Sae, showed you how to dribble and tackle. The first time you successfully stole the ball from him made his heart full as he watched you celebrate, then collapse, demanding a break. 

“Dumbass.” He booped your nose before shoving a water bottle into your face. Wordlessly you took it and started chugging its content as if you’ve never had a drink of it before. Sae grinned. “Dumbass.” 

m.list | like & reblog

[nemolfc]

𝐢 𝐫𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐫 𝐲𝐨𝐮 -

𝐝𝐨𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐢𝐤 𝐬𝐳𝐨𝐛𝐨𝐬𝐳𝐥𝐚𝐢

• 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐢𝐬 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐦𝐲 𝐝𝐨𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐢𝐤 𝐠𝐢𝐫𝐥𝐢𝐞𝐬, 𝐈 𝐰𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐞𝐝 𝐢𝐭 𝐬𝐨 𝐈 𝐡𝐨𝐩𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐠𝐮𝐲𝐬 𝐞𝐧𝐣𝐨𝐲 𝐱𝐨𝐱𝐨

( 𝒍𝒊𝒌𝒆 𝑰 𝒔𝒂𝒊𝒅, 𝑰'𝒎 𝒏𝒐 𝒔𝒉𝒂𝒌𝒆𝒔𝒑𝒆𝒂𝒓𝒆 𝒘𝒊𝒕𝒉 𝒘𝒐𝒓𝒅𝒔 𝒃𝒖𝒕 𝑰 𝒉𝒐𝒑𝒆 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒆𝒏𝒋𝒐𝒚 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒔 𝒎𝒆𝒔𝒔 )

It wasn't that she hated football.

It was quite the opposite actually, she holds a deep appreciation to the level of passion and athleticism that men and women give day in and day out in their matches, she is aware of how difficult it can be to maintain a level of fitness, and how it was even more difficult to overcome an injury due to the injuries they pick up.

It was that the sport in question reminded her of someone she had tried her best not to think of since moving from her home land three years ago, someone who just so happen to be unveiled as the newest player of Liverpool's Football Club, someone she had hoped not to see again yet would now have to sit through an entire match and see him do what he had always wanted.

The root of what had unfortunately been the sole reason for their friendship ending on a not so sweet note. 

Dominik to her was more than the son of her father's close friend, much less a next door neighbor; the pair were only a year apart from one another with Dominik being the oldest yet it was only a miniscule and barely visible difference, the young boy took an instant liking to her at age five when he had seen just how much she, like him loved to kick around his football.

It lead to days where the pair played in the  back yard of her home, or his whilst their mothers would sit and watch them play, often times cracking jokes about how the sport could be the stepping stone to a lovely relationship blossoming between them.

At first they brushed it off, like any two friends would citing that it wouldn't feel right to fall in love with your best and yet, as time went on, naturally her feelings had shifted and while she tried her best to chuck it down to a ludicrous teenage crush, it had only gotten worse with every year; it didn't help that Dominik had manged to charm her into moving with him to Germany, claiming he'd done his research and that there would be schools her, the other reason would be that he wanted his best friend there with him every step of his career.

She should have said no, weaved a ridiculous excuse and moved away; yet how could she when he looked at her the way he did with those damned beautiful eyes - that seemed more than enough for her to uproot her entire life to Germany to study while he pursued his passion on a bigger stage. 

Little did she know, that this move would be the beginning of the end.

Their movie nights that were once a ritual were few and far in between, cooking dinner together became a one woman's job as she would receive one excuse after another from him, even their conversations had lessened as he was either too tired to speak or in his way out to party with his teammates.

She didn't want to appear clingy, or to even demand his attention yet it was clear as the daylight that the boy she once knew had changed entirely to someone she no longer recognized, resulting in what she looks back on as the most difficult decision she could ever make, to walk away before she loses her heart entirely.

Safe to say it didn't end well, an explosive argument erupted with harsh words thrown left and right with the last thing she remembers him saying being, " I never want to see you again " and it was from that moment that she vowed never to think of him ever again.

The match was entertaining with Dominik displaying the skills she had always known he had, Layla had spent most of the match gushing over Trent and how attractive he was making her giggle at how vivacious her best friend was, and once they returned home, she had hoped that it would be a one and done situation.

Unaware that fate had other plans for the both of them. 

____

" Remind me again why we are going out! " She states with a loud tone, a soft breath erupts from her lips once she managed to tie the last strap of her dress.

Against her better judgement, she was roped into accompanying her close friend and roommate, Layla to a new club that had garnered quite the buzz around the city, she searched through her dresses settling on a sophisticated little black dress reaching all the way down and stopping at the middle of her thighs with spaghetti straps covering her back. 

Layla waltzes into her room, dressed in a beautiful baby pink jumpsuit that complemented her fair skintone beautifully. " Because, you have been so stressed out so we need to get drunk and enjoy our time, besides you can sleep off the hangover tomorrow since you're not working " she shrugs nonchalantly, before a smirk adorned her brims. " Or ....? " she trails off with a suggestive look.

" No, absolutely not. I won't cure my heart by having sex with a complete stranger " She said, shuddering at the mere idea.

Unlike Layla, she wasn't as vivacious and wild - she had gone on a few dates since moving here, but they were just that; dates that had either ended with a brief kiss or a slap on the face if they'd crossed the line, as much as she tried to ignore her feelings, her battered heart still beats for him. 

A groan erupts from Layla's brims, " You are such a snooze fest, you gotta liven up a bit. I know you're still hung up on that mysterious guy you told me about but its not like you're ever going to see him again, so the best way to get over someone is to get under someone " 

" I swear if you try anything I'm ditching you in that club " She points a warning finger at Layla. " I don't care what it is, but I'm not hooking up with any weird man "

Layla snickers then raises her hands in mock surrender, " Alright, but think about it! I might not even have to do anything because baby that dress is going to have a lot of guys drooling "

" Can we just go before I change my mind? " She groans.

__

The atmosphere of the club reeked of two distinct scents, alcohol and sex ... bodies close to another, dancing and chatting under the colorful lights and booming music. " Come on let's get shots " Layla practically drags her to the bar, unaware that the both of them had captured the attention of a few piercing gazes that belonged to two well known people, one of which she had been trying to avoid.

" Mate, who's caught your eye there? " Trent asks Dominik as the pair were seated in a private booth at the top floor of the club.

Dominik had noticed a familiar figure entering the semi crowded club almost instantly, he'd thought he was seeing things given the fact that the last time he saw her was two years ago, he kept his gaze on her until she turned around and that's when his eyes widened, it was her. " I ... " He was honestly too stunned to speak.

Trent followed his gaze and smirked, " Ok! they're quite pretty but which one are you really looking at? "

" I wasn't looking " Dominik shrugs, " I just .. thought I saw someone familiar "

" Oh ... " Trent mutters then smiles, " You mean your childhood friend "

Since his arrival to Liverpool, Dominik was able to fit in with his teammates quite well, specifically Trent, hence why they'd decided to step out together and celebrate their impressive win over City.

" More like former friend " Dominik mutters before taking a sip of his glass. " I messed up and really hurt her "

" Did you try reaching out? " Trent wonders.

" Everytime I try, I end up chickening out and honestly, I don't think she wants to hear from me " Dominik shrugs, " It's fine " 

_

" Holy shit! Talia look " Layla gasps.

" What? " She said loudly. 

Instead of responding verbally, Layla gestures with her head to look up and she follows her gaze to see what she meant, and that was when her eyes widened, and all the color draines from her face. " Fuck " 

" Yes, that's Trent Alexander Arnold and Liverpool's new player Dominik Szoboszlai " Layla squeals. " They're staring at us "

" Layla, I need to go " She whispers.

Layla frowns in confusion " What? " she states before asking. " Why? " 

" I just ... " She began, feeling her chest contract in a way that made it difficult for her to breathe, " I just need to leave, you stay and have fun ok "

Before Layla could respond, the young brunette storms out of the club to try and get some fresh air, she walks across the street to a small dinee that was still open at this time, in an attempt to calm her racing her heart.

She orders a cup of tea and a sandwich, and while she waits; she covers her face with her hands, inhaling and exhaling in an attempt to even out her breath - it seemed to work for a brief moment until she hears the all too familiar voice.

" Talia! " 

_

He didn't mean to follow her like a creep, yet when he had seen her face; and the way she had instantly recognized him, it shattered his heart to see the broken look in her eyes, even more so when he saw her storming out of the club causing him to follow her all the way out to the diner she walked into, he takes a deep breath before walking into the diner.

" Talia ", Her name effortlessly flows past his brims in the smoothest way possible.

Her head shot up to meet his gaze that was a combination of longing and sadness, her gaze however was that of agony. " Dominik " she said.

He gestures to the empty chair, " Can I sit down? " he asks.

She remains silent for a moment before a ghost of a smile appears on her lips, " No, you may not. In fact, you can have the table all for yourself and the food as well " she stands up then walks past him to leave.

He runs out after her, " Talia ... Talia, wait up. Please! "

" Go away Dominik " She yells, refusing to look behind her.

He finally caught up to her, grabbing her arm. " No, I'm not going away " he said.

" Dominik let go of my arm! " She exclaims.

" Can we please just go and talk? " He pleads, " Please? "

" Fine, you better have a good explanation " She mutters, stomping her way back to the diner with Dominik following her.

_

They spent the first fifteen minutes in silence before he breaks it by uttering the nickname he used for her, " Tali " 

" Dom, get to the point. I don't want an apology " She mutters, crossing her arms over her chest.

" I know that I was a shitty best friend, I let football consume my life so much that I ended up leaving you on the side as if you didn't matter " He began then adds on, " and I know I hurt you by not wanting to be a part of all the activities we used to do "

" I understood the importance of football to you Dom, believe me I did " She said, " But you just ... you basically left me alone on more than one occasion, to the point where I firmly believed that I lost you for good "

" Oh Tali " He sighs, " I know I was being unfair "

" I didn't want that argument to happen, but what you said keeps echoing in the back of my mind " She reminds him, " You said you never wanted to see me again "

" And I hate myself every single day for it " He assurss her, " All my success couldn't have been possible had it not been for God's blesisng, for my family and most of all, for you "

She blinks away the tears threatening to fall, " Dom " she whispers.

" I remembered you every day, every time I went out there on the pitch to play, I would look for your face in the crowd " He said. " I never stopped asking your parents about you, and when they told me you were here, I actually .. " he chuckles, " I prayed that we would run into each other "

" And here I was, praying that I would avoid you " She giggles.

Dominik smiles carefully reaching for her hand to squeeze it, " I missed you so much, édes pillangó " 

" I missed you too " She mutters softly.

" Can we " He asks with a small voice, " can we start over? properly this time " 

" What do you mean? " She raised a brow.

" There's a reason why I drifted apart from you " He begins slowly, " The truth is ... I " he swallows the lump in his throat, " I love you "

" What? " She whispers in complete disbelief.

Dominik nods, his gaze softening up to display his emotions. " I loved you since the first day I saw you kicking around the ball ... I loved you because you would literally be there for me, even before I can seek you out, I love you because you always know what to say to help me cheer up after a loss, or inspire me to keep pushing day in and day out ... " He smiles widely, " I love you for you, all of you "

" why didn't you tell me? " she asks him.

" I was scared, I mean ... have you seen yourself? " He states with chuckle, " It killed me how all my teammates were so fascinated by you that on more than one occasion, I wanted to kiss you senseless and show them that you belong to me, that you're mine " he adds on, " So, will you be mine? "

" Dom, I've always been yours " She shakes her head with a smile before leaning closer to peck his lips.

" Good, because I plan on making up for every moment I wasted being apart from you " He grins.

He remembers her.

She remembers him.

And love never forgot them.

[carwens]

https://www.tumblr.com/carwens/769953874702368768/in-spain-football-sphere-is-so-bad-when-it-comes

can you explain this a little more? I think the link between football allegiances and political ideology is SO fascinating

Hello anon! I tried to compact my thoughs.

Initial disclaimers: Not all fans of the teams are bad and these disgusting actitudes are not exclusive from right wing politics; also, you cannot generalize every citizen of a city, each is an individual. I think the main point of my "essay"is that men are men and that certain teams, because the geopolitical and economic situation they move in, attract certain type of people (but it happens with many things, not just sports).

this is all my perception as a single individual, as a woman who does not like football but was raised in spain.

spain had already pushed the "spain is the football country a few years early (2000') to attract tourists but it was taken to schooling too. it turned worse after the 2010, but football in high- schools and in playgrounds became the driving force of inequality since the image pushed was "only men, only for boys". the girls were relegated to the sides in risk of being (purportedly) hit by the ball. to play football as a girl, if the boys allowed it, was a way of validating and socially ascending (becoming one of the boys). problem is, the parents and adults were as idiotized by the sport that the children and so they never told the boys "is wrong to exclude the girls". there you have it, a generation of football boys that has sexism validated. At the same time, Madrid as city and capital of spain is the centre of conservative politics bcs it's an expensive and exclusive city to live. the main driving force of the real madrid was madrilians with conservative beliefs, but the non-madrilians no so much (many actually liked the sport and the team bcs they win and it's enjoyable to watch). those same years, you have the real madrid winning everyting and pushing this aura of "exclusiveness and only for champions" and everyone, no matter the money, wants to be a member of the club, initiating a fight of "which team is better" even in the people that are not into football. the idea of "you don't watch football, you LIVE IT" pushes the idea that no one and nothing can get between men and their fav football team. you also have the ultras or ultrafans, a violent force that gets into fights with other teams. take the previously stated, no one can get between the man and the team, sexism validated, no adults, violent person and you have the mix of a young boy who wants to be an utra bcs is the easiest and perfect way to show that they are a fan of the team. you've created a violent man plus adding the fact that they think it's fine to kick out women. did no one realize that it wasn't going to keep on football and will happen oustide of it? it seems no one did.

BUT, in the last few years, since 2016 let's say, since the rise of facism and feminism in spain, now, even fans who are not from madrid city/region are driven by the same exact thoughs of violence and rightwingery to become fans. many YOUNG men feel "opressed and insulted" by feminism and so they seach for validation in anyone that shares that statement. ronaldo raping without consecuences, the newly renovated women's team and their vulnerable players, social media becoming mainstream and without filter... perfect mix to vent their "frustrations". real madrid "fandom", both in real life and social media, has become a place where younger men share their facism rooted in anti-feminism and, because it's football and no one in power thought about stoping the violent culture of being a ultrafan, they are finding validation in it. and again, many fans are not, bcs they just like the team and football, non-spanish people mainly. but it has turned into such a heterogenous mix that now if you're born between 1990 and 2004 in spain, wheter you like football or not, you're very careful around rm fans, bcs they either like the sport and like a winning team, or they start reciting the mein kampf. see how they social media print affects that we say "football pfp, no opinion" bcs you will always see a man with a atleti or rm or barça pfp stating the most unhinged things.

conclusion: the rm (also atleti, sorry) attract certain type of people, right wingers essentially, because of the country's (city's) politcs and the team's historical fucked ups of players and coaches and presidents abusing women or people in general. You could also mix the incompetence of the legal system to judge fairly the millionare players.

important to note that young spanish women who tend to the right wing also tend to support the real madrid. i do not have enough info on this, again, since it's based on my perception and i do not vibe with this type of person.

there's also other type of people that have a favourite team and watch football because it's required to like football in this country (this is actually said in passive agressive voice).

[spraxinoscope]

Sumo is the best and worst sport there is

Champion Sumo Wrestler Hokutoumi by Kinoshita Daimon, 1985

I've been playing Street Fighter 6 and maining E. Honda, which is a gateway drug to learning about sumo, which is a gateway drug to watching hours of sumo wrestling on this 24 hour sumo rebroadcast twitch stream.

It's a fun spectator sport but it turns out that sumo is like American football but worse, because in addition to getting their skulls smashed together constantly, they also get all kinds of health problems from the stress, injuries, and diet. The average sumo wrestler lives to be 65 and is likely to get diabetes. It's inhumane. And it's backed by hundreds of years of tradition so they can get away with it.

...but, unfortunately, sumo is cool as shit. Here's why:

You lose a match by being forced out of the ring or getting knocked down. You win by being immovable. How do you become immovable?

By having more mass than your opponent, of course.

Every match starts with both wrestlers rushing together and colliding. All else being equal, the heavier wrestler has an inherent advantage at the start. Strength alone is insufficient; if he doesn't have the mass he'll just bounce off the other guy. If the match isn't decided in the first second, then it becomes a hellish grappling game, as they both try to figure out how to tip over a person who's built like the dog that cannot be tipped over.

So there's this arms race happening behind the scenes as coaches use the power of Dark Nutrition Science to try and make their guys heavier.

Every wrestler is trying to be heavier than average, so the average weight keeps going up. It's been going up since the 60s. Building and sustaining mass, along with doing the accompanying strength training to stay agile, is the challenge that defines a sumo wrestler's career.

This is the real game. The teams (which are called 'stables,' to give you a sense of why there might be a problem here) are competing with each other to win the title of Who Can Put The Most Calories In A Guy.

It's nightmarish, but if I'm being honest, it's also compelling. Like, this is what all pro sports do: relentlessly instrumentalize human beings into honed single-purpose machines. But in sumo the qualities being optimized for are moving fast, hitting hard, and being huge. And it turns out that a person can get really good at all three of those! It's impressive! Inspiring, even! It's just too bad that, you know, it eventually kills them.

Pro sumo is a dangerous, exploitative sport. It probably shouldn't exist. But as long as it does, do yourself a favor: Check out that stream, pull up the wikipedia page on sumo to read along so you can figure out what they're doing, and bear witness to a spectacular and deranged application of human ingenuity and drive.

It does help if you know hiragana so you can read their names. But, cmon, it's 2023. Learn hiragana already. It takes like a couple days on duolingo. The stream chat also has a bot that gives a short bio of any wrestler if you type ![their name]. If channel host sahairah happens to be there, and they often are in the evenings, they will patiently answer questions you have. but don't show up there and ask a ton of dumbass questions, because that would then be my fault.

[olivia-anderson-fanfic]

Yuu can do it!

Part 36

First - Previous - Masterlist - Next

When Enma returned home later that day, excited to tell his friends about ‘Magift’ (which, from what he had gathered, seemed to be similar to American Football, but with magic), he experienced the ultimate betrayal: both of his friends had known about it, and hadn’t bothered to tell him.

“Oh, yeah, the tournament thing coming up?” Ito said, frowning to themself. “You’re interested?”

Kuroki was even worse, groaning and putting his head in his hands. “I thought we were going to get past the cutoff without you realizing. We were so close.”

“If he wants to participate in the – uh – Magift tournament, who cares?”

“He will. It’s a magical team sport, Ito. Between dorms.”

Ito gave a quiet hiss of sympathy. “Oh.”

And then Enma realized that, unfortunately, if Magift was a team game, his team would be the other Ramshackle residents. Which… listen, he liked Ito, Kuroki, and Grim, but he could not imagine being on a team with them and winning. Enma couldn’t ask Kuroki to play, not with his magical asthma or whatever it was that he had. Ito was fine, not particularly good or bad during their gym class. Still, neither of them had magic, which left them at a huge disadvantage. Grim was the only one of them who had magical capabilities, but they weren’t particularly advanced, and he couldn’t imagine the monster being a good team player.

And that wasn’t even taking into consideration that there definitely wasn’t enough of them to fill out a team.

He sunk to his knees, devastation washing over him.

Kuroki patted him on the shoulder. “I was going to wait until the deadline passed so you wouldn’t get your hopes up.”

“I appreciate it,” he sniffed.

“Deadl – oh!” Ito looked at Kuroki. “That reminds me. Crowley told me to remind you about a Housewarden meeting tomorrow.”

Kuroki joined Enma on the floor, curling up into a ball of pure depression. “I don’t waaaaannaaaaaa.”

Grim floated into the room, only to pause. He looked at Enma and Kuroki, who were both grieving, and then Ito, who had gone back to their economics homework. “What happened?”

“Human boys are weird,” Ito said, shrugging.

Grim nodded sagely. “Yeah, true.”

~

Ace looked at the Ramshackle residents as they all shuffled into class the next morning, and his eyebrows shot into his hairline, his grin freezing on his face.

Which was understandable. They must have been quite the sight. Enma had a plaster over his nose, and Ito and Kuroki were both clinging to him. This was not ideal, as his entire body hurt (yes, his nose hurt the most, but everything was just awful for one Enma Yuuken), and their too-tight grips on his arms were not helping at all, but whatever, he’d deal. Grim was floating along behind them, entirely unaffected outside of being mildly annoyed that Kuroki was shaking too badly for him to use the boy as his own personal transport system.

“What the fuck happened to you guys?”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Enma muttered.

“The ghosts sabotaged our house again,” Grim said regardless. “Enma fell through the floor.”

“Ohhhhhhkaaaaayyyyy,” said Ace. “So, Ito is just worried for him?”

“Yeah. The way Enma fell was, apparently, super dangerous.”

Ito shivered. “If he had been looking any further down the cartilage in his nose would have shot right back into his brain and killed him.”

Ace looked mildly disturbed. Enma could appreciate this, he liked it when people weren’t entirely comfortable with the idea of him dying.

“I guess Kuroki is freaked out about that, too.”

“No, he’s scared of the freaky murder basement Enma fell into.”

“The fucking what now,” said Deuce, finally looking up from his textbook (apparently, in his eyes, seeing the Yuus cling to each other was normal enough that he didn’t care to pay attention to it, even if it was Enma in the middle instead of Kuroki this time, which was something Enma might put some thought to later).

Enma sighed. He wanted to pinch the bridge of his nose but, unfortunately, he wasn’t able to do that anymore without blinding pain. Also, he couldn’t currently move his arms with his friends dragging them down. The entire world is against him.

“Deuce. There are ghosts in our house. Consider why they are there.”

“... oh…”

~

At lunch that day, Enma was in too much pain from his sudden fall to even be able to dream of trying to carry their food like he always did. Truly, his life was terrible, and the only way he could ever be expected to recover was if he could go just a few days without straining his poor muscles.

Ito had thrown him a skeptical look at that, but they had agreed to hold everything, so who cares?

Now, you may be wondering, what about Kuroki or Grim? Didn’t they have their hands free? Shouldn’t they help, since Ito wasn’t as strong as Enma?

Well, yeah, but also… be for real.

Anyways.

They watched people bustle about, trying to shove their way to the front of the line.

To ‘improve student morale’, and also probably because the bakery paid him royalties to serve their food there, Crowley would allow them to drop in about once a month and sell their wares. Enma had heard the food was good, but the Ramshackle kids weren’t really in the place to splurge.

Hell, they were technically eating two meals between the four of them. Sure, their ‘abuse the buffet option’ thing had been said aloud to make Deuce feel bad, but they absolutely were that poor.

At least they got a bit of preferential treatment, since the ghosts liked them (wanted to kill them, Enma reminded himself, his nose twinging painfully, though he supposed that was just the downside of the ghosts liking them). They no longer bothered hiding the fact that they were all eating off of the two meal tickets they bought a day. The ghosts had heard them talk about it more than once, and if they were going to report them to Crowley then they would have done it already.

Things were better than they could have been.

Still, it was a little annoying to watch Ace hook his arm through Deuce’s and start trying to drag him away. “C’mon, let’s see if we can nab something before it all sells out.”

Deuce hesitated, though. “Hey, Enma, do you… want anything?”

The group of Ramshackle students gave each other wide-eyed looks. This had never happened before.

“Do you…” Enma frowned. “I don’t know – need homework answers or something?” 

Deuce shook his head just slightly before, apparently, his brain caught up to his body, and he nodded fervently. “Yes! I need – uh – Personal Magical Ability answers! Personal Magical Ability answers for a snack.”

“Oh… okay,” said Enma.

Deuce nodded once, the deal made, and then finally allowed Ace to drag him off so they could both muscle their way further up the line.

The Ramshackle kids simply watched him go, still in shock.

“¿Entiendes?” Ito murmured, finally.

Admittedly, Enma and Kuroki didn’t know Spanish, but that didn’t mean they hadn’t picked up on anything over the time they’d been living with Ito. Mostly curse words, admittedly, but also the occasional slang term.

So, yes, they knew what Ito had just said.

Kuroki grinned. “Ito-chan, everyone here is en-tien-des.”

Ito snickered. “Well, no shit, it’s an all-boys school. I mean, like, specifically for Enma.”

Enma’s nose scrunched. He sure hoped not. That would be awkward. Besides… “I thought he and Ace had a thing going?”

“Do you think that Ace has enough self-awareness for that?” Kuroki asked rhetorically.

Enma had to give it to him. That was a fair point. He shrugged awkwardly. “It’s probably just because I’m injured, guys.”

“Oh. We should get injured more often, then,” Kuroki said.

“Please don’t,” Ito groaned.

Kuroki opened his mouth to joke back, only for his hand to shoot out and snatch up Grim, who had been trying to sneak away and cause mischief while they were distracted. “Absolutely not.”

Grim groaned and wiggled in the boy’s grip, even going so far as to bite him – or at least threaten it, his sharp teeth didn’t even break the skin – but Kuroki held fast. Apparently, it had been a good thing that he was refusing to carry anything. Who knows what would have happened if the ravenous beast were to escape.

Still, Grim whined on and on about how he wanted a grilled cheese sandwich. Enma was pretty sure that, if he kept going, Ito might just make one for him to shut him up. Maybe that was the monster’s intention.

He tuned it out, looking up at the menu, trying to decide what he wanted today. Couldn’t be anything too spicy, Kuroki was probably going to panic and get chicken tenders again, so he’d whine his way into eating off of his and Ito’s plates as well… maybe sushi…?

And then. Enma heard it. The spray bottle-like laugh that haunted his nightmares. He whirled around, panic gripping him. Nonono he wasn’t at work he was supposed to be safe –!

Ruggie was looking at someone else with that hungry gleam in his eyes. The person a few spaces in front of them in line, holding a sandwich, gave Ruggie a confused look. Enma wasn’t religious, but he was absolutely ready to start thanking God for his mercy.

“Heyyy, pal,” Ruggie said, in the kind of way you absolutely should not talk to someone you consider a ‘pal’. “I see you were able to get your hands on the highly-prized deluxe cheese sandwich. Incredible!”

The student’s expression shuttered closed, annoyance stealing its way across their face instead. “It’s my food. You got here late. Fuck off.”

“I did get here late, that’s true, that’s true. And you got it fair and square…” Ruggie agreed in that exact tone he used when he was about to make Enma’s life miserable. Enma was so glad that this wasn’t happening to him for once. Ruggie slid a hand into his pocket. He pulled out… a hot dog bun. It looked like it had lint on it. “How about a trade? Your deluxe grilled cheese for this very exciting hot dog bun?”

Enma thought he was going to slap it out of Ruggie’s hand just for that insult, that was certainly what it looked like the student was going to do, and Ruggie didn’t stop him so Enma figured that maybe he was going to go with the ‘break it you buy it’ approach to make him hand over his food…

But, at the last second, the student's hand closed around the bun.

Even the student looked surprised by this development, looking down at the piece of bread in his hand with wide eyes.

Ruggie used that moment to snatch the sandwich out of the boy’s other hand. “Thanks for trading with me! I do hope you find something to fill that bun with! But that’s not my problem, so, I’ll be off, thanks!”

“Hey, senpai,” Ito called after him. “What’s the economy like in the Savannah?”

“Shit!”

“Cool, thanks!”

“Mhmm! See you in class, comrade!”

Ito gave him a vaguely amused look, but they were more concerned with fishing their homework out of the bag on Enma’s back to mark down the answer.

Kuroki, however, grinned widely. And then he twisted his face into one of pure betrayal. “Ito? Are you a communist?”

“I hate you,” they decided.

“Dodging the question, I see.”

Enma grinned at their dumb little conversation, but his eyes found their way to the guy Ruggie had just scammed. It… didn’t make sense. Don’t get Enma wrong, Ruggie was pretty convincing, but his strategy usually relied on simply annoying Enma into giving him a discount just to get rid of him. This? Where he had… what? Vaguely offered a terrible trade? He wasn’t sure how the person had fallen for it. It wasn’t like Ruggie had shoved it into their hands and overwhelmed them or anything, they had grabbed the bun of their own accord…

The kid frowned down at his hotdog bun, dissatisfied for obvious reasons.

Enma shook his head to clear it, grinning at Ito. “How do you know Ruggie?”

“He’s in my Econ class. Not sure why, I’m pretty sure he hates it,” Ito said, shrugging nonchalantly.

“Is he… er… like that in there?”

Ito didn’t even have to ask Enma what he had meant. “Oh, yeah, definitely.”

Kuroki squinted at Enma. “Wait, wait, wait. Did you call him ‘Ruggie’? No ‘Bucchi-senpai’, or even just ‘senpai’? What the fuck? We almost died for the right to be called by our first names!”

“Oh, that. Yeah, no, I just don’t respect him.”

Kuroki nearly fell over laughing.

~

Enma and Ito walked along, a half-step behind Kuroki as the boy complained all the way to the meeting:

“— should be a torture method. I mean, going straight from a shift at the lounge to a meeting? Just kill me, seriously.”

Ito rolled their eyes. “Crowley said the meeting shouldn’t last longer than an hour.”

“It’s still a hate crime.”

“You know, I don’t think that’s true,” Enma said.

“It is, it is!” Kuroki pretended to wipe away a tear. “It’s because I’m so cool. They want to drag me down.”

“Who is ‘they’ in this scenario?” Ito asked, because they were an enabler.

“Kuroki, that’s definitely not what a hate crime is,” Enma sighed.

Grim looked at them all oddly. “What is a ‘hate crime’?”

“What Kuroki just described,” Ito said.

And, listen, misinformation is bad, actually.

However, Enma desperately wanted to see that blow up one day, he thought it would be funny, so he did not argue any further.

Oh. Oh no. They’ve been spending too much time with Ace.

… he didn’t want to think about that, actually.

Instead, he sighed and ruffled Kuroki’s hair. This only served to make Kuroki glare at him and quickly try to right it again (he was utterly unsuccessful, but that wasn’t all that shocking considering he didn’t have a mirror to look into), but at least he was no longer concentrating on how terrible his life was.

Or maybe he was. Kuroki opened his mouth again to complain once again:

“Seriously, though, the only other ‘non-threatening’ server fell down the stairs like a dumbass, so I had to cover his shift.”

“How dare that other guy get hurt. Doesn’t he know what inconveniences you?” Grim said. It was hard to tell whether he was joking or not.

Kuroki nodded along anyway. “You get me, Grim-chan.”

Grim gave a little huff at the -chan honorific, but when Kuroki turned his head to press a kiss to the top of the monster’s head, he leaned into it.

Enma absently thought about trying to convince Kuroki to wear lipstick, just because he was curious as to how hard it would be to get a kiss mark out of the monster’s fur, but then disregarded the thought. Not because he wasn’t still curious, but because he knew Kuroki would never do that to his, quote, ‘favorite little terrorist’.

Of course, if Enma was curious enough he could always try kissing Grim with lipstick on – ‘try’ being the keyword there, as he would probably get his nose bitten off before he could attempt it.

They finally reached the chamber where the meeting would be held and, though it annoyed him, Enma would be forced to wait outside. Maybe he would fight Kuroki for the Housewarden spot after all.

… no, he’d feel bad. It wouldn’t even be a fair fight. Kuroki was, like, 5 centimeters tall and built like a twig.

And Ito would probably be mad at him, too. Ugh.

He would have to settle for Kuroki’s too-brief recaps after the meeting.

Speaking of Kuroki and the meeting… Ito grabbed him by the hand, dragging him closer so they could fix his hair. Grim floated over to settle himself on one of Enma’s shoulders.

And then, the moment every hair was back in place, Enma pushed Kuroki into the room and shut the door behind him, because he knew that, if allowed to linger, Kuroki would absolutely wait out the entire meeting.

Which is what Enma, Ito, and Grim were supposed to do, not him. The group shuffled to half-hide in an alcove, pressing close to each other so they could read their Alchemy textbook (or, in Grim’s case, so he could be warm and comfortable while he slept… they’d catch him up on everything before the finals). Enma wasn’t quite as bad at Alchemy as Ito – which was understandable, given they weren’t reading in their first language and were, therefore, more prone to mistakes – but he was still… well, Enma always questioned why the ingredients and potions needed to be prepared in a specific way, and then he found out.

Finding out was both his favorite and least favorite part. He liked knowing things. He didn’t like things blowing up in his face (literally).

The textbook, sometimes, answered his questions, and the less almost-dying he did the better off he would be, he thought.

A person with a blue armband shuffled over, and Enma immediately snapped to attention. Blue armband students – Ignihyde students – were practically mythical creatures, almost never seen out and about, squeaking and running the moment anyone laid eyes on them, and all pictures that managed to be taken of them always ended up corrupted somehow.

Enma opened his mouth to say hi, but the Ignihyde student did as Ignihyde students do: yelping pitifully and rushing to the relative safety that was the meeting room.

He pouted. He hadn’t even gotten to ask a single question. “Life is pain and suffering.”

“We can try and ambush him when he leaves if you want.”

Enma pressed a hand to his chest. “That’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”

“Oh, hush. I just have free time, since I’ve finally gotten the library to something passable and all,” they joked.

“Mhmm mhmm,” he teased, wrapping an arm around their shoulders and dragging them closer to his side. “Totally. You definitely aren’t fond of me, or anything.”

“I would never,” Ito said, sticking their tongue out at him. “I think someone is projecting.”

“Yeah, you, obviously.”

“Ooooh, what a great comeback, how will I ever recover –?”

“I guess the rumors were true,” a voice drawled. Enma’s head shot up to look at… the person from the garden that he and Grim had run into during their first week. Grim made a quiet snuffling sound and shifted, lifting his head to bare his teeth at Leona. Leona didn’t even blink at the clear display of hostility. “You magicless students really don’t leave each other’s sides unless you have to.”

“You’re going to be late for the meeting,” Ito said.

Enma was kind of proud of them. Last month they probably would have told Leona to ‘fuck off’ outright. But they had held back. Progress.

Leona considered this statement for a moment. Or, maybe, he was considering them, green eyes narrowed as they scanned over the three of them. And then he snorted, spinning around smoothly. “I guess you’re right. And this is an important one…”

Enma sighed. He watched him disappear around the doorframe, the sound of Kalim’s cheery voice starting to greet Leona managing to slip through before it closed behind him.

And then… well, there wasn’t much else they could do besides wait.

Grim was fully awake now, grumbling and bunting his head against both Ito and Enma. Enma recalled that cats did that to ‘scent’ people and things, essentially marking their territory, and he snickered. There was no way that Kuroki was going to be able to befriend the mice in their house when Grim was around. He was surprised the poor things hadn’t keeled over in fear yet.

Ito was flipping through their textbook, and, vaguely, Enma thought that he should have been reading it with them…

But he couldn’t really bring himself to concentrate.

The conversation with Leona had reminded Enma of how Deuce hadn’t even blinked at the sight of them clinging to each other that morning.

He was aware enough of the fact that they were probably more ‘touchy’ than the average person here. Kuroki liked to hold onto at least one of them when he was anxious (which was pretty much all the time). They slept in the same bed, so it was no surprise that their boundaries for what they could touch would be lax. Besides, Enma and Kuorki both came from a culture where skinship wasn’t all that uncommon. Ito was the exception, and accordingly didn’t often initiate touch, but their experience having younger siblings did make them more used to random hugs or hand-holding.

However, they had been far more affectionate that morning, both of them practically glued to his arms, and Deuce hadn’t even batted an eye because he didn’t see it as ‘out of character’.

Which meant maybe they were a bit too close.

Then again, all of the people here refused to call those they cared about ‘friends’, instead insisting on calling them ‘business associates’ or things of the like. Ace and Deuce would talk about how they hated Riddle when pressed on how much time they spent at Ramshackle Dorm. Even Grim continued to insist on calling them his ‘henchmen’. So maybe they weren’t the best gauge of what a ‘healthy friendship’ was.

Besides, considering their circumstances, it really shouldn’t have been surprising that they were as close as they were. No one else here could really understand them. No one else had been abducted from their original world without warning. No one else was forced to live in a run-down house full of beings that would kill them if given the chance. Heck, no one else was magicless. Why wouldn’t they cling to each other a little bit more than was ‘normal’, when they were the only somewhat familiar things in a world that was so hopelessly strange?

Enma liked it there, don’t get him wrong, but that didn’t mean that he was unaware of the fact that he didn’t truly belong.

Not that he would ‘belong’ back home, anymore, either.

His eyes fell away from the textbook – he wasn’t really seeing the pages, anyway – and slid to a candle on the wall, the flame flickering.

He rested his chin atop Ito’s head, his eyes falling shut. He’d had a long day.

“‘M gonna take a nap,” he murmured.

Ito gave a small hum to say they had heard him, and he didn’t wait for much longer before letting himself drift off.

~

He awoke to a hand prodding him in the side, and sent Ito and Kuroki a tired grin. “So, what was the meeting about?”

Kuroki’s grin spread wider. “Ito, you owe me.”

They huffed, rolling their eyes, but dug a couple of Madol out of their pocket. Enma was beginning to suspect that they lost bets on purpose, because surely they should have won at least once by now, no one can be that unlucky…

Wait a minute.

Enma squinted. “What did you bet on?”

“What the first thing you said would be,” Grim said, pouting. “I thought you were going to curse. No extra tuna cans for me.”

“You thought I would – why?” said Enma. He didn’t even curse! He made a point not to!

“Waking up sucks,” Grim shrugged.

Enma sighed, and looked at Kuroki and Ito, who were both snickering at his offense. “What’d you think I’d say?”

Kuroki smirked. “I knew you’d ask about the meeting.”

“I thought it would be a greeting,” Ito shrugged. “Y’know, like… ‘hi’ or ‘good morning’ or some shit. I had faith in you.”

“Terrible decision.” Enma looked at Kuroki again. “So?”

“Uh… well, it was a reminder to get application forms in for the tournament before the deadline, and then they started talking about this… Draconia-senpai guy. Apparently, Crowley wanted to disqualify him from playing, ‘cause he’s OP, but everyone went ‘nooooo that is so unfair’ or whatever. So he’s still playing.”

Ah, Kuroki, your eloquent descriptions never fail to both amuse and annoy Enma.

Ito frowned. “Didn’t Crowley say that this was an important, mandatory meeting?”

“It’s Crowley,” Kuroki said, shrugging.

“Oh. Yeah.”

[itoshi-s]

zari ! ! i wan hear how u n' rinnie met ^V^ ! don't spare anyyyy detail i wan hear all da juicy stuffs :3c

COCO < 333 thank yew 4 asking beloved cuz i am so excited to talk abt this hehe it makes me blush just thinkin about it !!! >_<

the very first time we encounter each other is at a local cafe in paris !! he's a pro player for psg, i'm here for my internship after moving out to continue education in sports psychology. simple as that !! and we both need some pick-me-up coffee to start the day. rin stands in line behind me when i order a latte and my favorite croissant - and it just happens to be the last one. i joke around with the cashier on how it must be my lucky day then,, and right as i say it rin sighs and tells whoever he's on the phone with that they have just ran out& he has to get something else. i turn to look at him and tell him that it's okay, i don't mind getting something else instead - and i recognize him and get all sheepish 😭 cause he IS so tall and intimidating and looks way too annoyed for his own good, and it is THE rin itoshi after all. he lifts the phone from his ear and shakes his head before insisting i take it, it's fine. ryusei might as well just not get his daily sugar dose this time, it's not a big deal, he thinks. he's not going to make a fuss out of it. i ask if he's sure and he nods, and because i want this interaction to b over already i just go thru and buy it </3 i tell the cashier to pack it to go & she's a bit surprised cause i'm usually the regular sitting in the corner and studying for hours on end,, but i tell her i just need something to sweeten up my day in case my first day at work turns out worse than expected !! she gets all excited and we laugh a bit and rin's a bit on the rush, but he doesn't mind, and it feels a bit funny to him, but he doesn't pay that much mind to it. but just when i'm about to walk away &wait at the end of the bar he turns to me& tells me good luck :( you already know i nearly trip over my feet when i go to walk away akjsfhask by this point i am a mess!!!!!!

now when we PROPERLY meet each other it's barely a few hours later, at the training centre, and i step out of the office after signing all the remaining documents i need to go through w/ my internship. i don't really know my way around the building that well yet &take a few wrong turns, so when i can't find my way out to the field where i'm supposed to meet the team for the very first time, i go to ask a guy that happens to walk past. and of course it's him :,3 i only ever notice when he turns to me & we're both surprised - he has every right to be, me not so much cause ... i knew where i was signing up lol - and he tells me he's going that way too, has some dumb meeting with their health team, so we can walk together. "why'd you think it's dumb?" i ask and he shrugs a bit. "it's not like we really need it. what, you one of them?" rin looks down on me and it just sorta clicks - the first day at work, now me looking for where the meeting takes place - and he smiles a bit. "i see. well there's nothing to be scared of. ryusei, maybe." he deadpans & i nearly cry 😭 cause WHY would u bring up the one (1) most unhinged man among all of u akjfdhsl and then he adds, "he wasn't too happy when i told him you took his croissant."

........tldr; we meet bc of work but it's sweet & perhaps fate played a part in it too :3 he's not too keen of having a psychologist gf cause he's scared i'll end up analyzing him LOL i'm just like.. no babes i've a whole football team 2 look after whenever something goes wrong my world doesn't spin around u . (it's a lie. it does. we're obsessed w each other) KJASHDK COCO I HOPE I GAVE ALL THE DEETS ....... i'm feeling a lil silly 4 how long this turned out but welp :,3 i love love looooove our lore &love talkin abt it even more !!! MWAH

[head-post]

Heatwave and protests in Paris hamper the Olympics

A string of protests and abnormal heat threaten the continuation of the Paris Olympics, the most anticipated sporting event of 2024.

Protests against Israel

A group of anti-Semitic protesters chanted “Heil Hitler” at the Israeli men’s football team, which was due to face Paraguay at the Paris Olympics last weekend.

The group unabashedly made their presence known from the stands, chanting hate speech and booing the Israeli team during the national anthem at the Parc de Prins stadium on Saturday night.

Flocks of protesters were seen waving Palestinian flags and some even performed a Nazi salute during their disgusting display of hate. Several also held a large banner reading “Genocide Olympics.”

The anti-Israel demonstrators were eventually ejected from the stadium, and no other disturbances were reported. A Paris Olympic organiser told Sky News:

“During the men’s football match between Israel and Paraguay at the Parc des Princes on 27 July, a banner bearing a political message was displayed, and anti-Semitic gestures were made. Paris 2024 strongly condemns these acts. A complaint has been lodged by Paris 2024, which is at the disposal of the authorities to assist with the investigation.”

This marks the second time since the start of the Olympics that an Israeli football club has faced protesters during its match.

The team was met with the same display of hatred during its match against Mali last Wednesday. Demonstrators during Israel’s match against Mali waved Palestinian flags, booed and whistled during the anthem.

After the match against Mali, Israeli head coach Guy Luzon said that the protest against his team and Israel would only be used as fuel to improve results on the field. He also added:

“Bring on the loudest protests. They will make us try harder.”

French coach arrested

A French canoeing coach working at the Paris Olympics has been detained after allegedly punching police officers who stopped him for urinating in the street, prosecutors said.

The French Canoe and Kayak Federation said coach Guillaume Berge was suspended from his duties. The report said Bergé was not coaching French teams at the Olympics, but was holding social events at the canoeing and kayaking venue in Vaires-sur-Marne, east of Paris.

The incident happened on Monday night to Tuesday in eastern Paris and a preliminary investigation has been launched, the Paris prosecutor’s office said. Other details have not been released pending further investigation.

Heat wave threatens Olympics

Tennis and football players are being allowed to take water breaks, BMX cyclists are sitting under umbrellas between races and horses are being monitored with thermal imaging cameras as the Summer Olympics adapt to the heat wave that has gripped Paris and much of France.

Temperatures were expected to reach 37 degrees Celsius (98.6°F) at the Roland Garros tennis complex near Paris on Tuesday.

Players can use the break to shower, change equipment, eat, drink or go to the toilet, but they cannot get medical attention or talk to a coach. If the heat gets worse, a committee including the tournament referee and medical staff may decide to suspend play.

In football, when the temperature is above 32 degrees Celsius, there are cooling breaks in both halves of the match. At a BMX freestyle competition in Concorde Square in central Paris, riders stood under umbrellas cooled by electric fans while coaches applied ice.

Read more HERE

[anthonybialy]

Buffalo Bills Win Down the Line

We were already sick of the Chiefs before they missed their nap.  Buffalo’s second home is the first place for measuring present regular season status.  The best way to cope with knowing hotel staffers by name is to drive competitors to tears.  In the case of the bratty opposition leader, it’s not figurative.  A tradition that occurs more frequently than annually doesn’t always inspire as much dread as seeing your family on Thanksgiving then Christmas.

I hope your toddler goes right to sleep tonight instead of Mahomesing.  Babies ask you not to compare them to him.  The lousy actor and occasional quarterback took a break from selling disgusting sandwiches and ironically racist rioting to show who he really is, namely an insufferable brat who failed a test of character.

The face of the league threw a fit over an indisputable penalty, which is fitting in its way.  The professional shrieker made a repulsed face like he tasted Subway for the first time.  I’m sure he would have remained calm if sacked by a defender who was that offside.  The greatest injustice Jerk from State Farm has ever withstood was his idiotic teammate getting correctly flagged for not knowing where he’s allowed to stand relative to the ball.

You can see what play he’s trying to execute if you just watch.  Mahomes tipped off the call with the all-time irrational postgame excuse about wanting to “see the guys on the field decide the game.”  Permitting certain players to gain an advantage is the opposite of letting them decide it.  There are rules to prevent that, which dismays players who are used to being exempt from them.

The illicit misalignment affected the play no matter how tangentially.  Lining up in Kansas instead of Missouri creates an unfair advantage either directly or though a prohibited maneuver teams must divert resources to stop.  Not calling fouls leads to Battle Royale-style mayhem.  Even if you’d prefer the game to be played in a more lawless manner, it’s against present rules.

When will the poor Kansas City Chiefs catch a break?  We’ve never seen a call go their way.  Andy Reid threw a fit like a cheeseburger’s out of reach because the officials didn’t help him for once.  He should have felt embarrassed that his receiver doesn’t know how lines work instead of fuming at officials for not giving him a warning that he should stop breaking rules lest they finally have to call it.

Why didn’t they show the Pfizer shill’s boy toy after his teammate ruined his overhand lateral?  The best part of incessant luxury box shots showing the porcelain embodiment of bafflingly popular irksome tone-deafness is that you can’t hear her.  Thanks to dating Travis Kelce, Taylor Swift finally has an ass.  

A game we’ll, um, never forget was what the coach needed as much as we did.  The Bills won even after the apprehension of flying on the same plane as Khalid Sean McDermott.  Life can be complex, as seen by how it’s possible to both think he’s a weirdo who should factor good and evil into his comparisons about team play and that the lame ancient story from a disgruntled fringe reporter was timed as suspiciously as possible.  Sports are tricky for emotions and other things.

Football is a nice break from nothing.  That icky bye featured disturbing news as a distraction from the ghastly void.  You have to phrase your wish to the genie so carefully that it’s not worth summoning him.  There may be a life lesson.  

Kingsley Jonathan deserved to play just based on performance.  The player he should have replaced should spend some time off for multiple reasons.  Unlike the legal process, we know how Von Miller plays out.  It turns out there is a town where he can get arrested.  After another game where he had zero statistical impact, we await details on an accusation worse than stealing from the Bills.

Disturbing charges may or may not reflect what happened.  That covers all of it.  But it’s crucial to withhold judgment despite the temptation to reach conclusions based on details that lack the detail of verification.  Miller could have committed what’s alleged, in which case he can shove off and rot.  But wait to see if the accounts match.  Some haven’t learned from ruining Matt Araiza’s life that treating a police report as a biblical proclamation is blasphemous.  Like waiting to see how the season unfolds, it’s imperative to wait for evidence.  Fans may as well buy a Super Bowl trip package on the grounds that Miller will lead the Bills there.

McDermott can claim he was hijacked into making the baffling decision at half’s end.  Why try a long field goal that might miss?  It’s apparently better to heave a pass that’s destined to be knocked down.  An effective strategy to end the game was nice on its own.  It would’ve been even nicer to have made wiser earlier decisions that could’ve widened the lead.

Josh Allen mauled it in.  The football star’s helmeted rugby technique makes the fact the new taxpayer-funded stadium won’t be hosting any 2031 World Cup matches even more dismaying.  How about a throw for balance?  Improvising an unbelievable completion on what seemed like a play that was destined to be disastrous shows he deserves the faith Bills fans place in him.  A moment teetering toward doom for which this franchise is renowned illustrates his remarkable capacity to alter outlooks.

There are better ways to avoid getting too excited than an interception at the worst time.  It’s not that there’s a good time.  But trying to top the reigning champions was already challenging enough without an unfortunate read.  Every story about Allen overcoming coaching screwups must be qualified by his scheduled awful decision which keeps foes in games.  Giving him credit for a Chiefs touchdown is just to motivate the end to that one lousy choice per outing.

An eventful week off shows why dullness can be preferable.  Outbursts are fun as along as they’re by quarterbacks we don’t have to validate.  Winning in a rather challenging environment while adhering to rules outrages the right people.  Lines don’t bend any more than rules regarding them.

[brenichols]

BASIC INFO

Full name: Brendan Alexander Nichols

Nickname(s): Bren, B

Age: 26  

Birthday: February 14th, 1997

Hometown: Fairford, Washington

Zodiac big three: Aquarius Sun, Aries Moon, Scorpio Rising

Sexuality: Heterosexual

Residence: Seattle

Occupation: Photographer

PERSONALITY

To put it bluntly, Brendan can be described as an asshole, douchebag, or any other negative term of your choosing. He learned from an early age to expect disappointment from people. He keeps most at arm’s length and pushes anyone away who attempts to know him better. He tends to be a bit hot-headed, which is only worse when he’s been drinking...which he frequently does. 

BIOGRAPHY

TW: Alcoholism

Brendan Alexander Nichols was born the middle child out of five children to Mark and Claudia Nichols. With two older brothers and one younger, there was a lot of roughhousing between the siblings. Something that caused Brendan to grow a thick skin and learn how to defend and protect himself. But when it came to his siblings, he would do anything to protect them from others, especially his youngest sister. The family grew up financially fortunate, given that their father was a surgeon and their mother a nurse at the local hospital in town. They never had to struggle for money and their parents oftentimes had a hard time saying no to their children. Some thought of them as spoiled, but with both parents putting in long hours at the hospital, they tried to make up for their absence with material things. “Sorry we had to work on your birthday. Here’s a hundred bucks to buy yourself something nice at the mall.” He learned early on to expect disappointment from people and kept most at arm’s length. His parents may have disappointed him when it came to missing birthdays and other important life events, but Brendan still had a strong connection with his mother, Claudia. Ever since he was a toddler, he had been a mama’s boy and was practically glued to her side throughout his childhood.

As he grew to be a teenager, Brendan became interested in soccer and went on to join his high school’s team. He had always been competitive by nature, which made sports the perfect outlet for him. Although he did play football for a year of high school, soccer was always the sport he couldn’t get enough of.

During his sophomore year of high school, he noticed things were starting to get rocky with his parent’s relationship. They started bickering more, getting into longer and uglier fights. They did their best to keep him and his siblings out of it, even though they all knew something was off. They just weren’t sure what it was. Brendan tried talking to his mother, trying to get an idea of what it was that was wrong. Part of him was terrified of his parents getting a divorce, just like so many of his friend’s parents had gone down that route. She looked him square in the eyes and assured him that wouldn’t happen. He actually believed her when she said those words.

One morning a few months later, Brendan decided to skip school and go home early one Friday morning. It was the off-season for soccer, which meant no practice after school. His attitude towards school usually changed during this time since he no longer had to actively attempt to keep his grades up to play in the games. When he got home, he spotted a familiar car in the driveway, but he couldn’t quite place where he knew it from. He shrugged it off, assuming it was their housekeeper or another type of maintenance person doing their job around the house. It wasn’t until he walked inside, only to see his mother and his soccer coach half-undressed with their tongues down each other’s throats. It was then that he realized it was his coach’s car in the driveway. He stood there frozen in shock and confusion. He knew his parents had issues within their relationship, but he had never even imagined that his mother would be cheating, let alone with his soccer coach. Claudia tried her best to come up with an explanation, but they both knew there wasn’t one. She had not only lied to his face but betrayed his trust as well. It felt as if it was some type of personal attack coming from both his mother and his coach. The two had teamed up to devise a plan to ruin his life. At least, that is what it seemed like in Brendan’s head. His mother even convinced him to not tell his father about what he saw, even going so far as to bribe him with money and gifts in exchange for his silence. He agreed to her bargaining at first, not wanting to pass up the bribes. He also still trusted her enough to listen whenever she assured him things between his father and her were going to be fine.

Things turned out to be the opposite of fine once his father found out on his own and served Claudia with divorce papers. It wasn’t only that, but Brendan discovered she never actually ended things with his soccer coach like she promised him she would. From that moment on, Brendan’s entire outlook on relationships changed. He lost a sense of trust when it came to women and instead put his defenses up. He was always the first to break things off or ghost, leaving the girls he dated angry and spiteful towards him. As long as he was the one breaking hearts and not being the one heartbroken, that was all that mattered to him.

It was difficult for him to continue on his high school’s soccer team, knowing his coach also had a hand in betraying him and breaking apart his family. Part of him wanted to opt out the season of his junior year, but he also knew it was the year that scouts would be checking out star players and offering college scholarships. Brendan tried to channel all his emotions into being the best player he could be. And lucky for him, not only did he go on to get multiple college offers, but his coach also quit his job and moved to another school states away halfway through the season. By the time his senior year of high school rolled around, Brendan had gotten a full-ride scholarship to Seattle University.

Brendan never was the type to excel in school, which had continued into college. Instead, he depended on his soccer scholarship to scoot by. He kept his grades at a B or C average but never cared to put more effort than he needed into his GPA. It didn’t take him long to get lost in the college partying scene. Every weekend he would head out to a frat party or one of the clubs close to campus that was known to be a college hangout. He would get plastered and bring a different girl back to his dorm every night, with no intention of ever calling them or seeing them again. Occasionally he would see some of them around campus or during a night out, which led to them referring to him as an asshole and hoping they never see him again. However, in his sophomore year, there was one girl that had him questioning his stance on relationships. It started off as a casual fling, just like all his other hookups. They had a few classes together, meaning they saw each other multiple times a week between their classes and hookups. There was an undeniable spark of chemistry between them, and Brendan slowly tried to let his guard down around her. However, as time passed, she wanted things to become more serious, which immediately caused Brendan to get inside his own head and push her away. He knew she was better off without him since she was way too good for him in the first place. That didn’t mean it didn’t hurt when she became tired of his games and his bullshit and moved on with another guy. One who actually wanted a relationship and could give her all the things he couldn’t. To deal with the pain, Brendan turned to alcohol to numb himself and lost himself in the college party scene again.

His world turned upside down the day that a past one-night stand came to him, only to break the news that she was pregnant and claimed it was his. In a state of shock, he turned towards his father for advice. The last thing Mark wanted was for anything to get in the way of his son’s college education and soccer scholarship. After learning the woman’s name, he went behind Brendan’s back to track her down and meet up with her. He offered her $100,000 and convinced her to sign an agreement that she would leave town and disappear, but not before informing Brendan that the test was a false positive. Mark had backed her into a corner and refused to let her get away without agreeing to the terms. A few days later, Brendan received a phone call informing him the pregnancy was a false alarm. The news came as a relief to him since becoming a father was far off his list of things he wanted in his life.

By the start of his junior year of college, Brendan’s dependency on alcohol worsened. What started as partying on weekends had now turned into overnight ragers in the middle of the week. He would oversleep, miss his classes, and his grades began plummeting. Eventually, he was kicked off the soccer team and lost his scholarship. His parents were disappointed in him and urged him to return home to Fairford to get his life back on track.

He agreed to attend a few AA meetings just to humor his father. He only attended a few before he began ditching them and heading to one of the bars across town. He never could learn how to curb his alcohol addiction. He just became better at hiding it from people. Eventually, he landed a job at the Fairford Daily as a photographer. It was a job that he had applied for on a whim since he had taken a few photography classes between high school and his years in college. It was something that he never expected to enjoy as much as he did. Not to mention, he seemed to have a natural talent for photography.

Last year, Brendan signed up for a few classes at the local community college and finished up his degree. It was another small step in the right direction, further convincing everyone around him that he was fine. His parents think his alcohol addiction was just a phase he went through in college, just like most kids do. Once his parents believed he was in a much better place, Brendan packed his bags and moved back to Seattle to start his next life phase.

[justinssportscorner]

Alex Kirshner at Slate:

The Pac-12 Conference, which started in 1915 as the Pacific Coast Conference and donned a bunch of names over a successful century of Western teams playing games with each other, is dead. After USC and UCLA exited for the Big Ten last summer, and after Colorado headed for the Big 12 last month, the conference took on additional water on Friday: Oregon and Washington, the Pac-12’s biggest remaining fish, joined their Los Angeles counterparts in the Big Ten. The Big 12 Conference is now also adding Arizona, Arizona State, and Utah, news that broke just minutes after the Pacific Northwest schools decided to join the Midwest. The future is deeply murky for the biggest schools left in the Pac-12 now, Stanford and Cal in the Bay Area. And it looks only grim for two of the quirkiest and most fun programs in college football: Oregon State and Washington State, who are losing their blood rivals (Oregon and Washington) to another league but aren’t getting the call to decamp themselves. The specifics will fall into place in the days ahead. The big picture is already a bleak one. The degradation of the Pac-12, and now its imminent outright death as anything like what it has always been, is a college sports tragedy. In some part, this moment is a natural destination for a train that left its station decades ago and will run over more of college sports’ nice old things in the years to come. But what has happened to the Pac-12 wasn’t inevitable and certainly didn’t need to unfold as quickly as it did. What college sports fans know as the Conference of Champions is at death’s door because of cold, hard capitalism, yes, but also because the people in charge of stewarding the Pac-12 were the wrong mix of arrogant and incompetent.

College sports has been transmogrifying into a made-for-TV product since the mid-1980s, when the Supreme Court stripped the NCAA of its top-down control of football television rights and left teams and conferences to make their own agreements. As one cycle of gigantic TV deals has given way to the next, the Pac-12 has slid into a more pronounced disadvantage against its peers in the South and Midwest. College football is a religion in the Southeastern Conference’s footprint and in much of the Big Ten’s, though the latter now covers both the parts of the country obsessed with football and the parts that are not. The Big Ten and SEC have lucrative TV networks of their own that they run in partnership with ESPN and Fox, and the leagues sell the rights to broadcast their games—their inventory, in industry parlance—for hundreds of millions of dollars. The financial edge of the big two leagues cost the Pac-12 both UCLA and USC in a realignment move to the Big Ten last summer, and the same edge has now cost them Oregon and Washington to render the Pac-12 unrecognizable. When those schools left, three others fled in response to the Big 12, and suddenly, it was all over. The Northwestern Big Ten entrants might only get half the money of a normal Big Ten member, but that will be more than they were likely to get if they had stayed in the outgunned Pac-12. Someone might look at the TV cash disparity and conclude the Pac-12 never had a chance to survive. But the Pac-12’s predicament is worse than simply not being able to compete financially with the Big Ten and SEC. The world was big enough for the league to survive in a reasonably strong form anyway, as a secondary but still powerful conference with a distinct Western identity. The reason the Pac-12 is instead finished is that its leaders messed up repeatedly and gruesomely until they couldn’t blow it anymore.

[...] All of this adds up to something a little less severe than the death of Western college football, because the teams involved will keep playing games. Fans will keep tailgating, their lives mostly unaffected by how much TV money their alma maters are raking in. But the reduction or demise of the Pac-12 will have serious costs. It could end either the Washington–Washington State rivalry known as the Apple Cup or the Oregon–Oregon State game that they used to call the Civil War. (The departing schools say they’ll prioritize maintaining those games, and we can only hope that stays true forever.) It will weaken the geographic distinction in a sport that used to see provincialism as a feature, not a bug. And it will pit schools against teams they share no history or animus with, in an 18-team Big Ten (at least) where some teams will go years without playing each other. They’ll all be richer. There is no guarantee that they, or anyone, will be happier.

The demise of the Pac-12 was entirely avoidable. USC and UCLA's defections to the Big Ten (B1G) were the warning shot of P12's demise; however, the conference still could have been in a manageable shape.

But when Colorado hightailed it back to the Big 12, the dominoes began to really unravel for the Pac-12's survival. Arizona, Arizona State, and Utah joined Colorado to the Big 12, and Washington and Oregon went to the B1G, leaving behind Washington State, Oregon State, Cal, and Stanford in a rudderless P12.

In truth, the Pac-12's disaster began with the Pac 12 Networks, and will end with messes.

[904sad]

My Facebook Page's Comments Section Wanted A QB Rankings Article. Now You'll Suffer, Too

For the record, I hate QB ranking articles. I hate listicles. I hate blogs that force writers to do listicles (and still don’t pay flat fees for them). Unfortunately, however, I have fostered a community of degenerates, and us degenerates love a chance to spew hot takes from the fires of Lake Minnetonka. We love to see who has the balls to go out on a limb and defend themselves in the comments section.

We’re barbarians. Heathens, even.

As we revel in the hilarity, however, we also practice a slight bit of intellectualism. Here at 904 SAD, you can have any opinion you want.

Well, as long as you can back it up.

This is why writing an article about the best returning quarterbacks in college football is difficult for me. Shedeur Sanders was the best QB in HBCU football last year, but North Carolina Central’s signal caller (and his Right Guard) put on a clinic in the Celebration Bowl last year. Also, NFL wise, we can’t tell who is worse between Zach Wilson and Trey Lance. Mainly because Trey Lance never plays. All that aside, Zach Wilson and Trey Lance were superstars at BYU (a Group of 5 Independent) and North Dakota State (a 1-AA powerhouse). They both went in the Top 3 of the NFL Draft and each of their franchises regret the picks to this day.

So, pro-level projections aren’t gonna be a thing in this article.

A numbered list won’t be present either.

Instead, we are going to use the written word to find out who the *best* returning starter in FBS or FCS college football is. Sorry D2, D3, NAIA, and NJCAA gunslingers. I’m not being an elitist. Unfortunately, us small school alums know all too well that you’re just gonna end up transferring to a D1 school the first chance you get either way (Why, Austin Reed? Why?).

THE LANDSCAPE

is shit.

Even if you take out the pro potential of the guys available for evaluation, Caleb Williams probably shouldn’t have won the Heisman last year. Come to think of it, Drake Maye wasn’t even a finalist for the damn thing. Unfortunately, that happens when you go 9-5 with a Power 5 schedule. Meaning ya lost 5 games. Meaning it’s hard to be the best player in college football when you can’t beat the best players in college football at least ten times (Lamar Jackson Somewhere: Hey!).

Also, picking Caleb Williams or Drake Maye is too easy. I mean, after all, the correct answer is either one of them. One is being coached by Lincoln Riley and the other one is what Arch Manning is supposed to be.

To make matters even worse, there are a lot of pedestrian fifth-year seniors and pandemmy-waiver dynamos who haven’t even broken 5,000 yards in their entire careers yet. There's also guys like Bo Nix who had one of the best offensive lines in the world, put up some phenomenal stats his first year in a new environment, and still couldn’t leverage his years of SEC experience to make a real run in the Pacific 12. 10-3 ain’t a bad record at all, but Oregon has been pumping out future Hall of Famers and All-Pros for years now. Eventually, somebody has to do what Marcus Mariota did that one time (That One Guy In The Distance: make a fuckin’ playoff, you dorks!).

So, winning obviously has to be a metric when determining who the best returning starter is. Before you guys start: Yes, I’m about to be extremely hypocritical. I wouldn’t be a proper sports journalist (*DEEP COUGH*) if I wasn’t.

MARK GRONOWSKI - South Dakota State

This MF has already led SDSU to the FCS Championship Game TWICE. Once in the spring (that one pandemmy season) and once in the fall last season. Did I mention that Gronowski is going into his Junior year? No? Well, did I tell you that he’s 22-3 as a starter? No? Damn, did I tell you that he’s been a team captain since 2022?

This man is a WINNER, son.

While Group of 5 guys are stat padding in the basement of the Bowl Subdivision, this man is sending an entire state to a promised land it never knew existed.

Throwing or running for a TD against Iowa would have been nice (would have won them the game in a blowout, actually), but at least he didn’t do what sooooo many FCS guys do against Power 5 teams early in the season: completely tank his squad’s chances of winning. Also, you know a QB has the juice when he is winning for programs that are never televised (ESPN+ matters!), rarely have guys taken in the draft (i’m including RD 7, too), and are in parts of the country that have less than 900,000 people in the entire state. Yes, you read that correctly. There are more bandwagon Patriots fans left over from 2018 than the entire state of South Dakota has residents. Gronowski is doing the Lord’s work.

SAM HARTMAN - Notre Dame

Wake Forest would like a word. Sam Hartman is so honored to play for the great cathedral that is Our Lady in Christ, but he made his initial set of bones playing for a…wait…huh? That can’t be right.

How can a Deacon be from Hell?

Anyway, Hartman is a 17th year senior who has 12,967 passing yards under his belt. Unless he has a season BETTER Joe Burrow’s in 2019, he won’t be catching Case Keenum’s all-time record for career passing yards (19,217). HOWEVER, Hartman only needs a measly 1,112 yards to pass Rakeem Cato for 10th all-time in the history of college football. That certainly makes him a name my list should respect, as Hartman also has the chance to play for a program with the resources, tools, and schedule to make a run for the College Football Playoff. This means the Irish signal caller could net that elusive First Team All-American nod he needs to be eligible for the College Football Hall of Fame.

Storylines, people. Storylines.

SHEDEUR SANDERS - Colorado

HEY, why are you booing me??? I’m right!

Sheduer Sanders led Jackson State to its most relevant era on the field in a minute. Yeah, he lost both Celebration Bowls, but the developing star led his team to a 23-3 record while he was under center. Sanders also won the Jerry Rice Award (Best FCS Freshman), the Deacon Jones Award (Best HBCU All-Around Player), and the SWAC Offensive Player of the Year Award in 2022.

Look, you asked me who the best returning starters in the country were. I answered the question (lul).

Entering into his first Power 5 season, Sanders will have a lot to prove in the Pac-12. Like Sam Hartman, Sanders’ prolific production at his previous school was not enough to earn him a First-Team All-American honor. That means the Head-Buffalo-in-Charge (the Chief Buffalo is his daddy) will probably need to make the College Football Playoff for the first time as a starter to make the media tides swing his way.

JORDAN TRAVIS - Florida State

Mike Norvell probably gets fired if Jordan Travis doesn’t turn the corner last year.

After years of development and struggle, Jordan Travis tossed the rock for over 3,000 yards, led his compadres to a 10-win season, thrashed the Florida Gators (who had a Top 5 NFL Draft pick under center [LUL]), and won a bowl against….

Wait, FLORIDA STATE BEAT OKLAHOMA?!

AUSTIN REED - Western Kentucky

Former National Champion? Check (2019 for West Florida)

Bonkers ass single-season as a passer? Check (9-5 record with 389 completions, 602 pass attempts, 4,744 yards, 40 TDs, and 11 picks in 2022)

CUSA Newcomer of the Year Award? Check (2022)

Bowl game win WITH the MVP to match? CheckCheck (2022 New Orleans Bowl)

The resume speaks for itself. Yes, the National Title for West Florida was won in Division 2, but Reed made the MEGA D2 to FBS jump last year and did the best thing Western Kentucky (or any CUSA team for that matter) could hope to do - Win. A. Bowl. Game. And guess what, he’s suiting up for a college football team in 2023.

Which means….(Isiah Thomas: I fit the criteria).

CAMERON RISING - Utah

Played against the Heisman Winner in the 2022 Pac-12 Championship Game and blew the Heisman Winners’ Malibu doors off the frame and the hinges.

Was efficient and accurate all year with a 64.7% completion percentage.

20-8 record as a starter with 2 Pac-12 Championships to his name.

Uh, yeah. Cue the Isiah Thomas ad-lib again. (Isiah Thomas: I fit the criteria).

AFTER THIS BATCH OF GUYS,

the list gets murky.

Spencer Rattler was supposed to be the #1 overall pick. Then he sucked. Then he transferred to South Carolina and got…hmm.

DJ Uiagalelei got Dabo Sweeney to do something he’s never done before: Give up on his guys. Before we knew it, DJU was benched for a Freshman and Coach Sweeney started looking for new coordinators to replace his new coordinators. Damn, son; that ain’t good.

Bo Nix has a chance to break out (like, REALLY break out), but what will it lead to? Will pretty numbers be enough to win? Or will it all just lead to some team taking a “flyer” on him in the 4th round? We’ll see.

Jalon Daniels? Ha.

Jayden Daniels? Ha. Ha.

Tyler Van Dyke? Ha. Ha. Ha.

Emory Jones? HA. HA. HAAAAAAAAA.

SO, YEAH

The past 2 NFL Drafts have taken a lot out the sport. Even if I scour the rest of the FCS and Group of 5, I’m not gonna find a guy who’s better than Caleb Williams or Drake Maye. That means I have to make a decision based on the guys I already named in this article. And with that, I choooooooseee…

FLORIDA STATE QB JORDAN TRAVIS: The Man Who Saved Multiple Families From A Cold Winter.

Well, not Odell Haggins’. That man ain’t ever gettin fired.

[robertogreco]

Here’s another now-deleted watch forum post, made by me in July 2022. The watch above is an H. Moser Venturer Red Gold and Vantablack. Note too that after posting it someone made a good case that the referenced Wristwatch Revival video is clickbait and the tag line “Even Rolex Refused to Fix it” is almost certainly not correct.

Brand Disloyalty

Something that I find interesting about watch collecting and watch enthusiasm is a certain talk about heritage that often feels more like a version of brand loyalty than anything else. I get that when purchasing something expensive it makes sense to consider whether or not a company will exist in the future, especially with regard to the length of the warranty. But as we saw in that recent Wristwatch Revival video, beyond a certain timeframe these companies will feel no obligation to support the owner of a watch. Loyalty tends to go only one way and it’s a marketing scheme. There is nothing wrong with liking what a brand happens to be doing at the moment. This is how I feel about Timex and Oris, but there are parts of both of their histories where they produced watches that are of no interest to me. And if their design, builds, pricing, policies, etc. change to something I dislike, my attention to them will come to an end. These are businesses and I don’t owe them anything. I also don’t feel the need to root for them either.

This is also why I’m particularly fond of the few brands that don’t feel compelled to put their name on their dials. Why do I need to advertise the brand of the watch company that I gave money too?

Somewhat related to the above is the argument that certain watch brands own old designs and should be the only ones that benefit from them. Sure, patents exist, but they also expire, and if another company can produce a design that is no longer patented for significantly less and/or with some different look or approach, then I don’t feel we need to be loyal to the owner of the now-lapsed patent. The public domain is important. What a brand did decades ago doesn’t necessarily mean anything about what they are doing today. 

These thoughts might make more sense when considering that I’m also not really into professional sports teams either. I love sports and enjoy watching a good game (mostly fútbol), but I find serious commitment to a local professional team baffling. I’m more inclined to root for the team that is playing better or more beautifully or intelligently (not including loophole exploitation). I also feel no commitment to teams, which nearly always (in the US, at least) have private owners who falsely promise a positive impact to the local economy to sucker municipalities into funding their stadiums. Even worse is when owners move the team from one city to another. I lived in LA during the glory years without NFL teams. I was there when the Rams departed to St. Louis (they are back in LA again now lol) and the Raiders returned to Oakland (now they are in Las Vegas lol). I guess we did have a professional football team still in the Trojans, but they were tied to the university, not the city. Blah blah blah.

What does it mean to be a fan of the Rams? What does it mean to be a fan of the American brand Hamilton? What does it mean to be a fan of Smiths now? And what about brands owned by massive conglomerates? Or brands with new owners or new leaders? Etc.

Anyways, real loyalty goes both ways, and I find nothing of the sort in business whether in sports, watches, or otherwise.

***

Here are some of the comments I made on the post in response to comments by other forum members:

/.

Yes, that talk of family, and to a great extent even community, within a workplace is very similar and coercive.

I’ll be a repeat customer in the same way as you – good experience and satisfaction with a product – but will drop a brand as soon as that changes. I might even go back to a brand I’ve left if something has clearly changed for the better.

I don’t recall ever having you in class? ;)

Now that you speak of nomadic youth, my nomadic adulthood might explain my confusion about sports fandom to some extent. And now that I think about it a bit more, I can be a fan of fans, my favorite being my experience with the La 12 (Boca Juniors fans) at La Bombonera and in other stadiums around the greater Buenos Aires area. It’s all about their energy and their songs.

//.

Thanks for the great “ramble”! I too remember the treatment I have received both in the lack of need to look for assistance and the assistance that I have received when things don’t go well. As I noted in my reply to [redacted], going with what I know and have been happy with (or avoiding what I know to be bad) makes a lot of sense when I don’t have time to think more about something.

I’ll admit that I don’t have experience with watch ownership (or any other luxury ownership) and thus with watches as a store of value. But I imagine that I too would be grateful for resale value in tough times. 

That is an H. Moser in the photo, one of the Vanta Black models. One of the things I love about that brand is their irreverence, but I also know I will never own an H. Moser given the prices they go for, so maybe I don’t really understand. Maybe a better example would have been Serica, which I love, in part, because they so minimally include their name at the very bottom of their dials. From what I understand, that was in response to feedback that they received after their first trial model, the W.W.W.

I totally agree with what you say about the discreet signifiers that come in the form of materials, shape, etc. Maybe that is even more snobby than wearing a name brand, and if so, then maybe I am a snob. :)

///.

PS: Regarding the value of Rolex watches, did you happen to see the article on “The Historic Value of Rolex Watches” and this chart from it?

I really enjoyed everything about that article (particularly that specific graph that answers a question I had been wondering about, though I would also like a line for the Upper 1% Income and the Upper 0.1% income) and it contains a passage that really resonates so much with me and that might also explain the perspective that I am coming from:

I enjoy simply looking at watches, test-wearing one from time to time... I don't need to own every single piece I like. You also don't need to hang every painting you see in a museum into your living room. In the same way you don't have to put every watch you see on Instagram into your watch box. As in another sentiment: There is the right partner for you, so there also will be the right watch for all of us. And the good news is that this seems to have been true for at least the last 50 years. Let's embrace that!

As I have noted elsewhere on [redacted] a few times, I get immense pleasure from reading and learning about watches and assembling a digital collection (just images downloaded from the web and not NFTs! LOL) of thousands of watches that I appreciate for one reason or another. I don’t think I would get nearly as much pleasure from collecting them beyond a few watches (I still have just the one). That comes from one of the parts of my upbringing that I have held onto tightly (unlike a lot of other parts of my upbringing that I have discarded), a sort of frugality and practicality that makes me averse to most luxury products and averse to accumulation. I know the rush that comes from making a purchase, but I also know how quickly it fades for me. I am nearly certain that with each additional watch purchase beyond a very few, the satisfaction that would come from owning it would diminish. So, rather than chasing them I will learn about them and leave the chasing to those who find greater pleasure than me in the chase.

////.

Oh, fascinating! Thanks for pointing that out [about the unreliable nature of the Wristwatch Revival title]. I really wonder how that refusal story came about. Maybe it had more to do about offering to replace more parts (instead of just service and repair) than the owner wanted?

The part in the second video where you talk about getting the equivalent of a new vintage watch through servicing and parts replacement is something that I hadn’t though about. Rolex of Theseus!