#they were talking about tennis

[legendofthe3divas]

I was half watching ‘this morning’ idk why I was just bored, I guess, and it was just there. BUT ‘don’t say love’ was the outtro going into the adverts. Sorry but I’m loving the promo and popularity of Leigh, it melts my heart <3

[zetterbabe]

sasha for the tennis channel (07.05.24)

[wimbledonstrawberry]

Casper asking Carlos about foursomes was definitely not in my bingo card

[rolandkaros]

i've been ruminating a lot on it because i think i'm bad at putting my thoughts into words but i need y'all to understand that while there are absolutely a lot of Not Good Things about the finals being held in saudi arabia for three years...the way people seem to treat is as morally black and white is shortsighted and unhelpful.

realistically the players traveling there will be protected. it may be uncomfortable, it's certainly not ideal, but they will travel there for a few weeks, play their tennis, then leave. there are a lot of women, a lot of queer people who actually live in saudi arabia who cannot just leave, who are actually subjected to laws and social climates...and to me it just seems very disrespectful to that actual lived experience, for everybody to sort of turn their noses up and get on their high horses. of course, if the players wish to opt out, that is their choice, but that is their choice to make. that's their judgement. not ours.

and then, what about a tournament like miami? florida is literally experiencing one of the worst active regressions that i've seen in the us (granted i'm young). things like critical race theory and lgbtq+ ed are being removed from curriculums, rights for trans youth, trans healthcare, etc. are going backwards. abortion rights? gun violence? and yes i know that the laws and climate in saudi arabia are different gravy, i understand that, but my point is, no one would ever DREAM of arguing against hosting a tournament in miami despite all of these issues. and we can extend this to a lot of other tournaments! i mean, all the outrage about fifa hosting a world cup in qatar, but we don't have any of these sentiments about doha? i've seen other people bring up that the finals were hosted in singapore when gay marriage was still illegal there. we've already talked about italy's fascist prime minister. and i could go on and on and on about the war crimes of countries like the us or the uk - is the us not participating actively in genocide right now? where is the standard? if you argue against hosting the finals in saudi arabia for the reason of human rights, to me it seems you have to uphold that standard for the location you do land on. and i can guarantee, you will not find a single country in the world with clean hands.

i want to be clear i am not arguing that hosting the finals in saudi arabia is a good thing, especially for three years, especially because it's definitely going there because of money, and not for any of the "good" reasons i think some people want us to believe about "improving the region" (which is very weirdly white savior-esque anyway). i don't really have an official "conclusion" to this discussion.

what i am arguing is that i think a lot of the protests against saudi arabiahosting the finals are more an example of implicit anti-arab bias and islamophobia, rather than genuine discussion. key word implicit: i don't think most people are purposefully trying to be anti-arab/islamophobic. or at least, i'd like to believe nobody is. but i also think, particularly in the west, there is already so much of this xenophobic sentiment ingrained. and this is why i think it's really really REALLY important to check ourselves when we talk about it instead of just jumping straight to the human rights conversation without a second thought.

i'll say it plainly: i don't think the finals should be held in saudi arabia. but for me, it has more to do with sportswashing, with the dangers of the way money is thrown around in sports, and because i think it's more evidence that the wta doesn't care about player welfare but rather about making a profit (what else is new). human rights are absolutely a concern of mine, but how is it fair to hold saudi arabia to a standard that we don't seem to care about for literally anybody else?

literally look at the us's ugly ugly history, past and present, and tell me why we deserve to host a tennis tournament.

[leprosycock]

checking my notes. looking over what i have for this stream, stacking them together, nodding in my big news anchor suit and gigantic shoulder pads. sea said this was juiced pt. 2, similar to how i equated house flipper to the replacement stream. and i totally agree!!

every piece of jrma and Iudwig's relationship is told through smoke and mirrors, productions, lights, cameras, and costumes, both in front of and behind a screen. and we get to see little pieces of them in between them playing their roles, or at least what they imagine their roles to be. they definitely both seem to lose the plot at some point when they get too entangled in what the other must be thinking and how they, themselves, are perceived. or they just get too entangled in the presence of each other. and they're not voyeuristic about it either, they just don't/can't care who sees because they are each other's stage. they both create the rooms the other performs in.

feels really good to simultaneously return to a dynamic that we've been familiar with over the past year or so and see new glimpses of things that have changed. jrma is comfortable with Iudwig to the point where he can poke and prod at him, tell him to go fuck himself, tell him he sucks, he hates him, because jrma isn't so fucking terrified of him anymore. he doesn't need to shower lud with endless praise because they already both know how deeply jrma cares. they banter right from the beginning, even when the audience isn't quite supposed to be aware of who or what 985bot is, because they can't physically stop playing and batting kitten paws at each other.

even when they're supposed to be playing up that 985bot is, in fact, a computer and not a real guy, jeremy is not in there, lud can't help himself. and i think that thrill of false anonymity really excites him. "hold you down and kiss you", "how's that taste, fucker?", "i love this guy! i fucking love this guy!", acting out and flirting and calling him 'baby', just because he knows that he can. the entirety of this stream is them sticking their tongues out at each other and teasing each other like crazy just to see who'll crack first, if either of them will.

they actually both just crack when they see each other face to face again, when lud is drunk and jrma is so unbelievably, egotistically delighted to be seen on screen again ("i love chat" yeah i bet you do, freak), but also by lud. the little head pat that jrma gives lud, gentle and birdlike, very careful touches that barely last a second because he is dying to touch him and lud is dying to be touched. his voice gets sweeter and softer and kinder and he beams like he's in heaven when jrma puts the medal over his head. despite lud's penchant for 4d chess, he can't keep playing every single second of his life. he's just so happy to be adored. jrma is happy to adore.

the last time they were both this happy together on screen was almost a year ago, during the chessboxing stream, when they were one whole and united unit. lud didn't have to compete for jrma's attention this time and jrma didn't have to spend the whole stream worrying that lud didn't care about him. this stream was very clearly a big collaborative creative effort between the two of them, given jrma's theatrics and weird twist ending and the exact kind of fast-paced, low-stakes, casual, friendly tournament gaming that lud loves to organize and play, so we can only assume that offbrand is doing well. they seem to be closer than ever and it's heartwarming and it's thrilling and i couldn't be happier. i love my boys!!!! more than anything, i love my boys. i love my boys so much and so passionately and so tenderly and i'm so glad we've gotten them back. we are back in a big and enormous and fulfilling way

[remuslupinfarts]

When Patrick Tashi and Art are on the beach and Patrick is like come back to our place we can just keep talking…about tennis. And then when Patrick and Tashi are in the dorm room and Tashi says we’re always talking about tennis and Patrick’s like can we not? I think abt that a lot.

[muirneach]

jasmine top 3????

[oof-ouch-yikes-stripes]

I keep forgetting tennis exists after the us open why doesn’t the season end with my most beautiful precious tournament,,, you’re telling me I still have two masters to get through this semester???? With my seventeen hour courseload???????

[batsplat]

fucked up that italian is at the top of atp tour rn but he’s like the most boring italian possible. wtf.

so boring he's basically an austrian

icl, by some irony my top three most beloathed sporting nations are spain, italy and australia, so for me the way motogp works is that the most moral way to deal with those countries is to just put them in a containment zone and have them tear each other to shreds. perfect. a victimless situation, except for the spanish, italian and australian athletes in question, and crucially it is Good and Valid for them to suffer

so I typically root against italians anyway across sports, just for vibes. I don't massively have anything against the other half dozen italian men bumbling around the upper end of the tour these days, but I also know I'd generally find them annoying if they happened to be as good as sinner. (I do like paolini!! and was a schiavone appreciator as a kid, so it's not a militant anti-italian stance.) I'd find almost anyone who is as good as sinner annoying. like motogp is a very rare exception to me as far as dominant athletes go, and those guys have to be actively insane for me to not get pissed off at them. my stance is that italians are not inherently interesting.... it's just valentino specifically, and then his reflected rizz also making his various proteges interesting. motogp features an above average number of interesting italians even amongst the non-valentino-affiliated, but that's just because you have SO many of them I reckon. whereas sinner is exactly in the mould of what we've come to expect from men's tennis stars: dull professionals allergic to controversy (minus the occasional unwisely applied anabolic steroid). craziest bit has been the atp pr push to shove that man down all of our throats. they're trying to sell us hair colour as an actual personality. the carrot boys thing is literally the most obvious psyop I've seen in my life. you can't fool me, that man has not had a single mildly interesting thought in his life. I'll say it: even his tennis doesn't really move me. at least I now know better than to expect more from that stupid fuck ass tour

[dizzybevvie]

boy how do you reblog such great things

been cultivating my dash for years. i also found most of them in my drafts

[mortiflyer]

seeing challengers and then going home and watching tennis highlights is like ok that was fun now back to reality. nice weekend but i gotta go to work now

[driftwooddestiel]

todays the last day of holidays 😭

[museenkuss]

sigh I miss being the pretty little babydoll of some older internet friend who would coddle me and at times make snide little comments and such that made me crave their attention and validation.

[pinktinselmonstrosity]

i love listenting to commentating on 'slower' sports bc it always gets to the point where the commentators are just having a little chat..... in one of the tennis matches i watched yesterday the commentators spent five minutes talking about the size of one of the players' muscles, and then comparing them to the size of their own muscles back in the day. the day before that they were placing bets on how many drinks one of the crowd members had had. it's like real-time gogglebox i love it

[politedemon]

would like to be able to go a day without getting myself into an incredibly stupid yet inescapable situation please

[navree]

You're a theater kid AND a horse girl? Where have you been all my life???

I mean I have been here on this blog since 2017, so part of it is just skill issue on your part anon.