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[andyy-gb]

Un Fanart para una artista increíble, sip lo eche a perder a comparación de su dibujo UnU.

@mememakerart15 emmm no se si se tenia que etiquetar en ambas xdd perdón por el spam xdd

[obeetlebeetle]

extremely beautiful wasp nest at work today

[nickythehickey]

i’ve reached the wedding episode and despite hearing basically everything about it somehow i was not prepared for it

[wombywoo]

Yay! The squad is here! I need to know, why did Quinn get invited to the squad? Do they know about his prophetic visions? Did he only meet Vincent in the squad?

Is Hameed a vampire? I thought the only people who survive bites become vampires... Or loose body parts.

Birdie being the dragon rehabilitator makes me wonder who the dragon is, and if it has anything to do with Quinn's dreams.

I'm so curious about how they all get along! Thanks for sharing them with us. <3

P.S: Fig is the best mascot ever, and I hope they all love on her!

Wooohoo the gang's all here! 🙌

As for the questions:

Quinn gets invited to the squad by Liz, who needs someone with airborne tactical skills to help train and initiate this new highly experimental 'program'....(psst it's dragons, the program is dragons) So he gets to meet Vincent when they all meet up, as he'd already been scouted as the team pilot 🫡 Liz is currently the only one who knows about Quinn's visions though...for now...

Hameed isn't a vampire; he was just bitten by one defending his family and managed to kill it. There's a very small chance a human who has been infected with venom will survive the bite unaffected, and he's one of those lucky souls. He's got scars up his arm and a few unusual traits now, but he's mostly fine 😅

Birdie has a pet dragon. More on this later...

In the beginning, I'd say that they don't get along for a bit, lol. Lots of tension and whatnot, but they do start bonding eventually 🥰

Fig is the best girl and plays the most crucial role in this entire task force !!!!!!

[wanderingmind867]

King Midas being one of those gold obsessed freaks with a giant mansion in the midwestern united states is hilarious. He's a horrible person, but I do think he makes for a fun villian. And honestly, I don't envy lityerses. Getting stuck with a father who's like one half a harmless mr. magoo type and one half a deranged maniac on par with the best comic book villians.

[vetuhoh]

Tucker: “She’s like I have kids, you can’t say I’m the head of something. I’m like what does that MEAN. WHAT DOES THAT FUCKING MEAN??!”

[eddieintheocean]

signed up to my uni diving club. The last question on the form was: "why do you want to dive (in your own words)"

me on the form: yeah im doing a marine bio course, interested in fish and want to see them in their natural habitat.

what i didn't write because i thought it might weird them out: i get Viscerally positive reactions to just pictures of fish. I think about fish Every Second of my day. I Consider Myself a Fish Sometimes. I have been like this since i Could Form Memories

[batsplat]

seen people talk about how marcs 2012 season was the reason the penalty point system was introduced (that made vale start from the back in 2015 which is admittedly absolutely absurdly funny) so here i am to ask my favorite motogp historian for thoughts (and prayers?) mostly about what exactly marc DID to make that happen (kinda funny also that he was branded a track terrorist from day 1 😭) and why they struck it in the mid 2010s?

okay so I'm gonna be lazy here and start out by just including what I put in the marc race recs post:

phillip island 2011 was the worst incident, and marc was criticised by motogp riders too, including valentino and casey. that one was like... it was just straight up dangerous and also incredibly stupid, I mean you're trying to get an extra lap in at the end of fp1 and are putting yourself and other riders in serious danger (definitely a case where you can argue that the penalty didn't go far enough and a race ban would have been warranted). marc can sometimes be pretty bullish in response to criticism while still going away and kinda realising what he'd done was a bad idea, quietly adjusting his behaviour... examples include this, where he had his team appeal the penalty, as well as of course 2018 argentina, where he talked down the 'mistakes' he'd made and said he'd done more wrong in the aleix than the valentino incident (which may be true, but it's the rhetorical equivalent of saying it's better to go up to someone's home and throw bricks through the windows than it is to set it on fire) - he is fairly good at learning from his mistakes, even when he doesn't always fully admit to them

that being said, of course he did continue getting himself involved in a fair bit of controversy during 2012. but it's worth pointing out that the penalty points system wasn't just a case of 'oh this kid is so bad, we've got to do something' - it was also a case of 'yeah this is being handled in a super inconsistent manner, actually'. like, there were times people felt marc should be penalised more, yes, but other times where they felt it was too much... it was just a bit all over the place. luckily, inconsistent stewarding is a problem they've managed to fix in the intervening twelve years, so we never hear about that stuff any more. let's just give a quick summary of the four biggest 2012 flashpoints:

qatar: marc runs luthi off-track in a deliberate and pretty dangerous way and gets a slap on the cooldown lap for his troubles, plus a reprimand from race direction

catalunya: towards the end of a race in which marc made several questionable moves, pol espargaro attempted to overtake marc who had just saved a fall - marc cuts across the track to rejoin the racing line and ends up colliding with pol. he was initially given a controversial penalty in the form of a minute added to his final time, before that was rescinded (which was unsuccessfully appealed by pol's team). see here for valentino and casey's reactions

motegi: marc 'torpedoed' kallio in saturday morning practise, riding into his side while kallio was on the racing line headed into a turn and causing kallio to highside... which he was not penalised for. some responses to the incident below

valencia: marc attempted to overtake corsi in friday practise, causing him to crash. this time, race direction handed out a back-of-the-grid penalty

it's a subtle distinction but an important one so I'll just stress it again: the stated aim of the penalty points wasn't to hold back aggressive riders like marc but to attempt to reduce inconsistency, which had been exposed in part due to how differently these marc incidents were handled. what marc did was create several high profile controversies, in each case prompting some level of frustration with how race direction handled the whole thing. obviously, there were other non-marc-related stewarding controversies, but it is inarguable that he was a significant factor in causing a revamp of the system

by the way, here's valentino's criticism of marc after the valencia incident:

here's a quick explanation of how the penalty points worked:

and, you know, for what it's worth marc did calm down in motogp... he certainly became better at operating in the grey area of the rules, approaching his racing in a manner his competitors didn't always appreciate but was certainly a lot harder to penalise. though there were also incidents that of course people felt marc should be penalised for - say after jerez 2013, jorge did kinda go 'okay but surely you can at least give a few penalty points for this, isn't this what they're for'. but it's not like there was unanimous agreement on that, see the immediate responses of some of the riders:

(bradley smith saying that jorge's last serious race was motegi 2005 - the one he got the race ban for - is a bit of an insane stance to take and doesn't really match up to reality, but it did make me laugh so that's something. of course the general point that during the alien era most of them were avoiding doing much actual racing isn't exactly wrong but. still)

not to make this a riding standards post, but this is the underlying tension when you're trying to decide how to regulate the sport... jerez was the first serious test that system faced - and it's one where race direction ended up calling it a pure racing incident. which is a tough call! I talked about it a bit in the sete post and what his stance was on the jerez 2005 incident, where he feels like this isn't a contact sport and shouldn't be adjudicated as such. it's a fundamental philosophical difference that became very relevant again when marc showed up fresh from his controversial moto2 campaign and woke up the entire class with his own particular brand of racing. from a write-up of the jerez 2013 race:

(motegi 2008 not motegi 2010, which is something I remember because casey's pass also allowed valentino to immediately swoop on through. should be noted that casey may have apologised but he did not give the position back to dani lol. also motegi 2010 is pretty memorable if we're talking about hard racing. fair to say that valentino demonstrated he did not share the approach of his fellow aliens when battling jorge)

and more on the shift marc brought about:

this is the thing, right - a big part of understanding that time period is concerning yourself with what came just before. the general feeling (unsurprisingly not shared by casey, jorge or dani) was that the series desperately needed some new life breathed into it, that the racing had become stale and sterile and far too predictable... there were several factors that contributed to this, from the beloathed 800cc bikes that were only replaced in 2012, to the approach of those three aliens and how adept they'd become at racking up wins by dominating out front, to how valentino (generally considered the most 'exciting' racer of the lot) had taken himself out of the competitive picture... I mean, in all honesty the racing is still not great in 2013 compared to the rossi heyday (it had gotten better by the very end of the 2010s), but of course there's a lot more energy to it than the years before. which meant the sport as a whole was in a tricky place where they both had to be seen to be constraining marc, stopping him from being an active danger to himself and others, while also kind of... letting him loose. a little bit of controversy is hardly a bad thing, after all - love him or hate him, everyone had a take, and that's the kind of thing that's obviously healthy for a sport

marc did get two penalty points that year for ignoring yellow flags in silverstone and crashing in the same place as cal crutchlow had just gone down:

(for obvious reasons, 'ignoring yellow flags' is extremely dangerous, but there's no reason to believe he wasn't being honest here)

he was also given another penalty point for the contact that caused dani's crash in aragon, taking him perilously close to that back-of-the-grid penalty:

and that was basically their position - it's a warning. broadly they wanted him to not completely revamp his approach, but just apply a little more discretion, exercise his judgement. a little more caution, a little more restraint. it's still fundamentally a different philosophy of racing than the one that had been espoused for several years by the other aliens save for valentino - but marc could get to a place where he was engaging in hard racing that generally toed the line without crossing it. a little more detail on the aragon incident and marc's approach to racing in the context of the time period from this write-up:

this is the issue, right, marc was riding on just the right line of acceptable that race direction would not have in any way been justified in slapping out race bans - though you can certainly argue that in some cases, you could have handed out more penalty points, which would then have meant he would have faced more 'real' consequences. in any case, they couldn't actually 'teach him a lesson', because he'd already more or less learned it... if the lesson is 'hard racing and contact is fine, just don't overdo it'. which of course, not everyone would agree with. the odd memorable exception aside, throughout marc's premier class career he's been very aware of that line, and has taken care to avoid bringing the wrath of race direction upon himself too severely

the penalty points thing and sepang 2015... well, first of all let's quickly bring in what the actual ruling was:

honestly, I imagine that if they didn't have a penalty points system, they would've figured out a different way to penalise him, and might have slapped him with a back-of-the-grid penalty anyway. not in a 'oh the fim had it out for valentino rossi!!!!' way, more that they did need to be seen doing something. the penalty points felt like a fairly elegant way of giving a penalty that wasn't that harsh and wasn't making any judgement calls over whether valentino deliberately kicked marc, while also in an indirect way ensuring that valentino would suffer consequences. and yes, it is a nice bit of dramatic irony - but the piece says it, the penalty "had to be severe enough for rossi to feel truly punished". the penalty points happened to be the tool they had available and perhaps with a different set of rules, valentino would have been handed a slightly different flavour of punishment. but really, this is more 'fun historical coincidence' than something that massively changed the events that played out

of course, it was a controversial decision that few people felt 100% comfortable with. on the one hand, if you believe that valentino kicked marc, then you probably would have wanted him to be disqualified - three measly penalty points does not feel enough in that situation. on the other, if you believe that valentino engaged aggressively with marc but without deliberately trying to make him crash, then a back-of-the-grid penalty that essentially decided the outcome of the championship before the final race even started is a tough pill to swallow. (of course there's also a position somewhere in between where valentino didn't literally kick marc but did attempt to run him off track, which would make the penalty 'about right'.) of course, the championship standings should ideally not determine what sort of penalties are being handed out - but equally, it's something that did limit the intrigue going into the race, and over something that felt quite arbitrary. the other penalty point he'd gotten to rack up the four total was about a qualifying incident in misano - which either feels like a silly thing to determine the ultimate outcome of the championship, or instead is a demonstration of how the cumulative nature of the points system is supposed to work. but yes, it did get a lot of criticism in the aftermath, with concerns over whether future title fights could end up being defanged as an indirect consequence of relatively minor incidents earlier in the season

and of course, the penalty points were eventually scrapped in early 2017. here's a bit more on that decision:

basically, sepang 2015 was a contributing factor to broader changes in how motogp was regulated, which down the line had the knock-on effect of getting rid of that penalty system entirely. rightly or wrongly, race direction felt like they had better tools available to penalise riders and this system was now redundant. anyway [insert another lazy gag about how the switch to a stewards panel has completely failed in eliminating controversy from stewarding] [insert pithy closing line] [press post]

[brionbroadway]

get emily axford on adventuring academy immediately to debate this man 

[bunabi]

on the topic of dai combat, my favorite memory is when i was fighting my first dragon but everyone but cassandra died so i SOLO'D IT WITH HER. the shield skills are too powerful & its wonderful

I love that lol

yeah building up stacks of armor with the warriors felt very satisfying, especially after spending most of the early game relying on barrier, becoming the physical wall of the party was cool

it just works etc etc

[skitskatdacat63]

Is it fucked up to have favorite historical deaths? Anyways. Frederick III, Habsburg, was simultaneously the most lucky and unlucky guy at the same time. It's so impressive, honestly, that he made it to age 77(!!!) in the 1400s, like?? But the way he died kills me 😭

The fact that he survived an amputation in the 1400s at age 77 is so shocking honestly???? Yet guess how he died. A couple months later....from eating a fucking unripe melon. BRO YOU SURVIVED GUARANTEED DEATH, HOW ARE YOU GONNA LET A MELON TAKE YOU OUT!?!?

[spicyicymeloncat]

Idk if this is a hot take but why is it always “Kai slaved away and worked his ass off to raise his sister” and never the other way round or them working hard together?

Like, I know he’s older but in the show, does he really… act older? Like if you think about Kai and Nya’s dynamic yknow? Because from my understanding:

When Kai and Nya are introduced we see Kai fail at making a sword and Nya being the one to chide him for it. Kai makes an overconfident statement about wanting to be a better blacksmith than his father. This suggests that one, Kai is rather rash as well as inexperienced (something that lines up with the rest of his character arc in the pots and also generally), with Nya being the more mature figure in contrast

Also just a note but in the shorts: “I can handle it!” “No you can’t, stupid”

Kai frequently being very good at neglecting people or things: leaving Lloyd at an arcade whilst being focused on finding samurai x, not even knowing samurai x was Nya or that she only did it because she felt left out by him, completely abandoning both Nya and Lloyd in s3 (and Ik he was going through it at the time, but in line with the fandom’s characterisation of him)

Kai in season 5: “After I lost my dad, I lost my way. But I was lucky to have my sister watch over me”

Generally, their dynamic isn’t one where Kai really provides for Nya at all. In fact, judging by the fact that Nya can make entire mechs and Kai struggled to make a sword, Nya was probably busting her ass to provide for Kai. And judging by the s5 quote, that’s probably true. I’m not saying Nya raised Kai, it just rubs me the wrong way when she’s treated like a decorative flourish to a narrative that paints Kai as a burnt out child who was forced to grow up too soon especially since that is such a mischaracterisation of him in the first place.

[nicolethered]

Season four of The Umbrella Academy…

[nopes-and-dreams-and-nightmares]

Two characters who really don’t interact enough. Imo.  There’s a one sided rivalry that hasn’t been seen since the Silver Age ha.

[the-sage-libriomancer]

nothing will ever convince me that actors deserve higher pay more than behind the scenes footage of the live-action Beauty and the Beast

i mean

i could n e v e r play this shit with a straight face

[classics-cocks-and-concoctions]

Found this note from when I first read Moby dick and you can seeeeeeeeeee my realization of what people meant by “homoerotic sub text”