#which also means the title will have to be different.....

[sneepity-snoop-snorpity-sneep]

i mean that probably is close to how/why it was given that name :/ as far as i know, none of the names/titles of various mental conditions or illnesses were come up with by someone who actually HAD them

i suspect that having that name which focuses on the attention and hyperactivity part of it may also be why inattentive adhd and adhd in women/girls overall largely went undiagnosed for years after doctors started studying and treating the condition. It's important to understand I think, that treating the symptoms of condition like adhd as the Main Problem isn't great. it's not like adhd is just a baseline brain with a button added on in there that says 'be hyperactive now!!' and acting like there IS a baseline brain underneath the symptoms just does harm to the adhd-haver (also applies to autism).

like Ass Don't Have Dopamine for SURE, but there's also structural differences in the brain - if I recall what I've read correctly, there's like a handful of parts/areas of the brain that are smaller than in a baseline brain, and one that's larger (one of these is def the frontal lobe but i don't remember which), so the way the adhd brain just functions is gonna be different AND it's just perpetually low on dopamine

honestly maybe we should just starting lobbying medical associations for a name change

I mean

[novelistwriter]

An Al Ghul first

DP x DC Prompt

Damian had an older half-brother that he loved. Danyal was his name, and he was the best fighter in the entire League, even better than Ra's and Talia combined. Danyal was even a brother who encouraged Damian to follow the things he wanted to do behind the backs of Talia and Ra's.

The last Damian ever saw Danyal was right before he left on a mission that may lead to a new Lazarus Pit when Damian was 8 and Danyal was 10. And right before Danyal left, he had embraced Damian and left a parting forehead kiss, saying that he'll be back soon.

Danyal had found the Lazarus Pit but had fallen in it after the ground beneath him gave away, and he didn't have enough time to react, as he was busy drawing for Damian about Goliath and other animals Damian would like.

Danyal was sent to the Infinite Realms and then put in another dimension near a place called Amity Park. He's got no time for friends or school. He needs to get back to his younger brother. Danyal uses his brain to hack into the school database and remove his name from it, effectively stopping him from ever meeting Sam and Tucker and stopping Dan from happening.

Danyal spends the next couple of years trying to find a way back to his home. And since the Fenton parents are always busy, that leaves just the "older sister" he has to deal with on distracting. He likes that she tries to get to know his culture better than the adult Fentons, as she calls him Danyal and not Danny or Danno like the adult Fentons. She even tries to learn how to make food from this world's version of where he's from.

Danyal still became a Halfa because he tried to activate the portal early, which had caused the portal to work but brought dangers he had to find off until he found the right place to go to. His Ghost Half outfit is his Assassins gear, as he was wearing it because he thought he would be going home when he activated the portal.

After Danyal bested Pariah and became the next Ghost King, he has the means to go back to the dimension he comes from. He's not going alone, as the Nasty Burger explosion happens, and only the adult Fentons and others were there, leaving Jazz without a family. Dani, known as Ellie, is also coming, it was easy to convince her because of her curiosity of how different his world might be. Vlad is gonna have to serve his time, as Danyal used his new title to put the man in Walkers prison. The man made Ellie by using his DNA to make her and for freeing Pariah, so the man will either fade away because Maddie is gone or get a new obsession to keep him going.

Danyal is now 18 and is finally back home. He just hopes that Damian is okay and not too upset that he didn't keep his promise to return.

[drivestraight]

mini explanation of why the crowd were like that and why sincaraz in general are so interesting if you’re interested!

basically everybody loves carlos because not only is he really really really good, he’s very charming and generally has got a very fun personality, interacts with the crowd + cameras + fans a lot etc. better on clay than pretty much anyone though. currently no2 ranked itw but more titles than sinner.

a lot of people don’t really fw sinner because while he is really really really good, he’s a bit calm which people find boring and robotic so there isn’t the same adoration from fans that carlos gets (also everyone loves an underdog which is not exactly sinner right because he has been pretty dominant, especially against the best of the active players) currently ranked no1 itw but less titles than alcaraz

the rhetoric seems to be that while sinner can beat everyone easily except for alcaraz. even though alcaraz generally loses to other people more than sinner does. very different styles of play but brilliant to watch because it means they have a great dynamic and are very well matched. and both are ridiculously good ofc

nodding at your sage wisdom. Also re sinner do you think that's why oscar wants to fuck him so badly

also "sinner can beat everyone easily except for alcaraz" is sooo hot i love that

[nihongoseito]

【音韻論コーナー】 syllabification in japanese vs. english!

buckle in, it's time for another episode of 音韻論 (phonology) 101 with sasha!! this time, i was inspired by a brief conversation i had with my bf where he set off my linguist alarms without meaning to (this happens frequently lol). actually, we were talking about zelda, the video games! here's how the conversation went:

bf: *yada yada yada* zelda. zeruda! me: うん、ゼルダ。 bf: how do you say the title in japanese again? me: ゼルダの伝説。でん、せ、つ。 bf: den-set-su.

two things are important here. first: i've clearly highlighted the slow, syllabified pronunciations of 伝説 that each of us produced, so please remember them. second: my bf is a native english speaker who doesn't speak any japanese! he was just trying to parrot me.

with the stage set, let's get into the weeds!!

what is "syllabification"?

it's exactly what it says on the tin: syllabification is the linguistic term for analyzing* strings of sounds as syllables. so, of course, this begs the question...

what the sweet hell is a "syllable"???

ah, the humble syllable *wipes tear*. she's a flighty little bastard honestly. but the good news is, we don't need a sterling scientific definition here today, we just need the basics.

try this exercise, which (depending on your L1) you might recall from grade school: say "syllable" out loud while clapping in rhythm with the word. it should turn out like this:

sy -lla -ble clap-clap-clap

this is a tried-and-true method for ascertaining the number of syllables in a word, and it's very hard to get wrong in your native language.** so, we say syllable has three syllables.

but, oh, of course we aren't done—do you notice where i've drawn the syllable boundaries (hyphens) above? what can we say about each of my proposed syllables...?

let's say this: each syllable (as i've drawn them) contains a vowel. (please read the letter y in syllable as a vowel.) from this observation, we can make a rudimentary theory: a syllable is one vowel plus its surrounding consonants (if any).***

aaaaaand this is where we descend into madness. what counts as "surrounding consonants"? in the middle of a word, how do you know which consonant belongs to which vowel? what if there are multiple consonants all in a cluster? are all consonants counted the same way? and also, what if the vowel is a long vowel or a diphthong? and what if—*panicked screeching*

ok ok ok, let's calm down. again, we don't need to solve linguistics today, we just need a working theory. so, going forward in this post, i humbly ask that we assume the syllable boundaries i draw are correct! i'm happy to discuss the particulars of syllabification in greater detail if you send me a message :)

*of course, this term can literally mean analyzing, like linguists do, but it can also refer to what speakers naturally assume their language to be doing. so if we say two speakers "analyze" the syllabification of a word differently, that refers to a subconscious judgment on the part of those speakers, not an actual scientific theory.

**just to cover all my bases: not every language uses the syllable as its primary unit of counting sound, though all languages have syllables (probably). for example, tokyo and kansai japanese count by mora (although kagoshima japanese counts by syllable!).

***yes, some languages (including english!) can use liquids as nuclei! don't worry about it here though!!!

what is syllabification like in japanese?

if you know anything about japanese phonology (which i honestly believe a lot of you do), you know we're always talking about the mora in japanese linguistics. like the syllable, the mora is a unit of counting sound. today, let's ignore the mora.

wait, what?! ignore the mora?! *i am burned at the stake for linguistics crimes*

alright, no, but seriously—please don't worry about moras today! all we need to worry about is syllables. i'll offer this rule of thumb: when counting syllables in japanese, analyze long vowels, diphthongs, little っ, and ん as belonging to the vowel directly in front of them.

let's see an example of each. again, we are NOT(!!) counting moras!!

long vowels: お-かあ-さん = three syllables (お母さん）

diphthongs: てい-ど = two syllables (程度)

little っ: けっ-か = two syllables (結果)*

ん: さん-ぽ = two syllables (散歩)

this way, we can see how quirks of japanese phonology fit in with our one-vowel-per definition of a syllable. for example, it seems like diphthongs and long vowels count as "one vowel" in japanese (if we take my syllabifications to be true).

make sense? japanese syllabification is actually wicked simple comparatively speaking, so these are the only tricky things to worry about. (for those of you still thinking about the moras, feel free to draw your own conclusions about how they're affecting our syllabifications here...!)

with that, we're ready to move onto a much messier syllabification system: english's.

*in rōmaji, this syllabification would be written kek-ka.

what is syllabification like in english?

let me be brief: it's complicated.

let me be slightly less brief: english loves consonants, and clusters of consonants, and clusters of consonants in phonologically inconvenient places. just to illustrate it, i'll give an example of an english syllabification i love:

stre[ng]-[th]e-ni[ng] = three syllables (strengthening)

ok, what the hell is going on here. first, the consonants in [brackets] are single consonants represented in english spelling with multiple letters (i.e., [th] is actually one single sound phonetically). second, we can see plenty of consonants are touching each other, like str and [ng][th], which happens in japanese way less frequently. so the differences are great and many!

but, what about the similarities? please recall our rudimentary definition: a syllable is one vowel plus its surrounding consonants (if any). does that seem to hold in the strengthening case...? why, yes, it does! if we set aside the lurid consonant nightmare, we can clearly see that each syllable in strengthening has one and only one vowel. so at the very least, our definition of a syllable holds across languages. that's what makes it helpful as a definition, of course!

hey, do you guys remember how like an hour ago i was talking about ゼルダの伝説 on this post...? let's finally get back to that!!

the syllabification of 伝説!

woohoo, time for the main event!! let me copy the conversation from earlier in the post here, and abridge it slightly:

bf: how do you say [legend] in japanese? me: 伝説。でん、せ、つ。 bf: den-set-su.

we're ready to tackle this syllabification puzzle now. but before we do, let me ask: can you see the puzzle? (hint: it's in the english!)

you may have an idea, but let me make it even more obvious. i'm going to convert the japanese syllabification into rōmaji:

me: 伝説。 den-se-[ts]u. bf: den-set-su.

aha, [ts] is a single phonetic sound in japanese! do you see it now? when parroting my japanese, my boyfriend broke the [ts] in half with a syllable boundary!!* why the heck did he do that??? let's discuss this problem in two parts: phonetics and phonology.

first, the phonetics: [ts], while very common in japanese, is not a common sound in english. specifically, [ts] does not occur at the beginning of syllables in english. for native english speakers, think of all the times you ever said tsunami (in english)—did you actually say [ts]unami? or did you say something more like sunami?

spoiler alert: i'm almost positive you said sunami. while we can get [ts] in other places (e.g., i[ts], ca[ts], etc.), we can't get it at the beginning of syllables. therefore, the japanese syllable [ts]u is not technically pronounceable in english. faced with an unpronounceable syllable, my bf had to find a way to make it pronounceable, and his strategy was to turn [ts]u into su, just like in sunami.

now, the way he turned [ts]u into su is where the phonology comes in! in the japanese, the syllable boundary (if we take my word for it) comes in front of -[ts]u, but as we've seen, that's a no-go in english. one option would be to completely delete the [t] from the original word, since he can clearly hear it's there; but it seems in this case, deletion was not preferable to getting in there with a shovel, hacking [ts] in half,** and actually moving the syllable boundary between the two halves. so doing, he both kept [t] from being deleted and kept [ts] from appearing at the beginning of a syllable. that way, he protected the original components of the compound consonant while still obeying the rules of english phonetics in his brain. wow, efficient!

so, we can summarize the new, english-ified syllabification as a kind of process:

original: den-se-[ts]u ! -[ts]u is unpronounceable → rejected

alternative: delete [t]: den-se-su ! salient sound is missing → rejected***

alternative: interpose syllable boundary: den-set-su ✓ no unpronounceable -[ts]u ✓ no salient sounds are missing → winner!

does this process make sense to you? well, i hope it does, since i'm the one trying to explain it...but if you think you've got it, then let me say, congratulations! you just did "optimality theory", a prevalent method of modern phonological analysis. go tell everyone you know!

so yeah, that's how my boyfriend (probably) got from my syllabification (and pronunciation) of 伝説 to his. all that work for one silly letter?! that's phonology, baby!

*how do i know for sure that he did this? well, it was clear to me from his enunciation, which was very slow and cleanly segmented. while that wouldn't fly as a valid method in a scientific experiment, i'll ask that you please trust my experience here!

**does this actually qualify as cutting the affricate (compound consonant) in half? some people would argue it's actually a two-step process of deletion and (re)insertion. i'm not an expert on that, so i'll admit i don't know for sure, i just picked the simpler one to explain in the post!

***are you wondering why deleting [t] is ok in sunami, but not here? it's probably because with [ts]unami, there is no earlier syllable to shunt the [t] into, and it can't float out there on its own, so it gets deleted. that's just my guess though :)

so, what did we learn?

we learned the syllable can be a fickle and garish beast, and yet at her most basic, she is consistent across languages! if you try counting syllables in the other languages you know, i hope you'll find our rule about one-vowel-per-syllable to continue to hold. of course, there are always exceptions or puzzles, so keep an eye out for those too—they're fun!!

wow, and to think—all that just because my bf wanted to talk about zelda. before i sign off, here's a final brain teaser for all you mora freaks out there: assuming i don't speak kagoshima japanese (i don't), why did i present the word 伝説 to my bf syllable-by-syllable rather than mora-by-mora? by all accounts, the mora is the unit of counting in all major varieties of japanese.

this is just speculation, but probably there are two reasons. first, english is my native language, and english counts by syllables; syllables are more salient to me than moras. personally, the only place i ever feel the moras in english is in poetry or songs, so in a regular conversation where we were otherwise using entirely english, my brain was in syllable mode.

second, ん, the moraic nasal, tends to be pronounced differently in isolation versus in context. in 伝説, it's probably realized as a nasal vowel, but if i had actually said 「で、ん、せ、つ」 to my bf, that ん would have come out as a velar (or somewhere back there) nasal. to a non-japanese speaker, that would be majorly confusing, and he probably wouldn't have been able to parrot it at all. i wanted him to understand, so i made it easier! (wow, true love~)

anyways, that's the linguistics du jour, i hope you enjoyed it :) as always, お疲れ様でした and see you next time!!

[mahou-furbies]

First impressions on Ichi the Witch

The requirements of what qualifies mahou enough for this blog have been getting more and more loose lately, but I think this is the furthest we've been from the magical girl genre so far. But it does have witches in it so let's go!

Back in January I came across Ichi's excellent witch design and wanted to get in on it, and for some reason I thought this would be a seinen series. But no, it's shounen, and in Shounen Jump of all things, which immediately drained most of the excitement. It's funny how I can't exactly put in words how Jump is different from say, Shounen Sunday or Shounen Magazine, but when it ambushes you like this you just know what you're in for. But anyway, at the time Undead Unluck was about to end so I figured I now might have room for a new Jump series in my heart. So I read a few chapters, forgot about it, and didn't catch up until now.

In this world there are magical creatures that witches can capture and summon for fights, like some kind of evil pokemon, though only women can use magic. However (stay with me this is going to be a stupefying turn of events) as the title suggests, our boy hero Ichi also manages to become one, much to the shock of all. Can you imagine it, a boy gets to join the action in a Jump action manga! This is truly a monumental moment for gender equality!

I wouldn't be dwelling on this if the manga wasn't so damn committed to making this its main topic. We go over this so many times, every new character has to be introduced commenting on it. The council of witches is suspicious about a man being a witch, and the general populace is also surprised about it! Men can't use even magic tools, except Ichi can! Also Ichi learns so fast, he's super good at witch stuff right away and can easily prove doubters wrong! Like geez I get it, can we move on please?

Also even aside from the gender stuff, Ichi's not really a character I particularly like. He's like this book dumb but street smart chaotic and impulsive feral hunter who is always on top of the situation isn't fazed by anything. Very little boy power fantasy type, imagine if you could just confidently do what you want despite rules and prove everyone who tries to stop you wrong! Couple this with the "Women Are Wiser" trope, where it's not uncommon for an idiot shounen hero to be paired with a more sensible female lead, whose job is to be the nagging buzzkill who futilely tries to keep the MC-kun in check. And here the female lead, Dessacras, suffers from this to some extent too and is often used to point out how wacky Ichi is.

Regardless I do like Dessacras and she's the best character so far. She's super smug in a really fun way and always has this perpetual frown on her face. And she is actually a weird slacker herself and causes ire to her witch colleagues, it's just that she's often contrasted with Ichi which forces her in the straight man role. Like Ichi she also has an S-tier character design, which is of course a big deal. Look at that hair! And eventually she gets to show that she can actually live up to her boasts of being "Everyone's Favorite Uber-Talented Badass", when Ichi finally bites more than he can swallow and needs rescuing. And lastly she is responsible for the most touching moments of the manga so far when we get past the initial introductory chapters and she and Ichi start to bond more. I see potential in their relationship and am eager to see where this goes, it is fresh for a Jump series for the female lead to be the older mentor figure rather than a potential love interest (I hope).

Ultimately I did end up adding this to my reading list. I like Dessacras and even Ichi has grown on me somewhat after getting some more depth, and now that the story has found its plot (prophecy that demands a sacrifice from Ichi) after the episodic beginning I am interested in seeing how it plays out. And longer arcs should also mean that every chapter won't introduce a new character to gawk at the male witch thing. Also the character designs are overall great and surprisingly the female characters are all dressed appropriately (meanwhile it's the dudes who strip, albeit not in a sexy scene). Special applause to Ichi's witch outfit which drew me in in the first place; it's rare to see a fun fantasy design like this on a male character. I don't think you should get your hopes up on the story doing anything meaningful with the gender stuff though, right now to me it seems like just a way to make the main character special and an underdog, and include a lot of waifus.

[chirpsythismorning]

Yeah a teaser dropping on ST day would be cool. But can we agree that a DNA board reveal would be infinitely better?

[random-autie-fangirl]

I drew another Chara- living with the Dreemurrs edition

"The King and Queen treated the human child as their own. The underground was filled with hope."

I don't like this as much as the last one but oh well... I ended up rambling a huge amount in the tag, so if you want details and headcanons about the actual drawing again, you'll have to look pretty far down this time, sorry (Also, I ran out of tags after a while. Tumblr is tired of me, lol. I might reblog this more tags later if I remember what I was going to say.)

[mantisgodsdomain]

More notes for Roach conlanging. Roach has grammatical gender, in which only Male, Female, and Object are grammatical genders, whereas Worker uses feminine grammar, Queen and King use a slight variant on feminine grammar, and Drone, and Queen-Alate use masculine grammar. This is because King is derived from Queen, due to their similar positions in a colony, and Queen-Alate is derived from Drone, as both are forms of alate.

Queen is an alteration of feminine grammar that functionally just adds a handful of extra syllables to it, and King is an offsprout of Queen that uses the same grammar with different pronouns. Queen-Alate, despite the name, is derived from Drone, as they are both for referring to different types of alate ant.

Most Roach dialects are intelligible to speakers of Snakemouth Den Cordyceps Roach, but Snakemouth Den Cordyceps Roach is not entirely intelligable to speakers of Roach dialects due to a mix of the excessively specialized vocabulary caused by the specific needs of its speakers, the fact that its speakers do not necessarily have Roach mouthparts and thus may not pronounce syllables in a similar way, and due to the fact that Inanimate Object is a full grammatical gender that does not exist in any other dialect of roach and replaces a decent chunk of terminology for things that previously had Other Words For Them.

[bigcats-birds-and-books]

Books of 2025: February Wrap-Up.

As it turns out: Rereading your own novel manuscript twice (once for the original NaNo and once for the most-current-frankendraft) dramatically slows down the Reading Published Books train, which is fine! I had fun on all fronts! And I did a bunch of knitting, too, and everything I read this month was Good, Actually :D

Photos and/or reviews linked below:

THE LANGUAGE OF THE NIGHT - ★★★★★ Essays on writing, science fiction, and fantasy! Wound up loving this, per my Le Guin Usual, had to bust out the flaggies to mark passages. My favorite chapters were "Introduction to City of Illusions" (which I must track down a copy of immediately), "Talking about Writing," "The Stalin in the Soul," and "The Stone Ax and the Muskoxen."

METAL FROM HEAVEN - ★★★★★ Y'all this was SO FUCKING GOOD. It's pitched as for fans of Gideon the Ninth and The Princess Bride, because it's about messy lesbians and one in particular's quest for revenge against the industrialist who had her entire striking family killed. Personally, I'd also throw an Arcane comp in there for the class warfare and aesthetics and weird magical substance. Significant review linked, PLEASE go check this out, it was very excellent.

ODD THOMAS - ★★★★ Reread, to go with my own manuscript-rereading (this book was an Inspiration for my project, as was WtNV). I still love Odd so much. Fucked up, weird, funny, tragic book--if you've ever been curious about Koontz, try this one.

WHEN WOMEN WERE BIRDS - ★★★½ Received this in my nature writing subscription box, started it without meaning to on a random Tuesday, accidentally read the first three chapters because it sucked me in. Parts of this REALLY hit right for me and parts of it were just Meh--definitely depended on the particular Variation on Voice. The opening chapter is the author receiving her mother's journals, collected over a lifetime, and they're all blank. If you like memoirs, and feminism, and environmentalism, and birds, and writing, and Mormonism, or any combination thereof, check this out! Short little book, does neat stuff with white space.

Under the Cut: A Note About ~*★Stars★*~

Historically, I have been Very Bad™ about assigning things Star Ratings, because it's so Vibes Heavy for me and therefore Contingent Upon my Whims. (Example: I don't like that stars are Odd, because that makes three the midpoint and things are rarely so truly mid for me)(I have hacked my way around this with a ½, which is really only applicable for me at ★★★ and up). Here is, generally, how I conceptualize stars:

★ - This was Bad. I would actively recommend that you do NOT read this one, no redeeming qualities whatsoever, not worth the slog. Save Yourself, It's Too Late For Me. Book goes in the garbage (donate bin).

★★ - This was Not Good. I would not recommend it, but it wasn't a total waste or wash--something in here held my interest/kept my attention/sparked some joy. I will not be rereading this ever. Save Yourself (Or Join Me In Suffering, That Seems Like A Cool Bonding Activity).

★★★ - This was Good/Fine/Okay/Meh. I don't care about this enough to recommend it one way or another. Perfectly serviceable book, held my interest, I probably enjoyed myself (or at least didn't actively loathe the reading). I don't have especially strong feelings. You probably don't need to save yourself from this one--if it sounds like your jam, give it a shot! Just didn't resonate with me particularly powerfully. I probably won't reread this unless I'm after something in particular.

★★★½ - I liked this! I'll probably recommend it if I know it matches someone's vibes or specific requests, but I didn't commit to a star rating on Goodreads. More likely to reread, but not guaranteed.

★★★★ - I really enjoyed this!! I would recommend it (sometimes with caveats about content warnings or such--I tend to like weird fucked up funny shit, and I don't have many hard readerly NO's). Not a perfect book for me by any means, but Very Good. This is something I would reread! Join me!!

★★★★★ - I LOVED THE SHIT OUT OF THIS, IT REWIRED MY BRAIN, WILL RECOMMEND TO ANYONE AND EVERYONE AT THE SLIGHTEST PROVOCATION (content warning caveats still apply--see 4-star disclaimer). Excellent book, I'll reread it regularly, I'll buy copies for all my friends, I'll try to convince all of Booklr to read it, PLEASE join me!!

[shreddits-less-popular-opinions]

Real pretentious for rusties to call themselves burgundy…you don’t see any other caste arguing about what they’re called :////

}:0|

[toxicrevolver]

2024 K-Pop Wrapped Tag Game

Tagged by @onlyoneofsideblogtrashheep thanks for the tag 💚💚

Regardless of Spotify stats, share your personal k-pop favorites of the year. Of the k-pop content that was released in 2024, post:

Favorite Group Album: DREAM()SCAPE - NCT DREAM

Favorite Solo Album: Depth - Yuta (of course. The way I will never be over this sweeping my October receiptify. NCT solo albums are the best thing ever to me.)

Favorite Title Track: Work - Ateez (this bitch was number 2 for my Spotify wrapped top 5 songs if that tells you anything.)

Favorite B-Side: BOX - NCT DREAM (from the album DREAM()SCAPE) honorable mention to Flamin’ Hot Lemon - Jaehyun

Favorite Music Video: Liar - BUS

Favorite Collab Track: Hush-Hush - BE:FIRST featuring Ateez

Tagging (no pressure): @we-survive-endlessly @smushedmuffin @skinzchoerim and anyone else who wants to participate can blame me

My ramblings bcs me tags started being excessive:

The way I had to fully think and google what fucking albums came out this year is insane. 2023 and 2024 have just blurred together for me. What do you mean Fact Check came out in 2023 but Ten’s solo album was 2024. Whot. I deadass could NOT think what group albums came out this year that I actually listened to. I’m so behind on releases it’s ridiculous. I’m still not over most of 2023s music. How am I gonna cope in 2025. I ended up picking dream()scape purely bcs I clearly remember looping it several times at work or while playing video games and not skipping any songs.

The way Jaehyun’s solo music has had me in a CHOKEHOLD. UNCONDITIONAL WAS MY NUMBER 4 TOP SONG ON MY SPOTIFY WRAPPED. IT CAME OUT OCTOBER 24th. SPOTIFY STOPS TRACKING ON LIKE NOVEMBER 21st. I HAVE A PROBLEM. HIS ALBUM THREW ME FOR A LOOP BCS IM NOT TYPICALLY AN R&B FAN BUT GOOD GOD THIS SHIT SLAPPED. THERE IS NO WAY THAT MAN IS BITCHLESS.

Also. 3 NCT related things making the list. On brand. If NCT was just one giant lumped together Spotify group I swear they woulda been in my top 5 artists. But no. They’re separated bcs subunits and I gotta somehow divide my time or only pick certain subunits to make my chart. A hate crime.

[hausofanya]

i have to ask because ive seen the name spelled with and without the accent- is it cléo or cleo?

it’s cléo! and omg okay i actually had a written thing for this back when i was first setting my girl up but it’s lost in the void now…….. so her maternal grandmother grew up in france and was named anya right. huge huge pianist during her time. and it’s bc of her grandmother that cléo’s mom kemi grew up to be a child of the industry herself (MORE ON THAT LATER!) but kemi wanted to honor anya with her own daughter + just really liked the name cleo (which means to ‘make famous’ btw…) so: cléo anya! the accent is just there for decoration tbh i think it just makes it look prettier LMFAOOO

[moe-broey]

GIRL......................... suspension of disbelief I know but.

Obviously you can pick out a BUNCH of the dragons as that Is an ongoing trope (dragons aging differently than humans, so they can look younger than they "actually are") (also while I did try to avoid including them to make them more comparable to Nino, I think Flayn can fit in either category for the purposes of The Context -- esp cause her dragon blood is meant to be secret)

Not only do we have Heroes skewing younger (a lot fitting into another trope of What If There Was A Baby Sister) we also have Baby Banner. Where the whole point is they are baby.

LIKE....... maybe I'm speaking way too soon and maybe the whole point IS this will backfire LMFAO, but it IS absurd to be presented with her art (which, def still looks youthful!) and having her say yeah I can pass as a kidnapped child. Which COULD be true! But also what do you mean no one is going to know you're a part of the Heroes. Why is no one fighting her on this. Not even including the dragons there are like a handful of Heroes who fit into her exact vibe. Some even MORE baby than her.

[sqlmn]

Seeing as the person who drew this for me and listens to me yell about these two and Rudyard is currently Illegal For Tumblr, I have been given permission to post this!

So a huge thank you I'm crying @ gunhorse ;0; my kids look great and I wuv them... I'm sobbing.

(And for those wondering, the agent named Bravo encounters Katale a fair amount though completely intentional from her. He thinks that she's just a very nice woman who got mixed up in the wrong crowd and she doesn't seem to wish him hard and he doesn't wish her harm so in the end when he sees her he's putting his gun away into a shoulder holster because he's a Good Boy.)

[supercantaloupe]

beginning to not have fun with these opera bracket posts tbh

[batsplat]

from the stuff i’ve heard marc’s former honda teammates (dani jorge and pol in their media careers but joan also i guess) say about him now that they’re racing is generally quite positive, both on a professional/riding level but also seemingly on a personal level? i’m wondering what you make of that given that, yeah, marc doesn’t seem like a very good teammate (unless you’re alex who i’ve left off this list). like MARC wants to separate on and off track stuff and it seems like all of these guys are willing too at least in retrospect, so he can’t have truly burned bridges with them. do you have any thoughts on that

(x, x) most riders are quite good at not burning bridges with each other! it's not like marc's competitors don't know that this stuff is kinda part of the game. I mean, all of marc's past teammates were also trying to assert themselves within the internal hierarchy... you can say that certain teammates engage in 'worse' behaviour than others, but, like, these people do understand they're supposed to be fighting each other! a baseline degree of nastiness is factored in and will be accepted to a greater or lesser extent by your rivals - especially when it comes to asserting yourself in intra-team power struggles. you might hate the other guy in the moment, but generally speaking once the active part of the rivalry is done with... you will probably get over it. marc's fellow riders are aware of how ultra-competitive marc is - and to a certain point they do respect it, not least because they're aware that this is part of the reason why marc has ended up with all those titles. it's like dani said, right, it's marc's strong suit. and in general, you do have to say that there's relatively few teammate pairings that devolve to the level of toxicity that it completely destroys the interpersonal relationship. you might need some level of preexisting animosity... most of the purely competitive sins can be healed with a little time

on the 'separating on-track and off-track' thing... well. this is kind of a question of how you define these things, you can say that marc generally speaking isn't going to massively hold grudges over isolated on-track incidents or whatever... but he doesn't just leave his fighting to the track, and personally I've also never felt he can entirely separate these things out in his mind. can you really say his professional and private relationships with other riders are completely detached from one another? mostly, he's opted to be pretty disengaged from his fellow riders as a collective, and obviously that's a good way to not take things too personally... it's all part of the game, isn't it? sometimes it's good to go with the straightforward approach: marc tells you he will make your life hell, he does indeed make your life hell, and then you both move on with your lives and can maybe actually have a pretty amiable relationship with him in years to come. he's not really defying your expectations at any point here, is he now? it's still a question for each of them as individuals as to whether they think that kind of behaviour is above board and acceptable or not... but everyone by now knows that marc plays these games, so it's not like they're going in blind

and it's not like other former teammates are constantly badmouthing each other. I mean... look, let's just cut to the chase here and bring in valentino as our reference point (as he is for the sport as a whole, which by the way does also help create a certain baseline of acceptability for marc's antics - maybe goated riders are just supposed to be dicks who knows). vale's premier class teammates were 1) nobody (2000-01), 2) tohru ukawa (2002), 3) nicky hayden (2003; 2011-12), 4) carlos checa (2004), 5) colin edwards (2005-2007), 6) jorge lorenzo (2008-10; 2013-16), 7) maverick vinales (2017-20), 8) franco morbidelli (2021), and 9) andrea dovizioso (2021). of these eight men (let's just exclude 'nobody' for now), do you know how many had serious complaints at any point about valentino as a teammate? that's right, it's one guy. one. some of valentino's other teammates, like hayden, checa and edwards, were even quite actively positive about their whole experience. this is the thing - you do need some specific circumstances for teammate rivalries to escalate from 'being kinda bitchy every other month' to 'actively fantasising about stabbing each other'. not accounting for natural interpersonal animosity, let's list some circumstantial factors that you need to get a bridge-burning-worthy level of feud:

you need a competitive bike. it is possible to beef about development direction when you're in the trenches (cf late 2010's yamaha, 2020's honda)... but generally speaking this is going to be quite low-level petty stuff, not actual war

you also need something that approaches competitiveness between teammates. if one teammate is unquestionably stronger than the other one, then it is very unlikely that you are going to get any open hostilities. the tension comes when the two sides are close enough to each other for the internal hierarchy to actually be a contentious issue (this is also basic self preservation... if you're the far weaker teammate then you do not want to make the situation troublesome, because then you will be the one to be fired)

following on from those first two things... well, it doesn't hurt to have a title fight in the mix. there are also other ways you can generate competitive stakes, like, for instance, if you and your teammate know that one of you will be out of a job soon. basically, it helps to have something to squabble over

it is maybe easy to forget how rare it is this century for teammates to be fighting directly for a title, let alone over the course of multiple seasons. only two 1-2's since the year 2000 and they're both for the factory yamaha's (though 2006, 2011-13 and 2017 did all prominently feature two factory hondas). which means that for valentino, the prerequisites were met just the once in his premier class career... and yes, the results were pretty memorable, but (topic! for! another! post!) it's worth pointing out that even that relationship was pretty much 'fine' whenever there was a sizeable disparity between the two of them performance-wise (2008 and 2013 are the most clear cut examples). I think the way I'd frame it with marc is that he has a bunch of mildly dubious strategies up his sleeve to assert himself within the team, which don't really deviate that far from what you'd expect from a rider of marc's calibre and only need to be escalated under specific circumstances. that doesn't mean he doesn't have the potential to be ruthless, but up until now it's mostly been a fairly 'acceptable' level of ruthlessness on the intra-team level... and not something that is likely to make other riders actually hate him

taking marc's teammates one by one... dani was the closest to meeting the bridge-burning prerequisites, though he was only a title rival in marc's rookie season. and marc did go further with him than he did with anyone else, and dani has made some pointed comments about marc's style as a teammate... but yes, he is fonder of marc these days. partly I'd just emphasise again that this is a fairly natural progression when you've stopped directly competing for long enough, and partly it's also just a question of individual personality - dani's not massively into holding grudges. then there's jorge, who... I mean, they might as well not have been teammates, given that jorge was either too slow or too injured to even be sharing any track space with marc. you have to put that one down primarily to circumstance, seeing as jorge's own track record on the teammate front isn't exactly spotless. marc and jorge beefing in 2019 would have been pretty dumb and also a massive waste of everyone's time in a year in which marc singlehandedly won the team's championship. even those two needed more to get things going

moving on to the dark years, pol and marc had an extremely stop-and-start partnership on a honda that was generally pretty uncompetitive... so the only stuff they could get ever so mildly irritable about were riveting incidents like 'marc saying pol wasn't the biggest championship threat' (neither of them were) or 'pol saying he'd copy marc's set up' (which proved entirely useless). not exactly title decider territory, is it now, and marc very much had pol covered as a challenger throughout their partnership. also, those two do have a longer history! they've known each other since they were kids and hold a pretty significant place in each other's careers. now that pol's more or less retired, it's natural there'll be quite a lot of sentimentality there - which will paper over any small cracks that appeared during those two years. and joan was a one year teammate at a time in which the bike was consistently close to offing them both. they only managed to start a sunday race together as teammates on thirteen occasions. it would take some serious effort to engineer a feud with that little opportunity, and, really, why on earth would you bother. maybe if honda had gone for rinsy rather than joan for the factory seat, it could've been a bit more prickly, but it's unlikely that it would have escalated beyond that

this is the thing, right, the only one of these partnerships that would have been worth burning bridges over was dani, and even there marc pretty much had him handled after the first season. in general, marc has been pretty clear on how he's not interested in making friends with the other side of the garage while the teammate relationship is ongoing... which is fine! there's some prominent-ish teammate pairings that are actually good friends, some teammate pairings where one of them is actively helping out and advising the other one, but some riders prefer to just keep their distance. it would have been a little silly of marc to start a feud with a teammate who is galaxies away from being a competitive threat, let alone a title rival, but generally it is possible to toe the line between 'attempting to suppress your internal rivals enough to stop them from becoming a problem for you' and 'taking radical enough action to make your internal rivals despise you'

especially in the post-dani era, marc never really had any need to push things too far... and, let's face it, how many of your teammate relationships end up with burnt bridges is also quite frankly a question of luck and circumstance. do you want to guess which top rider on paper has the worst track record this century with premier class teammate feuds, in terms of a) how many they've had, and b) how little public reconciliation there has been since the end of the rivalry?

yes, that's right, it's the first name that comes to mind when you're thinking of toxic and conflict-prone riders: andrea dovizioso. that old devil, constantly causing trouble. just couldn't stop undermining his poor, innocent teammates. can somebody please stop this ruthless bully before it's too late

I think you get the point. I would personally suggest that dovi is not in fact the worst teammate it is possible to have in a motogp top team. he just happened to find himself in a situation where he was teammates with two separate guys he did not click with at all, in situations that involved a pairing of riders who were (or had the potential to be) competitive with each other, as well as some proper stakes attached to the rivalry. in general, situational factors are going to determine this stuff more than anything else... and marc more often than not does have a reasonably good feel for picking his battles. he's flirted with the line, but he's mostly avoided crossing it. he hasn't had to