#written 2013

[peace-and-light-poetry]

Ending

The first snow Of a pure winter, be minded, there will come more

This year is ending

[weirdlookindog]

Sarah R. Bloom - A Message Written in the Sand, 2013

©Sarah R. Bloom

[demodoggonetired]

It's a quiet night in with just the two of them - Wayne having already left for work. A gentle drizzle has settled over the trailer park.

Eddie's hunched over at his desk with the old table lamp on, painting his latest miniature for the upcoming campaign. Steve's perched on the bed right near him, using that same lamp light to read one of Wayne's magazines. A tape randomly picked from their collection plays in the background.

There's a quiet 'clink' as Eddie rinses his brush in the paint-water cup (newly labeled after one to many mix-ups). The brush is dried then slotted into the cracked mug holding the rest of his painting tool hoard.

He pauses to stretch out his back from its scrunched position, scars giving a minor twinge at the action. Then reaches for his small, detailing brush.

Only, it's not where he put it last.

It's not on the pallet. Didn't slip under the paper towel. Sitting in the paintbrush mug? Nope. Roll onto the floor? No dice. (Well actually, many dice. Including the d8 he lost last week, he should remember to grab that later (he won't)).

It's as he's pulling his head back out from under the desk that he notices it.

The subtle, upturned pinch at the corner of Steve's mouth.

Like he's fighting not to smile. Trying to act like he hasn't noticed Eddie's obvious searching.

"Steve?"

"Mhm?" The thief doesn't even deign to look up from the magazine.

"Have you seen my small detail brush? Bright red handle?”

"Nope."

Right, of course. Because the hand Steve wasn't using to hold his magazine just happened to be tucked behind his back, out of sight.

Clearly this called for drastic measures.

Without giving the other a chance to react, Eddie lurches forward to push his boyfriend back onto the bed, simultaneously planting himself atop Steve's legs.

"You sure about that one, loverboy?"

Steve crinkles his nose with a slight blush at the pet name. Then reaches up with the hand that previously held the magazine (that has now ended up in the abyss of the floor, sorry Wayne).

Eddie stills, curious to see how Steve will defend himself, as the hand continues up... and plucks the missing paintbrush from behind Eddie's ear. Where Eddie had earlier, unthinkingly stashed it.

Steve's face breaks out into a grin at Eddie's affronted noise.

"What do you have to say for yourself now, Eds? Accusing your boyfriend of such a heinous crime?"

Eddie hums, rolling the now reclaimed brush in his fingers, staring down at the boy beneath him. His sure-fire grin. Eyes crinkled in mirth. How the soft lamp light and dappled moonlight played across his features.

He leans down, hovering over the other.

"I say that I'd forgive you anyway. How could I not, with such a pretty face like that."

They meet in a gentle kiss. No rush as they simply enjoy the other's company. Warm in the knowledge there's nowhere else they need to be tonight. The tape clicks as it finishes and the rain becomes their only background noise. They seperate.

"Mmgood. Cause I did steal your paint tube."

[danishphoner]

one thing that really fascinates me about alex is his devotion to art – and more specifically, how he chooses to get some inspiration from scientific works of what he aims to implement in his art. every time one gets to examine some of his lyrics, or even how he explains these lyrics in an interview, they can be greeted by some bits of actual scientific information. an example is how he named his taquería on the moon with the term “information-action ratio”, coined by the critic neil postman, and referenced it in the song four out of five, something that might also indicate an interesting articulation with postman's concept. the line “cute new places keep on popping up”, for example, can express his well-known sardonic discontent regarding the flood of information being generated and transmitted over and over and, as much as it seems visually appealing and does give the idea of benefiting from advanced technologies, it doesn't really add anything substantial to the receiver's critical thinking – and worse, it distances the information receiver from the sender in a communication channel, according to postman.

what i'm saying with this interpretation is, it's known that alex is enamoured with the idea of gathering a bunch of references and condensing them into a mixture of metaphors in his writing, but it's so thrilling how, at times, we can find some bits of science inside of it – and it's even more exciting, just like playing a puzzle game, to find these references and analyse them by doing a similar research to what he did to create his works.

[dragonsbluee]

People I'm re-watching Max Steel and season one Forge is making me LIVID.

Kudos to the writers for giving him new ways to avoid questions every episode but I am so close to yelling at him through my screen. Who am I kidding, I already have.

JUST GIVE THEM SOME DAMN ANSWERS FORGE! Re-watching is so much more frustrating becuase this man is standing there acting like he's not hiding Max's entire IDENTITY and SPECIES from him.

Side note: It's a really, really smart and unique way for the writers to justify Max and Steel's recklessness and rebellion against N-Tek. Their actions are a reasonable leap of logic because they deserve answers. They're also inexperienced, and so their searches don't go well.

Side Side note: Am I also the only one confused as to why Max calls Forge "Uncle Ferrus" if Ferrus is his last name? I've never heard anyone do that, especially because it's not like he knows any other uncles, so I don't know why the writers didn't go with Uncle Forge. I've only ever heard people use first names or a separate title that means uncle.

[quaranmine]

i think the whole cringe is dead, radical sincerity, depth of genuine emotion, earnest effort, and unironic love thing that tumblr has going on the past few years has transformed my outlook on things and changed me for the better. but it does mean that now the people i know irl will give me strange looks for being too sappy or too poetic or too dedicated or too excited about about something because they're still stuck in their "well i only like this ironically" phase. guess that's their problem tho not mine <3

[fixedglare-ii]

Okay I need people to see what I see!! You know pacific rim, right? And you have raleigh and chuck, right???? AND THEY ARE LIKE HANGSTER RIGJT???? No but this has been in my head since months!!! Raleigh is like a big puppy with a rough past and gets back into the jaeger program bc the world needs him and then arriving at the Hong Kong shatterdome he meets arrogant jaeger pilot chuck who doesn’t believe raleigh is needed and is doing his absolute best to piss raleigh off but! they reach an understanding and go save the world together!! (I am NOT talking about the end of the movie nope)

Like that’s sooooo hangster???? Or like hangster is sooo chaleigh??? You have both the main character with a torturous past with big soulful eyes and the one who the mission counts on and then you have the cocky but actually really good pilot who thinks he is enough for the mission and then gets angry when someone else is introduced and absolutely keeps on messing with the main character but they need each other to actually complete the mission and save the world (or destroy the main target)!!!

Someone please talk to me about it I’m going insane!!

[paper-mario-wiki]

Favorite tracks off of the Wolf trilogy?

sure! though that will mean strictly "favorite" and not "best" cuz, frankly, i'm not sure that i have the critical eye to divine that. or at least not this soon after having just listened to them for the first time.

my top 5 from Bastard, Goblin, and Wolf are

Tamale

Pigs

Colossus

Radicals

Tina

[batsplat]

hi batsplat! i would like to say that you are an absolute pillar of the motogp community on here, like you are truly so so appreciated. both for your knowledge and also for the way you write about things (i think you could write 3000 words on a grocery store trip valentino took in 2003 and still make it super interesting reading)

i was reading your post about your favourite rivalries that didnt include one of the aliens, who would you personally include as part of that list? (versus who is really good but not quite alien status) id also really like to know if (and who) youd count as aliens from the pre-motogp era, and if theres been a difference over time about how often we are seeing aliens or if theyre easier/harder to spot as technical developments have sped up

hope you have a great day!

that's so sweet... thank you that's such an incredible compliment dsdkhfkhfd

about the aliens, the way I use the term is entirely as a historical descriptor, not as a qualitative assessment of any riders. it's a useful shorthand for a specific riders in a specific era, but to me it has limited relevance outside of that era. so to be clear we're talking valentino, casey, dani, jorge and marc - and according to common wisdom this usage originated from colin edwards' 2009 comment:

“But as I’ve said before, I’ve got to be pleased to be finishing next best behind those four guys, or should I say aliens. “They are riding out of this world and to be right behind them means I’m doing the best job I can and that’s about as good as I can hope for at the moment.”

(jorge discusses valentino as an alien in 2007, see here. which might be complete coincidence, but has always made me kind of curious whether the word was floating around in the paddock in some capacity before edwards 'coined' the term)

the thing is, right, it made sense to treat those four (and later -casey +marc) as distinct from the field, because they were winning almost everything. one reason for this was that they were very good, very skilled riders. another was that from 2007-15, only four to six bikes were capable of regularly challenging for wins at any one time. it was a massive field disparity that quite frankly was partly enforced through machinery. that's why it makes sense to include marc in that term: it's not just the fact that he was very good, it's the fact that he was riding a repsol honda that was the best or second best bike by a long way for his first three years in the premier class. in 2016, motogp returned to michelins and introduced new technical regulations - and for all intents and purposes, the alien era ended. it ended when eight different riders won in eight races that season. yes, marc, valentino and jorge were still the top three in the championship... but it's the difference of whether you go into a weekend convinced you know the winner will come from a list of four riders, or if you very much do not know that. between 2008 to 2015, apart from the aliens, a grand total of two riders claimed wins - dovi on a repsol honda in 2009 and ben spies on a factory yamaha in 2011. both of those were wet races (which of course are generally more open than dry ones). so just to reiterate: a greater number of riders won in 2016 alone (9) than in 2008-15 combined (7). (in 2007, a further two different riders won races - capirossi on the championship-winning factory ducati and vermeulen on the suzuki.) yes, obviously the aliens were very good riders, nobody is going to argue with you over that... but those numbers? they're only possible in a specific version of motogp - one that only existed for a few years

honestly, I don't even really use the term 'alien' to describe valentino pre-2006 or marc post-2016. it's just not that useful to me... aliens to me is a 'pack hunter' thing, where even if some of them are injured or are having a bad day or whatever, at least one of them will basically always be there to pick up the pieces. marc and valentino might have dominated the sport as a whole - but not all of their championship seasons were completely dominant, and there's only so much any one athlete can dominate in the sport... you're not going into every single weekend thinking 'oh yeah they're definitely going to win' (yes, yes, there were two times per year where you did very much do that with marc). which is different when you compare it to the aliens as a pack, where you could be confident that ONE of them would end the weekend on the top step of the podium

which is why I just don't apply the alien term to anyone pre-valentino - it's not because I think they were less good or less talented or less anything, it's because for me it's a term that's more about an era than it is about individual riders. you have to treat each era on its own, and I'm not really a big fan of inter-era comparisons. it's just kind of impossible to say whether a rider in the 1970s is more talented than one in the 2020s, whether ago's numbers are more or less impressive than marc's and so on... the sport has just changed in so many ways over the years. of course, in sports you do generally have this upward momentum where each generation is 'better' than the last. sports has gotten more professionalised, there's been massive advances in terms of pedagogy and sports medicine and exercise science and all of those things - all of which already affects how athletes train from childhood onwards. the young aren't more 'talented' in the sense that they were born with an innate superior ability to compete at the sport, but they are more 'talented' in that their ultimate ceiling will be higher as a result of all these gradual changes over time. these things can change quite quickly even (and if other sports is anything to go by, I wouldn't be surprised if the nineties/early noughties brought some big changes in that regard) - so already between, for instance, valentino and marc there'd probably been a real shift in how young talent is being nurtured

(the most blunt illustration of this is that young valentino's lifestyle was completely different from that of young riders today, in terms of how much time he spent training in the gym, sleeping habits, nutrition etc etc. athletes now can't get away with that much deviation any more, and indeed valentino had to massively change his approach in the 2010s to remain competitive - but of course it's different if you haven't been doing this stuff since you were a kid. I think we can safely assume valentino's 2003 supermarket trips looked rather different from marc's 2017 ones)

being good in pro sports may in some ways be harder now than it was in, say, the eighties, and the level of competition you're facing might be higher now - but of course, it would also by extension be unfair to judge those athletes by the standards of today. also, different eras are going to lend themselves to different profiles of rider depending on competitive trends, type of machinery and so on - even very basic stuff like how tall you are might have helped you in a certain era and hindered you in another... so what does that mean for talent? if we're discussing 'talent' at all, how can we possibly treat it as anything other than relative to the era we're discussing? to me, it just makes these comparisons between different generations pretty pointless... or well, I like talking about some of this stuff in a more holistic 'isn't this interesting' kind of way, not a 'this is why xyz is better than xyz' approach... this kind of thing is also why I finds goat debate such a uniquely boring way to spend your time, incidentally

this is a very long way of saying, I don't have a metric by which I judge athletes pre-2000 as 'alien' or 'not alien'! I think you have similarly dominant athletes, though again it is so tough to decide how much of that is down to talent and how much of it is down to bike advantage. if you take doohan's title winning seasons for instance:

yeah, look, sure, you can call him an alien as far as I'm concerned - if I'm watching these races live I will be expecting doohan to win in any given weekend. I'm still kind of missing the pack hunter feel in some of these seasons, so I won't know for certain the winner is going to come from a very short list. like take 1998:

not really one group vs the field, is it? and yeah, even if I consider doohan an 'alien' in some of those seasons, I'm still not going to call him that - because the term was essentially coined in 2009 for a specific group of guys that one other guy was later added onto. the competitive landscape and demands of doohan's era were so different that it feels off to try and go back and label him or any other past riders aliens... they were phenomenally talented, yes, they were great champions, yes, they can be called as good as the aliens, sure - but why wrench the term out of its historical context? is it still an analytically useful concept if you do so, except as a way to generically refer to a rider as 'very talented'?

which is also why I personally don't describe anyone since then as an alien. this doesn't mean I don't think fabio or now pedro aren't as good as those guys were, I just don't think they've been given the opportunity to have that kind of hold over the sport. fabio won five out of eighteen races in 2021 - and he did so on a yamaha that basically only he was able to consistently get a high level of performance out of. which is deeply impressive - but unlike say casey in 2007, he didn't have those other riders to dominate all the other races. eight riders won a race that season! it's just a fundamentally different competitive landscape. personally, I'd be perfectly content if we don't get another alien era. of course 2007-15 isn't all bad, but for good reason most fans' most fondly remembered eras are either 2001-06 or 2017-19... yes, at times one rider was too dominant, but it still felt like more riders had a shot at victory - and most importantly the quality of the racing was generally very high. this kind of domination by a few mega talents on the best machinery can get drab pretty quickly (though of course a lot of the blame for decreased race quality needs to be assigned to the 800cc era 2007-11, not to any of the aliens themselves)

I'd be quite happy to retire the term alien going forwards... except as a useful shorthand for a specific group of guys who have mostly retired. it shouldn't be used as a way to bash the young stars, as if they just can't measure up to the legends of the past. which would be dumb! again, plenty of ways in which motogp is harder now than it ever has been, though the most important thing is that it's just... different. not better, not worse, just different. sure, maybe we'll get another equivalent to the alien era, even though I personally think it's quite unlikely. if it happens, yeah, let's discuss cranking the term out again (and, yes, if you look at the current season and ignore sprints... if this current trend continues then we can have the debate at the end of the season. pecco and jorge despite all their apparent inconsistencies are currently building a pretty solid case for themselves) (now I've said that they're both gonna crash out of assen huh)

that being said! I don't exactly neatly follow this principle myself, because sometimes I do use something like the term 'alien-like talent' to refer to fabio or pedro... obviously, you can argue this is basically the same as calling them aliens in everything but semantics. so what's the criteria there? when do I use this term? I think to me it's just... instant, 'in your face' talent. they arrive to the premier class and they shine basically immediately. valentino got a relatively sedate start to the premier class by alien standards - which is fitting, because he's not really about that blistering raw pace. still, he wasn't far from being a rookie champion, got ten podiums, two wins... not too bad. casey was on a satellite team, but he got pole in his second ever race and came painfully close to winning his third. dani got a podium on debut and fought for the championship for almost the entire season. jorge got pole in his first three races and won his third. marc won the second time out and of course secured the title in his rookie season. compare that to fabio - pole in his fourth ever race on satellite machinery, fighting for wins in his first season. pedro got a podium in his second ever race and is handily outperforming everyone else on that bike

so it's about how quickly these guys pick this stuff up, how quickly they make that step from one level to another - though again, it's important to stress you can't just neatly compare these achievements! valentino's first two seasons were on 500cc bikes, which were notorious for being kind of evil. some of these riders started on satellite bikes (we're not counting valentino here), and there's also plenty of talk about how the bikes have become more complicated to ride now, making pedro's rapid adjustment even more impressive. but in every case, there is just this ability to 'be fast immediately', whatever the circumstances... and it's worth pointing out that even though pecco had a mediocre rookie season, he was incredibly quick in 2019 pre-season testing. jorge martin secured his first pole position and podium at his second race in motogp

speaking of, those two were already a touch older when they joined the premier class. there does generally seem to be something to the idea that in motorcycle racing, if you are not already very fast at a certain age, you will have a quite definitive ceiling... and from valentino onwards, the age by which you need to already have reached that standard of 'very good' seems to have gone down. when we're talking about talent and throwing around the term alien, this feels like another important change to mention - doohan was not winning his titles as a 22 year old! neither was rainey! or schwantz! or lawson! or... actually spencer was very young, yeah. but I think you get the point. I cannot tell you definitively why this changed, but it clearly has changed. in the 21st century, only two riders have won titles when they were older than 26: valentino (29-30) and jorge (28). valentino and marc were both 27 when their dominance over the sport ended (even if valentino secured titles after that point and marc will very probably do so as well). casey was 27 when he retired. (fun fact: pecco bagnaia is currently 27 years old.) so overall it's pretty rare in grand prix motorcycle racing to operate at the top of the premier class for more than a certain number of years - but the precise age window in which you are likely to be at your best does seem to have shifted pretty radically this century. which should demonstrate how hard these things are to compare... like I said, talent is often assessed by how quickly you are good at something - but if we called mick doohan a late bloomer, it would be wildly ahistorical

and yeah, look, this idea of 'you have to be good young or you will have a certain ceiling' is hardly unique to motogp, lots of sports are like that... another measure of this precocity that's perhaps more useful than just 'age' is looking how long it took them to win a title from when they joined the premier class (if they did so at all, of course). it's generally very fast! marc year one, valentino, casey and joan year two, jorge and fabio year three... and, well, pecco and hayden year four. of course, there's exceptions to this 'be fast immediately' rule - athletes who ended up being very good and title contenders who had slightly different paths getting there. the sete's and dovi's of this world - and to a lesser extent hayden too, who unlike those two was only even really a title contender in a single season... but generally speaking, those riders seem more heavily reliant on circumstances playing out just right to have a shot at a title

or perhaps! perhaps it's going to change! especially if you look at repeat champions, pecco does become a bit of an outlier in how he got there this century, doesn't he? compare the numbers he was posting in his rookie season vs valentino, casey, jorge and marc. and in some ways, you can extend this even further and say he's a massive historical outlier in terms of any premier class champions. there was an article about this in late 2022:

and some more about how historically unusual he is:

isn't that great? you don't become premier class champion with that kind of a rookie season, but pecco did! hey, aleix was a serious title threat in that season, which is a far more remarkable story still! and the thing is, right, if you're studying the current era and are labelling some riders aliens but leaving out pecco... then no offence but what's the point? look, who knows, maybe marc and pedro and david alonso are going to dominate the next twenty titles and pecco will have been a weird blip. but isn't there something fun about believing that a bunch of different riders could eventually develop into title threats? wouldn't it be kind of cool if you don't have to just write someone off age 22 any more? I don't know, I think it's a neat development! I hope it sticks around! there'll be plenty of alien-level talents in the future, but personally I wouldn't mind at all if there were no more aliens

[gildedtragedies]

of course my first post on this godforsaken site would be a shittily-made we must be killers meme...your honor i am simply obsessed with @lorata's specific brand of mentor-mentee dynamics

[foursaints]

Saints, I saw your Necrophilia post and I have a fic recommendation for you if you are interested. It is not Rosekiller unfortunately, BUT, it’s arguably a much more fucked up pairing (it’s so good, I know it’s weird but just give it a chance!). It’s called read my eulogy by sassysquatch and it’s 100/10. It has this creepy little Harry who was forever changed by the killing curse and he is soooo your Evan coded. It has tons of Addams family vibes and makes Harry a necromancer. It is really such a well written fic if you’re looking for something unique and a little twisted. If it’s not your vibe that’s all good too! I just saw that post and thought of it immediately

oh wow!! i gave this a cursory once-over as soon as you sent this ask, and was instantly absorbed... thank you so so much for the rec! this is exactly my vibe and i will be reading for the 1-2 business days

[palukoo]

this is SUCH an insane thing to say in a random blog post/obituary especially as the author is ostensibly not a lesbian. like truly hello??? that said. well… points we’re made!! there WAS something vaguely dykey about her.

[abzania]

I cannot believe it's been 10 years and I'm fucking fixated on Sebastian and Black Butler again. This can't be happening. I shouldn't have screenshots of him, yet here I am. I'm cursed. I can't escape this. My heart is still 13 and stupidly charmed by a stupid pretty demon and his stupid child boss.

[fortheflock]

MAXIMUM RIDE MENTION IN FORBES IN 2024

Sorry for the jumpscare. FORBES just released an article about James Patterson's top 10 novels. maximum ride is number 7.

The article really had nothing to do with maximum ride but it's just always a little bit of a fright when and The general public remembers that the series exists.

Link to the article:

Weird thing to note; but Hawk and city of the dead are not listed in the official Maximum rides series. I'm wondering if it's because he's co-authoring that? Or is it that they want to pretend that those books didn't exist?

I didn't read most of the article because it had nothing to do with maximum ride. But thanks for noticing I guess.

[akascow]

someone just tried to Um Actually me in a youtube comment "uh pretty sure bates motel is a reference to bates motel, not psycho" oh really? and where did psycho take place ? BATES MOTEL. and which movie came first ? PSYCHO..,.

[ilynpilled]

i wish jaime’s arc was never this heavily associated with the word redemption bc every single discussion about him revolves around that word and the baggage people have with it. i know george repeatedly used it when it concerns him, but i obv do not think that means his arc is as simple as going from bad to good in a linear fashion. but it is about transformation imo. if it was just about a perspective shift/recontextualization then why would george make him lose the thing that defined him in every way and allowed him to detach himself from everything? it is also not an elaborate trick and a subversion of “redemption arcs”, that is also a reductive and cynical read of it to me. his nuances are never discussed beyond “bad guy is good guy now” or “guy is tricking u he is still stagnant.” imo his motivations evolve, his relationship with the self evolves, his relationship with abstract concepts he craves such as honor, love & knighthood evolves, he evolves: he is one of the characters that is in constant motion, he is always on a journey, he is rarely at a standstill after he leaves the dungeon in acok. it makes me so sad that nothing new is said about him atp other than fandom going in circles about this one word, especially bc i think he is at a key transitional point again right now. i think his arc is about tearing down the “brave golden knight” image in every way until you are left with nothing but harsh reality and a broken cripple. it is tearing apart facades & personas. and then it is the story of what one can make of oneself then. it is about grueling moral dilemmas and the making of choices. and then finally it is about the idea of confrontation for someone who has always been incredibly afraid of it and repeatedly chose to run away inside instead. george deliberately made it so he can no longer do that. that must lead somewhere.