#from 2008-2012

[yuurei]

i want to back to 2012 when i would play feral heart and transformice all day.. scrolling through vocaloid and anime forums.. i was not made for modern social media

[bsptourist]

rp_highwayimprobable

created by Magnar Jenssen

[phantombegruvia]

SFTH MURDER MYSTERY - PART 2 [AMANDA POV]

MASTERPOST

*CW for somewhat graphic detail of a dead body and child death

[WAYNE MANOR LOBBY - 15:45]

A whole lot just happened, Amanda realises. This other guest, Tarquin apparently, just burst into the lobby and announced the death of both the event host and the butler. And now, they were locked inside the manor, all possible exits blocked off by metal shutters.

There was also Esmeralda who was an event in herself, she was so stunning and there was something so.. mystical about her - and Amanda was getting off track.. she should probably tune back into reality.

John Jacob was actively trying to pull the shutters up, Amanda watched him grow more and more frustrated when he continued to fail - he then kicked the shutters, cursing.

“I've seen death before,” Tarquin’s words were shaky, “a whole lot of it.. but this - this is something different.”

“What do you mean ‘different’?” Margaery asked, she and Rumpled had taken either side of Tarquin. Rumpled attempted to calm her down, while Margaery tried to pry answers out of him. The rest of the guests stood around, listening to the conversation. The majority of them were scared or shocked or both, and an odd few were.. not.

“I don't know..” Tarquin placed his head in his hands, “I lost a lot of my crew out on the sea,” (Amanda saw that Poppy perked up, almost unnoticeably), “I cared, obviously, but I knew the dangers of my, er, job. The only loss that struck me was the death of my beloved, Amanda.”

Amanda couldn't help but feel a little weirded out by the use of her name, despite knowing that he wasn't referring to her. Just hearing a man use her name after the word ‘beloved’ made her internally cringe a little.

“What happened to her?” Helter asked, hesitation evident.

Tarquin's breathing hitched ever so slightly, “she was murdered,” he paused, “and I'm pretty sure that Wayne and his butler were also murdered.”

A very uncomfortable silence fell over the group.

“Why do you think that?” Margaery asked.

[WAYNE MANOR OFFICE - 16:08]

Not everyone chose to come to see the murder, but when Esmeralda said she would go, Amanda, in a stupid act of desperation, agreed to go as well.

Tarquin had led the group of six to the office, offering a quick warning (“it's not pretty.”) before opening the door. And he was right, it certainly was not.

Bruce Wayne was slumped unceremoniously over his desk, the desk itself was covered in blood; the liquid oozing over the edge, creating a puddle on the floor. Amanda always saw the man in the news, and he looked so much more different in person - obviously, he was dead. His skin had grayed slightly, and his eyes had dulled. The most obvious change, and possibly the most striking, is also what seemed to be the cause of death - a batarang that was lodged deep in his skull.

“He was killed by Batman?” Amanda couldn't help but ask, it was more of a slip, really.

Margaery hummed, “it seems that way, never really trusted that bloke anyway. Why wear a mask? It just proves you've got something to hide. But I guess that's the whole point, isn't it.”

Juliet tilted her head slightly, “how long has he been dead? It doesn't look recent.”

“Ten days,” Esmeralda stated, “give or take.”

“And how would you know that?” Tarquin pointed, all his earlier panic now replaced with determination.

“Notice the discolouration?” She held up one of the corpse's hands, and showed the group the black splotch on the back of it, “it usually happens when a body has been left unattended after around ten days.” Esmeralda must've noticed the look that the group was giving her, and shrugged, “I've read many books on dead bodies.”

Rumpled squinted, “right,” disbelief evident in his tone. He walked over to the desk, and up picked a small sheet of blood covered paper, he adjusted his glasses, “it's some sort of photograph, seems to be of Ethel.” He muttered under his breath, “what kind of magic did he perform to make it colourised?”

Amanda peered over his shoulder, it was certainly Ethel, but it was blurry and you couldn't make out her face, just the large unsettling grin. Amanda did not trust that woman one bit.

She noticed that there were other photographs and picked another out of the blood (she made her disgust known, “ew.”). She was met with a picture of Tracy, one that reminded Amanda of images somebody would post on Facebook after getting drunk at a bachelorette party. “This one's of Tracy.”

[WAYNE MANOR KITCHEN - 16:36]

The butler's death didn't appear to be a murder. He seemed to have just collapsed on the floor of the kitchen. He was an old man, after all, and Wayne's death might have caused him to have a heart attack.

Esmeralda said that he had died ten days ago, too.

There was no sign of him being killed by someone else, no blood, no wound, no nothing.

Amanda had thought that it was quite sad he didn't manage to drink all his tea.

[WAYNE MANOR LOBBY - 16:49]

Amanda and her group of dead body checkers returned to the lobby where the other six guests were waiting for them to return.

“You're back,” Poppy had said, she seemed happy and relieved to see them, before looking confused, “where's Esmeralda?”

“She was right behind us,” Margaery stated the obvious, “I didn't even realise she was gone.”

Neither did Amanda, and it worried her.

“Bruce Wayne had been murdered,” Rumpled announced to the group, “we think that the Batman is a possible killer. We also believe that the butler had suffered a heart attack after seeing Wayne's body.”

Esmeralda had reappeared, swiping her thumb over her lips. Amanda tried not to think about the heat that rised to her cheeks when she saw it, and she hoped that her blush wasn't noticeable.

“Why do you think that Batman killed him?” Derek hesitantly asked, “he's a hero, he helps people. He doesn't kill.”

“Wayne had a batarang in his head,” Margaery plainly stated, "seems pretty incriminating to me."

“Who's Batman?” John Jacob raised his hand to ask.

“A Scottish hero!” Poppy said from next to him, “or, well not-hero, now.”

There was a loud THUD coming from up the upstairs banister. The guests looked up to see what made the noise.

A young boy, possibly twelve years old, climbed onto the banister rail, “hi!” He waved at the guests, shouting to them all, “I'm Dickie! I'm an acrobat and Bruce says I can perform for you tonight!” He stood on his tiptoes on the rail, holding his arms out either side of him, “though, I have nae seen him in a while, he does tend to disappear from time to time.”

Amanda was scared that the kid was going to fall off and plummet to the floor.

“You see that there?” He pointed to the chandelier just above them, “I'm gonna jump to it! You ready?”

Amanda was suddenly filled with panic, much like most other guests, and joined in the chorus of no’s and disagreements.

Dickie didn't listen, and instead jumped. He did a few flips in the air, which were admittedly impressive for a kid his age. He reached the golden chandelier, cheering.

This did earn a round of applause from the guests, but that was cut short when the chandelier suddenly jolted, before fully coming off of the ceiling.

It happened in slow motion. The kid released the chandelier, but it was too late, his body made a sickening crack when it made contact with the floor. To make things worse, the bottom of the chandelier was pointed sharply, and it impaled his chest.

"Oh good, I found him a little annoying anyway," Juliet broke the silence that followed.

part 1 << part 2 >> part 3 MASTERPOST

[storm-driver]

doing a social experiment poll for KH circles. answer to the best of your ability via the tags/replies

Including the DLC, did you like Kingdom Hearts 3's story, gameplay, both or neither?

Then, what YEAR (or window of time) did you get into Kingdom Hearts as a franchise and genuinely start playing through the games?

[dessi1998]

Lamine Yamal - youngest player this Euro and youngest winner on a Euro at 17 years and 1 day

[notonlymice]

Sara x Shaun au

[violenceparty]

Some old Kenny pics (feat. Ibushi and Michael Nakazawa) from Nakazawa's blog :]

[jackfrostimposter]

genuinely why is there so much misinformation about the guardians of childhood book series?

[missruslana]

Merlin 2008-2012

[batsplat]

kind of recently clocked that marc took caseys honda seat coming into 2013 (not saying he didn’t deserve a factory seat immediately bc he obviously did, kid went and podiumed his first and won his second ever race on that bike but it somehow never crossed my mind and it’s kind of insane to imagine now that a rookie would get it) and i was wondering if there was something To Know about that mid to end 2012 season, about vale back to yamaha and casey retiring and casey and danis teammateship and how dani reacted to marc getting that seat etc i love love love your rambles so if you got thoughts please share?

y'know what. let's do this one with bullet points

at the start of 2012, retirement rumours were swirling around two riders. one was casey stoner.... the other was valentino rossi

valentino was entering year two of a miserable stint at ducati, trapped on a bike that was *checks notes* shit and that was still several years away from making the kinds of improvements that could make it championship-winning machinery in anyone's hands (remember, even casey wasn't anywhere close to fighting for the title in 2010). it had also been a rough couple of years injury-wise for valentino, with 2010 bringing the shoulder injury courtesy of a motocross accident, followed by him breaking the leg at mugello. the painful shoulder problems persisted even upon his return from the leg injury, not exactly helped by his decision to delay shoulder surgery until the end of the year, and he remained hampered in 2011 while he was trying to adapt to the new bike

probably the main reason for the retirement rumours, however, was the death of simoncelli in an accident valentino had been involved in. the rumours basically started the day after the accident, and did not stop even when he showed up at valencia and raced (for about one corner until he was caught up in an ugly multi-rider pile up... kinda set off by dovi but anyways)

the rumours persisted in 2012. valentino became increasingly irritable about them.... meant that both valentino and casey were going into round three at estoril having to address the retirement talk. casey denied that he was planning to retire in the estoril pre-event presser (and he'd already kinda hinted to honda he was ready to sign a new contract)

this all led to some pretty silly drama, where the journalists were less than impressed when casey did announce his retirement two weeks later at le mans and casey went 'well I hadn't decided to retire yet back then!'

anyway, more important is the retirement announcement itself. casey made a statement at the very start of the le mans presser. here's the text:

he was the championship leader at this point, and the favourite to defend his title. of course he took a bunch of questions at the presser about the announcement, and cited several other reasons for his decision to retire, like people's reactions to his mystery illness in 2009, or too many people criticising the current racing being boring, or how they let CRT riders into parc fermé (let's not get into that)

now it's important to note that this was round four. which meant that the entire rider market was about to be spiced up... so let's backtrack a bit and talk silly season: historical edition!

okay, so marc could have feasibly moved up to motogp a year earlier, and for a large chunk of 2011 there was pretty frenzied speculation he was going to do exactly that. in october, between the phillip island and sepang rounds (where he had the crash that gave him diplopia and prematurely ended both his season and his championship bid), he finally announced he was going to stay in moto2

so, in late 2011, speculation was already of course starting for what the grid would look like in 2013, with a lot of big name contracts expiring at the end of 2012. both factory yamahas, hondas, ducatis, amongst others... you know how it goes. the expectation was broadly that casey would stick with honda and dani would be protected for at least another year by the rookie rule (more on that in a second), that jorge would stick with yamaha and... well. at this point, it was plausible valentino might sign at least a one year contract extension with ducati, with just enough glimmers of progress and signs that things might be headed in the right direction for him to want to continue building that project up

early 2012, around the time of the first race, and actually it's looking plausible that none of the six big factory seats are going to be changing hands. jorge and casey seemed the most certain ones, valentino too committed to ducati, and dani likely to sign a one year deal until marc swoops in at the end of 2013 to take his place

then casey announces his retirement, and silly season properly kicks off

first order of priority is of course the vacant repsol honda seat. now, the main thing stopping marc from getting that repsol honda seat was never actually going to be a lack of space - it was the 'rookie rule'. in 2010, a rule was introduced to stop rookies from joining the factory team. the idea was basically to help out satellite teams by giving them the chance to house a young star rider, give them publicity and results and so on (face it, how much would any of us be talking about tech3 this year without the pedro acosta factor?)

this was likely never to really work like it was supposed to, because if you're one of the factories, you can basically set up... teams that are only very theoretically 'independent'. another factory team in all but name. remember how valentino technically won his first title at a satellite team? well, that was essentially a shell team set up as a way to have somewhere to put valentino for two years while repsol honda was full. not the same team (and indeed, valentino and jb did sometimes look over at the chaos at repsol and go. good lord. what's going on there) but full factory support

in spring 2012, dorna was still adamant this rule would remain in place:

should also help explain why the general reaction to suzuki suddenly pulling out in 2022 was 'shocked but not that shocked' lol

but of course by mid-2012 this rule was facing another serious test: where do you put marc marquez, especially with this vacant repsol honda seat just sitting there? now, the valentino model did seem like a reasonable one in this situation, where you put him into an existing satellite team with heavy factory backing or even just create a new one to house him. which is something valentino himself talked about:

except, it wasn't quite that straightforward, because from 2013 onward manufacturers were limited to supplying bikes for four riders, two in a factory team and two in satellites - so you'd have to take away one of the bikes from the existing two honda satellite teams, gresini or lcr

one of the reasons why putting him in one of the existing satellite teams was a bit of an issue was that he was already backed by repsol, which could have caused sponsorship conflicts if he'd been housed with one of those other teams. but also, by this point ezpeleta was sounding rather less committed to the whole thing. from june 2012:

which.

my man

if you KNOW that the most prominent rookies can be put into shell satellites anyway and you are openly joking about it then WHAT was the POINT of any of this

by the end of the month, they gave up on the whole thing. as it happens, it wasn't even repsol honda who asked for the rule to be dropped - it was the satellite honda teams who were like 'yeah we don't actually want this kid for our team, way too stressful to make this all work for a single year before losing him anyway'

not a universally popular decision, it has to be said

it's quite likely that if casey had stayed and the rookie rule had still been dropped that hrc would have immediately taken in marc and not renewed dani's contract, which would have been a wee bit awkward given dani's late season form, but. you know. so it goes. anyway honda didn't end up having to make any tough calls

about two weeks after the rookie rule is dropped, hrc announces the two year contract with marc

by this point, valentino has had another miserable start to the season with ducati, save for a fun little wet podium at le mans - you know, the race where casey announced his retirement... they had their last ever duel there, with valentino snatching second place from casey on the last lap

photo abbove not representative of the general tone they used to discuss each other in that time period

anyhow, these rare bright spots weren't going to be enough for valentino

"There was a lot of expectation from me and from Ducati to win, but unfortunately I didn't have a good feeling with the bike, especially with the front," he said some years later. "When you are in that situation it's very difficult because you lose motivation and you lose the joy of going racing. When you start the weekend you are already in a negative way, so it's difficult, because if you don't have fun on the bike everything becomes heavier: leaving your home, all the travelling, speaking with journalists, everything. Also it becomes difficult to sleep. You are in a tunnel. When I was with Ducati I thought about stopping many times, but in the end it was a very good decision not to give up. Because if you stop and you don't have a bike then it's very easy to find yourself out of the business." - from Oxley's 'Valentino Rossi: All His Races'

he began openly talking about a return to yamaha in 2012 to replace the underperforming ben spies (though as late as july, publicly he was still talking up the chances of him sticking with ducati)... which was not a prospect welcomed by all in the factory - who saw his initial move to ducati as displaying a lack of loyalty. there was also of course the issue of yamaha wanting to avoid a repeat in the dramatics with jorge, which was certainly a topic in the negotiations. valentino's new deal with yamaha was eventually announced in august

so yes, obviously pretty qualified enthusiasm from jorge's side. it helped that it was made clear that, at the start of 2013, this was very much jorge's team, something which valentino had to work to change as a result of his level of performance (after 2013)

which left dovi to take the ducati factory seat. though he too maybe had to do a little bit of... smoothing over past comments in the negotiation process:

and that's that! there was a brief period in which honda and valentino rumours were a thing... always unlikely, given the long-standing mutual animosity there, and valentino claims he was never in contact with them. dani's contract was signed when marc's was, so that put an end to that. there was also serious speculation jorge would take casey's seat at honda, which was ended by him signing for another two years at yamaha in june. everyone sorted

dani and casey had a pretty cordial teammate relationship - though of course by this point it was already no longer really a team organised around dani as it had been in the late noughties. from late 2011 (shortly before simoncelli's passing):

and from the mind games post:

he also says the following in that passage: "some days [dani] beat us but to be honest I always felt like I had the measure of him over the course of a season"

more to be said about that relationship, of course, but it was basically harmonious on both sides, and they parted on good terms. as for dani's response to marc's signing, it wasn't like he was in a place within the team to complain too much - though his position was strengthened by his late 2012 form, where he won six of the last eight races. both of them mostly just stick to saying the standard respectful pr stuff about each other

though this is pretty funny in retrospect:

"I know nothing about pedrosa's goals" my man I think you can probably guess

[le-chevalier-au-lion]

2008-2013 races are just a mix of julià márquez, emilio alzamora, aki ajo and santi hernández having a dad-off over this baby-faced increasingly demonic child

[oh-meow-swirls]

the yo-kai watch -> persona hyperfixation pipeline feels weirdly logical but i can't really put a finger on why tbh. might just be me being sick idk-

[nofuneralplease]

it’s still so funny that while i knew taking back sunday and liked the tunes i heard, i knew nothing about them and just shuffled through their songs on a playlist sometimes… until i saw them at riot fest in 2022. the band was phenomenal, it was a religious experience.

but i saw john nolan and was bewitched. my entire life derailed. i lost my fucking mind because of a guy i could barely see from the middle of this massive crowd.

and i was right.

[climbdraws]

skinny jeans are out baggy jeans are in WRONG. wait 5 years and skinny jeans will be relevant again

[cringekind]

I'm pretty solidly gen z but millennials in the late 2000s early 2010s knew what they were doing with indie music!!! like obviously it's nostalgic for me because I was like 10 when some of these songs came out but like yall were so right electric feel by mgmt IS one of the best songs ever. I'm listening to cough syrup next fingers crossed it makes me so nostalgic I throw up !!!

[ohmuqueen]