#it just wasn't the same without him

[livelovecaliforniadreams]

#Like Father Like Daughter

[duchessripper]

okay but now i need him again in the next War Games cause imagine:

Randy Orton pacing inside the cage as the final entrant, leering down at the ring with his predator eyes, the camera cuts to him every so often, he rattles the bars of the cage tauntingly. When it's his time to enter, the opposing team freezes and panicking tries to plan out what to do as he stalks down the aisle, not rushing, letting the anticipation and terror build. And then when he enters? C A R N A G E.

The viper returned and showed everyone why he is still the apex predator

[not-kayvalencourt]

Let's all put on our thinking caps and see that there is no actual evidence that iskall didn't do anything but his own word. There is, however, massive amounts of evidence that he did.

If you follow me and support iskall (or stress), unfollow me. The bullshit tantrum he just had and the amount of people there are supporting him is actually disgusting. If you genuinely believe him, you need to look up manipulation tactics. He is going to use his fame to get people to trust him, just like he did to his victims.

[lovecolibri]

Okay, but I am *obsessed* with these FaceTime calls because we have talked a lot about the Abby parallels/contrasts with Eddie leaving but still keeping in constant contact, but have we talked about the Shannon parallels/contrasts???

Like, we see a video call in Eddie begins where Shannon basically uses Chris to get Eddie on the call so she can pick a fight (forcing Chris into the middle of it) about something she KNOWS Eddie does not have the capacity to sit and discuss with her at the moment. Like, he's not at an office job dodging her calls and coming home late so they can't talk, he's literally in an active war zone and flying off to rescue injured soldiers and he is STILL trying to do the video call while being berated for being a bad dad and partner and feeling like a failure.

Contrast that with Buck being a calm, steady, reassuring presence every time Eddie reaches out, and affirms that Eddie can trust his instincts on what to do with his own son! He gives Eddie the support Eddie needs, and we don't see Eddie being forced into anything, or being caught at inconvenient times because they are communicating so clearly and talking whenever they can and working things out together!

It's just such a clear contrast to everything BOTH of them are used to from their previous partners and so full of love and support and having each other's backs like.....it's happening! It's happening on our screens before our eyes!

[d8tl55c]

oh boy !! ! ! ! !!! ! thANK y0u all for the kind words on my last art posts. you all get it and i was/still am so happy about it

as promised, here's some close-ups of the comic for image quality's sake, and other screenshots i rescued from the community whiteboard (and something else)

first up another sketch of mystery gender-ambiguous being. (please send me more name ideas for them if you got one- i like to hear em! (reminder it's the side character that appeared for <10 seconds in AvM Ep. 30))

a few fav scenes

emotional support cwab

they weren't meant for this purpose exactly, but i do have countless "fluffy sticks" loose in my notes and homework sheets from the school years.

papery critter.

even when i wasn't confident in fur or feathers, they helped me practice posing and create some satisfying gradients/flowing poses. (im a sucker for good tail poses) (oh yay! i found a good pic...)

and finally, little sneak peak for you for reading so far ;3

i realized that whiteboardfox is pretty great for my working needs. simple and to the point and all. feels nice with the mouse and the tablet.

so i started hashing out a big project idea just to see if it holds up and

[

several hours later ...

]

oh

oh man

it's a little bigger than i expected

<next>

[brionysea]

when max is depressed we know something's wrong because lucas says with his words that he knows something's wrong but when mike is depressed we don't think anything of it because will's right next to him rolling his eyes about how stupid straight people are

[satoruxx]

have to remind myself that a big chunk of jjk fans will never be able to accept the fact that their favs were loved by multiple people and loved multiple people …

[amelikos]

Day 47 of being positively shook at the bit of info revealed at the end of HZ092.

[gxlden-angels]

You know the Bible does go kinda hard when you start to read it like a very rough draft of a Percy Jackson-like novel with too much world-building cause there was absolutely no reason for gayboy Jesus to do all that shit

[batsplat]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

and more on the shift marc brought about:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[creative-hanyou-girl]

You guys know on how InuYasha, the few times he talks about it, badmouths his father and says he doesn't care to avenge his death when he battles Ryukoltsei?

I wonder if InuYasha starts to regret his mindset towards his father once he himself becomes a father. Or at the very least, he starts to understand his father better. Especially if you want to go by the Movie 2 canon where part of Toga's death was from protecting InuYasha and his mom.

Just makes me wonder if InuYasha looks at Moroha or any of his other children and has the thought that it'd break his heart if any of his kids felt resentment towards him like he felt for his own father, especially when everything he ever does is to protect them. And I wonder if it makes InuYasha start to look at his father's memory differently, now that he's a parent himself and would do anything and everything to protect his kids, even if it meant dying and leaving them without a father.

Not that he'd go and try to get himself killed, as he wants to actually be alive so they don't have to grow up like he did, but you know he'd sacrifice himself if it meant his children could live, just like his father did for him (according to movie 2).

I don't know, I just wonder if InuYasha starts to ever regret the way he looked at his father's memory back when he was a teen once he becomes a father to Moroha and starts to understand his father's actions as a parent now that he himself is a parent. Ya know what I mean?

[bitchapalooza]

Zoro has never had coffee before and after Zoro stayed up the entire night turning the only bathroom on the Merry into a stink bomb, Robin will never offer to share her coffee with anyone ever again even if they know they can handle it

[shythalia]

Arcane fans stop spreading & presenting fan theories (that hold very little water) as actual facts to newcomers challenge:

IMPOSSIBLE

[librarisxng]

i miss dabin i hope he's living his best life.

[v1-kisser]

Why are people in the ult rakill fandom fucking allergic to tagging ga bv1el specifically. Starting to pmo for real

[teddybeartoji]

can't stop thinking abt how much my grandma would've loved toji.....