#this is going to make sense to literally nobody is it?

[creature-wizard]

Here are some tips for appropriate behavior as an ally:

99% of the time, you should not talk about yourself (like mentioning things you've done or how something makes you feel) on somebody else's post. There are a few exceptions (like a personal anecdote that strengthens OP's point), but usually it's inappropriate.

You might see a post talking about a thing and feel compelled to talk about another thing it reminds you of or feels adjacent to. Sometimes people don't mind this, but it's also highly contextual and depends on the person you're responding to. Usually, it's considered inappropriate behavior.

When in doubt, add nothing and only use filing tags. Remember, you can always make your own post or vent in a private journal.

Learn to manage your own feelings and work through them in appropriate settings. Practice mindfulness, try journaling, talk to your friends, a therapist, your priest, whatever. People advocating for their rights have a lot to do and worry about, it's not reasonable to expect them to manage your feelings or listen to your confessions.

It takes time to learn how to talk about issues with all of the depth and nuance they deserve. Trying to be a teacher after a few weeks of research is a bad idea. If you're new and not well-read, focus on boosting other people's stuff.

Research stuff for yourself as much as you can. There are some people who will be happy to explain things for you, but lots of people are tired and nobody likes repeating the same 101 stuff forever. Searching DuckDuckGo for simple phrases like "systemic racism" or "systemic transphobia" are good places to start.

Go read Information Literacy Basics 101 while you're at it, to improve your research game.

Everybody advocating for their rights is tired and stressed out to some degree. Don't take it personally if they're short with you, and refrain from snapping back. Yes, even if you think they're wrong.

You should generally trust oppressed people when they talk about their own personal experiences, but you don't have to take literally everything they tell you at face value. Distinguishing between people talking about their own experiences and the narratives they use to explain and makes sense of those experiences is a crucial skill.

Posts generalizing about a privileged class are not inherently posts demonizing a privileged class. "All men want to rape" is demonization, "cis men are responsible for most rape" is not. Learn to distinguish between them and don't react to the latter as if it's the former. Bend like a reed in the wind and let it pass over you and through you etc.

Feeling uncomfortable is to be expected, and you have to get used to it. You will hear a lot of things that reframe a lot of things you took for granted in a very negative way. That said - you need to be able to distinguish between feeling uncomfortable and accumulating actual psychological damage. If you start feeling like you're irreparably broken or like you deserve to be punished for having privilege, that's unhealthy.

Acknowledging systemic oppression and the need to dismantle it doesn't mean you need to adopt an us vs. them mentality. In fact, that kind of mentality is unhealthy and harmful. Watch out for that because it can sneak up on you.

No matter what anyone tells you, performatively traumatizing yourself (such as by viewing gory pictures) is not activism. See Bellingcat's article How to Maintain Mental Hygiene as an Open Source Researcher.

You might be tempted to share gory photos because you think it'll get more attention and make people care more. However, sharing photos of murder victims is widely considered disrespectful and traumatizing people will not make them better activists.

This is what I've got right now; additions are welcome.

[presidentofthelipglossclub]

one thing i wish for in pnf is baljeet having a desi friend group. he only started being friends with the main group after s1 began, they weren't close before. so who were his friends before? the desi kids he grew up around because his family is very clearly still involved with their traditional culture and that includes fostering close relationships! i refuse to believe he didn't have any friends because that's just not how desis work, the desi community in any given area is very much intertwined. at the very least he has a bunch of family friends/relatives who all get together very frequently at parties and whatnot. even if they aren't "proper" friends i know he has a desi peer group hidden away somewhere.

also you're telling me a kid THAT desi didn't have ANY desi friends? bullshit.

[withluvvenus]

　　　　

　　　　❝ GOD 𝓕ORBID 　 A GIRL HAS PASSION ❞

　you're literally o͟b͟s͟e͟s͟s͟e͟d͟ with a guy who you have never met . 　　　UGH . so what ?! 　 an insight on venus's fan DR

　

　

　

　

　

　

　　✶　　WHO IS ﹫LUCKYGIRLSYNDROME ?!

　　　　well truth be told ? that username belongs to the one and only , the most delusional girl ever on the face of the internet , venus . yep , the girl who is also known as ' hamzah's little sister ' or ' one of the slushynoobz friends ' . to popular belief , hamzah and venus aren't actually biologically related , venus is still the eldest daughter and the sister of a younger brother who IS blood related . people just like to confuse the two with a sibling bond because that's what they used as a defense line when people started to ship them . gross ! venus sees hamzah as the elder brother she never got , and hamzah only sees the girl as his little sister that he must annoy every single day or else the world might end .

　　　　but who else is she , if not the people who make up her mosaic of humanity ? she's an addictive lovergirl who believes in the good of the world and the axis that the earth spins on is made up of it's own sunlight energy . how is she going to prove that ? no idea ! other than that , venus is a teenage girl stuck in a twenty year old woman's body . she still obsesses , fantasizes , and daydreams like a high schooler in the middle of her physics class would do if there was a clear window nearby . venus never had empathy for anything science related , but she has empathy for everything else in the universe . someone hurt her ? " oh , what if they're going through something ? " somebody insulted her ? " they're probably having a bad day . " it's awful sometimes , being like her . thank god she's not like this 24/7 ! sometimes she has those days where she's extra mad , has more rage in her voice than any boxer before their match could even try to possess.

　　　　and where does she take this rage out on ? her podcast , of course !

　

　　✶　　SHE'S SOCIAL & SHE'S A PODCASTER !

　　　　a walking podcast is what they used to call her when she was in ninth grade , the first year of high school in the states . her friends , her classmates , or anyone who were graced by her thoughts that are usually stored in her trusty journal told her to start a podcast . why ? because she talked a lot . too much even , some of her teachers admitted . so that's what she did , she started a podcast just as a ' passion project ' in the summer in which it transitions from chill to absolute chaos , also known as the summer between sophomore year and junior year of high school . the project didn't turn out so well , as she slowly started to descend into a madness that only juniors understood . she was too busy with SATs and ACTs , APs and boy crushes , that she completely forgot about her one place where she could rant happily .

　　　　yet , she has a podcast still . why ? because she got bored one day . got bored so badly that she bought herself a mic and recorded in her car . it was a whole segment of nonsense , in her head , nothing was making sense . but when the words disappeared into thin air , and she rewinded the audio and listened , there was a smile on her face nonetheless . and that , dear lucky clovers , is where luckygirlsyndrome started , the podcast . at first , she didn't get a lot of views on youtube and listens on spotify , but slowly her popularity sky rocketed when she first appeared in a slushy noobz video . venus had been friends with mandy , martin's girlfriend , for a while , somehow . the friendship was one of those in which nobody remembers where it started from . however , venus flew to toronto the summer she graduated , spent her whole summer with mandy and the others , and became friends with them . now the comment sections searches for her in every video just because of the vibe she had bought .

　

　　✶　　DELUSIONALGIRLSYNDROME

　　　　oh she has a crush alright , a big crush , like one that almost any girl has felt throughout the span of her life . this one is ungodly , though . she always talks about him in her podcast episodes , slips his name into the cracks of conversations . what ? like he's gonna watch a podcast like her's ?

　　　　one of the sturniolo triplets , the middle one to be exact , is the one she has had the biggest crush since her senior year of high school . she found one of their videos , watched it all the way through , but didn't register a single word that was said because her eyes were on him the whole time and her ears had blocked out everything else . she had to rewatch the video , force herself to look away . she laughed , whole heartedly . her final thoughts ? they were funny , especially nick . she thought she was just like chris . and oh boy , she had developed a ' celebrity ' crush on matt , alright . she never grew out of it , no matter how often she watched their videos or the gap in which she had grown too busy and too bored . but he was still present , somewhere in the back of her mind . now she's a college dropout because her podcast is making numbers and she's living the real influencer life . but one things for certain , matt sturniolo will just stay as her celebrity crush .

　　　　right ?

　　　　　　　　　　　　　 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵𝗹𝘂𝘃 ✶ 𝘃𝗲𝗻𝘂𝘀

[justnamedjosie]

i'm honestly so relieved to see so many people actively defending ragatha due to the latest episode.

after watching ep 5 i immediately had the feeling people were going to hop on the ragatha hate train, she's a well written female character who has normal human flaws just like the rest of the members of the circus, she slips up and says something insensitive to jax about whatever incident that caused jax to lose his friend (which by the end of the episode she owns up too and apologizes for by the way), yet people saw this and instead of being like "wow this character made a mistake and apologized for said mistake because nobody is perfect and everyone slips up and says something mean every now then, wow she's such a real and complex character!". we got "she's the devil incarnate".

like please get me to understand why you guys HATE this girl, these fans are literally repeating the same behavior that they showed towards pomni and gangle. it's a very uncomfortable pattern i'm seeing in this fandom of female characters being ripped to shreds for simply having flaws, like any well written character would have. and then seeing the male characters (mainly jax obviously, though i have seen the same behavior with caine a bit) be excused of literally any fault of their actions because of whatever reason they can pull out their asses at any given moment.

like no, jax shouldn't be justified or in any way excused for his behavior towards the other members just because he has issues. if that's the way these fans think then i'm honestly surprised they don't give ragatha the same treatment. like i'm not saying that any of the characters shouldn't be held accountable for their mistakes just because they have problems, hell no. i'm saying after learning that ragatha grew up with an absolutely awful mother, which would definitely explain her people pleasing behavior towards everyone, that those fans would be a lot more empathetic towards her, but i guess not.

i truly don't understand. like i love jax as much as the next person, but i can acknowledge that he's not a good person and his treatment of the others is wrong, no matter what he's internally dealing with. his issues that are slowly being revealed to us EXPLAINS his behavior, but absolutely doesn't excuse it. so it truly boggles my mind that ragatha can make these mistakes (which are so much smaller than what jax has done to others) and she's immediately deemed horrible and unforgivable. make it make sense.

at best it's simple favoritism over their favorite character that can do no wrong in their eyes (which in the process they completely mischaracterize them) and at worst it's blatant misogyny. i truly don't know what else could explain the influx of hate towards ragatha. it's okay if you don't like ragatha, not everyone will like the same character. it only gets frustrating (to me at least) when these people hate a character for something that isn't true in the slightest and that they completely made up.

the silver lining to come out of this is personally i've seen more ragatha defenders than these fans. i'm glad there are people who actually understand her character and can appreciate how well written she is! ragatha has made her way into being one of my favs on the show, and i can't wait to see where her character will go from here.

(also this isn't supposed to be a jax hate post or anything, like i said i love jax. i just really dislike how the fans have been treating him and by proxy ragatha as well.)

[maxdibert]

There’s a particularly curious —and frankly repugnant— narrative in how Marauders stans and/or snaters construct the figure of James Potter in contrast to Severus Snape. And it’s not just a matter of personal preference or who they find more attractive or interesting. It’s an ideological construction, deeply shaped by a neoliberal, superficial, and classist lens that absolutely needs to be dissected.

Because it’s no coincidence that James is praised for “choosing the right side” from the beginning, as if that automatically made him a heroic figure, a holy redeemer of the wizarding world. The problem isn’t acknowledging that he made a good decision (of course he did, no one’s denying that). The problem is building an epic narrative around a decision that, from a class-conscious perspective, was literally the bare minimum. Are we seriously holding up as a moral paragon a rich kid, pureblood, raised with every opportunity in life, just because he didn’t become a bigot? Is that what heroism has been reduced to? Not becoming a complete psychopath when you have every means, every support system, every privilege to not become one? When you have a family actively encouraging you to do the right thing?

It’s like clapping for a billionaire who throws pocket change at a cancer charity or makes a tweet saying “racism is bad.” That’s not virtue, that’s marketing. They’re not risking anything, they’re not questioning the system that privileges them, they’re not redistributing even a gram of power. Worse still, they continue living comfortably on top of the corpses the system leaves behind. So what the fuck is the point of their “goodness”?

It’s the same with James. No one ever demands anything of him because he fits the mold of the perfect hero: rich, popular, brave, and eventually a martyr. But this same little shit used his social capital to publicly, continuously, and systematically humiliate another student, with the full complacency of the school staff. And that wasn’t a childish prank. That was an exercise of power. Of dominance. Of classism. Because the bullying James inflicted wasn’t innocent: it was vertical. It came from a position of privilege, directed at a poor, weird, socially outcast kid who had no one.

But of course, nobody talks about that. Just like nobody talks about how utterly disgusting it is to justify that kind of structural, childhood violence with excuses like “Snape insulted Lily” or “Snape was going to be a Death Eater.” As if that somehow justified publicly stripping someone, ridiculing them, psychologically crushing them from the age of twelve. That kind of defense mirrors the logic used to justify state repression, “he must’ve done something.” It’s fascism with a fresh coat of paint.

And on the other side, we have Severus. The kid who had everything against him. Who came from a broken home, with no resources, no affection, a miserable childhood. Who, like so many adolescents in similar situations, clung to the only thing that gave him a sense of identity, belonging, and power: an extremist group that offered him a narrative of strength when the world treated him like garbage. Was it the wrong decision? Absolutely. But it was a socially understandable one. And more importantly, Severus didn’t stay there. He broke away. He risked his life. He spied for the resistance. He lived under constant threat of death for years. He betrayed those who had ideologically seduced him, and he did it not for public redemption or forgiveness, but for love, guilt, and political commitment.

That transformation is infinitely more courageous and valuable than the lukewarm “right choice” made by someone who already had everything handed to him. Because it’s harder to change when you’ve got nothing. Because it takes real courage to act without a safety net. And because, unlike James, Severus was never rewarded for his fight. The “good” guys despised him, the “bad” guys hated him, the students feared him. He died alone, like so many real-world martyrs, with no statue, no golden plaque, no glorious narrative.

So no, defending James Potter is not “progressive.” It’s not the woke gesture some people think it is. It’s a half-baked apology for privilege. It’s what happens when you’re taught that good and evil are just personal choices, entirely detached from any kind of social analysis. It’s what happens when you’ve never read a single fucking line of the Frankfurt School and you believe power is a matter of “personal values” instead of systems.

And it disgusts me. I’m disgusted by the superficiality with which people praise those who never had to struggle, just for doing the bare minimum. I’m disgusted by the classism disguised as “adolescent heroism.” And I’m even more disgusted by the way people vilify those who did make mistakes, but then did what so few are brave enough to do: change.

Because, at the end of the day, true courage doesn’t lie in being born good. True courage is in facing your own errors, owning them, and doing what it takes to never repeat them, even if it costs you your life. And that, my friends, was not James Potter.

That was Severus Snape.

[tasty-soda-pop]

Everyone theorizing that "Oh gangle will abstract" "Oh ragatha will abstract" You're saying that cause those are the eps we've gotten. You're forgetting who the next episode is supposed to center on. Ep6 is supposedly Jax's episode, and if ep5 was really the silly before the storm, that means next episode is THE STORM, or the start of it at least and I know for a fact that it landing on Jax's ep not after means something. Jax is the storm, and I've known since the beginning that something huge would happen with Jax, because he's the one character kept ENTIRELY SECRET, and I get it that being cagey is just sort of his personality, but it's not just that, glitch and gooseworx have always been cagey ABOUT JAX, even what small info we did get before now goose has said could just be a lie. I've always thought they had to be keeping him such a massive secret for a reason, its because someone massive will happen with him and telling us literally anything before now would destroy that surprise punch the story is gonna deliver. We just finnaly got something on him sure, but that still feels like breadcrumbs, we dont get the full story, not even close. So now with all of that, what if it's Jax who abstracts? Or nobody abstracts because might I remind you we're still not close to the final episode? But what if Jax breaks as we've been seeing a trend of characters breaking in their own ways during their episodes? And what if Jax has to be as secret as possible cause he'll break in bigger way than what we've seen? I think its entirely possible, and honestly I think we've been seeing him crack ever so slightly since ep4 ironically. Those are just my thoughts based on how narratives sorta go, like dont reveal your hand too soon type.

And before you bring up the cake and bowling ball thing I have no clue where y'all got the idea that either of those meant anything crazy symbolic like that, I get this show adds details that get reveals in later episodes but that felt very random to pull from, like you're looking at the wrong frames. Plus killing off a main character before the finale doesn't really make much sense, but lots of theories don't make sense looking back.

[egophiliac]

So.... what are your thoughts on Ace's UM, if you haven't been asked this already?

sneaky magic for the sneakiest boy

no but really, I think it fits him really well! I had thought his UM would probably involve something kinda sleight-of-handy or pickpockety! and I looooved that it made such a nice loop-around back to episode 1. ❤️ I was. kind of half-expecting him to just run out and punch Riddle in the nose again. but instead this time 'twas he who offed the queen's head! it was great! and he did it while stone-cold terrified out of his mind! because Ace is the only remotely normal or well-adjusted person at NRC and therefore the only one who is like "we're going to literally die, this is super effed up". but he did it anyway!!!! I AM SO PROUD

[average-hua-cheng-fan]

another reason i think that xie lian felt an instant connection on the ox cart is because he and hua cheng both grew up in xianle.

there are maybe 4 people still alive that grew up in that culture. based on my own experience, you can pick up on things like accent, cadence, references, and humor that suggest a person is from the same place as you without consciously noticing it. that sense of comfort and similarity probably played into their instant chemistry.

[woefulstar]

sometimes id read a marauders fanfic with Indian james and wish i didn't understand hindi

[qoldenskies]

48, 68, and 79 for the fanfic writing asks. :]

48. Who is your favorite character to write for?  Has this changed since you’ve started writing for that fandom?

forever donnie (he stuck out to me the SECOND i watched the show and has not left my brain)... but i actually find raph second easiest to write pov for, i wanna get into the meat of him at some point because he's really interesting and surprisingly unexplored compared to the other three!!! even though he ends up showing no matter what i do ive been a little hesitant to do anything super duper leo-centric out of spite and mikey is FOREVER THE HARDEST TO WRITE OUT OF THE FOUR OF THEM AUGGHHHH SHAKES HIM!!!! love him though

68. Are there any fics that influenced you to write the way you do?

shout out to firefight for getting me to write again <3 unmaking by corvidown is also a personal favorite of mine, i HIGHLY recommend it

79. Do you have any writing advice you want to share?

im mostly intuition when it comes to writing and not very technical about it (which is my folly, i need to get better at going back and mastering the basics) but what i CAN say is that, from experience, if your pacing seems way too fast there is a very good chance that's just you. if youre like me youll probably skim instinctively because you already know whats on the page (which is why its recommended to read out loud when editing because its easy to skip over mistakes), but for most readers its going to feel a lot longer than it is!!

like genuinely with both caged lungs and coming undone im still like "wow i need to pad this out with more scenes" but so many people sing my praises about pacing, and thinking that things are well-rounded and detailed, and im like... Huh. i genuinely considered adding like 6 more scenes to coming undone and had to literally stop myself because i was going to Die if i did that (i actually think the uhhh. third to last scene? the last mikey one. is way too fast still, id go back and rewrite it if i could)

oh also i recommend character bibles! character bibles are always good, i like writing sample dialogue and keeping track of little vocal quirks/body language things (it also helps me pick out and avoid things that get really deeply rooted in fanon when theyre kind of frustratingly off the mark, although i do have a couple of headcanons that remain consistent across fics like the painkiller thing Because i use it for EVIL!!!!!!). and when i feel like im slipping ill go back and rewatch some episodes to make sure i can HEAR it in their voices

i cant say much about how i do symbolism/parallels/motifs which ive heard a lot of praise about, i keep a list of ideas i have and somehow it turns into something coherent (i literally type "AHAHAHA FUCKKKK IM A GENIUS" in my notes when i get a good idea) i dont even remember where the canary thing came from but now its my thing. help girl

[cinnabeat]

i cant believe theres actual people out there that complain that people dont die enough in kh?? like yeah i will concede its kind of annoying when someone you thought was dead is actually alive the whole time but like i also have the ability to acknowledge that kh is just not that kind of story??

[bacchuschucklefuck]

just realized after sophomore year's article class swap riz would 100% have assassins after him

[lunarrolls]

let me make it so abundantly clear right now that taking the shard was a fucking amazing choice. obviously not from a logical standpoint, they were warned against doing that like eight billion times, but it was SUCH a good move narratively holy shit. i think ashton would have given it up to fearne if she wanted it, but she didn’t, and oh my god did they want it. they have been recklessly throwing themself into answers this entire time. they threw themself into a fucking volcano without any hesitation to get that shard. the fact that it made them feel anything at all? of COURSE they were going to grab it. he told evontra’vir that he was owed power. nobody else was going to give it to him, from his pov, so he took it himself. also it was fucking hilarious how bad of an idea it was. literally just the worst possible thing you could have done. but also it made total sense, i love it, taliesin jaffe what the actual fuck, i owe you my life, aabria iyengar i owe you my life more,

[opens-up-4-nobody]

...

[cywscross]

You just don't think antis are a problem because they're not in your fandoms. Once they start making posts with thousands of likes accusing you of being a pedophile and threatening to find out where you live and work so they can report your pedophilic tendencies because you ship teenagers (shounen characters), you'll start caring very quickly. Not in favour of that happening to you? Cool, you're a proshipper.

The fuck

[batsplat]

oxley bom pod was talking about the friendly atmosphere in the paddock today and they brought up vale as someone who would make himself hate his opponents in order to beat them. they mentioned biaggi before saying vale didn’t need to make up a reason there lol, and the gibernau, stoner, lorenzo, marquez. thought it was interesting to hear them say that especially since oxley specifically had a particularly close working relationship with vale!

got around to listening to the podcast rather belatedly + had a chat about this general topic that helped me organise my thoughts on this a bit. I transcribed the most relevant comments - probably some small errors because of cross-talk and like... I'm a fast transcriptionist but can't be bothered to properly do it, here:

O: One is because racing is so fucking complicated now. [...] They've got so much to do, so much pressure - to have the negative energy of anger and hatred is actually - B: It's a waste. O: It's a bad thing, you're just wasting your energy. I mean it depends on the character, okay - B: So maybe Vale was the last who really needed to hate somebody to give him - and now even Vale invites Casey to his ranch to ride with him. But he really needed to - It was not difficult for him to hate, but he - Some riders he really looked for a reason to hate them even more, because then he could dig deeper in himself - because he was just a happy chap - in order to beat them. O: Max Biaggi. B: But it was easy to hate Max! That was not very difficult. Sete Gibernau, basically he needed to try - O: Casey Stoner. Sete Gibernau. Marc Marquez. B: He hated Vale probably before Vale hated Casey! But that's another podcast. O: Yeah, I think so. No, definitely, definitely, definitely. [...] Some people - they get fired up by hating other people, and that's fair enough.

so yeah. I mean, qualified agreement, I guess? they're definitely right about casey hating valentino before valentino hated casey lol. if valentino ever really hated casey at all. which is not necessarily a mainstream take, so it's nice to hear it!

I also agree with this general take about... y'know, the creeping professionalisation of the sport and how that affects how likely you're going to get fun drama. goes beyond just hours spent looking at data and also about... having a bit of a life, having time to actually form a personality. and as I've said before, it's the fans! clickbait news + social media featuring partisan fans, who aren't just going to read every statement but also react to every statement like it's life or death shit. pecco and jorge have gotten push back for some incredibly, deeply, ridiculously mild comments these last couple years. they HAVE to phrase everything they say as inoffensively as possible while still getting their points across, and even then they'll generally be jumped. like, forget valentino, how do you think casey would have fared in this current media environment? up against a fanbase as partisan as valentino's - or marc's nowadays? not well is the answer! I think to some extent you can get away with this stuff more depending on people's perceptions of you, so marc and increasingly pedro will generally be fine... but on the flip side, the pecco's, the casey's, the jorge x2's of this world... everything they say gets read in the worst possible light, but now everyone's just so much louder about it

but this ask was more about valentino than the current landscape, so I'll get back to him. I do think it is a bit of an issue if you frame it as a completely either-or issue - at the end of the day, most competitors will probably motivate themselves through their enemies at least a little. pecco definitely uses negative emotions to fire him up, people criticising him and the like. casey absolutely used them, often directed at valentino. all the comments from the haters to fire them up right, to show everyone how wrong they are. on a psychological level, there is not something *fundamentally* different between using your rivals or the fans or the press to motivate yourself - it's still the same underlying motivational process (and indeed the podcast references lawson's distaste for the press). casey signs off his first every grand prix win by saying how nice it was to beat a spanish rider sponsored by the circuit, like are we calling that pure love for the game? he and mostly martin and to a somewhat lesser degree pecco do share a tendency to... believe the world is out to get them, and use that to fire themselves up. idk if casey strictly needed to do that or if it was just ingrained at a young age and became a stable self-perpetuating way in which he viewed the world but also, it doesn't really matter, right. maybe in both valentino and casey there is a pure unpolluted soul who could have enjoyed winning just for the sake of winning, but in practise it's clearly more complicated than that. as has been recently discussed in quite some depth in this parish, late 2007!casey was getting sympathetic interview write-ups that described his mentality as informed by 'bitterness and rejection'. including bitterness at valentino, who at that point in time was not meaningfully reciprocating any of that stuff!

so I do have a bit of a bone to pick with this idea of 'the last guy'. valentino didn't 100% motivate himself by hating his enemies, the blokes after him didn't do so 0%. I think of the aliens casey is probably the most similar to him by this metric... some are definitely less inclined to do so. lorenzo's a bit of an odd case where at times it felt like he was better at making other guys hate him than necessarily hating them himself... complicated guy but I think he actually really did want to mostly fuel himself in a positive manner, except then for various reasons both external and internal he needed to also draw a bit more from. the darkness. marc is more likely than either valentino or casey to just fight to win for the sake of winning... then again you do have cute little incidents like misano 2019 where marc - off the back of two back-to-back last lap defeats - miraculously happened to find an extra bit of motivation through a spat in qualifying after duly harrying the yamaha's all weekend. again, it's a question of degree, right. marc is just inherently less restless than valentino and less inclined to think the world is out to get him than casey, which are all contributing factors

with valentino, I think I disagree a teensy bit in terms of framing more than I do in substance. first off, not to be a broken record on this, but obviously all of these feuds were very different, involving very different emotional landscapes. I don't think it's correct to say valentino needed an enemy to fire himself up, but he did always need something. some mission to dig his teeth into, some way of making the whole thing exciting. of making it fun! I'm not all that convinced of this happy-go-lucky characterisation of valentino - a lot of the time he had to go to an awful lot of effort to keep himself entertained, and when that didn't work he could get pretty miserable. he needed to keep himself stimulated, he needed to stop himself from feeling lonely, he needed to give himself a purpose to work towards. hatred did help him in a motivational sense, and he's talked in his autobiography about how anger has made him ride faster. it's useful... up to a point. it's just not a uniform thing across rivalries

my sense is that it comes down to two things. 1) he needs something to motivate himself and get excited, be it a rival or whatever. and 2) he needs some distance from his rivals. motivating yourself through a rival is not quite the same thing as motivating yourself through an enemy. for instance!! casey was only really his enemy once they were no longer on-track rivals - it was unrelated to actual competitive calculus, and was in some ways more about casey than it was about valentino. when valentino did that shit to casey at laguna 2008, he's not like... mad at casey. he doesn't hate him. he's gleeful at least in part because of how obviously pissed casey is, but he doesn't hate him. because he doesn't need to hate casey to want to beat him! casey is already so considerable a challenge that beating him is reward enough in itself - he's this super tricky puzzle for valentino to work away at... and when he comes up with the answer at laguna 2008, he's delighted. he doesn't really hate jorge in 2009 either - dislike, yes, hate, no. he's already plenty stimulated by the challenge of beating his feisty young teammate... he doesn't need anything else. he gets through 95% of the 2015 season with barely any animosity with his title rival - there, he would have seen it as distracting from his primary mission of winning his tenth in a way that was entirely disconnected from any particular rival. he also runs into the problem that it feels like any psychological warfare feels like it's getting aimed more at marc than jorge - but that's entirely accidental, he isn't TRYING to fuck with marc in the middle of the season. why would he!! and jorge refuses to be fucked with on the track because he's just never in the same postcode as valentino, and valentino isn't attempting to fuck with him off the track. he's barely even doing like,, mild mind games, like they're quite actively friendly the entire year

(I do sometimes think you can do a bit of displacement here where you don't necessarily need to hate the person you're actively fighting to get the job done - cf marc at misano 2019, also... tbh casey 2011-12 kinda had that vibe where he was getting all that energy out of his system in valentino's direction and could then keep things civil with his actual title rival. there's a LITTLE bit of that 2015 even pre phillip island but mostly valentino does have a more early 2008 'we move in silence' vibe or whatever that pecco tweet read. this is the restlessness thing, right - he kinda needs to fill his brain with SOMETHING)

which brings us to the second element: needing some distance. zero problem with biaggi, which is kinda the training wheels feud in that it takes a bit of a life of its own before valentino REALLY was intending it to. he's a kid (literal eighteen year old) who's kinda snarky about biaggi in the press and biaggi takes it EXTREMELY poorly and confronts him about it and it kind of spirals from there. with casey + jorge, valentino ensures that they never GET too close. I do think there is an element of... y'know, not wanting to be close friends with the guys who are your title rivals, because it's harder to beat people you care about and deprive them of the thing they want most in the world. which I actually think is pretty normal!! valentino's problem is that on a few occasions he has ended up in rivalries with blokes he was at some stage close in - and either he preemptively withdraws as with marc and... ? probably...? melandri...? - or the relationship deteriorates and then blows up as with sete and also marc. the 'preemptive withdrawing' bit does suggest a degree of self-awareness with regards to his own competitive process - and as has been previously argued in this parish, valentino's relationship with marc developing as it did was in large part due to his competitive situation 2010-14. the two of them falling out was probably always going to happen if they were competing, the two of them falling out that badly required valentino's stint in the competitive wilderness to let him lower his guard to such an extent

so that's the argument in broad strokes. yes, valentino can use enemies to motivate himself - he certainly enjoys having rivals, he enjoys fucking with them, he enjoys figuring them out and measuring himself against them and also a little bit of competitive edge. that doesn't mean he needs enemies per se, or certainly he wouldn't have seen some of his rivals in quite such extreme terms (casey in particular of course felt differently). he did need SOMETHING to motivate him... rivals, definitely - enemies, perhaps. and he also needed a bit of distance from those he was competing against. which post-sete he tended to preemptively enforce, except that one time when he didn't, and when it wasn't preemptively enforced it did have a tendency to blow up rather spectacularly. so in essence, you still end up at the same conclusion, right - valentino did get a lot out of having enemies, did motivate himself with them, did need to beat someone. but the working process is a bit different as I see it. sometimes making enemies is about emotional regulation, y'know. feuding as a healthy outlet for competitive tension. as it should be