see-u-space-cow-boy - Tumblr blog

see-u-space-cow-boy · 1 month

Text

The Basics of the Premier Leauge (TOP tier of English Football.)

A small post explaining basic aspects of the PL! I tried my best to cover as much as I could. If I miss anything/Or if I'm Incorrect, let me know!

-> How does it work?

Well, there are 20 teams in total. In the Prem, Every team plays each other twice. Once at a team's home stadium, and one time at the other teams home stadium. (Lets say, Man City vs Chelsea. They would play each other once at Stanford Bridge (Home Stadlum of Chelsea), and once at the Etihad (Home stadium of Man City).

So that makes... 38 Matches in a season!

In a match, Teams can get 3 points for a win, 1 point for a draw, and None if they lose.

-> How do you win?

Simple, the team with the most points is awarded the PL trophy!

However, if 2 teams finish with the same number of points, then Goal diffrence is used to determine a winner!

Goal diffrence is the number of goals scored for through the entire season, minus the amount of goals conceded AGAINST your team.

-> Note: The Bottom 3 teams face what is known as Relegation, which is being demoted to the Championship, the second leauge of English football.

The top 4 Teams qualify to the UEFA Champions Leauge, which is a competition for Europes top football clubs to face each other!

5th (and I think 6th?) Qualify for the Europa leauge, which is a secondary Competition for Other Europe clubs to participate in (At a bit of a smaller level.) Note: Not 100% confident in this answer, so do your own reaserch with this if you wanna be sure!

---

-> What Players to follow?

Well, theres a lot to choose from! But here are a few of my personal favorites to watch.

Dominic Solanke (Bournmouth- he helped with a AMAZING comeback against Luton Town. from losing 3-0 to winning 3-4! Overall he's def shining this season)

Martin Odegaard (Arsenal- he's captianing them to a amazing and mabye even historic run in the Champions leauge so far. and I must give him that!)

Mohamed Salah (Liverpool- I don't think words describe how I love this guy. He's perhaps scored the most goals for Liverpool during our time. Overall he shows up for his team when they need him.)

Of course, Any of the Liverpool players are worth watching. Our younger players such as Quansah, Danns, and Bradley are all SHINING this season and stepping up when senior players are Injured.

Alisson Becker and Caominh Kellher (Liverpool)

Our two amazing Goalkeepers, Alisson is one of the very few GKS to SCORE for liverpool. That should tell about how world-class he is by itself. Kelleher has also been amazing to step up when Ali is injured. Both of them are very good keepers i'll say.

---

-> Rivalries

Some of the popular rivalries you'll hear about between clubs are...

Manchester Rivalry (Man United vs Man City)

London Derby (Tottenham Hotspur vs Arsenal FC)

Merseyside Derby (Everton Vs Liverpool FC)

That's just to name a few, but overall if two clubs are in the same area of the uk, chances are they have a rivalrly more than not. or if they are locked in a title race! (Those teams are Liverpool, Man City, and Arsenal at the moment.)

@see-u-space-cow-boy hope that explains a few things! lmk if theres any more questions!

#premier league #you are the best for this #thank you so much

8 notes · View notes

see-u-space-cow-boy · 2 months

Text

deus ex machina : rosquez cyborg au (1) / 2.5k words [inspired by tags from @anitalianfrie]

Valentino Rossi is old tech — yellowed, sunbleached, peeling film and gold and copper. Cheeks gaunt with the sinking bend of aluminium plating, teeth buzzing in his jaw late at night; signals sent and not received. He stepped out when the upgrades stopped, when it was, “change yourself or fall behind.”

Marc Márquez isn’t so lucky. Adorned with the shift between eras, the worst of the old and the most volatile of the new. Ahead by sheer force of will — raw, predestined power. Nothing that you can get from parts, from new connections and new liquids running through your system. It’s Valentino’s protégés that herald the dawn of the new age. Chrome, bright and blistering like mercury. Glossed acrylic over titanium.

Everyone knows Marc pulled himself apart. Saw him come away from the bike and split his arm into fragments, scattering wire and crystalline silicon across the gravel. The screech of feedback, the twist of fingers breaking on themselves at the sudden loss of connection. He returned a year later, different. Everything had been stripped, rebuilt, remade. All chrome, all smooth, round surfaces. New parts beneath, white wires and titanium. Things he wasn’t made for, wasn’t supposed to be — and it showed. System delays, things moving when they shouldn’t and not moving when they should. Sliding out more often than not, unable to sync with the bike, unable to sync with all these new facets of himself.

Someone had walked in on him one day — and of course it got back to Valentino, of course — Marc hunched over on the floor of his motorhome, bent around a mirror with his arm pulled open like roadkill, guts across the floor. Screwdriver in hand, teeth grit against the overstimulation, the screaming signals of FATAL ERROR from laying himself apart like this. Beneath the chrome, beneath the paint — the same parts Valentino uses. Older than Marc’s servers.

A photo gets out. No one knows how. No one even really knows what they’re looking at to begin with. A tangle of wires, half of which are scorched — predating Marc’s very existence — and the other half a shiny powder blue, wrapped together like hot-wired veins. He’s completely Frankenstein-ed himself, components from different decades working together to move the man. It’s why his eyes flicker unevenly, irises spinning under the stress in his system. Valentino can’t help but stare at his wrists — his throat, when they pass each other in the paddock, like his skin will peel back of its own accord and reveal the amalgamation of tech beneath. He’d like to see it. Like to feel it for himself — what it’s like to live between eras.

Valentino doesn’t mind the protest of past-age parts; the steady, rotorous thrum of things that fit together. He’d replaced racing components with simpler elements, real quality of life stuff. Nothing about Marc says “quality of life.” Everything he does, he does to win. Even his smile is tight at the edges. Not often genuine unless he’s on the top step.

His head is bowed now, ridges of his spine visible through the thin material of his t-shirt. Valentino is two tables behind him, Bez at his side. His eyes are fixed to the back of Marc’s neck — to the waxy panel of pale skin, no doubt covering a memory port from at least two generations ahead of him. Bez says something about the ranch, about Luca and the others, and Valentino forces his attention back to the younger man. They’re in America — Texas. Marc had missed the first two races. He’s wound with the sort of tension now that holds promises. Valentino is expecting something terrifying, something grand and monstrous and holy. Marc looks up when Álex arrives at his table, and Valentino traces the slope of his neck, the glow of something pure and insane flowing inside his jugular. It lights him up from within, paints the wall of his throat thin and orange for everyone to see. Too strong to be vulnerable, even when Valentino can see his hummingbird pulse.

He’d shown nothing in practice. Kept clean, kept all these new secrets close to his chest. The paddock is vibrating with the suspense of it come FP3, all eyes on Marc atop the Gresini Ducati. A foreign bike, foreign parts in his first real session of the year. For anyone else it would spell disaster. But not for Marc.

Valentino can’t keep his eyes off Marc from the garage — a blistering star of silver and blue. He doesn’t even see Pecco go down, attention riveted to Marc nearly losing it in the hairpin, leant at an angle that should kill him. He reigns the bike back in like it weighs nothing, like it’s an extension of his own body. His eyes flash gold through his visor, and then he’s flying down the straight. It’s only a matter of seconds before his name jumps to the top of the leaderboard.

1:59:997.

Fucking hell. Someone laughs behind him, a dry, disbelieving noise. Uccio appears at his side, jaw just as slack as Valentino’s own.

“He’s got to be illegal. Non c'è modo. They have to open him up.”

Valentino winces, mind reeling at the memory of his own inspection. Men he didn’t know with their fingers beneath his skin, testing wires and circuits in search of a disallowed bug, a black market part. He’d bruised like a peach afterwards, put back together wrong, rearranged and violated. Uccio looks at him like he expects Valentino to agree. Valentino just shakes his head, lip caught between his teeth.

“He’s just insane,” he breathes, reverence where there should be disgust. “He could be killing himself with it. It is the risk nobody else will take.”

The next best time all session is 2:02:131.

The cameras follow Marc back to his garage. When he pulls his helmet off, he’s bleeding from his mouth. One of his eyes is blinking white, and when he rubs it, he smears blood up his cheek. Valentino’s chest constricts. He’s killing himself with it. That’s rejection. That’s a pump somewhere, a gear, grinding to a halt. When Bez and Diggia roll back in, they look shaken. Bez’s eyes dart to the TV screen, to the rigid lines of Valentino’s face.

“Pensi che morirà?” he asks, voice quiet.

Valentino would like to say ‘no’ with full faith. Would like to laugh, to call back the rest of Marc’s career and shake his head. But he thinks of Marc on the floor of his motorhome, tearing himself apart in the name of first place.

He opens his mouth and no words come out.

Marc pulls the same feat in Q2. A total disobeying of the laws of physics and mortality that puts him seconds above the pack and comfortable in P1.

When the lights go out at the start of the sprint, Valentino is stock-still. Martin can’t jostle him in the start, can’t even get his front wheel ahead by a centimetre. Marc is gone by lap three. He’s so safe in the lead that Valentino actually gasps when he takes a turn like he’s fighting for his life, like he needs to squeeze every fucking millisecond out of the bike. It’s not safe, or reasonable, and obviously Marc has never been either of those things on track. The screen above him cuts to the Gresini manager, Nadia Padovani, with her palms together in front of her face, eyes unblinking. She looks like she’s praying.

Marc wins it, of course. Takes every corner like he wants to die, but stays on and brings it home. When his helmet comes off in parc ferme, this time there’s no blood. No misfiring light in his eye. Just silent revelry in his achievement, mouth open and gasping for air. The teams in parc ferme are muted, dull in fear and awe. Even the Gresini pack are slow to embrace him, and when they do it’s with care — delicate like he could shatter.

Valentino goes back to his hotel that night and digs up the leaked picture of Marc’s wrist. It’s blurry — more a grainy wash of colours than anything actually useful. But he stares at it, turns it over in his mind. Tries to imagine the shiny white cables that his academy boys use intertwined with his own copper wiring. Flinches at the thought. Pictures himself desperate enough to cut his arm open and mess around in there, jamming things where they don’t belong and praying something sticks.

The next morning, the paddock is blanketed with an expectant hush. Even the grandstands are reserved, quiet like they’re waiting for something spectacular. They are — they all are. Waiting for Marc Márquez to sprout wings, to melt into the bike, to die. Marc makes his way to the garage without acknowledging the eyes on him, head down. Valentino squints when he passes him, cataloguing the pace of his walk, the set to his jaw, the column of peach luminescence up his jugular.

The lights going out is like a bomb exploding. Suddenly noise — the scream of twenty-two engines, the roar of the crowd. And Marc is still. Something must disconnect, something falters with him, with the bike, and by the time everything’s alive again, he’s sitting in ninth, boxed in on all sides. Valentino nearly bites through his tongue. Bez has slipped up to fourth, and Diggia to sixth. The camera zooms in, captures Marc shaking his head before diving up the inside and taking back a place.

Four laps in and all Marc has done is hunt. When he steals back into first, the crowd erupts. Valentino swears he feels the pit wall shake. He barely blinks the rest of the race, eyes riveted to Marc. Marc, who gives himself such a comfortable margin from second place and yet goes into every corner with his shoulder scraping the ground. Bez steals into P2 on the final lap, and Valentino’s heart clenches. He’ll be able to stand at the barrier in parc ferme — watch for the blood on Marc’s lips, the tremor in his hands. He snatches a wad of paper towel off the desk and shoves it into his pocket as he follows the crowd out. On the big screen, Marc crosses the finish line and stands up on his bike, head tipped to the sky.

He pulls Bez into a tight hug once the younger man has clambered off his bike. Bez lets himself be crushed against the barrier by his team, almost pulled over it with the force. Marc shows up seconds later, and Valentino can’t disguise his interest, fingers white-knuckled around the fence. Marc greets his team, takes head-pats and shakes until he has to pull away and yank his helmet off. Valentino is so close, pressed shoulder to shoulder with a Gresini mechanic. He’s one of the first to see the blood, the spatter of red at the corner of Marc’s lips.

It’s subconscious, him reaching into his pocket for the wad of paper towel and then reaching for Marc. His knuckles brush against the Gresini leathers, and Marc flinches like he’s been shocked. Their eyes meet. There’s no blinking light, no mixed signals. Marc drags his gaze down to Valentino’s hands, to the paper towels, and he takes them. For Valentino, it all happens in slow motion. He watches the curl of Marc’s fingers around the material, eyes desperate for the shine of metal, for something unnatural. Marc dabs at his mouth, pulls the towels away and stares at the blot of red. And then everything is moving again, Quartararo materialising at Marc’s side, Marc crumpling the towels into his fist, Valentino falling back into the crowd. He releases the breath he’d been holding.

The next day, the headlines read that Marc is to undergo an inspection tomorrow, 12PM local time. Valentino’s stomach drops.

Two days after that, Uccio texts him.

> Look at Márquez’s Instagram.

He puts down his coffee, sits up a little straighter. His phone takes a second to load, and then it’s the first thing in his feed. Marc’s forearms, held side-by-side and palms-up to the camera. Split from wrist to elbow, panels open like the bonnet of a car. Captioned Public inspection. Valentino stares. He’s looking at bone — at red muscle and tendon and cables like vines, titanium plating, reflex chips and movement sensors. It’s a rainbow mess of technology, the white-silver-blue of everything new age and the red-green-yellow of old parts — Valentino’s parts. There’s a card in there that he recognises. Yamaha’s brilliant royal blue behind striking yellow, and that’s his number.

Yamaha had gone public with his instinct cards in 2009 — engraved on it 46, and the little smiling face of his cartoon caricature. The price of them had been obscene; a collectors item, more than anything, but fully-functioning even so. And Marc has one inside of him. It’s ancient now, by today’s standards. He feels sick. Feels his stomach twist. Thinks of how Marc had heaved the bike up from the ground before it had the chance to slide, like he’d felt the shift before it started.

> That’s one of your cards from Yamaha, yes?

He flicks Uccio’s message away. He can’t do this right now. If Marc loses it — if he goes flying, hits the ground and breaks and they can’t put him back together — if that happens and it’s Valentino’s instincts that don’t catch him —

“Vale?”

He looks up. It’s Luca, lingering in the doorway like he doesn’t want to get any closer. His face is pale — he’s seen it. Valentino blinks, pulls himself together and meets Luca’s eye.

“Is he allowed to do that?”

He waves a hand, tossing his phone to the side. Each breath feels squeezed through the crush of his tightening chest.

“Of course. It’s his funeral, but he is allowed.”

“But that tech is — some of it is at least fifteen years old. I don’t understand how he can be so fast, when the limits on that stuff —”

“Ah.” Valentino blinks. He thinks of the photo, parts welded together, wires expertly braided. “He’s bypassing the limits. All the things of my age — they did not know yet how to set a hard maximum. So everything has a wall, yes? But it can go much more than that, but it is dangerous. He’s — he’s broken the walls, he’s connected it to all of that generation nine tech, something in there must act as a repeater, the signals can travel further than they ever did for us — God.”

“You’re kidding,” Luca says, eyebrows at his hairline. “If he goes too far he could die, I mean, if something gets crossed and he can’t stop himself, then…”

Valentino sees it in his mind's eye; sees something tick over in Marc’s chest and get stuck, sees the bike scream into top speed and the pair of them fly into the barriers with the force of a missile.

“He won’t, though,” Valentino replies, voice soft. Marc has always broken the limits — the limits of what is possible on track, the limits of his body. Despite it all, he holds some measured confidence about it. Like the limits are not his own — just those that everyone else has set for him. Like he has so much more left to give.

#motogp #rosquez #motogp fic #marc marquez #valentino rossi #MY BEST FRIEND IS A WRITER #A GOOD ONE #A GREAT ONE

70 notes · View notes