#DO NOT TAG HIM IN THIS I SWEAR TO GOD.

[mwagneto]

not enough people are talking about neil gaiman and his wife having their own apology dance, him saying smtg like "are you really married if you don't have your own apology dance" in like 2021, writing and filming season 2 of good omens, and then a few months later getting a divorce

[veveisveryuncool]

me on my knees begging for a tails and nine interaction in season 3 🙏🙏🙏

take to the skies, forgotten fox boy <3

[tmos-time]

"hey buddy what have you been doing lately" well ive been thinking about how hazbin would be easier for me to consume if it looked different at bare minimum

[gooperts-gunk]

im so crazy over the tragedy of everything q!bbh does being under a demon pretense even though he's a fallen angel.

do u think he just accepts the demon label because it's easier. do u think he believes it too, and catches himself in his thoughts with "oh, right. im not exactly that". and maybe he believes that he did this to himself? do u think what he did was to protect himself or someone? no matter the fall, he still has so much kindness to give and his brain just isn't wired the way a natural-born demon would be, he can't hold back instincts when time demands it, maybe that's why he fell in the first place.

and when he's finally bad, not good, it's treated like the end of the world, without empathy on why he would act out. do you think this keeps happening? the same scenario, multiple times, every timeline? he has to be used to it. so he has to take it in stride. he's good until he lashes out under extreme pressure, and suddenly he's called demon. and once again he's what heaven made him out to be. what he made himself to be, his brain would ruthlessly provide...

i don't think he wants to be that, though he hides secrets behind secrets of which neither identity is a home... but i don't think he wants to have to change, either. and i don't think that's wrong of him.

...you collapse atlantis ONE TIME and all of a sudden YOU'RE the bad guy and SURE it was FUN but REALLY now,--

[dykeyangel]

The idea of Aziraphale falling the angel version of Crowley but that person is no more and then Aziraphale falling for the demon Crowley is eating my brain...

aziraphale fell for an angel who carved out the stars and when crowley crawled from his burnt up body, aziraphale loved a demon with scales and yellow eyes just as much. crowley fell from heaven and built himself back up from the ashes of who he used to be and aziraphale didn't even blink before loving him with his whole being. crowley has the capacity to be both of these iterations of himself, he changes and sheds his skin and aziraphale just keeps loving him. the angel that crowley used to be doesn't exist anymore but that's just fine because there isn't a crowley that aziraphale wouldn't love.

[kasumikoujou]

return of the king

[psihawaii]

it is... a bit upsetting that there aren't a lot more people aren't talking about grian's episode (or at least, in the way they probably should be lol). to be clear, i'm glad he changed the title, i'm glad he's made an attempt to correct himself instead of doubling down but... i mean what use is changing the title when you say the phrase 'Manifest Destiny' so many times in the video itself. why would the painting you commission be so similar to The most famous depiction of it. i wanna take this in as good faith as possible and believe that he really did just not know what the phrase meant, and, again, i'm glad that he's made any kind of effort but... eugh. idk you'd think more people would be talking about it.

edit: apparently he's now edited himself saying the phrase out of the video. which i'm thankful for.

[m1d-45]

from soil….

summary: albedo has learned many things, and yet sometimes it feels like he knows nothing at all.

word count: 3.9k

-> warnings: massive spoilers for albedo lore… bottom text

taglist: @samarill || @thenyxsky || @valeriele3 || @shizunxie || @boba-is-a-soup || @yum1x || @esthelily

< masterlist > || part 2 >>

as a synthetic human, albedo wasn’t raised as most were. he was ‘born’ fully grown, the shaky knees that let him stand those of an adult. rhinedottir hadn’t wasted any time, immediately beginning his training in various forms of alchemy from the moment he was oriented enough to try and speak.

he was taught the periodic table before he was told the names of colors, he was told how to tell which solvent was best for an experiment before he even understand the nature of his creation. he could recite the best methods for creating hydrogen gas by heart, he knew how to make carbon dioxide go supercritical and even experimented with ferrofluids on the side, but he didn’t know what it meant to be ‘burned’ until curiosity got the better of him and he put his hand over a flame.

he was told not to, like so many other things embedded in his memory, but never why. he knew fire was hot, of course, but.. even as his hand jerked away of its own accord, he found himself wondering what the odd feeling under his skin was.

rhinedottir was disappointed to learn of what he’d done, but had simply given him the instruction of ‘don’t hurt yourself, it’ll set you back.’

‘hurt’. thats what this was?

as he waited for his ammonia to drip into the iron solution, he picked through the many bookshelves in the room. many were scientific texts, with a few encyclopedias, but he wasn’t looking for those.

pulling down the lone dictionary with his now-bandaged hand, he flipped through the pages, keeping an eye on his experiment in his periphery as he did so.

hurt

(v) cause physical pain or injury to

(adj) physically injured

(n) physical injury; harm

how strange…

he shifted the book in his hands, staring at his wound through the bandages. carefully flexing his hand, he stopped right on the cusp of something sharp, the skin of his hand… was hurt.

albedo continued to read through various definitions, his experiment shifting in color to a dark brown without his notice.

why would he divert his attention from something so thrillingly new?

albedo was no longer a stranger to pain.

it took him far too long to realize he should probably be buying borosilicate glass equipment to handle the sort of experiments he was carrying out, only ever noticing when his third watchglass cracked under the heat of manganese heptoxide. his hands were permanently covered in little nicks, each carefully wrapped in bandages as to not get anything into them, some deep enough to scar but most barely enough to annoy.

slowly, he began to learn. he learned the safest ways to clean up shattered glass, he learned how to wrap his dominant hand and had become somewhat ambidextrous as a result. he learned when he needed to stop and take a break before he got a headache, he learned to tell when his hand was cramping from notes and took the time to practice with his other. pain was no longer unfamiliar, but it was still just as strange.

he was learning.

though he didn’t fully understand why this wasn’t taught to him, why he wasn’t told how to make a salve for burns or given a set of gloves to prevent it happening in the first place… he sort of could see why he wasn’t. pain was the result of failure, of a broken piece of equipment or a too-hot burner. it made sense.

did it?

he carefully poured water into a beaker, not paying attention to the conversation behind him. one of rhinedottir’s friends was over, as was becoming increasingly common, and he’d stopped listening once it turned to her daughter. a few compounds caught his attention, but he couldn’t afford to be distracted. the ratio of acetone and water had to be just right, and he was nearing the balance point, the solution fizzing less and less with every addition.

“she’s quite the- klee, don’t-”

without warning, something heavy crashed into albedo’s back. the bottle in his hand tipped and jerked, splashing into and over the rim of the beaker. the heater beneath it hissed as the ice cold water dripped down the side, and though he stood quickly, reaching to unplug it, it was too late. sparks flew as the wiring shorted, the red glow of the plate beginning to fade.

something hot and sharp rose in his chest, buzzing in his hands, the air turning thin. his jaw tightened with the feeling, the cord in his hand biting into his palm.

he’d knocked over his stool in his haste, and beside it was a small child, wide red eyes staring up at him. with bright blonde hair and long, pointed ears, it was clear she was the woman’s daughter.

and she had ran into him.

the woman—alice, his mind supplied, though he didn’t quite hear it—crouched besides her, pulling her up and dusting off her clothes, “klee! what did i say about running in the lab? you know it’s dangerous.”

rhinedottir sighed, leaning against the wall and looking at the failed experiment. “another failure…”

the sharp spikes of feeling turned on him in an instant, and the cord fell from his hand in surprise. he didn’t mean to mess it up! it wasn’t his fault klee was running around! why was he to blame?

“gold, it’s not his fault. i should have watched klee closer.”

“nonsense. he shouldn’t have even been using a bottle. pipettes are much more precise, and if he wished to have any sort of credibility to his findings, he should have used those to better track how much he was putting in. ‘add water until it stops foaming’ isn’t much of an instruction, you know.”

alice stood, some sort of response already forming in the draw of her brows, but albedo turned towards his mess. his hands shook as he moved the too-full beaker to a bin, the heating plate heavier than usual. he ignored the increasingly heated conversation behind him, letting his hands go through the familiar motions of disposal. his chest felt heavy, an odd pulse between his ribs reminding him of the reason he was wiping water off his desk.

he didn’t hold it against the girl, of course. she was too young to even be thought of chastised, and… rhinedottir was right. he probably should have used a pipette to add the water, or at least something less volatile than an open bottle. after this long, he should have known.

his vision blurred, the wad of towels in his hand washing into one mass. he threw the towels into the trash, his free hand coming up to wipe at his eyes. had vapor gotten into them? that wouldn’t be good if that were the case, but though they stung it wasn’t as sharp as it would be from chemicals.

albedo wiped up the last of the water, absentmindedly wondering why his chest ‘hurt’ if he hadn’t been injured.

alice visited often, usually bringing her daughter along as well. he wasn’t sure why, as she was surely too young to learn much in the way of alchemy, but she evidently had learned not to run in the lab, thankfully. she sat on a stool at her mother’s side, carefully drawing in a small notebook.

albedo stood at the sink, doing his best to focus on removing the caked sediment from his glassware. alice was talking, again, telling a story of a place he’d never been or heard of, and his thoughts admittedly wandered when he wasn’t careful. he’d wonder about the knights she was talking about, the cavalry led by a man in frosted blue, and he glanced over his own outfit. plain white, as typical, but he wondered about the dye that would have been used. he always wore white—“easier to tell when you’ve spilled something,” rhinedottir always said—and his few attempts at making dyes always ended up splotched and uneven. how did they dye clothes? or did they dye the thread first? would that be more or less efficient? was it harder to work with dyed thread, maybe, because it could wear during the weaving process?

curiosity bubbled within him as he rinsed off a stir rod, scraping off the leftover sediment with his nail. it would take too much time and space to try what he was thinking, not to mention that he didn’t even know how to go about it, but…

he turned to put it on a towel and paused, seeing klee looking up at him from her stool. she waved, shyly, pen tucked against her palm, and he hesitated for a moment before waving back. it was small, barely a raise of his fingers as to not draw attention, but she lit up anyway. her feet kicked against the stool in excitement and she hid her smile in her sketchbook, and albedo felt his own begin to form. he felt warm, a gentle feeling starting to rise. he tried to pin it down, running over the list of emotions he’d learned, but it didn’t match. it wasn’t the sharp, white-hot spike from when he’d ruined his hot plate, nor the slow but insistent press of curiosity. he felt… soft, almost, a delicate heat pushing him to smile back, gently-

“albedo.“

the sharp call of his name scattered the feeling like fish recessing deep into a lake, repulsed by the word.

rhine had cut off alice, evidently, the latter’s hands still raised mid-gesture.

“are you finished? why are you looking at klee like that?”

though it didn’t show on his face, albedo felt as confused as alice looked. her hands had moved to her sides, eyes flicking between the two of them with an odd twist to her mouth.

albedo swallowed something cold and bitter, taking a breath. “like what?”

he tried to put as much genuineness into his words as he could, but rhinedottir just shook her head.

“you know how.”

“i-“

“get back to work, albedo.”

she looked away, cutting the conversation short despite the argument still on his tongue.

he didn’t know. she never told him. none of the books in his lab ever described what it meant to be alive, to feel, to grow. he’d read all of them, cover to cover and back again, but none of them described what he wanted to know.

albedo turned back to the sink, wondering if there was a name for the cold pit in his stomach.

the next time alice comes, albedo has the time to look and properly greet her. he doesn’t have anything important or time sensitive going on, simply waiting for a dish to crystallize, and it was clear that the short wave he gave, pencil still in hand, had made her happy.

“hey albedo! what are you working on?”

almost subconsciously, his eyes flick to rhinedottir, searching for her approval, but she’s turned away, inspecting some random report on his desk. his chest feels cold as he lifts his sketchbook in lieu of a response. he’s drawn a cecelia, a kind of flower he saw on his last expedition, only ever growing near the top of a cliff.

he wonders of rhine would be proud of its accuracy, if nothing else.

“oh, a drawing?” klee seems to stand a bit straighter when she registers that the notebook in his hand is for drawing and not for research, and alice chuckles at her enthusiasm. “could we see?”

again, albedo seeks his master’s approval. he doesn’t find it.

he takes a quick look around the lab but knows there isn’t anything dangerous. the only active and open chemicals are the one in the beaker behind him, and that’s both well away from an edge and covered with a watchglass. so he nods, spinning his pen from his hand and into a pocket as they carefully move across the lab. he notes the caution with which klee steps over a fallen pen, the hand not in her mother’s tightly gripping her bag.

he tilts the book up for her to take—his heart had picked up at some point and he can see a quiver where his thumb digs into the binding, when did that happen?—but she just peers down at it from where she is, not reaching. it only takes a moment for something bright to reach her eyes, unfamiliar yet not unwelcome.

“cecelias, right?”

hesitantly, albedo nods. “i was exploring the eastern edge of mondstat, looking for valberries, but… i found these instead.”

she hums with a nod, her expression shifting slightly. “you need to go further north if you want valberries. cecelias grow on starsnatch cliff, and you want to go to stormbearer point.” albedo made a note to ask rhine where that was. “still, this is very impressive! the detail is remarkable despite not having a reference; you must’ve been blessed by the creator themself!”

her eyes glitter in a way that tells him it’s supposed to be something said in jest… but he doesn’t get the joke. behind her, rhinedottir’s head snapped up, eyes narrow, the report long discarded, and albedo takes the risk before his master can speak.

“who?”

alice’s face falls.

albedo looks over at klee for the nth time, checking that she was still happily doodling on her own paper. rhine had been swift to pull alice into a side room after her comment, so it was just them left in his lab. her, on the stool he’d offered her after her mother was pulled away, and him, still on the same chair he’d been for the past few hours. his pen felt cold in his hand despite the fact that he should have been producing more than enough body head to keep it warm, something… uneasy bubbling in his blood.

words pushed to the forefront of his mind, the same as they did every time he checked on klee, and this time he let them go.

“do you know who was alice talking about?”

she stops, the room falling silent as her pencil stills, and he feels oddly exposed in front of her wide red eyes. she reaches up to adjust her hat, the clover on it smudging lightly with graphite. “the creator?”

albedo nods. “rhine never calls people ‘creator’s of things, even masters of k-…. masters of alchemy are simply ‘alchemists’ to her. i’ve never heard of such a title before.”

klee pouts, stuffing her pencil into the rings on her notebook and settling it in her lap. between her fingers, he swears he sees something shaped suspiciously like a cecelia.

“the creator made everything! mama says that they are older than even her, and that they gave klee this!”

the stilted grammar of her words throws albedo off, but not as badly as when she reaches for her bag—nearly falling in the process—and unhooks a large glass-looking jewel inset in silver. it glitters red, a pattern of a flame engraved within, and he finds himself leaning closer. questions spring to his mind—‘how did you get it? what does it do? does it have a name? how is it made? how were you acknowledged by somebody so important at such a young age? is there even a significance to it at all? why doesn’t rhinedottir have one? does alice?’—but she speaks before he can voice them, voice unnaturally cohesive for somebody so young.

“i got my vision after i tried to make the biggest bomb ever!” after she what- “i made a mess out of my station… but mama says it’s okay! she helped me rebuild it and everything, and even stitched back on dodoco’s ear!” she points to a small plush charm hanging off her bag, leaving him with still more questions than answers.

“didn’t your mama teach you about them? why are you asking klee?”

albedo fell short.

was this something that parents typically taught their children? he supposed rhine would technically be his ‘mother’…. but even that was more in the literal sense. she was his mother as in she created him, but she was his master in that she taught him about and guided him through alchemy.

(but was that even for his sake? or was it hers?)

before he could say anything, alice had come back, a crease between her brows and a heavy frown on her face.

“come on klee, we’re leaving.”

klee quickly hooked the ‘vision’ back onto her bag and stuffed her notebook inside, slipping off the stood with a ‘bye bye albedo!’ before he even understood what had happened. her hand folded into her mothers, having crossed the room swiftly, free hand tucked under the strap of her bag.

alice gave albedo a long look, filled with a feeling he couldn’t begin to decipher, before her jaw set and the door opened, a wash of cold air sweeping in as they left.

rhinedottir nearly slammed open the door, shutting it just as harshly behind her, but albedo didn’t flinch from where he was weighing out sodium. she’d been returning from expeditions more and more irritated lately, the domains she’s been searching somehow turning up less clues each time. he’s not privy to her work, so he simply keeps his mouth shut, never offering his advice or help even when he knows it helps to talk puzzling things out.

he tapped his stir rod on the edge of his beaker, knocking off the excess solution, and listened to her go through her routine. boots off, shoes on, coat off, lab wear on. bag down, notes up, then the bang of her door.

he stifles a smile at her predictability. most of her actions are prescribed, a routine she likely follows unintentionally, but it brings him a small bit of comfort. she did the same things when she returned today as she did every other day, no mater the size of her discovery, retiring to her room to review her findings. he learned quickly to shut down any attention-sapping experiments as quickly as possible after she returned to be able to dedicate as much as he could to listening to her ramble, leaving space on his table for her diagrams. he rarely got a word in, but that just made him all the better listener, able to concisely say everything he wanted to in the moment’s space of her breaths.

with all of this in mind, he covered his beaker. the solution would be fine overnight, so long as it was chilled, and he was quite looking forward to tonight’s talk.

albedo stood from his stool and began to clean up, listening to the clock tick down.

a few hours later, rhine returns with a heavy sigh. he hears papers flap in her hands as she shuffles through them, the sound growing louder as she approaches. she sits in the chair he’d set out for her in preparation and drops her papers on the table in a messy pile, various diagrams drawn across them.

she picks out one seemingly at random, depicting a diamond-shaped sigil inset onto a large set of doors. a complex web of patterns wraps around it, ending on eight smaller sigils. below the diagram, she wrote out a quote, presumably the one inscribed across the top of the door, “when seeking those who have lost their faith / there’s not much one can do but wait / you take the swiftest trail at once / and try until your hopes prevail.”

he doesn’t know what it means, but he keeps the words in his mind as she shoves aside the rest of the papers, setting down that one and beginning to talk about how she tried to solve it.

“there’s over 40,000 combinations—i did the math—and i wasn’t going to sit there for however long it took. the geo slime condensate only had enough elemental energy preserved in it to activate all of the sigils twice, and that didn’t account for actually killing the things.”

albedo propped his arm on the table, resting his chin in his palm and staring at the paper. he took in and registered her words, of course, hearing and understanding them, but a majority of his mind was focused on the paper. each of the winding paths started at the center sigil and twisted out, quickly becoming hard to follow- likely due to erosion, since the domain seemed embedded into a cliff face.

still, he pulled at the puzzle, picking at the edges. the inscription played on loop in his mind, producing ideas just as quickly as he shut them down. it couldn’t be that they had to leave to a secondary—or more—location, since six separate places for a domain was too complex and highly unlikely. it couldn’t be that there was some sort of prayer or hymn they needed to follow, due to the same argument as the first. there had to be a simpler solution….

“have you tried activating them in the order of the pathways?”

silence.

he looks up at her lack of response, finding her with her hands raised, clearly mid-ramble.

“i apologize for inter-“

he’s cut off with a wave of her hand as she picks up the paper, flipping it towards her. “dont, you already said it. what do you mean by ‘order’? actually, don’t answer. you can tell me tomorrow.”

just as quickly as she arrived, rhine left, picking up all her papers and leaving with a swish of her coat, her door nearly slammed shut.

albedo’s eyes flicked to the clock. she was barely there for ten minutes.

why? he’d spoken up before… granted, never interrupted, but… surely that wasn’t a large enough offense that she left?

he looked around his desk, empty of any equipment or glassware in preparation for the usual hours-long talk. it was earlier than he normally went to sleep, and though he could in theory return to work…

an unusual hesitation had seeped under his skin, pulling at his hands when he tried to stand. what had he said to make her leave? he’d just wanted to help…

after a moment, he stood, awkwardly pushing in his stool. ‘tell her in the morning’…

something odd and unsettling curled around albedo’s limbs as he went through the motions of preparing for bed. his fingers felt stiff where he ran them through his hair, the sheets on his bed cold despite the fire. an unmovable weight had sat itself on his chest, telling him that he’d done something wrong, but couldn’t tell what.

he hadn’t done anything. he’d just offered his help. she was the one that broke routine.

the weight told him that he was wrong.

he didn’t know why.

[moongothic]

[tachyon-omlette]

Eda gets a Yatter account (based on a conversation I had with @soundcrusher​, ft. @thewiglesswonder​‘s oc Mac - or, well, her Yatter account)

full image:

(and without the green optic filter)

[reuptakeinhibitor]

i love stobin working retail jobs and sharing a resume so much but consider this. steve follows robin to bloomington, indianapolis, west lafayette, wherever she decides to go and they get a little apartment. maybe they decide to go out of state but i think they stay in the midwest. then st takes a page from buffy and steve works construction while robin goes to school.

[batsplat]

from the stuff i’ve heard marc’s former honda teammates (dani jorge and pol in their media careers but joan also i guess) say about him now that they’re racing is generally quite positive, both on a professional/riding level but also seemingly on a personal level? i’m wondering what you make of that given that, yeah, marc doesn’t seem like a very good teammate (unless you’re alex who i’ve left off this list). like MARC wants to separate on and off track stuff and it seems like all of these guys are willing too at least in retrospect, so he can’t have truly burned bridges with them. do you have any thoughts on that

(x, x) most riders are quite good at not burning bridges with each other! it's not like marc's competitors don't know that this stuff is kinda part of the game. I mean, all of marc's past teammates were also trying to assert themselves within the internal hierarchy... you can say that certain teammates engage in 'worse' behaviour than others, but, like, these people do understand they're supposed to be fighting each other! a baseline degree of nastiness is factored in and will be accepted to a greater or lesser extent by your rivals - especially when it comes to asserting yourself in intra-team power struggles. you might hate the other guy in the moment, but generally speaking once the active part of the rivalry is done with... you will probably get over it. marc's fellow riders are aware of how ultra-competitive marc is - and to a certain point they do respect it, not least because they're aware that this is part of the reason why marc has ended up with all those titles. it's like dani said, right, it's marc's strong suit. and in general, you do have to say that there's relatively few teammate pairings that devolve to the level of toxicity that it completely destroys the interpersonal relationship. you might need some level of preexisting animosity... most of the purely competitive sins can be healed with a little time

on the 'separating on-track and off-track' thing... well. this is kind of a question of how you define these things, you can say that marc generally speaking isn't going to massively hold grudges over isolated on-track incidents or whatever... but he doesn't just leave his fighting to the track, and personally I've also never felt he can entirely separate these things out in his mind. can you really say his professional and private relationships with other riders are completely detached from one another? mostly, he's opted to be pretty disengaged from his fellow riders as a collective, and obviously that's a good way to not take things too personally... it's all part of the game, isn't it? sometimes it's good to go with the straightforward approach: marc tells you he will make your life hell, he does indeed make your life hell, and then you both move on with your lives and can maybe actually have a pretty amiable relationship with him in years to come. he's not really defying your expectations at any point here, is he now? it's still a question for each of them as individuals as to whether they think that kind of behaviour is above board and acceptable or not... but everyone by now knows that marc plays these games, so it's not like they're going in blind

and it's not like other former teammates are constantly badmouthing each other. I mean... look, let's just cut to the chase here and bring in valentino as our reference point (as he is for the sport as a whole, which by the way does also help create a certain baseline of acceptability for marc's antics - maybe goated riders are just supposed to be dicks who knows). vale's premier class teammates were 1) nobody (2000-01), 2) tohru ukawa (2002), 3) nicky hayden (2003; 2011-12), 4) carlos checa (2004), 5) colin edwards (2005-2007), 6) jorge lorenzo (2008-10; 2013-16), 7) maverick vinales (2017-20), 8) franco morbidelli (2021), and 9) andrea dovizioso (2021). of these eight men (let's just exclude 'nobody' for now), do you know how many had serious complaints at any point about valentino as a teammate? that's right, it's one guy. one. some of valentino's other teammates, like hayden, checa and edwards, were even quite actively positive about their whole experience. this is the thing - you do need some specific circumstances for teammate rivalries to escalate from 'being kinda bitchy every other month' to 'actively fantasising about stabbing each other'. not accounting for natural interpersonal animosity, let's list some circumstantial factors that you need to get a bridge-burning-worthy level of feud:

you need a competitive bike. it is possible to beef about development direction when you're in the trenches (cf late 2010's yamaha, 2020's honda)... but generally speaking this is going to be quite low-level petty stuff, not actual war

you also need something that approaches competitiveness between teammates. if one teammate is unquestionably stronger than the other one, then it is very unlikely that you are going to get any open hostilities. the tension comes when the two sides are close enough to each other for the internal hierarchy to actually be a contentious issue (this is also basic self preservation... if you're the far weaker teammate then you do not want to make the situation troublesome, because then you will be the one to be fired)

following on from those first two things... well, it doesn't hurt to have a title fight in the mix. there are also other ways you can generate competitive stakes, like, for instance, if you and your teammate know that one of you will be out of a job soon. basically, it helps to have something to squabble over

it is maybe easy to forget how rare it is this century for teammates to be fighting directly for a title, let alone over the course of multiple seasons. only two 1-2's since the year 2000 and they're both for the factory yamaha's (though 2006, 2011-13 and 2017 did all prominently feature two factory hondas). which means that for valentino, the prerequisites were met just the once in his premier class career... and yes, the results were pretty memorable, but (topic! for! another! post!) it's worth pointing out that even that relationship was pretty much 'fine' whenever there was a sizeable disparity between the two of them performance-wise (2008 and 2013 are the most clear cut examples). I think the way I'd frame it with marc is that he has a bunch of mildly dubious strategies up his sleeve to assert himself within the team, which don't really deviate that far from what you'd expect from a rider of marc's calibre and only need to be escalated under specific circumstances. that doesn't mean he doesn't have the potential to be ruthless, but up until now it's mostly been a fairly 'acceptable' level of ruthlessness on the intra-team level... and not something that is likely to make other riders actually hate him

taking marc's teammates one by one... dani was the closest to meeting the bridge-burning prerequisites, though he was only a title rival in marc's rookie season. and marc did go further with him than he did with anyone else, and dani has made some pointed comments about marc's style as a teammate... but yes, he is fonder of marc these days. partly I'd just emphasise again that this is a fairly natural progression when you've stopped directly competing for long enough, and partly it's also just a question of individual personality - dani's not massively into holding grudges. then there's jorge, who... I mean, they might as well not have been teammates, given that jorge was either too slow or too injured to even be sharing any track space with marc. you have to put that one down primarily to circumstance, seeing as jorge's own track record on the teammate front isn't exactly spotless. marc and jorge beefing in 2019 would have been pretty dumb and also a massive waste of everyone's time in a year in which marc singlehandedly won the team's championship. even those two needed more to get things going

moving on to the dark years, pol and marc had an extremely stop-and-start partnership on a honda that was generally pretty uncompetitive... so the only stuff they could get ever so mildly irritable about were riveting incidents like 'marc saying pol wasn't the biggest championship threat' (neither of them were) or 'pol saying he'd copy marc's set up' (which proved entirely useless). not exactly title decider territory, is it now, and marc very much had pol covered as a challenger throughout their partnership. also, those two do have a longer history! they've known each other since they were kids and hold a pretty significant place in each other's careers. now that pol's more or less retired, it's natural there'll be quite a lot of sentimentality there - which will paper over any small cracks that appeared during those two years. and joan was a one year teammate at a time in which the bike was consistently close to offing them both. they only managed to start a sunday race together as teammates on thirteen occasions. it would take some serious effort to engineer a feud with that little opportunity, and, really, why on earth would you bother. maybe if honda had gone for rinsy rather than joan for the factory seat, it could've been a bit more prickly, but it's unlikely that it would have escalated beyond that

this is the thing, right, the only one of these partnerships that would have been worth burning bridges over was dani, and even there marc pretty much had him handled after the first season. in general, marc has been pretty clear on how he's not interested in making friends with the other side of the garage while the teammate relationship is ongoing... which is fine! there's some prominent-ish teammate pairings that are actually good friends, some teammate pairings where one of them is actively helping out and advising the other one, but some riders prefer to just keep their distance. it would have been a little silly of marc to start a feud with a teammate who is galaxies away from being a competitive threat, let alone a title rival, but generally it is possible to toe the line between 'attempting to suppress your internal rivals enough to stop them from becoming a problem for you' and 'taking radical enough action to make your internal rivals despise you'

especially in the post-dani era, marc never really had any need to push things too far... and, let's face it, how many of your teammate relationships end up with burnt bridges is also quite frankly a question of luck and circumstance. do you want to guess which top rider on paper has the worst track record this century with premier class teammate feuds, in terms of a) how many they've had, and b) how little public reconciliation there has been since the end of the rivalry?

yes, that's right, it's the first name that comes to mind when you're thinking of toxic and conflict-prone riders: andrea dovizioso. that old devil, constantly causing trouble. just couldn't stop undermining his poor, innocent teammates. can somebody please stop this ruthless bully before it's too late

I think you get the point. I would personally suggest that dovi is not in fact the worst teammate it is possible to have in a motogp top team. he just happened to find himself in a situation where he was teammates with two separate guys he did not click with at all, in situations that involved a pairing of riders who were (or had the potential to be) competitive with each other, as well as some proper stakes attached to the rivalry. in general, situational factors are going to determine this stuff more than anything else... and marc more often than not does have a reasonably good feel for picking his battles. he's flirted with the line, but he's mostly avoided crossing it. he hasn't had to

[spiderwarden]

while i'm on my bullshit, I want to extend a special 'fuck you' to whoever it was on the Larian team that made the companions nicer and propped one up over the others. Give me Bitch!Shadowheart back, I want Sassy!OG!Wyll, where is MEANER Lae'zel, put Astarion back in the pod I don't like his 'knife to the throat' introduction, Give Minthara's extra scenes and snipped dialogue back - remember she had TWO sex scenes. WHY are we treating the ORIGINAL script like its some sort of taboo thing that needs to be repulsed.

[cheollipop]

i was busy rewatching the mv like three times sorry but we know sounds fucking amazing im ascending

[amoneki-ramblings]

do you think Kaneki might ever pray with Amon despite not being catholic himself? just sitting next to him mumbling the words as Amon says it because he likes to be with him

speaking of religion, what kind of faith do you think Kaneki would follow? I hc him as an atheist :) but I think you know more about religions than me lol

Ooooh I like that idea a lot actually I have So Many Thoughts (rubs my hands together evilly)

also this is just a sidenote but i know some people may be uncomfortable with religious discussion, so if you are lmk and i'll start tagging it :thumbsup:

I feel like Amon hasn't prayed often in a while because of his past, but he may still on occasion (habit), and may get back into it properly after actually resolving his feelings with the past. At some point Kaneki starts to join him. He doesn't really know How to pray, especially since a lot of it is in silence, he probably just kneels there and silently wishes for safety for his friends, for strength and resolve, etc. etc. But when Amon starts saying the actual prayers out loud he just sits there and listens to him quietly saying them.

At some point Kaneki might start mumbling along with them, he vaguely knows some of the prayers and has heard Amon say them enough times to kind of know them. Amon is surprised when Kaneki starts doing that and it just kind of becomes a Thing; maybe Kaneki even asks Amon to tell him how to pray the rosary since he sees him doing that often as well (when the rosary is prayed in a group there's one person leading that says the first half of most of the prayers and the rest say the other half, and I think it would be interesting with them alternating like that)

While Kaneki isn't catholic himself he finds it reassuring, while it's unlikely to him that there's someone out there that'll actually grant his prayers it's a nice thought, y'know? It's also just very relaxing there, even if it was kind of awkward at first

I think he also finds the sound of Amon praying very relaxing *cough*

I also think Kaneki would be atheist, while he wouldn't completely deny the possibility of there being a god of some sort he also isn't really a follower of any particular belief system (note: ive actually been informed that there is a better term for this, agnostic, which is essentially being neutral lol). I think Amon would know this, and therefore doesn't really know why Kaneki chooses to pray with him despite this, but he figures that Kaneki does have a lot of things he would want to pray for, things he would want to seek forgiveness for, too, and he appreciates that Kaneki is willing to spend time with him like this anyway.

[scalproie]

everytime I see someone go "UM did everyone FORGET Jin caused WORLD WAR 3🤨🤨🤨??? He should be hated by everyone/in jail/dead🙄🙄🙄" I'm like alright. time to love Jin harder.