#That being said I do miss those days

[todayisafridaynight]

what makes minedai even sadder is that we never rlly see daigo try to build a bond with anyone else like he did with mine it rlly shows how badly it effected him like yeah he reached out to shinada in y5 but that’s rlly it and he probably would wanna leave him alone after that and not involve him in any yakuza stuff so i don’t think they would’ve hung out or anything like that afterwards. All he rlly had were saejima and majima but they were more like babysitters than anything, wish we saw more of their dynamic tho like we did with majima and daigo in dead souls since that was fun and we were lowkey robbed but in canon he’s just as lonely as he was before majimas promise to kiryu. And mine is the only person he really had a meaningful relationship with romantic or not they were still really close and we don’t see that again with daigo ever (from what i recall after y3) ok sorry for rambling LMFAO

even with shinada, he reached out to him more so out of 'duty' and trying to make up for the misfortune that befell him because of yakuza than wanting to rekindle any kind of friendship they might have had in high school (though it sounds more like they were just acquaintances if shinada needing a second to remember who daigo was is anything), so yah i doubt they really had any kind of bond afterwards

dead souls really was the only time after Y3 where we got to see daigo be more sociable with someone, but its as you say majima and saejima are more like retainers than close friends

[autisticlee]

sometimes people who struggle like to make jokes or find positives about their condition that causes them to struggle so they can escape the constant negative and struggle. sometimes autistic people will say things like "the 'tism" or use the "autism creature" or say their autism helped them have a *positive trait* to feel better about their struggles. because living your life only focusing on the struggles and negatives is depressing and makes it hard to want to live, even if those struggle take up 100% of your life and you can't actually escape them. sometimes any little seemingly positive thing can help a lot.

but there's so many other autistic people that hate when we do that and call it "reducing autism to a cute trendy thing" and say it takes away from *their* struggles and is bad and shouldn't be used. maybe *you* want to only focus on your struggles, but some people can't live in constant negative and need some positive or to find ways to make their condition more positive so they can feel better about living with their struggles. life is hard. I take anything I can get.

I cant get jobs. I can't make and keep friends. I can't get help and support for doing "normal" things so sometimes I go weeks without being able to shower and without eating more than a bowl of cereal a day. most times can't even do things I like. struggle to communicate. have meltdowns. i'll never be able to live independently. I struggle a lot. but instead of sitting here always depressed and having no motivation to live, i'd rather try to joke about "my 'tism is acting up again" when i'm struggling (just an example. don't think I ever actually used the 'tism thing but i saw others use it) or say "i'm just being a creature" when I need to stay in my dark room because everything is too much and I personally find it cute to be a little creature meant in a positive way. i'm not actually downplaying mine or anyone else's struggles. I still acknowledge them and that silly jokes dont make them go away. i'm not trying to be trendy. i'm not doing any of the things people say we do by making silly little jokes. i'm using the silly little jokes to convince myself life can be a little more than pointless, painful garbage all the time.

(continue in tags)

[batsplat]

Pecco and Pedro are probably the people who more than anyone else want to beat Marc. Pecco because he is forced to do it for a matter of survival, his bet next year is to be able to win against Marc with the same bike. Pedro wants to win the first world championship with Marc in MotoGP, even better if he wins it against him, because of course that’s what he wants. I MotoGP your teammate is your first enemy, as surreal as it is, it would be more likely to see Pecco and Pedro helping each other (which would be unlikely anyway because they aren’t the type of people who do that) than one of them helping their teammate , especially if it's Marc. If anything Marc and Pecco have to be intelligent enough to at least not take each other out Portimao style, because in that case there will be someone behind them ready to bite

so I'm going to jump in right away by saying, I know this ask acknowledges it's unlikely but, yeah, pedro and pecco will not be helping each other in any meaningful sense - because they are both serious challengers to each other and they know it. sometimes, riders can be known to help non-team members in fairly small low-key ways (see in this post valentino accusing marc of deliberately towing ducati riders to get them ahead of his actual rivals in brno 2014). for both pecco and pedro, marc is definitely the bigger focus, but they are both perfectly aware of the danger the other poses, and will not be inclined to treat each other as anything other than an active threat

that being said! of course pecco has already nicely demonstrated this season that he does approach his marc fights differently than he does those with other riders (which is broadly the correct and smart thing to do, even if the specifics can be critiqued). portimao even gave us the direct comparison between pecco/pedro and pecco/marc! part of it, yes, will just be an element of self-preservation - marc is now back to being a major roadblock for winning any future championships, and he'll be in pecco's house so will of course require... extra attention. apart from that, it absolutely would be the most meaningful way pecco could win a championship, by beating the famous marc marquez on equal machinery... nobody has done that before, and it would instantly dispel any remaining doubts about pecco's ability and cement his legacy as one of the greats of the sport. he wants to beat marc so badly because marc is one of the two riders he's always been chasing... and marc's absence has left all the young pretenders in this odd place where they've taken the crown but don't quite believe it's theirs yet. (just to say this again, I personally don't share the view that marc's absence diminishes those titles in any way, but it is of course interesting when the riders themselves have these insecurities.) there was that interview from early-ish last year where pecco talked about some of his personal limitations and how he views his own status in the sport:

fascinating, isn't it? of course, I'm sure a second title will have helped to some extent in making him feel a little more entitled to that status in the sport - but this is not the kind of thing valentino or casey or jorge or marc ever would have said. there's a self-consciousness to pecco, an awareness of his uncertain, shaky journey to the top of the sport, how he's fully cognisant of how different he is to those names... which can be a problem at times - delusion is an athlete's life blood, and while the level headed insight pecco expresses here is arguably admirable, it is not necessarily helpful for him as a champion. on the other hand, sometimes lacking a little in the delusion department can be a good thing if it allows you to deliberately improve yourself, pushed on by the knowledge that you still have a long way to go... pecco's biggest self-inflicted wounds have tended to come when he's at his most comfortable - you can theorise about why this happens, but maybe that striver mindset is exactly what he needs to keep him going. it's still quite the admission to describe his 2022 season as more incomplete than either valentino or marc's title runs. (mind you, it's arguably even less complete a season than some of their misses - of course with valentino you have the obvious ones, but did you know that marc scored an average of 13.44 points in 2015 vs pecco's average of 13.25 in 2022? obvious caveat that in 2015 there were considerably fewer competitive bikes and barely any capable of regularly challenging for race wins.) the need to prove himself is always there with pecco... it keeps peaking through with him, and it absolutely peaks through in his approach to marc. yes, yes, acosta is the future, jorge martin has been his title rival more recently... but of course, beating marc would be special. do you think pecco ever dreamed that of it? do you think he really believed that he could before he was already premier class champion? with most champions, you would say it's likely. with pecco, I'm not quite so sure

as for pedro, yeah, obviously, that's just the cycle continuing lol. deeply curious what those two regularly competing at the sharp end of races looks like. pedro has kinda kept his distance, isn't that much of a marc fan himself... when he talks inspirations he tends to bring up schwantz, stoner, pedrosa, and of course rossi

schwantz is far from an unusual pick amongst riders, though as the years pass perhaps gradually more so - it certainly reveals an appreciation for the history of the sport. as do the other choices, in a way... let's not forget that acosta was eight years old when casey retired. of course back in the day casey and dani themselves got plenty of criticism for how 'boring' they were - that's just how these things go! nobody's ever nostalgic for the present etc etc

pedro did also talk last year about how the public wants celebrations and rivalries, critiquing how friendly riders are nowadays and saying people want battles like jorge/dani, valentino/marc, and so on (full clip here)

heartwarming: global number of people who still care about the valentino/sete rivalry is now confirmed at 2 (two)

obviously, you can't just go out and manufacture feuds because you're feeling like it, and pedro's had a pretty quiet rookie season in that sense. but once he feels like he's settled in and can challenge the infamous marc marquez in an actual title fight? on the basis of this rhetoric, you'd at least hope he's not going to be too shy in taking on the challenge. of course he too wants to beat marc more than anyone else... again, it's a question of legacy, how pedro clearly situates himself within the same lineage as both valentino and marc - even if personally he aspires to be more of a successor to the former than the latter. always better to take the crown for yourself, right? this is a kid who's clearly into the history of the sport and is already determined to make himself a big part of that story... weaving himself into that narrative by taking on a legend of the past, taking on the task of disposing with that legend himself. plus, given pedro is so aware of that history - he knows that what people remember are the rivalries. he wants some of that for himself! it'll be interesting to see how proactive he'll be in making that happen, certainly seems like an enterprising young lad

anyhow, yes, plenty of potential for both of those dynamics. and yes, they do very much want to beat marc - but if we're talking about who wants to beat him the most, jorge martin probably deserves a mention right around now. does have to be said that something dumb like the portimao thing is costing pecco and marc this year. it's kind of gone under given the sheer bucketloads of points all the title contenders are throwing away, but pecco would be eight not eighteen points behind in the standings if he had settled for sixth in portimao, and for marc it would be twenty four rather than thirty five points if he'd backed out of the move and had another go on the next lap. relatively unlikely to make a difference at the end of the season... though for mr title decider pecco bagnaia, it sure might be! I did joke about making the pecco/marc portimao thing tradition, but generally speaking two top riders crashing each other out isn't that common a thing, and it's pretty..? rare? that it's the same two riders on multiple occasions? I'm drawing a bit of a blank here, to be honest... then again, title contenders do seem to crash rather more than they used to (admittedly they also have a lot of opportunities now) - so maybe this is going to become a more regular occurrence. but what is more likely to happen is that when you have two competitive riders on the same bike, they do run the risk of taking turns stealing points from each other at the circuits where their bike is at its best. I think pecco and marc can probably minimise this given what a good all-round bike the ducati is across a range of different circuits, and also given that as individual riders they do at least seem to be reasonably distinct in what their strongest and weakest tracks are. all in all, I kind of doubt they'll cost each other like that next year... though admittedly if portimao is anything to go by I may be tempting fate

[stuckatmyhouse12]

*comes out of MerMay in June (MerJune) sweating and haggard and bleeding*

[saltinesinsoup]

aughhh the hell of like. being sick but feeling decent like i could go to class. and the knowledge that like. probably shouldnt. and also my class is in half an hour and i havent had lunch

[doodlingwren]

Hiatus

I am going on hiatus for a bit more. I really really hoped the stuff that have been going on lately were already "sorted out" but, uhm... they aren't. I need to take a bit more time offline once again, and try to work things out.

Thank you for your patience ❤

Wren

[ranger-kellyn]

made a spreadsheet to better help me visualize how i'm managing my time and u g h i'm so sick of work being the primary activity.

[eunhos]

.

[stabbylambchop]

Hey uh

anyone here on Art Fight this year or-

Cuz I'm on there, same name and everything. I'm on Team Vampires.

You can like, add me or whatever...I mean, if you want...

I haven't interacted with anyone on here or even really drawn in a couple months, sweet pulsating spider-christ ...

[todayisafridaynight]

So, here’s a question I don’t think anyone’s asked or at least it’s been a while… why is Jo your favorite?

i was trying to find the post where i explained it in depth but i'll give a tl;dr his backstory regarding masato and his implied childhood abuse recontextualizes a lot of his behaviors and actions as well as adds extra layers to his devotions to arakawa and the speculative progression of that relationship going from strictly 'transactional' (being that he's only there to see masato and arakawa just Happens to be there) to genuine respect and adoration and that makes my brain tingle. also i think hes hot

[aberooski]

If I have another breakdown at work tomorrow like I did the last time I worked a Saturday I'm going to kill myself because last time I screamed in the hallway and cried so hard I was shaking because of how stressed I was.

[livvyofthelake]

this is what i was referring to the other day btw.... she literally said well you people were annoying last time so fuck off i'm not doing it anymore.... and i stand with her <3

[scarletcomet]

i was talking with my dad because i don’t really understand a lot of things in my computer engineering class, and my dad has a degree in computer engineering. he said i should try to meet with the professor. i told him that the exam is in the morning, and he was like oh people usually start studying more than a day in advance. like first of all, i did not start studying today. second of all, did he miss the part where i’ve been severely depressed for the last like month to the point where im going to have to take incompletes in all (except maybe one) of my classes??

[crossbackpoke-check]

do u ever speak too soon & immediately regret it.

[falling-hand-in-unlovable-hand]

i wish i hadn't made it into this year's play tbh

[love-fireflysong]

I AM A PLATFORMING GOD!!!!!!

(...except not really cause I still need the 38 time trial relics for that coveted 106% 😭)