#and of course you too buddy

[anastacialy]

guys, i think the hermits are going to accidentally start a prank war again. because just like last time, a game of telephone has begun. first, false made iskall's build into ''false beans,'' her shop from the previous season. however, to give herself plausible deniability, she signs it with "love, Joel. x" due to his username, smallishbeans.

next, iskall sees this, and completely believes it. he thinks it was joel who pranked him, and as he says to pearl while showing off the sign, which he kept even after tearing the prank down, "joel gave me a kiss." in his most recent video, he pranks joel by sending him loads of anonymous messages in order to completely spam and fill his inbox, preventing him from getting any more mail, with notes such as "thinking about you. x"

of course, joel is going to have absolutely no context for this, because he didn't make the initial prank. so who is joel going to assume sent him all those messages while he was away on holiday? well, i have a guess.

etho.

[soliadiaz]

buddie first kiss being them extremely happy that bobby's alive. buck is so so happy and smiling going for a hug with eddie and eddie is so so happy and fond of buck he just places his hands on buck's face and kisses him hard. they're both in shock about bobby and about the kiss but they're so so happy they can't stop smiling so they have to stop kissing so they just hug and touch foreheads. they're just so so happy.

(fujo bobby is so so alive and so so happy too)

[acid-waste]

I'm so mad actually I can't believe some people took this scene in chapter 3 and turned it into a who's right about their grief when the scene in chapter 4 literally has ivypool saying I don't mean to make it all about me- haven't thought much about how dovewing is handling her own grief- people read chapter 3 and to me it seems as if chapter 4 doesn't even exist and the rest of what ivypool says in chapter three after saying this doesn't as well

“Dovewing, I’m truly sorry that Rowankit died. But losing a sickly kit—a kit you’ll be reunited with in StarClan one day—is different from losing a full-grown cat who was just coming into her own as a warrior. A cat who doesn’t exist anywhere—who is just gone.”

ignored this and what was said and called it a day

[polysyndetonaddictsupportgroup]

hi!! let me start this by saying that I love your writing to bits and I'm having a blast with all the extra info we're getting with the asks!!

im case you're still answering them, and since so far no one has taken the bait, I gotta ask: what's up with Hatsume's class and their obsession with Mirio in pez dispenser debris? and do Power Loader and Aizawa have some sort of support group?

(I'll sneak in that it's really funny to me that you wrote pez dispenser debris while procastinating studing for the bar exam, because I was also studing for the bar exam at the time you started posting it, and I procastinated studing by reading it 🤝)

WERE YOU THE PERSON WHO MADE A COMMENT ON ONE OF THE ORIGINAL POSTS ABOUT HOW YOU WERE READING IT AS A BREAK FROM STUDYING

Hatsume Mei and the rest of the support class insist they’re just joking about the religious cult aspect of it all but also everyone’s sort of nervously laughing in the corner because the entire school is increasingly certain that they’re not joking. Basically, Hatsume Mei has such fucking weird girl energy that she has brought a religious fervor to the invention of support technologies. It is a holy mission dedicated to making tech that is sick as fuck. Hatsume Mei infected them all with her maniac energy and they all started acting like her about it.

Power loader doesn’t know what happened okay this class is insane it’s insane and he was busy putting out all the literal fires and then one day he realized they were call each other Sibling and there was a shrine to a wrench with googly eyes in the corner of the room and when he tried to take it down all the students just stared at him, unblinking and still, with hammers and saws in hand, and there’s a white board? No one can use? Because they are manifesting the coming of their Chosen One? He is afraid?? He goes to the Hound Dog and he says “Hound Dog you are the guidance counselor and these kids they need some guidance please go guide them I don’t want to get out of my car in the school parking lot each morning I’m afraid man I’m afraid” and Hound Dog goes to them and he says “heyyyyy kids what’s. What’s up with all this.” And totally fucking normally those demon children all say “oh it’s just an inside joke” and so Hound Dog says to Power Loader “it’s just a joke man they’re kids let them have their fun” but it’s not it’s not a joke they all mean it now. He thinks they’re trying to lull him into a false sense of security so they can sacrifice him to the wrench. He is fighting for his fucking life over here.

He and Aizawa go drinking together every weekend.

One of the biggest issues with support technologies is how they interact with Quirks. Take Izuku. He is a nightmare to make support gear for. Everything just fucking breaks on him. Do you have this sick fucking electroshock bracelets you want him to try out in the field? Haha, no you don’t. You have useless shards of incredibly expensive and completely irreparable plastic and steel. He threw one punch and they blasted off of his body in seven different pieces. Sorry xoxoxoxo.

Mirio, before he was Quirkless? Utterly useless to design anything for him. It’d just fall off his body. They spent every day fighting for their lives to keep his pants on and never even had the option of support items past that.

It’s like that with everyone. You invented these sick fucking gloves that let you climb walls like spider-man? Well they’re not compatible with Bakugou’s Sweat Powers, so fuck that I guess. Like. Some heroes could use some gear, but frankly? Most of their day was designing clothes they could wear without accidentally blasting them off their bodies. Iida was a constant, secret battle against chafing. Before Mirio was Quirkless, they were busting out a loom to weave his own hair together. Everyone had some kind of absolutely disqualifying quality of their quirk that made half their prototypes useless.

They were sick of it. The vast majority of people who became heroes had flashy quirks, and the vast majority of flashy quirks are fucking nightmares to work with. It was ruining their creativity.

Don’t you ever want to go nuts? Full throttle? Plus Ultra? They wanted to stop fighting the Seven Hundredth Battle Against Iida Tenya’s Thighs and start inventing the kind of bullshit that is only legal because the government doesn’t even know to ban it yet. It was their calling. Their holy mission. Completely fucking thwarted by the fact that class a literally has a hero whose quirk means she has to be fully naked for max efficacy. What are they supposed to even do there? Nothing! They’re all so bored!

So they all started sort of joking about Tabula Rasa, the Blank Slate, a figure of prophecy who would come with the most perfect, inoffensive Quirk that was compatible with the most batshit fucking insane support tech they could dream up. Tabula Rasa was their Chosen One. One day, their god of steel and fire and turning and terrible, glorious change, It Who Watched What Wonderful Horrors They Wrought In Its Name And Never Blinked, would bring the Blank Slate to them.

And they were going to deck that guy out in the most unethical bullshit imaginable. They were going to reinvent the gun but cooler and more morally ambiguous for that guy.

Anyway Izuku knew about all this shit and said “oh we can exploit the fuck out of that.”

So he told Mirio to meet him outside of the first year support course workshop without providing any other relevant information whatsoever. Izuku just said that there was someone he thought Mirio should meet, brought him inside, and took him straight to Hatsume Mei. He very loudly introduced Mirio as a third year heroics student so that he could be heard over the din.

He’s Quirkless.

Hatsume Mei turned to Mirio and whispered, with tears in her eyes, Tabula Rasa.

The entire workshop fell into a sudden and eerie silence.

Make him Batman, Hatsume Mei, said Izuku, as if any of this shit were normal.

Hatsume Mei cried harder under the lights of the workshop. She looked Mirio up and down, as if to confirm, and again she whispered, Tabula Rasa.

Anyway Mirio had no idea what any of the ensuing chaos was at the time. There was a lot of weeping in a horrible climax of fear and joy and holding each other in trembling embrace. Lots of “the prophecy” and “I didn’t think I’d be alive to see it” and “I have to go find my blueprint for the gun that shoot knives.”

Hahah, kids.

Anyway, at that time, no fucking clue what was happening. But he knew the outcome would be sick as fuck. So he’s just been sort of going with it since then.

Power Loader immediately left the building and took a personal month. Nedzu asked Present Mic to help cover, who left crying after two hours. Aizawa has told him if he ever asks him for anything ever again, he will burn the building to the ground, and so Nedzu did not ask him.

So he just hired a new substitute teacher for every single day that that room needed staffing, close to all of whom quit teaching entirely after.

Anyway, that’s how Mirio affords support gear despite being independent and generally unpopular. Pretty much every time he swings by the main campus he receives a jet pack that also can control birds and maybe sharks too (they’re still beta testing the shark bit) and he says “Cool!” and puts it on his mortal body. Half of the support class is madly in love with him. However, Hatsume Mei, their High Priest, has stated that their god watches them all with its ever-jiggling eyes and has seen the lust in their hearts for the champion it bestowed upon them and rebukes it. She knows it’d tear them all apart if people started shooting their shot.

There’s no real narrative significance to that story. I just thought it would be funny if Mirio had a fuckton of support gear because he was a figure of religious importance to a it’s-a-joke-not-a-joke cult in the support class.

[way-too-obsessed-gamer]

My personal take on the coalecroux official wedding rings (like they are dating and perhaps decide to do an actual wedding) is that they can look like anything but they must be enchanted. One always feels like the cold side of a pillow and the other always feels like a warm blanket. Yes the former goes to Gideon and the latter to Kremy

[criminalmaya]

Can't believe i had to bear the sight of fucking 🗿 and no eddie diaz tonight. The fuck is wrong with you tim? You mean to tell me an ex amy medic who has seen it all in combat wasn't supposed to be with his team in the biggest disaster the 118 has had to face, the one where his medic knowledge could have help a lot? the one where their captain, bobby nash, who is his family too, dies???? Does that sound right for anyone? Cause it doesn't for me.

[daily-hanamura]

[qoldenskies]

I want you to know that Leo bringing out the pet names for Donnie gut me every time and I am always laying dead on the pavement /pos Keep at it!

INSTANT KILL

[katabay]

ANDREY STAMATIN

Keep a close eye on Peter. You'd become desperate and turn into a villain without him.

I spend a lot of time thinking about daniil and peter, but something just clicked into place for me with andrey. so!

I am. currently untangling this thread of thoughts about the stamatin twins and daniil and this kind of. triangle that's happening. a three fold bullet for sure, the kind of recognition-awareness-understanding where three people become one, but to step back from that. when daniil and andrey talk, there's a specific shape of peter that stands in his conversational absence. so: triangle formation. it's opposite-adjacent-complementary to daniil and peter's conversations. it all goes back to that first conversation you have with andrey. it's giving knife. love it!

bsky ⭐ pixiv ⭐ pillowfort ⭐ cohost

[iwritenarrativesandstuff]

Akechi voice: “Haha I’m fucking miserable :) Anyways nice café! Did you know that my mom died and nobody ever wanted me. This is some really nice coffee. I think we must be connected by fate. Hi Futaba-chan. Thoughts on the Phantom Thieves? Anyways, this place is lovely. I’ll be back.”

[sugarpasteltmnt]

i feel crazy whenever i’m just existing because all the fics i’ve ever read are just floating in the back of my mind at all times and TNV just keeps. popping. up. (along with many others but..)

and now i’m making more fan art of it because apparently an animation wasn’t enough to satisfy the voices.

awesome job of making such a wonderful fic that it’s had this much of a lasting impact because omgg

AWWWW thank you so much!!! you're so sweet thank you!!! and don't worry, even though TNV is over it still is rotating in my brain 24/7 lol

waaa thank u so much ;w; it makes me so happy to hear you loved my silly little guy and my silly little story so much

[polysyndetonaddictsupportgroup]

hello hello!! your fic pez dispenser debris brings me immense joy. and i wanna know if the other nejire and tamaki will be showing up. id love to see their reactions to fucking #leku. and i’d love to hear your thoughts on them in general if you have any to spare. the big three have such a fun dynamic to me.

Tamaki will appear. I’m not fully settled on Nejire. In my mind, she moved to Kyoto not long after she graduated but keeps in very close touch (if you read the battle of Yokohama posts, she was there during that fight because she was visiting Her Boys and insisted on a Big Three Sleep Over, which is why the three of them were together when Izuku called to begin with). They have a group chat that she started blowing up when the Leku news hit. All of them are painfully, violently aware of the fact Mirio is absolutely not dating Izuku and also of the fact that Mirio’s probably close to drowning himself at the mere thought.

I do really like the idea of the Big Three having been sort of outcasts before they were the big three, and I think canon supports this reading. They were all sort of the weird kids. They were each other’s only friends. After they started rising in the ranks, they became more popular, but they all consider the others their main people.

I also like the idea that they became the Big Three because of each other.

They were friends before they were the big three. And it’s not a coincidence that the big three were all already friends. They pushed each other to grow in their skills and surpass everyone else.

The reason why they haven’t been more present in pez is actually the same reason why I didn’t have them open a hero agency together: they all need to grow separately from the others for a bit.

Like. Here’s Mirio, with two very skilled and experienced heroes at his side, waiting for Izuku to graduate so he can start his agency. Why not go into business with the friends he’s already been fighting with for years?

I see the Big Three as people who all, for one reason or another, decided that they needed to learn how to be strong on their own at the start of their career.

Take Tamaki. He’s childhood friends with Mirio. He was briefly referenced in one of the tumblr posts as one of Mirio’s staunchest advocates after he lost his Quirk. So why isn’t he heroes with Mirio?

Well, he sort of is. He’s got a mutual support agreement with him.

Time to derail into my favorite topic: the economic models underpinning fictional societies. As you can probably guess I’m great at parties.

Mutual support agreements are contractual devices that I came up with in response to the convoluted economic structure of heroics compensation I discussed a few posts ago. In that post, I discussed independent/underground v. agency models with respect to public compensation and how I think that there’s an impossibly complicated matrix that grants heroes portions of the local budget based on their statistics. Briefly, I discussed how that calculation would cause conflict with big name heroes taking credit for their sidekicks’ work because agencies would necessarily need to be counted as one entity for the purposes of public funding.

What happens when multiple agencies are involved in the same incident?

As a reminder, the reason why they need to assign credit for a bust to one individual is because agencies are funded as a whole. This is a grant system that’s meant to be more than just about paying a salary—the government is providing funds meant to go towards an office space, supplies, everything. You could not give everyone in an agency public funding separate checks under that model. Public funding is made out to the agency as a whole and it’s up to the agency as to how to use it. But if you have six people from the same agency who all register the exact same take down because they all participated—well now you’ve got the one job reported six times over for the same filing entity. That’s going to horrifically skew the funding calculation. The government’s paying for the same bust six times over and you just incentivized hero agencies to send their people all to do the same job because it pays the same to have six guys stop one criminal as it does to have six guys stop six different criminals separately.

But hey—sometimes it’s a six guy job. That would more appropriately be considered an enhancement to a job’s relative difficulty than it would be to giving credit for a takedown. After all, the same job could require “six guys” or “one All Might.” If you focus on the number of heroes an agency uses in a job than you do on how difficult that job actually is, then you’re inadvertently penalizing better heroes because Mid Tier Agency needed six guys to handle what you did on your own, but since they needed six whole guys they get paid more for the same thing that you could do solo.

But the reason for this one man credit structure is because you’re getting one check for the government per agency. But what about when heroes from different agencies team up? Big Hero is not sharing a government funding check with Even Bigger Hero, and there’s absolutely no way that every single team up is just fucking pro bono for everyone but one guy. That’d make it impossible. So the same job would have to get counted multiple times when it involved different heroic entities.

The fact that you were teamed up instead of solo would go into the relative value calculation of each independent job. You get the full pot if you’re solo, but if you’re sharing the load, you’re sharing the credit. But at the same time, how much credit you get would also have to be determined on a case by case basis. Like. A hero that evacuated three civilians contributed to a fight, but they in no way should get equal credit and compensation to All Might, who fought the entire villain team solo.

So say Big Hero Agency and Bigger Hero Agency are doing a team up for the good of Japan. Big Hero Agency initiated the investigation, did most of the legwork, and invited Bigger Hero Agency onto the job. However, when it came to actually fighting, Bigger Hero Agency absolutely carried the day. Big Hero Agency would have been dust if Bigger Hero Agency hadn’t been there.

Who deserves more credit and compensation?

There is probably some kind of governmental dispute/appeal board to settle disputes about compensation, but like. As someone who does government work. The government’s absolute favorite thing to say is “we are not babysitting you, fucking figure it out like big boys.” They’ll have a way to resolve disputes, but they will also heavily incentivize voluntary agreement amongst the parties.

Planned team ups probably have legal working shit out ahead of time. Spontaneous team ups or heroes stealing each other’s fights a la Mount Lady and Kamui Woods in the pilot are probably the biggest headaches.

But what about heroes that are always teaming up? They’re your go to. Your homeboy. The daredevil to your Spider-Man. You don’t file your paperwork together, but you’re still always fighting side by side. Are you renegotiating who gets credit for what in every single little fight?

Fuck no. That’s a huge pain in the ass. Enter the mutual support agreement. It’s a contract that has a bunch of clauses meant to help streamline deciding who gets credit for what and resolve disputes before they happen.

You wouldn’t just want this for compensation purposes. Say Big Hero commits the hero equivalent of police brutality. Now he’s being sued. He’s apparently not that big of a hero as the name implies, because he’s got no fucking money. You want more money for your client, so you need a deeper pocket to pull from. At the time of the incident, he was working with Bigger Hero Agency. They’re not the same agency, but it was Bigger Heroes bust, and they work together all the time. Big Hero is basically one of Bigger Heroes employees hidden behind a different corporate structure. Should Bigger Hero be liable for Big Hero?

That’s a big fucking court case that can be headed off at the pass by the fact that Bigger Hero put indemnification and liability clauses in its mutual support agreement. There’s a lot of issues that would arise from the practice of heroics that you’d want to govern ahead of time with a contract. So you sign a mutual support agreement.

But the silly little fake tumblr post also said they weren’t popular and mostly agencies like Idaten used them. So why is that?

Frankly, because it’s not very worth agencies while to team up with other agencies on the regular. The system doesn’t incentivize it.

If you have all of your own sidekicks on a job, you can steal credit from them. The same is not true for heroes from other agencies. You get more public funding if you staff a job with all people from your agency instead of having part of the credit go to other agencies. And you get to stand in front of the cameras and say “Big Hero Has Saved The City Again” instead of having to say “Thank You To Our Dear Friends From Bigger Hero Agency Who Carried This Team.”

Idaten is the exception because, well. It doesn’t care. Idaten’s priority is cultivating the necessary talent and teamwork needed to get the job done. It doesn’t care if it has to go outside of the agency for that. Fuck, Tensei’s canonically willing to reach out to vigilantes. Its genuine focus is saving people, so it goes against the grain of what the system incentivizes.

Mirio and Tamaki have a mutual support agreement. They’re out working together so much that Fat Gum’s agency approved an overall disliked mechanism to facilitate their team ups. They are heroes together—so why aren’t they in an agency together?

I think Tamaki wanted to spend his first year in heroics forcing himself out of his comfort zone so he’d improve. Fat Gum will force him in front of the cameras. He’s focusing on learning how to communicate effectively with the public and with the media, and Fat Gum has the sort of resources and infrastructure where Tamaki can devote the time to learning that and improving. If he was in an agency with Mirio, he’d use Mirio as a crutch to hide from something he genuinely wants to improve in. Fat Gum forces him to grow.

Mirio himself sort of had to go independent. For one, he and Izuku decided to start their agency not too long after Mirio got his license. It was before Mirio debuted. Izuku had just finished his first year. No one knew who either of them were, and they had no clue just how famous they’d both become before Izuku graduated.

They both figured they’d be a couple of nobody heroes with a dinky little agency right out the gate of Izuku’s graduation and were sort of genuinely excited at the prospect. They’d just be heroes together, which is all they wanted. They’d figured no one would give a shit about them until well after they started their agency and started working and that Izuku would have 0 offers to work elsewhere because he wasn’t even going to apply to agencies. So Mirio decided he’d stay independent until Izuku graduated so he wouldn’t be tied up in an agency contracts and they could just start fresh.

The other reason is that most agencies wouldn’t touch Mirio with a ten foot pole because he was Quirkless, and even with the ones that would, he suspected they’d sideline or coddle him because he was Quirkless. Being independent meant he could do whatever the hell he pleased. So he bought the Mirio Mom Van and, for a brief, glorious moment, convinced All Might to supervise their bullshit so he could start going on jobs with Izuku (students have to be supervised by heroes with a teaching license, which he wouldn’t be eligible for for the first three years of his career, except in exigent circumstances. He couldn’t have Izuku as an intern himself but All Might sure could). For a few beautiful weeks it was just Mirio, Izuku, and fucking All Might in the Mirio Mom Van going on stakeouts, all wearing the world’s stupidest mustaches. The UA internship program revoked permission for this arrangement not long after it started formally out of concerns for the legality of this arrangement since All Might was no longer an active duty hero, informally because All Might, Izuku, and Mirio is the stupidest and most reckless combination fucking imaginable and they are killing Aizawa from the stress they are killing him. So now Mirio works alone while he waits for Izuku to be fully licensed.

Nejire I kind of see as someone who moved away from her hometown right out of the gate of graduation but visited home very frequently, which is why she moved to Kyoto after graduation but was having a fucking sleepover at Mirio’s place when Yokohama happened. She takes the bullet train back at least once a month and spends the weekend bumming on Mirio or Tamaki’s couch. I think she wanted to see who she was away from home and there’d never be a better time to do it. I also think she’ll move back so that way she can work more fully with Her Boys one day, but wanted to push herself out of the familiar first.

All of the trio’s reasons for not working together quite yet are mutable, to be clear. Tamaki just wanted the experience early in his career or he knew he’d never learn the public relation skills he wanted to get. Nejire also just wanted the experience somewhere else before she put down real roots somewhere and is liable to move back to be with her friends and family. And Mirio’s on the verge of opening his own agency, so he doesn’t have to worry about getting sidelined by his boss anymore or getting tied up in a bad contract.

[rearranging-deck-chairs]

the doctor isnt neurodivergent or autistic or adhd or nonbinary or genderqueer or asexual. what the doctor is, is Not From Here

[buckleyseddie]

you saw me (i got nowhere to hide)

maddie’s pov | post 6x10 | 5.6k

Maddie turns around, ready to leave, reaches for the doorknob and–

And then she freezes again because she hears it, the sound that made her realize she wasn’t alone in the first place. Only this time she can place it.

Crying.

She drops her hand, turns on her heels, and steps further into the loft. There’s no one in the kitchen or the dining table, which is as much as she can see from there. Then she takes a few more steps, her head whipping around, looking for the source of the sound.

When she finds it, Maddie’s heart all but plummets to the floor.

On the steps of the loft sits Eddie, hunched over, hiding his face in the soft fabric of what looks like one of her brother’s sweaters. And he’s crying.

No. He’s sobbing. An onslaught of gut-wrenching sobs tearing through his chest with so much force that his whole body shakes with it.

Oh, Eddie.

***

Or while Buck’s in a coma, Maddie finds herself at the loft one afternoon. There, she finds a heartbroken Eddie and they have a moment.

read on ao3

[batsplat]

come on there’s gotta be at least 3 sete/vale rivalry appreciators (you me and pedro acosta)!! haven’t seen 2003-05 seasons in full but mugello 2004 alone was so great.

vale and gibernau finished 1&2 on the same podium SEVEN times in 2003, the only ppl who did it more in a single year (since 2000, was too lazy to look back further) were lorenzo/pedrosa in 2012 when they swapped 1&2 places 9 times on the podium.

I love you anon

listen, I know some people need their rivalries to be more balanced than this, but in terms of actual on-track battles it's like. one of the very best this century. (I'm trying to hold back from calling it the best this century but I don't not believe that?) also some might argue that the 1-2 achievement is even more impressive in 2003 than in 2012, given more riders were capable of fighting for wins and the field spread was way less dramatic. sete's 2003 season in particular is so underrated, man's scoring an average of 17.3 points per race, four wins, 10/16 races on the podium, only two races where he was worse than fourth... serious pace plus consistency! out of nowhere!

anyway, here's every notable on-track encounter between sete and valentino, with * to **** asterisks by how worth watching it is for the fight between those two specifically. (for most of these, of course you can find more details in the sete post and the valentino race recs post.) using italics I've indicated which races are available on youtube (or on facebook, in the case of phillip island 2004):

welkom 2003**: the first race after kato's death, and the one where sete secures his unlikely emotional victory. valentino applied heavy pressure on sete in the late stages, but sete stood firm

le mans 2003***: yes, valentino was unlucky when the race was interrupted by rain - but the resulting battle between sete and valentino in the last few laps in tricky conditions is fantastic. multiple overtakes on the last lap and both riders off-track at the final corner

catalunya 2003*: valentino looked locked-on for the victory until he made two mistakes, the second of which has him go off-track and drop several places to hand capirossi the win. vale finds some crazy pace to catch up with biaggi and sete and pass them both

sachsenring 2003****: valentino gets a big enough lead you think it's surely over... but then sete catches him, leading valentino to let him go by so he can study him from behind. a dramatic final lap that prompts a bit of an existential crisis from valentino

brno 2003****: valentino shows up after the summer break with red hair, a determined smile and a mission. this race is a thriller, a proper dogfight between 3-5 riders with plenty of twists and turns - before the whole thing distils into an all timer of a final lap duel

rio 2003*: valentino sticks behind sete for a while, but it feels like he was just biding his time. once he gets past, he pushes hard and pulls away for a comfortable win

sepang 2003*: the match point race, after valentino had run away with the season post-brno. valentino gets a middling start and has to hunt down sete, but once he does he again pulls away

mugello 2004***: MY BELOVED. this is where the momentum in that season really shifts, courtesy of one hell of a chaotic race. there is an excellent sete/valentino duel in this race, but it's far from the only thing going on. all of it's brilliant

catalunya 2004****: a race long duel! I love catalunya duels because so much of it is about tyres getting chewed up and the riders wobbling and sliding more and more. sete's home race and psychologically a very important race... one hell of a show

assen 2004****: the turning point of the relationship! I still FULLY believe this set up everything that happened next, even if nobody talks about this race any more. the fight slaps!! the last lap slaps!! the podium with bad vibes slaps!! valentino in that presser!!

brno 2004*: sete badly needed a win here, and in the end it's not particularly close. the early battle with those two and biaggi is fun, but eventually sete's newly upgraded honda has the clear edge

phillip island 2004****: the first duel post-qatar curse - so these two now hate each other. it's also a match point race! banger of a start, sete is proper feisty here leaving valentino to hunt him down. banger of a final lap too

valencia 2004*: last race of the season - and even though the title's been sealed up, wouldn't it be nice to get a morale-boosting win to take into the new year? at sete's home race too? ah, you know how this goes. the way valentino gets past sete is pretty funny

jerez 2005****: well of course! again, fierce start, and it takes a bit to get rid of everyone else so it's just those two again. the last lap is something special, as is the post-race drama

catalunya 2005***: back on sete home turf!! and sete rides such a good race, he's really doing his very best - except of course valentino is hunting him down again. there's a brutally dismissive quality to this victory

le mans 2005***: edwards streaks off in front until valentino catches him - and vale's content to sit on his teammate's rear tyre until sete catches them both. the race from there is a joy

sachsenring 2005***: another goody! hayden features quite prominently in this one, and crucially valentino never manages to make a break for it. sete leads going into the final lap

brno 2005***: the fun of this one is in remembering it's sachsenring // summer break // brno... and the duel here immediately picks up again with valentino brusquely cutting past sete on the first lap. really makes it feel like sete is trapped in some sort of a hellish time loop... the end to this one is proper CRUEL

qatar 2005***: one year anniversary of that race and of course sete is desperate to repeat his success. the more of these you watch the crueller they get, not least when it really does look like he's built up enough of a lead. melandri also plays a big part in this one

mugello 2006**: you just know how badly sete would have loved to win this (and so did the commentators). entire race is excellent but sete mainly features in the starting dogfight, not the latter stages

phillip island 2006**: this is a chaos bike swap race and there's a lot going on, all of which is very relevant to the title fight. relevant to this post is that sete and valentino end up fighting for the last podium place on the very last lap. their last duel before sete's career was cut short by injury

obviously, if anyone's looking to watch the full sete/valentino story, there's a few more races you'd have to add in like 2004 welkom, qatar and sepang. anyway, this rivalry slaps. hopefully soon a fourth person can be recruited to the cause

[tardisimpalalover16]

I want Buddie to happen just as much as the next person does but I would really really love if abc didn’t just rush them to be together in this season. There are only ten episodes. I just keep imagining that season 7 ends with a domestic Buddie scene—sitting down on the couch together sipping beer watching a movie with Chris. That could very well lead up to a kissing moment (hence very lovely blushy Ryan Guzman) and he (Eddie) literally wakes up on the couch, dazed and confused. Going “oh my god, I’m in love with Buck.”

Season eight could continue on as Eddie Diaz is a good catholic Mexican guy. I think he will have lots of emotions and hardships accepting those feelings, and also being like yah it’s so easy to love Buck. He’s been doing it for years. Mr.I-put-you-in-the-will. Can’t get any more heart eyes than that tbh.

Of course I’m such a big fan of pining, and this man has been pining forever even if he doesn’t realize it (Thank you Ryan). I would just appreciate a knowing he’s in love pining.