#defending champs

[cletusthurstonbeauregard]

WNBA opening night

and the champs got their rings

[monsieurenjlolras]

If you ever go to Vermont, you might hear someone mention Champ, and if you ask them what Champ is they will explain that he is a lake monster that lives in Lake Champlain. SOME PEOPLE might explain this by saying that he is "the Vermont version of the Loch Ness Monster." These people are WRONG and they are perpetuating LIES. The first possible sighting of a Creature in Loch Ness was in 1871 CE (the 565 CE creature sighting was in a river, NOT Loch Ness). Champ was first sighted 1609 CE. THE LOCH NESS MONSTER IS SCOTLAND'S VERSION OF CHAMP.

[charles-leclerc-official]

I can at least rest easy knowing that Max is out there defending Charles to anyone who will listen.

[doloneia]

99% of teucers get hit with a fuckass big rock before they finally kill hector

[g-cedillo]

What could you possibly see in a failure like me?

Knuckle Puck

Ace Of Spades

Sacramento, CA

02/22/2022

[homoeroticgrappling]

So with Ospreay fighting Swerve for the world championship, does that mean not only are we getting AEW VS AEW for the world championship at Forbidden Door but that Ospreay isn't gonna defend the international championship? Cause if there's one title that should be on the line at every Forbidden Door it's that one, so unless they book him to have two matches...

[m-a-d-e-l-e-i-n-e]

I think as a society we need to forget that the past eight years or so ever happened and just go back to this

[xariarte]

Sixteen players are competing to represent Canada in Paris but the battle isn't just on the court. [Lindsay Dunn] spoke to Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Nickeil Alexander-Walker, Kelly Olynyk, Lu Dort, and Trey Lyles about the epic battles in... UNO - Jul 4 2024

[logangarfieldss]

@lgbtqcreators​ creator challenge | [color, favorite musician]

State Champs Music Videos

[muirneach]

jannik halle 2024 singles & doubles champ would slay and it’s definitely feasible

[incorrectthots]

If the oilers beat us, fuck. If the stars make it to the finals, fuck. Like I'd rather have a nasty rough mattdrai cup finals then the cats kill my girls. Like we need to figure out how to play again (we played vegas first round and how hard could playing the cats in the finals be- I'm shitting myself) as soon as the stars are out the NBA finals are still on so there's still hope for Dallas

[g-cedillo]

You are my North Star, my Lighthouse, the only thing that helps me come back home.

Give Up

Don’t Come Home

Knuckle Puck

[latenightxtalking]

oh COOK

[cephalopodsquad]

kickout at one and then suplexing joe, oh im marking the fuck out

[2leggedshark]

If orange Cassidy didn't exist do you think there could've been a different wrestler who could've gotten you fully into the wrestling thing or would you have completely missed out on this?

That's actually a great question and honestly???? It's hard to say. I think it would've had to be either a real silly person or someone who does like. High flying stuff to hold my attention lol.

Maybe a luchador, like the luchabros or komander, or hologram even tho he's very new to aew. They all probably also could've gotten me into it I think.

Willow nightingale also definitely could've been the sole reason I got sucked in if orange didn't exist. I mean. She's also a really big favorite of mine and she has been that for a bit. So. Yeahhhh

[batsplat]

I love your brain! like yes of course valentino should be a princess! (and a witch, who curses ppl) and the malicious story teller stuff!!!

*insert that photo where mick doohan is putting a crown on valentino, but make it a tiara instead*

also, the bike transforming into a blue haired anime girl in his dreams I feel like irl valentino would endorse this afdggjk

(x) somehow this is probably the cinematic vision that is most likely to get made. we already know he's into surrealist animation that's based on himself so it's like. not that much of a step. lemme sit him down and explain utena to him I wanna see something

for reference, the doohan/valentino photo

icl, in my head I remembered the crown already looking more like a tiara. like I'd lezzed up that crown in my head, made it a little daintier. that's actually a pretty normal crown. I mean, it's still objectively a bit of an odd photo to exist. but yeah. to me this is basically already princess-coded. shame his honda prince just couldn't treat him right

it's funny because he's such an absolute weirdo about this stuff that a lot of this bike characterisation is basically already... well, it's already true in his own head, isn't it. like how he'd hesitated over saying yes to yamaha because he was so attached to like... the honda not Because It Was A Good Bike but because it was one of his true loves or something

"I took pictures of myself hugging and embracing the rc211v" FREAK

and how the whole process of signing with yamaha was like. about liberation. but so hard to give up his girl and show up for this completely different girl who's likely to be mid for a while

like!! he really goes all in on the liberation stuff, but it's also.... he really saw something in that yamaha when nobody else did. it's a bit horse girl of him, but also for our purposes here the bike is spiritually very much the prince to swoop in and save him from his mental shackles. can the horse save the horse girl, that's what happened here

anyway, something about how... a lot of the scaffolding of utena's plot depends on kinda bizarre and straight up silly mythology that anthy and akio are quite directly responsible for... the duels, obviously, akio using his projector thingy, the letters from end of the world... to the point where it almost serves a disorientating effect, where the characters are increasingly immune to how nonsensical and weird everything is and stop even commenting on it. unless they get a shock to the system like nanami accidentally seeing anthy and akio................ uh. you know. and then there's something quite fun and engaging about valentino kinda,, brute forcing his vision on the sport - where increasingly a lot of the insanity involving him has become completely accepted to the point of being accepted, and everyone else is operating within his rules. the celebrations is an obvious totem for that general influence.... just something quite fun to hearing commentators speculating what he's trying to tell the world when he's dressing up as a prisoner or whatever, like they're actively engaged in this insanity valentino has set up. but it's also kinda about the legacy element, where you end up having the melandris and jorges of this world following in his footsteps and planning their own celebrations... nobody ever did it quite as much as valentino did, but even stuff like marc's title-winning celebrations, the dice or snooker table or whatever, are part of the same tradition. I had this moment watching maverick dress up as batman this year where I was like 'huh this would be a completely bizarre event if I were watching tennis or f1 or whatever but I suppose we do just completely accept it as basically normal behaviour'. and because for valentino, celebrations are such a big element of narrativisation of his victories, of explaining The Meaning of his victories, of telling the story of a win and his career... he's kinda ensured this sport as a whole ends up being super into exactly that style of narrativisation. all on the same wavelength in how bizarrely dramatic they are. is this not basically utena, artificiality of the narratives and all.... well, not really, but it is a little bit imo. valentino probably could've gotten a pre-race sequence where he challenges riders to duels introduced if he really put his mind to it

I was also thinking some more about the imagery he's big on, most notably all the sun and moon stuff (from here)

angry moon and angry sun!! so which one's supposed to be the happy-go-lucky one

you get the occasional grinning moon:

I would think it's fun and quirky and a bit of a subversion if the moon is actually like. the happy bit. and the sun is the competitive nature. even discussing this is all kinda funny, like how many athletes are this into inventing their whole little symbolic language you can theorise about? I'm engaging with this sport in the same way how utena, by the time she's like fifteen episodes in, doesn't even question how it's possible that black flowers can mind control students. these things are basically equivalent

anyhow I do miss the faces on the sun and the moon, they were a very early valentino aesthetic. and crucially it does fit into the reading of 2004 that's really about him... integrating those two natures. as I've repeatedly yapped about by now, there are no celebrations that can quite match the pointed cruelty of sepang 2004. sun and moon meet each other, destroying his enemy in whimsical fashion. so: with all this dualism valentino himself has introduced into the story, with all this symbolic stuff he was throwing at the wall in 2003, he's basically created the narrative himself wherein his prince (the m1) can swoop in and liberate the princess (vale) and allow the prince to revolutionise the world (idk self actualise ig) by integrating the sun and the moon or... or something. and becoming a witch is depicted as being pushed over the edge by a moment of crisis obsessed with achieving a singular goal... well, that's qatar, isn't it. devoted to his m1, has a crisis about coming close to losing the title, does a curse, plans a little sadistic celebration to ritually manifest his curse into existence. and also the bike is a hot anime girl prince he can do witchcraft with. valentino hmu I have a proposal for you