#god i miss those days

[bottleneckdolphin]

Is the transformers fandom really even still around or am I just here like

[ms-nishakadam]

When Handsome Jack took over the ECHOcasts back in the day...

[kingfisherprince]

the history of rafole, part one

or: every story starts somewhere.

by popular demand (read: three-ish people and my own insufferable brain) we are now Doing This. so without much further ado, i present to you the very first rafole history post.

and of course where better to start than where it all started? their first match against each other, the french open quarterfinal in 2006.

(continued under the cut.)

some context: rafa was, for the first time ever, the defending french open champion, and the world #2 behind roger. novak was world #63 and all of 19 years old. rafa had just turned 20 a few days prior.

(internal monologue: oh my god they were kids)

this was the year we got rafa's little roland garros blog-diary-thing, and in it he says this about the upcoming match:

and this is what novak said in his pre-match press conference:

(spoiler alert: he doesn't. but we'll get to that.)

thanks to a lovely anon who pointed me to the @rafolearchive account, i found out that novak wrote 'vamos nole' on his shoes for that match, to mimic the 'vamos rafa' on the back of rafa's.

with his history of impersonations, it's probably quite a tongue-in-cheek thing from novak, but i find it hopelessly endearing. maybe that says something about me, i don't know.

anyway, we might as well get onto the actual match.

(warning, the highlights are in 2006 video quality. so, awful.)

some cinematic shots:

this was during the start of rafa's era of utter dominance on clay, and also during the start of the era of constant match retirements from nole. so although it was a pretty good match, seeing the scoreline end up like this ―

― with rafa winning the first two sets to continue his 58 match clay winning streak, and novak retiring citing a lower back injury, shouldn't be much of a surprise.

(that flag, by the way, is of serbia and montenegro, a union which disintegrated the very month this match was played. but this is rafole history, not balkan history, so i'll just note that at the time, novak was still considering switching to british nationality, and move on.)

what is a surprise, and honestly more than a bit ridiculous, is what novak said in the post-match press conference.

i definitely suggest watching that video, just for the nuance of rafa's reaction ― he found it just as funny as i do. here's the most important part:

yeah, of course he isn't. it would only take, oh, 6 years for novak to beat him on clay and 9 for it to be at roland garros. delusional much today, nole?

rafa literally had to ask for a spanish translation to make sure he was hearing that right haha. he takes it with humour, though, and i'll close this section out by saying that their net hug was really sweet, as always during the early years.

this was their only match that year. since then they've played each other at least once every year, with 59 matches in total and a whole lot of history in between for us to cover.

that history starts here.

love-all, begin.

[end part one.]

part two

[ask-the-best-baldi-basics]

Hello.

I am Painis Cupcake!

I will eat you.

:D

{ no thank you

[mandiemegatron]

I almost forgot to respond to you mentioning me in that previous ask but WHAT DO YOU MEAN I'M YOUR ANGST MENTOR ALSIDNEB ?!??!!? 😹

I'd just write what the heart wanted to write, and if it meant shattering someone else's heart in the process, then so be it LMAO

What's funny tho is that I think you were the one who started calling me the "grandmaster of angst" during our rp days??? It may have been someone else too though, I don't remember for sure. But I do know it happened, and so now whenever I think of angst, I just see it as living up to my title 😈😈😈

In the words of a salty water god:

"I've got a reputation

I've got a name to uphold,

So I can't go letting you walk

Or else the world forgets I'm cold"

MY ZUKA HII lmao YES I remember those days, I can't remember if it was me or if it was Shannon (IDK IF WE'RE STILL MUTUALS SHANNON BUT I LOVE YOU AND THINK OF YOU ALL THE TIME, I HOPE YOU'RE DOING WELL!!) But I can remember that exact conversation between the three of us 😂😂😂😂 GOD those were the days 😭😭😭

But FR you are absolutely the Grandmaster of Angst, and I take alot of inspiration from you 🥺🥺🥺💖💖 you've for real helped me as a writer and a creator and I can't thank you enough for that. I strive to break the peoples hearts 😈😈😈 (and then put them back together 💖)

[sad-cinnamongirl]

me and my friend are going to an abandoned building tomorrow

[lokisprettygirl]

Songs that gives you 2000 nostalgia

I am getting alot of questions today, I love questions.

Now I have hundreds of songs but I can only add a few so here it goes

[skiitter]

tagged by the beloved @andcosmic

three ships: Silvermerc (Johnny Silverhand/V), Zutara (Zuko/Katara), Dhr (Draco/Hermione)

last song: 'Call Acab' by Sam Stone

last movie: D&D: Honor Among Thieves

currently reading: Golden Son (Book 2 of the Red Rising Saga) by Pierce Brown

currently watching: Ted Lasso, BEEF, The Mandalorian

currently consuming: I'm out of my Beverage Bitch Bevvies rn and it SUCKS.

currently craving: a fucking beverage

taggin’ (no pressure): @cuteasamuntin @simplifiedemotions @sumbul @master-of-strings @vos-videmus

[jedimasterbailey]

Barrissoka Valentines Day short story ideas…let’s hear them! I may just get back into writing again to get me out of this depression that taken hold of me for month 😅

[pangtasias-atelier]

i just wanted to say its saurr impressive the quality and speed you put out work, especially for requests like thank u for feeding us 🫣

Thank you so much bestie!!! I'm glad you're enjoying the stories and just wanna say thanks again for the message ajsjsbns. I genuinely don't even wanna answer these so I can just stare at them often but then I feel bad not answering.

And thanks for letting me know you're enjoying my silly little stories. Like, every bit of interaction mean a lot with how dead fandom interaction is compared to livejournal which I'm used to from so long ago lmao. And even a03 is like dead just compared to a few years back, like I looked at it and just kinda got sad at reading people's stories and left comments on each one I enjoyed

[instantarmageddon]

I just remembered that when I was really little I couldn't operate the ps1 joysticks so I played every game by pressing down on the dpad really hard and scooting my thumb around which is. Certainly a strategy

[dictatoroffandoms]

Going through my old drafts and found a post that is just someone's cock and balls

[beingsuneone]

Nothing will beat the vibes of watching old YouTube fnaf songs back in like 2016/2017

[gamer-kai]

Teen Wolf discourse used to be like

Deaton is a satanist, he stole the Hale alpha spark for Scott in the name of Beelzebub, Lucifer himself put Deaton on this earth, and I think he is somehow responsible for the hale fire. Stiles is canon bisexual because he hesitated to answer a question about his sexuality, but he is not into Scott (even though he said multiple times that he was attracted to Scott). He is only into Derek. In fact, it is homophobia that Derek hasn't knotted Stiles already, and we should boycott the episode where Danny gets it on with the gay twin, to protest the homophobia. Scott is the spawn of Satan, a bad friend, a bad alpha, the werewolf antichrist, and also mentally challenged even though he is in advanced classes. Who the hell is Boyd? Never heard of him.

[wp100]

i remember when the only choice u had in baldur's gate was to play a human or dwarf. i played Dark Alliance on the Xbox when I was younger. Game scared the crap outta me. It was getting hard to play too so we didn't get past a certain point. We were still in the sewers? cellars? with the rats and the ice block things. Those ice block monsters scared me so bad I couldn't go any further

Yeah kid me was weird

[plumadesatada]

just remembered a fic on AO3 (or more likely LJ because it had that distinct late 00's experimental vibe) that appeared double-spaced oddly, in that some paragraphs would be spaced normally and others would have double or even triple spaces in between. it was about one half of the otp getting over the other's death (or coma, can't remember which), so all the comments were about how poignant the use of visual spacing was as a means to convey all the emotional holes in the character's life.

and then the author replied like... *giggle* guys it's NOT double spaced. try selecting the whole text

and we were all like "no WAY"

but we selected the text, and yes!!!

the "holes" in the story? they were actually lines and actions from the dead/coma character's ghost, rendered invisible to the eye by the simple trick of coloring the text the exact same as the background, revealed by nothing more than a click and a drag of the mouse

a story about the profound loneliness of losing your the partner of your life and having to make do without them, without anything to fill the holes they'd left behind, suddenly became a story about the profound helplessness of seeing someone you love suffer from your absence while you are right there, unable to do anything about it, unable to communicate that you love them enough to suffer unseen and unheard with them, just to keep them company they'll never know about

it was then that I truly realized how *superior* the digital medium is to plain printed paper, how the medium and the format can add to a story.

I think about that fic about once a year. I wish I could find it again

EDIT: FOUND IT!!!! UPDATE HERE