#hope this was at least kinda interesting?? idk

[aakaneeee]

new luka content! you know what that means (from luka fan number one tm)

trigger warnings!: this is more or less coherent, I tried my best to tie my ideas togheter though. physical violence mentions, heart attacks mentioned? idk if these are valid tw's

pointing out the obvious, we have earpieces for both Luka and Till, which means they'll probably use their hands!! a lot!! I wonder what that means...

also, on the topic of earpieces, a lot of the times, rock singers use them.. does that mean they'll have that kind of performance? it could be, since we do know that bl8m DEFINETLY has the ability to sing that way!! I would love to see Luka just.. snapping. A lot of people say that Till will rage, but I'd like to see the opposite.

If you look close, you can see a heart rate.. at first glance, it's.. a little faster than usual? It looks a lot like Tachycardia. I looked closer and noticed the heart rate chart is kinda.. shaky?? I wonder if this is foreshadowing.. maybe I'm reading too much into it, but I know that sometimes, your heart rate can slow down during a heart attack?? (I just talked about tachycardia what am I saying.)

considering his fingers' placement, I realized that chronic migraines usually hurt on the side of the head.. I dont have chronics, but my migraines usually hurt behind my ear, so I was wondering if that's why they are there...

onto his appearance... his hair looks put up, right? At least, half put up, and that reminds me of:

top 3 luka... when he's standing on a throne all alone... foreshadowing much huh

i personally believe "Never come back again" is the name of the song, since CURE was "delivered" to us in a similar manner. for me, it could go 2 ways:

"Never come back again", as in, never participate again.. as in, either Luka losing and not participating again.. because he's dead?? or not participating again because the aliens got bored of him and Heperu gets another pet for his whims...

"Never come back again", as in, "She'll never come back again", I was thinking of the song possibly being Hyuna dying and so, never returning, which would make sense because Ruler of My Heart, Luka's other song, is also about her.

No matter the outcome, I am so excited for this! Luka is.. obviously my favourite character and he's been since the first time I saw him, so any outcome will have me.. quite interested :3 if this goes into Luka dying, I will feel the grief of Ivan fans (I hope not though.. sorry Till..)

just akane fangirling under cut:

OH. MY GOD RAAHHHHH HE IS SOOO BEAUTIFUL😭😭 I can see the long hair... it's longer than in round 6... AND THE PONYTAIL TAKBHHHH HES SO BEAUTIFULLLL THE WAY I STARTED JUMPING WHEN I SAW THESEEEEEEEHEJDJSH

[chiimeramanticore]

[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

[funkbun]

queen doodles n some unrelated queen thoughts n ideas

For the Stone Queen, death, destruction, and revenge were the only ways to reach her goal. A goal she has long forgotten, but the cycle of wrath is one that she refuses to escape. Later in her reign, after her enemies have been long gone and forgotten, she sometimes finds herself thinking "Why am I doing this, what do I wish to achieve?" And while that thought is usually brushed away almost instantly, she is left with a feeling that all her actions have been done in vain.

That feeling grows and grows until her own eventual demise, rotting away in the middle of a desert. A solitary, motionless being left alone with her final thoughts. After a reign of terror and destruction, she feels as though this is the only realistic outcome for her. She's not proud of herself, yet still did not regret her actions. Her first "death" lead to this, the deaths of those who betrayed her fueled her wrath, and she continued to lead a legacy of death until her own, arguably, the most pathetic death she has had to witness

.

However, the Desert Queen (Queen 2) has a different view on death. To her, death is a natural process that all beings must go through. All but her, that is. She understands what death is, but feels completely removed from it due to her perceived immortality. In her mind; and many other desert grumps, she's a god, something totally different from everyone and everything she sees.

Death isn't something she should personally worry or care about. To her, there's no reason to waste her limitless life thinking of the possibility of not being around anymore. Which is why her death came as a shock for her and her subjects. Her body had been weakened after centuries of ruling, so the island's ruthless volcano took her out instantly. It was a quick, probably not painless, demise.

rip to these bug ladies lol

[smiles-ocs]

Some concepts and ideas for Castor and Ronan’s story called Starchild. Some of these are… hard to get to drawing, specifically Ronan’s younger siblings, might redesign them, but they’re all very young. Ronan left to join a crew so he could make money for them while his parents physically can’t work, and he made sure that his 12-year-old brother is very helpful. Then some random character ideas. A first mate on Castor’s pirate crew, two important characters named Rigel and Esther, castor as a young boy, and random scene ideas I have.

There’s a lot of crap I’m rambling about under the cut so go there if you want to know more about the characters, lore, and spoilers

I also have an idea of a deity or something of the sorts. It’s bascially a “Star God”, something with incredible power that was given to them from the heavens, and it is responsible for the starchildren that have shown up around the world, hence why this series is called Starchild. The whole thing around the Star God is a mystery, but people do know it exists thanks to the star children. This is a little dark but some explanation on Starchildren:

Starchildren are born every few hundred years or so, it’s unknown how often a starchild is born, but people believe that starchildren are the star god’s children, and that when they reach a certain age, they are sacrificed to deal with all the problems the world is having. They believe that if a starchild is not sacrificed, demons from hell will arrive to destroy the world. I hinted at this on my last post, but starchildren turn into strange creatures, the main one being the Leviathan. There’s also the Kraken and the other one who’s name is so complicated I’m not even going to bother with it dhskdbsk.

Long story short, the whole thing is a lie. Starchildren have incredible power when they become adults and are “awakened” as Starchildren. They remember the person that gave them that power (the Star God) and their purpose, which is watching over the people. However, centuries ago, someone in high power believed that Star children were too powerful, and out of fear, he came up with an excuse to kill starchildren before they grew too powerful, because no one should be more powerful than him. So they killed starchildren when they were young and weak, hiding behind the excuse of it being a sacrifice to the world or something, using the blood to cleanse the world and keep the demons at bay. That way, if the starchildren escape, and inevitably take on the role of “deities”, people will believe that the demons have arrived to punish them for failing, and will try to kill the awakened starchildren.

Starchildren cannot escape their fate, however, because they cannot hide unless they are far away from people. They have blue hair that shines in the darkest fog, blue hair that cannot be hidden, and a star birthmark somewhere.

I suppose there’s no reason to hide this now, but Castor is the starchild of this era, originally called Orion, but he changed his name for safety. He ran away when he learned that he was going to die, trying to escape on a boat. The people almost caught him, but the kraken appeared, seemingly saving his life. As Castor tried to hide from people, he tried to hide his blue hair, but it constantly shines through whatever he hid it in. The best he could do was to wrap it up and put a thick hat on, which helped, but even so, you can see in his wrapping the blue hair. He tried to dye it, hide it in mud, even shaving it, but the blue cannot be covered up, so hiding in plain sight was nearly impossible to him. He left to sea to avoid people, but accidentally became captain of the pirate crew. He’s a very jaded man who is intimidating and skilled in sword fighting. People respect him as a captain, so he is in high status on his ship (obviously 💀). Problem is, there is a very, VERY high bounty on the star child’s head, so even the most loyal crew members may turn on him if he is found out.

Castor trusts no one, but he seems to have a soft spot for Ronan for some reason. Even when he eventually finds out that he is the starchild, he can’t bring himself to kill him. He’s just a boy…

Obviously, Esther and Rigel are starchildren as well. Rigel is an ancient starchild, who lived a good life before the starchildren sacrifices. He roams the ocean, punishing anyone who threatens the innocent or disrespects the ocean. There were a lot of starchildren too, but the creatures of starchildren were hunted and killed, leaving Rigel, Esther, and Castor the last three starchildren. Esther was a starchild who escaped the sacrifice, who is far more cruel and jaded than Castor, and when Castor is “awakened”, she goes after him to use him to punish everyone.

Rigel is that turtle Whale island thing, Esther is the kraken, and Castor turns into the Leviathan.

The star god is no benevolent being, and is not a god at all. He’s a regular human who got magic from some meteorite, idk, there doesn’t need to be any specifics lol, and he grew immensely powerful. He resides away from the ocean, but he is not a good person. He’s greedy, selfish, and does nothing to help the innocent starchildren he “created”. He would love to have the starchildren to do his bidding, but if they die, it’s no matter, cuz he doesn’t need them. Idk maybe he’s not greedy lol. Either way the star god is not a good person, but I kinda want the star god’s role to be similar to Davy Jones in pirates of the Caribbean. There must always be a star god.

Anyways I hope that all makes sense 💀💀 Ronan is just there, being roped up into this nonsense, but he’s a good boy with a good heart and wants to help the starchildren, and he and Castor grow close.

[xlillilith]

prowlerbyte the only good 42 miles ship imo

[screechingsandwichhologram]

my uninformed american opinion is that i will be calling it derry not londonderry because im american and therefore will always support ireland if its ireland vs the british.

(i wasn't even going to post this but i wrote a whole essay in the tags so i don't want to waste that)

[fairyroses]

did you watch the Shattered/Asylum Talkville episodes? 👀

Yes I did! I'm really sorry, I've been meaning to send you all my notes/highlights from the Shattered pod ep like I promised I would, but my last semester of grad school started like 2.5 weeks ago and I've just been massively overwhelmed since then. 😭

Tbh, you could probably watch the full Shattered pod if you wanted, it was a pretty good ep for Talkville standards. The biggest highlight was probably Michael saying that the moment where Lex sees Clark use his powers for the first time is his favorite Lex moment in the series (especially in terms of his own performance)—he's clearly really proud of this episode and I think that made the pod better in general. Also Lionel gets called an evil bastard a couple of times, Tom points out how we all feel bad for Lex by the end of the episode, and Al Gough calls the Clex relationship "the focal point of the series." Other stuff happens too ofc, but I'd say those were my top moments.

The Asylum pod was... less good, IMO—like, it wasn't bad I guess, but some stuff def left me feeling kinda frustrated, so I wouldn't really recommend that you watch that one askldfsk (I could probably skim through it again and collect some highlights from it if you want, though)

[yakultii]

I was listening to an aussie podcast and they briefly proposed the question of whether it’s time that aussies (and other nations) should be able to have some influence over America’s presidential elections/voting because as allies there is a flow on effect which really does impact us in many ways and honestly (american)politics is not my special interest or nothin so maybe idk things and could be missing something but also maybe in such a globalised society this wouldn’t be such a bad idea

[designernishiki]

well. finished yakuza 5.

[michi-chelle]

if i got anything out of kouichi’s route it’s this image aka the best haru image ever

[piningpercussionist]

Aside from the delicate touch of a redhead and borderline infidelity, did you get Ramona anything for her birthday?

".... Shit."

Kim stares blankly at her phone for a moment, unsure how to proceed. Did she know that? Did she know it was Ramona's birthday? She tried to recall but kept drawing up blanks. Had she not told them her birthday?

Maybe the panic was making her forget.

Kim bites her lip as she pockets her phone, leaving the ask unanswered; she'd give them some vague non-answer and verbal attack another time. Apparently, she has a birthday girl to tend to.

The guilt feels light enough to ignore now anyhow, as she shuts off the water fully and moves towards the door; she tries not to doubt that Ramona will make her forget about it entirely.

But as her hand reaches for the knob, she hears approaching footsteps, and goes still...

[jessiesjaded]

...

[lanihaluki]

For those of you who are writers out there: please never stop writing. Each time you write and share it with the world, you are sharing little pieces of your heart and that is BEAUTIFUL. Share your work because it makes you feel seen. Share your writing because it makes you light up, or even more, makes OTHERS light up because your creation exists.

Words — YOUR words — can make others laugh, cry, or be overcome with feelings of comfort. And if you’re doubting your writing abilities, maybe comparing it with other writers, there is no competition to be the best. No one else in the world has the same style, the same tone or characters or storyline that you do. Write because your stories are uniquely your own. Write the way that eases your heart <3

[akari-hope]

.

[mysunshine-youremoonlight]

sometimes i look at things i write and i go "huh. my mental illness is showing"