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#if things were simply better
blurred-cat · 11 months
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i'm sure it's been asked before but Having A Good Life an Entitlement or a Privilege? should to goal of a society be to ensure all the needs of its members are met or should their needs only be met because they are valued enough?
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cruelplatonic · 3 months
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my personal headcanon is the vees were unremarkable nobodies when they were alive. i just love it as a thematic throughline for them. they love to let the public of hell speculate on them being famed and acclaimed since before death, but the the truth is they were a d-list failed influencer that got by on cheap controversey and scamming, a broke junkie who burned every shaky bridge he ever had, and a worn-out broadcast production assistant with more rejected auditions and tossed out script pitches than he could count. nobody missed them when they were gone, nobody cared who they were until they were dead.
#because villains who didn't start off supremely powerful are more interesting to me#vees#it's not that they CAN'T be better. or that they're simply ignorant of the ways they fuck up others lives#they actually all do have that knowledge of being the underdog. and it's made them all the more shitty#because they never want to be those people again#narratives about people who make each other worse <3#to be clear they were still shitty people in life. manipulative. consumed by greed and envy. all their individual flaws etc etc#but hell made them into the absolute worst versions of themselves#of course what their Worst Self is and the journey/length of time/initial reaction to being in hell varies#like val sees hell as a continuation of the things happening in life. just w/ the power dynamics always privileging him#it's the same drugs and violence. except the violence isn't just survival anymore but the chance to indulge his deeply sadistic desires#vox has completely dissociated from his time alive. that person is dead and he's reinvented himself 1000 times over since then#90% of the time he has those memory files shoveled into a hidden directory#he refuses to acknowledge that he's still haunted by some of the same insecurities from almost a century ago#val doesn't necessarily see his living self in a fond light but he does see that person as fundamentally him#velvette thinks life was full of people who weren't her demographic but fortunately that's been fixed by sinners!#they just couldn't Get Her and that was all their faults#the primary way they view their past selves can be summed up as: scorn (vox) apathy (valentino) and in denial (velvette)#sorry the bulk of the post was in the tags. i will be doing this again#the scorn is the coping mechanism for shame. of course
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halorvic · 3 months
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The danger is clear and present: COVID isn’t merely a respiratory illness; it’s a multi-dimensional threat impacting brain function, attacking almost all of the body’s organs, producing elevated risks of all kinds, and weakening our ability to fight off other diseases. Reinfections are thought to produce cumulative risks, and Long COVID is on the rise. Unfortunately, Long COVID is now being considered a long-term chronic illness — something many people will never fully recover from. Dr. Phillip Alvelda, a former program manager in DARPA’s Biological Technologies Office that pioneered the synthetic biology industry and the development of mRNA vaccine technology, is the founder of Medio Labs, a COVID diagnostic testing company. He has stepped forward as a strong critic of government COVID management, accusing health agencies of inadequacy and even deception. Alvelda is pushing for accountability and immediate action to tackle Long COVID and fend off future pandemics with stronger public health strategies. Contrary to public belief, he warns, COVID is not like the flu. New variants evolve much faster, making annual shots inadequate. He believes that if things continue as they are, with new COVID variants emerging and reinfections happening rapidly, the majority of Americans may eventually grapple with some form of Long COVID. Let’s repeat that: At the current rate of infection, most Americans may get Long COVID.
[...]
LP: A recent JAMA study found that US adults with Long COVID are more prone to depression and anxiety – and they’re struggling to afford treatment. Given the virus’s impact on the brain, I guess the link to mental health issues isn’t surprising. PA: There are all kinds of weird things going on that could be related to COVID’s cognitive effects. I’ll give you an example. We’ve noticed since the start of the pandemic that accidents are increasing. A report published by TRIP, a transportation research nonprofit, found that traffic fatalities in California increased by 22% from 2019 to 2022. They also found the likelihood of being killed in a traffic crash increased by 28% over that period. Other data, like studies from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, came to similar conclusions, reporting that traffic fatalities hit a 16-year high across the country in 2021. The TRIP report also looked at traffic fatalities on a national level and found that traffic fatalities increased by 19%. LP: What role might COVID play? PA: Research points to the various ways COVID attacks the brain. Some people who have been infected have suffered motor control damage, and that could be a factor in car crashes. News is beginning to emerge about other ways COVID impacts driving. For example, in Ireland, a driver’s COVID-related brain fog was linked to a crash that killed an elderly couple. Damage from COVID could be affecting people who are flying our planes, too. We’ve had pilots that had to quit because they couldn’t control the airplanes anymore. We know that medical events among U.S. military pilots were shown to have risen over 1,700% from 2019 to 2022, which the Pentagon attributes to the virus.
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LP: You’ve criticized the track record of the CDC and the WHO – particularly their stubborn denial that COVID is airborne. PA: They knew the dangers of airborne transmission but refused to admit it for too long. They were warned repeatedly by scientists who studied aerosols. They instituted protections for themselves and for their kids against airborne transmission, but they didn’t tell the rest of us to do that.
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LP: How would you grade Biden on how he’s handled the pandemic? PA: I’d give him an F. In some ways, he fails worse than Trump because more people have actually died from COVID on his watch than on Trump’s, though blame has to be shared with Republican governors and legislators who picked ideological fights opposing things like responsible masking, testing, vaccination, and ventilation improvements for partisan reasons. Biden’s administration has continued to promote the false idea that the vaccine is all that is needed, perpetuating the notion that the pandemic is over and you don’t need to do anything about it. Biden stopped the funding for surveillance and he stopped the funding for renewing vaccine advancement research. Trump allowed 400,000 people to die unnecessarily. The Biden administration policies have allowed more than 800,000 to 900,000 and counting.
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LP: The situation with bird flu is certainly getting more concerning with the CDC confirming that a third person in the U.S. has tested positive after being exposed to infected cows. PA: Unfortunately, we’re repeating many of the same mistakes because we now know that the bird flu has made the jump to several species. The most important one now, of course, is the dairy cows. The dairy farmers have been refusing to let the government come in and inspect and test the cows. A team from Ohio State tested milk from a supermarket and found that 50% of the milk they tested was positive for bird flu viral particles.
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PA: There’s a serious risk now in allowing the virus to freely evolve within the cow population. Each cow acts as a breeding ground for countless genetic mutations, potentially leading to strains capable of jumping to other species. If any of those countless genetic experiments within each cow prove successful in developing a strain transmissible to humans, we could face another pandemic – only this one could have a 58% death rate. Did you see the movie “Contagion?” It was remarkably accurate in its apocalyptic nature. And that virus only had a 20% death rate. If the bird flu makes the jump to human-to-human transition with even half of its current lethality, that would be disastrous.
#sars cov 2#covid 19#h5n1#bird flu#articles#long covid is def a global issue not just for those in the us and most countries aren't doing much better#regardless of how much lower the mortality rate for h5n1 may or may not become if/when it becomes transmissible between humans#having bird flu infect a population the majority of whose immune system has been decimated by sars2#to the point where the average person seems to have a hard time fighting off the common cold etc...#(see the stats of whooping cough/pertussis and how they're off the CHARTS this yr in the uk and aus compared to previous yrs?#in qld average no of cases was 242 over prev 4 yrs - there have been /3783/ diagnosed as of june 9 this yr and that's just in one state.#there's a severe shortage of meds for kids in aus bc of the demand and some parents visit +10 pharmacies w/o any luck)#well.#let's just say that i miss the days when ph orgs etc adhered to the precautionary principle and were criticised for 'overreacting'#bc nothing overly terrible happened in the end (often thanks to their so-called 'overreaction')#now to simply acknowledge the reality of an obviously worsening situation is to be accused of 'fearmongering'#🤷‍♂️#also putting long covid and bird flu aside for a sec:#one of the wildest things that everyone seems to overlook that conor browne and others on twt have been saying for yrs#is that the effects of the covid pandemic extend far beyond the direct impacts of being infected by the virus itself#we know sars2 rips apart immune system+attacks organs. that in effect makes one more susceptible to other viruses/bacterial infections etc#that in turn creates increased demand for healthcare services for all kinds of carers and medications#modern medicine and technology allows us to provide often effective and necessary treatment for all kinds of ailments#but what if there's not enough to go around? what happens when the demand is so high that it can't be provided fast enough -- or at all?#(that's assuming you can even afford it)#what happens when doctors and nurses and other healthcare workers keep quitting due to burnout from increased patients and/or illness#because they themselves do not live in a separate reality and are not any more sheltered from the effects of constant infection/reinfection#of sars2 and increased susceptibility to other illnesses/diseases than the rest of the world?#this is the 'new normal' that's being cultivated (the effects of which are already blatantly obvious if you're paying attention)#and importantly: it. doesn't. have. to. be. this. way.
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bride-and-bride · 6 months
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Saw a neat Fourcheanult post about the ways in which he sucks but tragically I cannot reblog without at least SOME analysis on how the loss of Louisoix would impact his choices and views on his children's actions
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wheres-hoid · 2 months
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This is an RE: Dracula (Bloody FM) appreciation post 💕💕
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joons · 7 months
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This may be a prickly subject, and I'm sorry if so. But I'm trying to learn more about Elvis, and every time I bring him up to people I know, they try to tell me he was this terrible person, and point me toward Priscilla's book, the movie made on it, and the discourse. Idk if you've talked about it on here (I tried searching your blog but couldn't find anything on it). If you're willing, I'd love to hear your take on it so I can see a more nuanced view.
The film Priscilla was greenlit roughly a month after Priscilla herself was informed that she was close to becoming financially insolvent in 2022. With a business partner, Brigitte Kruse, who allegedly helped broker the film deal, she established a limited liability company called Priscilla Presley Partners that was supposed to use her image and likeness to create several lines of merchandise to coincide with the film's release. That business partner is now suing Priscilla because she did not have the rights to her image or likeness, or any ability to use the Presley name, because she had already sold all of those rights and was no longer considered in good standing with Graceland or Elvis Presley Enterprises. The entire business deal, then, according to the lawsuit, was built on her misrepresentation of how much her image was worth.
The deal between the two of them fell apart after Riley Keough, Lisa Marie's daughter and Priscilla's granddaughter, settled with Priscilla to give her a lump sum of $1 million from Lisa Marie's estate and yearly amounts of $100,000. Priscilla sued very shortly after Lisa Marie's death because she thought Lisa Marie's signature on a will had been forged because Priscilla was not included in it. All of the assets were supposed to go directly to Lisa Marie's son, Benjamin Keough, who died in 2020, and her three daughters, two of whom are still teenagers. Now, part of those assets have been claimed by Priscilla and her other son, Navarone, who has no connection to the Presley family and has stated he is glad Lisa died.
Four months before Lisa's death, Lisa wrote to Sofia Coppola and made it clear she had strong concerns about the Priscilla film and was suspicious of the intentions behind it:
"As his daughter, I don’t read this and see any of my father in this character. I don’t read this and see my mother’s perspective of my father. ... I will be forced to be in a position where I will have to openly say how I feel about the film and go against you, my mother and this film publicly."
Lisa was enormously grateful for efforts put into 2022's Elvis to find her father's soul and to restore his dignity in a world that often turns him and his family into a joke:
"You can feel and witness Baz’s pure love, care, and respect for my father throughout this beautiful film, and it is finally something that myself and my children and their children can be proud of forever."
It is such a strong and powerful statement, to see how much Lisa valued family, not just her father but her own children and their legacy, and how willing she was to speak up no matter what was going on in her personal life to say what was right. On this and many other things, Lisa and Priscilla's values have rarely been in alignment. A friend and EPE business associate, Joel Weinshanker, said of her, "Lisa couldn't be bought, she couldn't be pushed. If she felt that something wasn't in Elvis' best interest, it was never about money. And she really is the only Presley that you could say that about."
Priscilla, though, has adjusted her stories about her time with Elvis almost every time she discusses it. For a quick example, she said in her book, which was released in 1985, that Elvis insisted she do her hair and makeup a certain way, that he had control over her look and would get upset if she didn't dress how he wanted. But in an interview with Ladies' Home Journal in 1973, she said that she made a deliberate choice to attend makeup school so that she could learn how to style herself, and that it was her idea to wear big, black hair and big, black eyeliner. She said she was embarrassed for going overboard. She said, "I wish that Elvis had said something, but he must have liked it because he never commented." This lines up with recollections from Patti Parry, a platonic friend of Elvis' and a hairstylist, who said Priscilla always wanted Patti to do her hair in a "big boombah," but that Priscilla would then get upset when Elvis didn't notice or didn't like it.
These changes are impossible not to notice if you follow her for any length of time. At the film premiere, she said it felt just like watching her life and said she was consulted on everything, since she was an executive producer. After the film came out, she said she couldn't understand why Coppola had changed so much about the story and misrepresented events. In the '70s, she said she and Elvis lived almost totally separate lives, that she came and went as she pleased, and that she loved this freedom. Later, she said she felt completely stifled and trapped and never left the house, even though she had friends she went out with all the time. In 2019, she tweeted a forceful denial about a National Enquirer story: "This is the Enquirer folks... please don't believe everything you read. ... Never planned on being buried next to Elvis. What will they come up with next?" But part of her settlement demands in her lawsuit against Riley in 2023 asked "to be buried next to Elvis." This year, she said in two separate interviews that Lisa was with her when Elvis died and that Priscilla had to break the news to her, despite the fact that Lisa was at Graceland when it happened. She has said she gave Elvis the idea to wear belts on his jumpsuits, to have a lightning bolt as his logo, to sing "An American Trilogy," though none of that is true. She retells the story about forcing Elvis to burn all of his spiritual books to prove he loved her as an almost funny anecdote about debrainwashing him, while Elvis later said it was the worst thing he ever agreed to, a desperate attempt to make her happy by giving up the things he valued the most. (For the record, this is my opinion about their relationship on both sides: thinking they could change themselves and each other to make it work. It never did.)
Every secondhand Elvis account has to be treated lightly and only valued for its consistency with known facts and other witnesses. I try to give enormous benefit of the doubt to anyone in the Elvis world because they often only have partial knowledge of what Elvis may have been thinking at any given time, and there are numerous examples of people who were taken advantage of by unscrupulous journalists who changed the story they wanted to tell. But Priscilla's stories sometimes are not even consistent with her own statements, which makes them very poor options indeed to base anything on. However careful we are about noting potential biases and inaccuracies in other memoirs, we have to be triply, quadruply careful with anything in which Priscilla involves herself because she has a vested interest in generating discourse today in order to make money. Unfortunately, Priscilla has a habit of stifling other accounts or making sensationalized statements each time there is a possibility that she will lose some of the cachet that comes with being an Elvis Source—after Elvis' death, when she believed she was going to inherit his airplane and disinvited everyone that Vernon said could fly in it to his funeral; when she sued the parents of one of Elvis' ex-girlfriends after he died because he had allowed them to live rent-free in a house he bought for them; when she claimed that Elvis wanted to reunite with her before his death, despite the fact that he was engaged to someone else and told many people he couldn't see a reunion ever happening with her; before Vernon's death, when she convinced him to make her an executor of the Presley estate until Lisa came of age; after Lisa came of age, when she convinced Lisa to let her stay on as partner; when Lisa accused Priscilla of misspending Lisa's money, during which time anonymous sources cropped up to say Lisa was in debt and drug-addled; when Priscilla was removed from her position as an EPE spokesperson but kept collecting $900,000 a year from the company; when Lisa died, and Priscilla sued once she learned she wasn't in the will; when Priscilla was no longer associated with EPE and decided to do another adaptation of a book that she has since recanted parts of and has contradicted before and after its release.
When Priscilla thinks there is a threat to her image and position, she does new interviews and projects to muddy the waters and stir public interest, whether it is true or false, positive or negative, laudatory or defamatory. She gets corrected by Elvis' surviving family members, girlfriends, friends, and fans, but these stories do not get the same reach no matter how much they are backed by contemporaneous documents and witnesses, or how many resources there are to educate the public on how Elvis' and Priscilla's attitudes about marriage and relationships changed—along with the rest of society—between 1960 and 1970.
I think almost any single-source project is not going to advance our understanding of Elvis in any way because no one individual can speak for him, and we are kind of obligated to include all the context we can in order to appreciate his character, his successes and failures, flaws and virtues—and to treat both himself and those around him as fully three-dimensional people who have their own blind spots. Priscilla is far too aware of her own image, and far too willing to change it to suit the audience, to be particularly valuable here.
She is next scheduled to appear at the Lexington (Kentucky) Comic & Toy Con.
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guinevereslancelot · 2 years
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babe would you still love me if we were superheroes and you were in danger and i went absolutely bonkers and crossed every moral boundary imaginable to protect you at literally any cost?
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theseancekid · 2 months
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okay also like. even though i don’t want to write anything having to do with s4………….i would kill for a thread with claire bear
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lesbianjodie · 1 year
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Think about characters that the show tends to portray as innocent and chill but still 100% know Conan is Not who he pretends to be. Jodie should by now at least strongly suspect Conan is Shinichi. We have seen she's not a bad detective (in figuring out Akai faked his death), she knows Vermouth has stayed young for 20+ years and she heard her talking to Haibara at the docks, so she could probably do some research and put two and two together. Like by now she should know. Maybe she's just not addressing it to protect him?
And then there's Takagi. He doesn't have half the information Jodie does, but come on. After the "who are you" scene in the elevator???? Being answered he'll tell him in the afterlife and ending up not getting a reply???? And then moving on like nothing happened???? Like you gotta admit. Something weird must've happened inside his brain. How do you even justify that. "Maybe he's the spirit protector of cops incarnate I'd better do as he says and act natural lest he casts a Curse upon me" or some shit similar. Surely not Shinichi Kudo shrunk by a criminal organisation that would be too weird.
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dootznbootz · 8 months
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Odypen definitely and equivalently adore each other BUT I weirdly can't see them as the type to actually say "I Love you".
They still definitely vocalize their love for each other but it's more so in "My Joy", and "Extraordinary Woman", "Strange Woman/Man", etc. And very cheesy lines (both say some cheesy shit in the Odyssey, and he definitely does in the Iliad as well. "Joy like a drowning sailor seeing land" bit???)
I could see "I adore you" but even then, that's probably during very specific moments but the actual "I love you"??? I just typed it just now for fic shit and... It weirdly just didn't feel right and I don't know why. 😅
Idk maybe it's kind of because I see them as over the top in ways, they love wordplay and riddles and I think they'd almost think "...That's not good enough >:( " about it??? I don't know???😂
#I wrote this last night. I'll do the asks I got later. don't worry! :D#I am the cheese god remember?😅#I think these two would try to “out-cheese” each other and whoever is left speechless first loses#“I would forget my own name before I would ever forget you” bullshit. CHEESY#And yes. “I sleep in our nest with you or outside on the dirt” stupidity >:D#I plan for Odysseus as a beggar to ask why she waits so long. As he's been gone a longer amount of time than the time they had together#(Simply asking as reassurance. He knows his answer. Calypso asked him. but what about Penelope?) but she gets mad at the#“Beggar” and pities him as he must be telling the truth about having a miserable life if he never got the chance to know such devotion#How what they have could never be sullied by#something as trivial as distance and years. How the years with him were the best in her life. Only made better by their son.#'My dear Joy made songs and poems about love a reality as that was simply the life we shared. Even separated our 'song' will always echo#no matter how long it's been. I'LL make sure it always does. And I know he's doing the same... That strange man used to say that#even if he died his corpse would drag itself back to us before he'd ever give up.'#...I'm not one for 'odyssey zombie au' but when I first heard it yeah. :'D Came up with this back then#“His eyes as hard as flint or horn-” Bullshit! The sad lil fuck is hiding sobs with coughs and telling her to keep away for fear of her#catching whatever “illness” he has. The nice thing about being disguised as old means sickly old man works.#...#I'm noticing that Odysseus has a lot of silly oneliners while I write Penelope with a shit ton of set up :'D#They are so silly and I love them so much#...I wrote a lot :'D#Mad rambles#shot by odysseus#my headcanons#odypen#yahoo!!!#sometimes I wonder if I should tag this with more things but I don't want to taint the regular tags with my bullshit :'D I KNOW I'm insane
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Like honestly I think that people are genuinely unaware of how MCYT and the internet as a whole used to be because like… the space is improving. Things coming to light when they happen and not years later is a good thing. Not only is it impossible to have a space with no bad people ever, any space that appears as such is actively dangerous and suppressing the victims within the community as a way to stay “pure.” I really worry about people leaving for those sorts of spaces because in my experience they’re far more rotten than MCYT could ever be, because victims are shamed into silence and treated like dirt to keep that spotless reputation. It’s a show of purity, not any support for victims, because Victims Coming Out Is A Good Thing. It means they feel safe in the space to do that. Places that seem safer because they don’t have all that are just ones that silence any victim far worse.
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queer-reader-07 · 1 year
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it is so vitally important to me that aziraphale and crowley not only love each other but choose to love each other.
i don’t want it to be fate. i don’t want it to be god’s will. i want it to be a conscious and continuous choice.
i want aziraphale choosing every day of his goddamn existence to love crowley and all that he is. i want aziraphale choosing to love crowley not in spite of being a demon, but because he is a demon. i want aziraphale choosing to love crowley’s curiosity and creative wonder. i want aziraphale choosing to love crowley’s love of plants and gardening.
i want crowley choosing to love aziraphale’s passion for books. i want crowley choosing to love aziraphale’s desire to do things the human way even if he could just miracle it. i want crowley choosing to love aziraphale’s angel-ness because it is a fundamental part of him.
i want aziraphale choosing to love everything about crowley and vise versa. and i want it to be a very conscious and intentional choice.
it being fate negates the entire point of the story. good omens is a love story between an angel and a demon, yes. but that’s not all that it is. it’s a story about two occult/ethereal beings who choose humanity over the great plan. two beings who choose the world over armageddon. and they make those choices because despite it all they have chosen to fall in love with the world and with humanity.
it only makes sense that they choose each other. that they choose their love. it being fate or god’s will ruins the foundational pillar of their relationship. that they choose each other over and over and over again. year after year, century after century, time and time again. they always choose. they choose the arrangement, they choose saving the other from harm, they choose lying to protect the other.
it is always a choice. and it better stay a choice or i am going to be so devastated.
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recurring-polynya · 9 months
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Assuming that Ichigo, Chad and Uryuu left for Hueco Mundo from Urahara's shop after midnight, November 1 started during Bleach episode #142 and ended on episode #310 and I honestly find that a little bit upsetting.
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taniushka12 · 2 months
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local guy reminiscents on his big bang theory shipping opinions he had as a tween at 3 am, it is fatal 😔
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maxiwaxipads · 4 months
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Romarriche - “Your company is one of a kind… I would never lie to you. I would never say a half-truth or be quiet.” “What is it in your mind, Merold?” “Hearing your voice, complaint or not—it is music to me either way.” Merold - “If there is one constant in this world… Let it be you.” “You’re the cruelest and the kindest thing that happened to me.” “…If only you continued to look at me like that.” Romarriche - “…Merold?” Merold - “But~ It’s only a minor case of bad-mood-itis.” “So Romarriche, spoil me with a spar, will you?” Romarriche - “Merold.” Romarriche - “Look at me.” Merold - “…” Romarriche - “Is something… Wrong?” Merold - “Instead of a spar…” “I might want to lie down on your lap after all.”
#fragaria memories#merold#romarriche#i wont lie i only had the first line and wanted to write something with it#i was reading this novel and i wanted to write something romantic </3#im gonna babble here on my own so you're always free to skip the tags...#if i remember correctly romarriche and merold were made knights around the same time and I work on that context#i like to think their relationship was rocky at first at romarriche's side who didn't want to befriend merold#compared to merold who thought he finally had a friend his age that was also a knight of fragaria#it was romarriche who looked at merold with a perceived perfection and was compared to him#“...I'll get better and strong. I'll impress everyone so I don't have to hear it--his name repeating over and over again.”#merold who says “if only you continued to look at me like that...” refers back to the past when romarriche didn't think of him favorably#but i like the double meaning to it “please look me as you did before and look at me as you do now”#“cruelest” and “kindest” i was a reading a novel that also used those words so I kinda grabbed from that </3#its really a cute novel though#me reading fragaria memories theories to see if it can at least make sense#i like this but i dont like this at the same time wwww#what does it say about its characters? as a writer i want to care about that because no dialogue should be said without reason#i think this dialogue is perfection but what am i writing this for? who does it refer it? what does it refer to?#but at the end of the day i simply want to indulge myself#something that could sound good and personal and something that could make people who read this smile and myself smile#Merold - “Will you make the promise to never change?”#Romarriche - “Change... But change in what way?”#Merold - “...”#Merold - “Because I'm a knight who fears a lot of things...”#Merold - “And I care about the Romarriche I have now.”#it was never supposed to be detailed but look at me now... </3
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batsplat · 3 months
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casey also talks about sepang 2015 what do you think of that
oh in that podcast? uh... lemme listen again...
yeah idk it's not really anything new I'd say? he's said basically all the same stuff in more interesting and extensive ways elsewhere. I think casey inevitably has a very 'well feuding is bad and helps nobody' point of view, has expressed that before in the past, does it here again, and he's also drawn a parallel between himself and marc on several occasions. which... well, of course there's similarities in terms of public discourse or whatever, but the parallel really falls apart whenever casey argues the feuds cost valentino. like, I do think it's sometimes important to just. keep in mind. it's interesting that casey draws this comparison in his mind but that doesn't necessarily means he's right about this. I'm not sure how you'd argue that starting a feud with casey cost valentino anything competitively? you can argue it didn't help him I guess, and then we can have a debate about the ins and outs of the 2008 season. we can also have an argument that in a hypothetical world where casey isn't ill in 2009, valentino doesn't break his leg and casey isn't on a piece of junk in 2010, and valentino isn't on a piece of junk in 2011-12, then actually maybe valentino sparking open animosity with casey COULD have cost him. but we don't know that! didn't happen! I wish we could have found out, but we never got the chance! as it stands, the tally on this is pretty straightforward: casey won the title when things were reasonably civil between them in 2007, and valentino took control of the following season at the exact moment he worsened the relationship between the pair of them in 2008. obviously, it's all more complicated than that and casey would of course argue laguna didn't negatively affect his subsequent performances... but it certainly didn't help them. like, at the very worst valentino escalating tensions in 2008 is a complete net neutral. after 2009, them being bitchy to each other every other tuesday was completely competitively irrelevant beyond maybe affecting how they approached occasionally fighting for a podium position. hey, maybe casey used that feud to fire himself up through sheer spite throughout the later stages of his career, but that doesn't actually support his anti-feud stance - it's basically the exact same thing as what valentino does. they're both quite similar in that regard! always so hungry to prove a point, to show how someone else is wrong. kinda half the point with this feuding business is to get yourself going, get yourself motivated, yeah. he straight up openly admits to using yamaha's repeat rejection of him as a way of giving himself motivation, and at the end of the day that's really not all that different?
anyway, what else does casey say... oh yeah, that him and the other aliens were already kinda prepared for this and had learned vale's tricks. that valentino had only been able to get into the minds of the previous generation. welllllll *wiggles hand* sure, I mean, he did clearly have to change his approach... he couldn't just use the exact same playbook to get to them, either on-track or off-track. but that's why he did change up the playbook... again, whether you want to believe valentino won his final two titles 'in the head' rather than just through pure pace kinda depends on how you assess the evidence, but it is at the very least a debate. and, y'know, it's always worth remembering that valentino's most important mind games with casey didn't happen in a press conference... it was on the track. and the on-track stuff really is just embedded in how valentino approaches winning. speaking of aliens, this is what dani and jorge have said:
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like, valentino's entire approach to his riding, even to the way he's setting his bike up, is deliberately about directly fucking with you... he's not actually always trying to be faster than you as much as he's trying to give himself the tools to make your life miserable, to pressure you into mistakes, etc etc... and again, especially with casey (if anything because he was so mentally sturdy), the off-track stuff was really just window dressing. (I know they bicker a lot after 2009 but it's just so fundamentally irrelevant to actual on-track competition.) so you can be aware of those tricks, but it also doesn't necessarily help you when someone's being nasty to you on-track in a way you just fully do not enjoy. which is what it was like for casey! for casey, a lot of this comes back to the truly unpleasant context of how he was perceived by the public, how he was treated as mentally weak or 'broken' or whatever partly because he had the misfortune of coming up against a bloke who had the reputation for breaking rivals. I think it's quite natural to end up with a bit of a hardliner 'actually I've never been mentally affected by a result in my life' stance - and of course casey is a lot tougher than a lot of people give him credit for. that being said. sometimes your rivals affect you, shit happens, it's part of the game. it's fundamentally a nice idea to think that valentino's tactics weren't just morally wrong but also ineffective, which is kind of the appeal of this narrative, right? you want to believe you're above that, you want to believe you were adequately prepared and wise to valentino's tactic. it's unsurprising and understandable that casey does tend to tell the story that way, but again it's *wiggles hand* also hard to describe it as completely factual
uh. what else. oh I'm thrilled casey does canonically know valentino and marc were friends, he has said he wasn't following motogp too much during that time period so you couldn't be sure of that. does this mean anything? does it tell you anything? well, no, but it's just a pleasing thought to me. I like that. oh also 'provoking particularly aggressive riders isn't a good idea' is kinda a funny take from casey? like, he of all people would hate the idea of being cowed by someone's reputation like that... casey's right that provoking fast riders can potentially be dangerous, but y'know I do think that's probably not news to anyone almost nine years later. um. that's all I've got I think
#i will say idm getting asks like this AT ALL but i do hope that's not like. the only bit of the podcast people are paying attention to#my thing with sepang 2015 takes is that like... when's the last time anyone has said anything genuinely interesting about that event#which yes big words from the feud blogger... but in fairness a lot of the sepang 2015 stuff is from old notes. that's my excuse idc#but that's kinda the thing... i feel like i haven't really had a new original thought about the whole drama for three plus years#u do kinda run out. basically the takes say more about the person saying them than about the actual event at this point#which. yeah. casey's comments on sepang '15 are primarily interesting in what they tell you about how he feels towards valentino#mind u he's actually quite nice about valentino in this one? casey call him let's finally organise that dinner#heretic tag#//#brr brr#batsplat responds#oh casey does go on another spiel against riders who win at all costs. ships that passed in the night of feuds i always say#also he gets the age he enters the premier class at wrong. i held myself back in the last post from pointing this out for tonal reasons#but if people want my podcast hot takes. i do simply have to mention it. just to set the record straight here#'they battle for podium places after 2009' genuinely. twice. like the alien era giveth but a lot of the time it really does just taketh#somewhat ironically casey wins the duel when he's on the shitty ducati and vale wins the duel when he's on the even shittier ducati#whatever that tells you idk#casey was always promising the laguna rematch would've gone differently and I love that conceptually but also we just don't know#he was like next time I WON'T play nice and it's like?? omg what does that look like. casey what were you cooking#for ethical reasons it's probably fine but for character arc reasons it's objectively ass that casey ended up being able to do all his -#- racing in a way he was entirely comfortable with for his second title in 2011. like it's just a complete waste of a year#you have this whole thing building for four years and then 2010 comes along and it's like. well that's enough narrative intrigue now! <3#also casey/jorge are fundamentally too interesting as individuals to have had such an obscenely boring on-track rivalry and yet here we are#it KILLS me because if you rearranged it and made valentino's dogshit ducati years like. 2009 or something#and do a straight title fight between jorge and casey THEN I genuinely think it would've been way more interesting#the problem with valentino is that he is fundamentally the WORST imaginable character you could invent to be casey's foil#literally everything about valentino could have been designed to be a casey-specific nightmare#but unfortunately that also makes him objectively the most interesting rival casey could have gotten#like morally it's on the edge. but narratively? literally could not have gotten a better villain in casey's story#constantly dancing on this faustian line of having to imitate valentino to beat him while trying not to lose yourself... juicy
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