#is also very amusing

[mgu-h]

Secret Santa 2024 🎅

[crypticscarecrow]

Who I'd Be

@starteas and also @lizaluvsthis because you caused this

[gurggggleburgle]

i think it be really funny if the reason why Shen Yuan feels he is gigachad brain in terms solving problems, being better than Shen Qingqiu, and making solutions while scoffing being like 'haha typical PIDW writing I'm so smart' isn't because he's actually trope savvy; but that because the world is based on Airplane's writing it means the world's collective intelligence cannot be smarter than its creator and intention. And PIDW is dumb on purpose in a lot of ways.

Like Shen Qingqiu sits in on Luo Binghe's meetings and offers bare bones economic theory and gets so much genuine praise and he's lording over how smart and cool he is for this.

Meanwhile Shang Qinghua has been begging the system to raise the bar since day 10. Man's taught himself so much theory and philosophy not because he's a scholar but because being in a room with people who are only as smart as you for thirty someodd years would drive a lot of people insane eventually. And you'd think having a fellow transmigrator would help but it's very obvious outside of lore man has the intelligence of shiny rock and he just can't man.

[benevolenterrancy]

~loathing, unadulterated loathing~

[annasofthe11thdimension]

Waltz

[br1ghtestlight]

mark katz being an attorney irl is still so horrifying to me btw Like imagine ur sitting in court already having maybe one of the worst days of your life. and then out walks mephone4

[susielesbianism]

Rhapsotea entry on the Deltarune Wiki you will be the DEATH of me

[aroaceleovaldez]

the way the fandom (and canon!) treats Nico versus Meg is so amusing to me given they have like one year between them at best. Meg in TOA is older than Nico in TLO. Why is every 13 year old in TOA babey when Nico is treated like the hottest emo boy who needs to enter a relationship Right Now or he'll Die but he only just turned 14. Meg is even shown to be basically equivalently powerful to a Big 3 kid. but she needs to be chaperoned meanwhile Nico at 11 is just let loose on the world unsupervised after beating up a ghost

[squad-3]

Hair!!!

[lilislegacy]

petition to rename “wrath of the triple goddess” to “grumpiness of the green-eyed demigod”

[elodieunderglass]

Your jockeyposting has enthralled me (certified non-horse girl) and made me curious—how much familiarity do jockeys have with the horses they’re riding? Is it normal for a given horse to have a Long Term Jockey or are the jockeys like. Called up a week before and asked to race a horse they’ve never met? (& interested to hear any Killy lore related to this)

Thank you so much! (In reference to Killie the jockey OC and random posting about horse racing more generally.)

In general, racehorses never have a long-term or even a repeat jockey, and vice-versa! Jockeys usually aren’t familiar with the horses at all.

There are three main situations where they might be, though; if they’re retained, if they’re nepo babies generational and have a trainer in the family, or if they’re amateurs having fun. So with apologies for making a really long post, I’ve structured this as a writing reference.

Retained Jockeys

Killie’s a retained jockey for a stable (very unusual - not many jockeys are good enough, and not many stables have the resource to employ one) and he and Thunder share an especially eccentric owner who likes to watch them paired up.

And hey, if we were unbelievably ultra-rich people with no moral compass, “putting Killie and Thunder in a jar and shaking them together, briskly, to see what happens” would be a fairly legitimate hobby.

I’m not an expert or personally involved in the industry, so if you were thinking of doing some writing in the setting yourself, a starting point for a retained jockey’s life is this “day in the life” video, of champion flat jockey William Buick, TW for discussion of weight.

Generational

Jockeys may handle horses as family businesses. In real life, “racing dynasties” are influential. A very lucky jockey, retiring in middle age with piles of winnings, often wishes to become a trainer; especially prosperous ones buy a stable operation, move in their family, use their reputation and connections to get owners to send them horses, and start chucking their own children on the horses as a source of labour. The children grow up, stick around home, and naturally keep getting chucked on horses for their day job. Next thing you know, you have a lot of grandkids and horses around the place, so you might as well keep going with it. Everyone pretty much lives at Grandad’s stable together, and then you get cousins scuffling on the day job like this:

That’s how Killie grew up, as the result of several generations of jockeys becoming trainers producing jockeys. but moving to a retained post was both a) the only logical move if it’s offered, and b) an escape from his parents, who are astonishingly awful. and if you are that kind of nepo baby, like Killie, it makes so much sense to flee the country (move to the uk and constantly pretend you’ve just dropped your phone in a horse’s water bucket, glubglubglub, BYE MA.)

Press “keep reading” for the amateurs and then what everyone else is doing.

Generational steeplechase jockey Jonjo O’Neill Jr does a day in his life here. he knows the horses and is doing admin, management and stable work … at his family’s massive operation.

Amateurs

Finally, in the UK, you can ride as an amateur jockey - usually in types of lowkey local steeplechases, like “point to point” - and basically anyone can do this. horse racing is fun, but you need a license to do it with other people, and the license remains incompatible with owning a registered racehorse. So technically your best friend could share a horse with you, in all but paperwork, and they could be the trainer and you could be the amateur jockey, and you could wrangle your way into actual races with a horse that you knew. It wouldn’t work very well as a day job (the horse would only race like 2x a month, netting you like £300 a month out of your friend’s pocket, plus the absurd costs of transporting/entering everyone) but if you were writing a crazy story in which some good friends and their pet racehorse decide to make it rich, that’s how you could do it.

Everyone else

Everyone else (including generational jockeys whose grandfathers didn’t have the foresight to establish a proper dynasty) just scrabbles around.

Most races aren’t high-stakes! There are a lot of basic boring races every day. (though, if you ask jockeys, there is apparently never quite enough work.)

horses might live at the stable of their owner but more commonly their trainer (some owners are both).

Jockeys cannot own racehorses themselves.

In the UK racecourses are randomly scattered around the country, usually hours away from each other. They all usually have several races every day.

Jockeys in the UK are paid £157.90 for Flat jockeys and £214.63 for jumps riders per race. They get this flat rate for everyone, whether they’re experienced or not! Their expenses are fairly high, and as freelancers they have to cover them all. The real attraction pay-wise is that they get a “cut of the purse” (percentage of prize money) if they win first, second or third place in a race. It’s a small percentage that they have to share with their agent, but there are sometimes some super-big stakes, where you can earn your year’s wages all at once.

Of course, you need to be piloting a pretty good horse in a high-stakes race to have a shot at that.

jockeys are a rare professional athlete that work every day, and they want (but are never guaranteed to get) a few rides every day. This usually means travelling across the UK constantly every day.

Racehorses usually only race once a week or less. They definitely don’t “work” as often! Their schedules rarely match up to jockeys. Driving them around the place is also a huge pain.

Jockeys live all over, and most of them are known to spend several times more hours driving between jobs than they ever spend sitting on horses. They get up very early each day, often “riding out” (doing early morning horse exercise) for trainers before hitting the road, often driving for several hours between races. This has been flagged in many sports medicine papers as one of their many wellbeing risks.

At any rate, with hundreds of jockeys travelling randomly around the country, getting injured and suspended and with stats fluctuating constantly, trainers work through agents to book jockeys - often not getting the one they want.

There are also considerations like trainer suddenly deciding they want to get a different (better) rider instead, leading to the one they booked getting “jocked off”.

All of everyone’s stats, from horses to jockeys, are publicly available, and everyone can study them obsessively. Trainers will request jockeys who have attractive stats - that’s not just “winning” stats, but weight/strategy/experience that might match the horse (+ terrain + conditions, etc). In their turn, jockeys with better options may turn down an offer of a horse with terrible form (I.e. a big loser, or a dangerous animal, or one that looks incredibly dodgy in race videos.)

Often trainers try to get the same jockey for their horse, but in all this chaos it’s not always possible, and everyone has to constantly pursue their own best interests.

Particularly winning jockeys and particularly influential trainers may gradually come together in working relationships, and as a horse gradually emerges as a favourite and the stakes rise, you’ll start to see it working more often with the same people. For example, in the Grand National, the jockeys will probably know the horses.

In conclusion, it’s common for the first time the jockey touches the horse to be when they’re thrown on top of it, prior to the race.

They get around this by studying form (race statistics), watching videos of the horse, and of course speaking to the trainer about their desires/instructions/strategy.

OKAY that is the MOST information that I could possibly have given!! I don’t know why I know all this!!! Thanks!!

[missjanjie]

this is so fucking funny to me

[kindred-spirit-93]

thetis and her grandbaby

the second panel originally was going to read "hes mine now" lol.

achilles probably jumped in after his mother (who went to show off to her friends), forgetting that neo is very cant breathe under water XD

look at his tiny lil hand holding onto her robes dfghjk. held my baby cousin last night and shes so light and squishy ahh. very babbly too :')

[realbeefman]

robert chase one of the characters of all time. hes blonde. he went to seminary school. he purposefully murdered a patient. he’s a vapid slut. allergic to strawberries. was caption of his college bowling team. desperately needs to be on antidepressants. he’s divorced. his ex-wife was/is in love with his dadboss. it’s heavily implied that this is part of why he married her to begin with. he’s been fired multiple times but he keeps coming back like a fucked-up obedient boomerang. he’s the best surgeon in the hospital. all this while having the personality of a sopping wet cardboard box of corn flakes that somebody poured milk into and let mildew.

[liloslittlethings]

liam making louis laugh and then...choking him out

(via SugarScape)

[nocek]

And this concludes the grand crossover event

(or does it?)

(it does but I was given a great idea for how to solve Gwen's problem :) )

the timeline of previous relevant comics:

[Jeff has a great fashion sense and Peter is the best hooker]

[Jeff is found and fucks are lost]

[bro landed up in the wrong universe and all he got out of it is a lousy bow]