NSFW Warning: This contains people mentioning having sex. They do not have sex in this, but it is mentioned that they did. Honestly not sure how required this warning is in this case but I’m not taking any chances.
Bastion: *brooding after having sex with Ida for the first time*
Ida: *tired but staying awake to address whatever angsty nonsense this is* “Hey you, that’s a very thinky frown”
Bastion: “Ida, what are we?”
Ida: *hums* “Good question, well I’m squatting in your freaky death house and you’re trying to eat me sooo Tom and Jerry?”
Bastion: “I only meant that we just had sex”
Ida: *drily* “So did Tom and Jerry.”
Bastion: *fretting* “I really like you.”
Ida: “Yep, that’s been made very clear.”
Bastion: “But I want to eat you”
Ida: “Also, been made pretty clear.”
Bastion: “And I would like to do this with you again”
Ida: “Me too actually.”
Bastion: *crescendo of fretting* “But Ida, if I caught you, I would still devour you, in fact I feel hungrier for you now than I did before.”
Ida: “Mn, creepy, but I’ll allow it”
Bastion: *finally notices that Ida is being smart with him* “Ida I get the distinct impression that you aren’t taking this conversation particularly seriously”
Ida: “Bastion, we just fucked.”
Bastion: “Language.”
Ida: *sticks tongue out* “I am tired and the post coitus fuzzies aren’t going to make my input on this any sounder but: I’ve never actually felt safe, at any point in my life, not really, so if you’re worried I’ve misread the danger you pose, then you’re wrong, I don’t trust you to not be a predator Bastion, but…*intertwines her hand with his* I am trusting you with this.”
Bastion: “This” *spoken reverently* “I want this so badly Ida, but what if tomorrow is the day I catch you?”
Ida: *reaches out with other hand and boops his nose* “I think you’re getting ahead of yourself spider boy, but, on the off chance you get very very lucky, I’m not going to hold your true nature against you.”
Bastion: “Could you perhaps promise that? I know humans are not as bound by these things as Fae, but it would comfort me to hear you promise.”
Ida: *rolls eyes* “Bastion, I promise not to hold you trying to eat me or succeeding at eating me against you just because we’ve had sex”
Bastion: “It’s silly I know, I want to devour you, but I do not want to betray you or hurt you. I thought to keep how I felt a secret from you. When I realised I loved you, I was ashamed of myself, I have always been greedy, hunger has ever been my nature, but to want your heart and affection, even though I could never resist devouring you, it seemed a degree of selfishness outrageous even to me”
Ida: “Well, I won’t say it’s not greedy, but I will say I don’t really mind” *yawns*
Bastion: “Ida?”
Ida: *sleepily* “Yes Bastion?”
Bastion: “If I catch you can I still kiss you? Can I hold you gently before I eat you? Can I address you warmly even when you are digesting inside me?
Ida: “Sure Bastion” *yawns* “I don’t see mnn why not…” *falls asleep*
Bastion: “…” *holds her tightly*
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so what’s the deal with your new blorbo? assume 1. i know how football works (used to actually watch) but not how/why some players get famous; (2) i know nothing about messi except that he. exist; (3) feel free to go bananas to your heart’s content if you decide to answer this.
fuuuuUUUUUUUQ ME. Can litchrally any Argentinian, any FC Barcelona supporter, ANYONE who has followed fuutyball for more than *checks watch* TWO WEEKS spot me for this one?!?! I am GROSSLY underqualified to answer this question Cunningham's law is about to hunt me for SPORT.
Okay. LIONEL MESSI. I can't summarize everything about this Guy who is currently one of the Main Characters of the most watched sport in the world, but I CAN summarize how he has started cooking my brain!!!
(that is him!!!! my guy!!!! HIM JUMP)
I have been trying to read a book with @rhaeneystargaryen for at least a couple years now, but somehow never had the spoons or the right overlapping interest. And then she told me that she was reading this:
I figured I would give it a try! I wanted something low effort, low investment, something I didn't care a whole lot about that I could put down at any moment bc work has been hell lately. And then I hit THIS line in the introduction, and I could literally FEEL the cursed hyperfixation key in my brain start to turn:
GUESS WHICH ONE IS MESSI!!!!!
I'm not a twitter stan, I swear. I am AWARE there is a media layer here. These people are real, actual human beings with documented flaws and mistakes, I am WELL AWARE that they are ungodly wealthy pro athletes and not "stars who are just like us!!! ✨✨✨." It's also obviously reductive and unfair to view anyone solely through a comparative lens - no living being could live up to the marketing hype that has been generated around Messi, Ronaldo, or indeed any pro athlete in the elite leagues.
BUT GOTDAM IF THIS FUCKER DOESN'T MAKE IT HARD!!!!
Bare bones: Lionel Messi is a football player born in Rosario, Argentina, who at 13yo moved to Spain to play for FC Barcelona. He joined the adult team at a whole ass 17 years old. Ensue absolutely RIDICULOUS teen prodigy meteoric rise, with both Messi and Barcelona winning all the Best Football Awards ever and Best Individual Sports Achievements in Everything. I have spent the last two weeks spending FAR too much time reading football books, and all the gotdam graphs look like this:
People talk about Messi being the player who made them fall in love with "the most beautiful game," and I can SEE WHY!!! HERE I AM!!!! A CLOWN!!! ALSO FALLING IN LOVE!!!! I am googling sports highlight reels of his plays like a CHAD FOOTY HOOLIGAN!! WHO AM I, I AM HAVING AN IDENTITY CRISIS. It is just so much fun to WATCH him! Listening to commentators screaming "Eight, ten, IT DOESN'T MATTER HOW MANY DEFENDERS THERE HE GOES THROUGH THEM!!! MESSI GOAAAALLLLL"
What makes it WORSE is the whole fukken rivalry business the book was about. Cristiano Ronaldo was another super-gifted player who debuted at about the same time and had a similar prodigy teen genius rise. He signed for a rival club in the same league at the same time Messi was playing with Barcelona. The story reads like a gotdam Hollywood sports drama, on both an individual and a team level!! I cannot IMAGINE what it was like watching this unfold as it was happening!
For starters: on an individual level, they were constantly thrown up against each other for every award imaginable. The Ballon d'Or awards list, which crowns you King of Soccer for the year, has looked like this since 2008:
(there is obviously talk that Messi is up for an EIGHTH award this year, but I don't think about the future bc it is bad for my cooked brain 😊)
On a team level, there was (and IS) of course the clubs. I am ABSOLUTELY not qualified to get into the weeds on this, but the rivalry between Barcelona and Real Madrid has deep, deep political, historical, and cultural roots going back (among other things) to Catalonian oppression under the fascist Franco regime in Spain. Josep Suñol, then-president of FC Barcelona, was shot in 1936 by Francoist troops.The matches between the two clubs and the two players with their drastically different teams and styles at the time were super-charged - an ACTUAL QUALIFIED Barcelona supporter is going to have to get in here and explain the history and emotion behind the Clasicos bc THAT IS SEVERAL BOOKS IN AND OF ITSELF!!!!!
The whole point of THIS particular book was not, in fact, a blow-by-blow comparison of the players. The point was that by being WHO they were and WHEN they were, Messi and Ronaldo changed the shape of the game forever in terms of marketing, branding, team strategy, finances, etc etc etc. It's an interesting read (if not entirely unbiased on all points), if you enjoy the absolute blood and oil-soaked clown show that is professional football money!
But ANYWAY.
AFTER I finished the book Messi ended up cooking my brain bc (1) all of the context above re: rivalry in league football, and (2) his PERSONALITY. Someone made him in a lab to ruin my life!
I mean, the club loyalty gets me. For his entire professional career, Messi has played for exactly two teams - Barcelona and his homeland Argentina NT. He only left Barcelona in 2021, VERY much against his will (per him, his agent, his friends, his family, AND FC Barcelona) due to an absolute hot mess of a league financial situation that is apparently still sorting itself out. I don't know how common it is for pro athletes at his level to move around, but I feel like it's more common than that!!! THE CLUB LOYALTY gets me, the HOME LOYALTY gets me!!!! Especially as he's gotten better and better, and there's been more and more pressure on him to keep delivering even in the absence of anything else!
The gotdam STOICISM also gets me!!! Call it shyness, call it humility, call it down-to-earthness or reservedness or whatever you want - what everyone kept mentioning about him in the books (and what certain French marketing departments are still probably saying about him) is how QUIET he is. Journalists would complain about how he "made it to age 30 without ever uttering an interesting sentence in public." A Nike exec who lost a bid with his agent for a sponsorship waved it off by saying "Imagine how much trouble we would be in if Messi had a personality." Relative to his peers in the elite football world, he doesn't have a flash lifestyle with a huge entourage. He doesn't do a lot of press. He doesn't try to push a personal brand, even though it's a big chunk of income for wherever he plays. Even though he obviously COULD, he doesn't go around talking about Greatest Of All Time (TM). When he DOES give interviews he doesn't even talk super loudly. He keeps to his immediate family and his closest circle of friends.
AND YET. AND YET. ON THE PITCH, HE PLAYS LIKE HE DOES. He creates not just for himself, but for his TEAMMATES the way that he does! I realize that NO ONE gets an award for being a team player in a team sport, or for "not being as much of a dick as you could have been," but HE STILL HAS HIS HOMETOWN ACCENT!!! He dedicates his goals to his GRANDMOTHER! He met his wife when he was FIVE YEARS OLD, he has never had a relationship with anyone else ("It has always been Antonella, for me"), he has three beautiful kids, his teammates keep apparently falling in love with him and doing Intricate Rituals, I AM ENDEARED I AM ENDLESSLY ENDEARED
Did I mention he is also very short? Allow me to mention that. 5"7 / 1.7 meters in pro-athlete world is PICK-UPABLE SIZE. Multiple reels out there of his teammates celebrating goals just by PICKING HIM UP it MAKES ME SO FOND
(on an Intricate Rituals note, Messi's size and his evasive style of play has caused a lot of opposing team's strategy to be "make a cage, kick him as soon as you can and tackle often," which has in turn prompted a lot of specific protection strategies for him as a forward and also over-protective teammates :)))). WHICH OF COURSE COOKS MY BRAIN EVEN MORE YOU KNOW HOW IT IS.)
And that isn't even STARTING on his saga with the Argentina NT, which reads like YET ANOTHER HOLLYWOOD SPORT DRAMA that I cannot believe actually happened!
Again, I am begging ANY Argentine to jump in here, I AM GROSSLY IGNORANT as to the history of this sport I got here two whole weeks ago how is this HAPPENING to meeeeeeee
My very basic understanding of the situation is that Messi has played for the national team ever since 2004, whenever he was on break from Barcelona. Over the years since then, Argentina (with Messi) has tried again and again to win the World Cup (and the Copa America), but consistently failed despite regularly advancing to finals. BECAUSE Messi was on the team, Argentina routinely and perhaps unfairly got billed as "favorites" to win, with criticism in the press being focused disproportionately on Messi when they didn't. I don't know how bad the situation in Argentinian media got, but even the western English outlets were picking it up. "Messi plays better for Barcelona than for his home country, Messi isn't Argentinian enough, Messi keeps too much to himself and doesn't sing the anthem,etc etc etc". Maradona famously commented that Messi was "a great person, but had no personality," and that it was useless to try to make a leader out of him because he caved under pressure (referring to Messi reportedly being sick from nerves before the world cup games).
(note: gotdam rivalry. Of the people named who would be better and more stylish leaders, Cristiano Ronaldo was up top )
The pressure DID get to Messi in the end - he issued a statement in 2016 saying he would retire from international football, but there was a huge home campaign to get him to come back to the team. Argentina still didn't win the 2018 World Cup (players of opposing teams said that their strategy against Argentina was not letting them pass to Messi). And so on, and so forth.
AND THEN!!!!! 2021!!!!!
I THINK I HAVE POSTED FAR TOO MUCH ALREADY about the current Argentina NT for someone who, as I said, JUST ARRIVED AT THIS GOTDAM SPORT, but I'm going to make everyone look at these quotes again. These are quotes the team has given ABOUT MESSI HOW IS THIS REAL????
Argentina would go on to win the Copa America - and then...well 🥰
I DON'T KNOW IF I'VE EXPLAINED THIS ADEQUATELY!!! I DON'T KNOW IF I HAVE SUFFICIENTLY REPRESENTED THE DEGREE TO WHICH MY BRAIN IS COOKED!!! Did that mean anything to anyone???? I don't know!
HELL
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