potentialities

and then there were two

2026-01-27T00:51:50Z

God, we really picked the worst year to completely melt down, I'm not impressed by any of these teams. Pat could kick all of their asses if he had knees.

( championship Sunday )

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Divisional Roundup

2026-01-20T00:07:00Z

We're running perilously short of football. Soon we will be entirely out.

( divisional games )

( championship games )

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Wild Card Wrap-Up

2026-01-13T05:13:30Z

( six games, three days, mostly hate )

( divisional round pre-hate )

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NFL Wild Card Preview: the Hate Matrix

2026-01-10T20:53:06Z

The NFL got me a Wild Card Weekend for my birthday but they neglected to put a Patrick Mahomes in it. Don't think Roger Goodell read my wishlist very carefully, probably because he was too busy concocting evil schemes like blowing out the TV ratings record by making the Chiefs play the Cowboys on Thanksgiving and scheduling us into a bunch of other inconvenient times and places. Oh well, nothing left to do now but watch and root for the teams that I hate the most to lose to the teams that I hate at least somewhat less.

( hate ratings, or hatings, if you will )

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FIC: Contrapunctus Inversus (Vicky Bliss, Vicky Bliss/John Tregarth, T)

2026-01-01T22:00:14Z

I wrote Vicky Bliss, a fandom deeply embedded in my heart, for Yuletide this year!

Contrapunctus Inversus (2467 words) by mayhap
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Vicky Bliss - Elizabeth Peters
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Vicky Bliss/John Tregarth
Characters: Vicky Bliss, John Tregarth
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, Meet-Cute, Crimes & Criminals, Metafiction, Period-Typical Sexism, Banter
Summary: invertible counterpoint: counterpoint in which the voices, while retaining their original form, may be interchanged above or below one another in any order

I might do something incredibly old-fashioned and write up a DVD commentary-type thing for this, because I had so much fun playing with a Vicky who's an art thief and a John who investigates her as opposed to vice versa.

The cover art for the Recorded Books audiobook of Street of the Five Moons isn't the greatest, but it has its charms and it grew on me while I was doing canon review, so I added it to my icons. There's not much to choose from when it comes to cover art that attempts to depict them! Dishonorable mentions go to this Dutch edition where they both have dark hair for some reason, and the Recorded Books audiobook of Trojan Gold where they appear to have accidentally published an unfinished sketch and even if there was meant to be a final version, it looks like it was shaping up to be bad. The American hardcover of Silhouette in Scarlet is my favorite, but the composition isn't suitable for iconning, unfortunately. The Recorded Books audiobook of Night Train to Memphis is mediocre but at least it's finished.

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fantasy football

2025-12-30T04:36:31Z

The Chiefs defense played a one hour Dungeons & Dragons one-shot together. I can relate because when my team is out of the playoffs, I also want to retreat to a world of fantasy and maybe try to kill some people!

There's a teaser on Instagram if you're curious but not a one-hour video curious.

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Yuletide on ESPN2

2025-12-25T12:49:20Z

I got a Manningcast musical masterpiece for Yuletide this year!

All About the Game (4827 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Monday Night Football with Peyton and Eli RPF
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Peyton Manning, Eli Manning
Summary:

Peyton really wishes they could get Bill on the Manningcast this season. Eli wants to make his brother happy. Turns out there's more than one way to do that.

Peyton and Eli attempt to secure Belichick for a sequel to the original musical through his new management, but of course, Jordon Hudson is notoriously nearly impossible to work with. Fortunately, some of my favorite people pop up along the way to help. It's ridiculously funny and actually very sweet!

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Dear Yuletide author 2025

2025-10-19T00:35:50Z

Dear Yuletide author,

I am so pleased that we share an interest in one of these fandoms and I can’t wait to read what you write for me this Yuletide!

I enjoy a wide variety of stories, all year round but especially at Yuletide. I love short, punchy stories and longer, plotter stories, explicitly smutty and/or kinky stories and coy stories that are all about the teasing and the implications, stories with some kind of meta angle to them and stories that engage with the source material 100% on its own terms, stories with ships that are canon and stories with ships that aren’t.

I am mayhap on AO3 as well. I have checked to make sure I have gifts enabled.

L’art du crime | The Art of Crime (TV)
Alexandre Pardo
Antoine Verlay
Florence Chassagne

I came here for the art history and the murders but they sucked me into the will-they-won’t-they relationship! Sometimes it starts feeling strained or contrived when the characters keep not getting together for so long, but with Antoine and Florence I can believe it—they’re both being utterly ridiculous, of course, but Antoine is so alienated from his own emotions and Florence is so overwhelmed by hers, it’s plausible they keep getting in their own way. I do very much want to see them them get together, but I also enjoy the pining and the denial. Established relationship fic that breezes through the actual get-together part is another great option!

Feel free to put in as much or as little of both art history and murders as you like. I really love the device of Florence’s imagined conversations with artists, if there’s anyone you’d like to have offer her their input. The fact that Antoine still doesn’t know that they shared a childhood connection with the little boy in the Monet painting is still hanging out there, waiting to perhaps be resolved at some point. The Louvre is one of the greatest locations in the world and any amount of time spent there with anything in the collection is always a delight.

I’m also extremely fond of Alex! The premise requires something to keep Antoine in OCBC in spite of the fact he so clearly does not belong, but he accomplishes this role so delightfully. I love that he’s determined to save Antoine from himself at the cost of bringing utter chaos into his own department, and he really rocks the combination of the dapper vests and eternally put-upon expressions. I’d really enjoy a story where he continues to be substantially involved in mediating their relationship, maybe even getting even more deeply enmeshed somehow. However, if that aspect doesn’t speak to you or you just have other ideas you want to explore, I don’t want to box you in at all, since I’d also be perfectly happy with a story where he is not a main character or doesn’t appear.

Character exception: okay to write a story that either doesn’t focus on or doesn’t include Alex.

Monday Night Football with Peyton and Eli RPF
Eli Manning
Peyton Manning

The Manningcast is, to me, the best thing to happen to televised football since the computer-generated first down line, and I’ve gotten much more fond of both Manning brothers, their sibling dynamic, their post-NFL career choices, and their roles within the larger Manning Football Universe. I’d love a fic that does something with that dynamic , whether it be directly depicting the production or filming of the broadcast or something more closely connected by being based on the version of themselves and their schtick that they put out on selected Monday nights. I love the bickering, the rivalry, the goofiness, and also the parts where they’re just watching football with us.

What, precisely, you do with all of this is entirely up to you. Feel free to use any real people (or fictional characters, for that matter, why not?) as potential guests on the show—it wouldn’t need to be someone I’m personally a fan of to work in this context! The thing where Eli absolutely torments Tom Brady merely by existing will never not be funny to me. Bill Belichick might not want to come back on the show since he has been very busy imploding his whole life, but what if he did, or what if they at least tried unsuccessfully to get him on? That “ManningCast: The Musical” promo video they did last year is incredible and I particularly enjoyed it because I also happen to love musical theatre, but you could channel that same energy with anything equally off the wall and it’d be fitting. Or, if anyone is interested in changing one letter to change a fandom, I would love to delve into the forbidden realm of Manningcest. Draw up whatever play you like here and feel free to audible.

Plain Girl — Virginia Sorenson
Esther Lapp
Mary

I love how delicately and yet powerfully this book explores Esther’s thoughts and feelings—about her family, the Amish community, their way of life, and of course about her new friend Mary, whom she finds so beautiful, not just for her pretty dresses, but also things like her silky hair and her dimpled elbows as well as her wonderful kindness and tact in welcoming her to school and becoming her bosom friend. It’s written as a seduction and that seduction is a good thing, a fountain that sends forth sweet water and not bitter. I see flashes of an eroticism as well, like Esther touching Mary’s hair and finding it so beautiful that a shiver goes through her fingers and her heart starts to beat very fast, or Mary showing Esther her petticoat when they’re planning to change clothes with each other, which I find really lovely.

Even though they don’t end up wearing each other’s clothes at school they must do it eventually, somewhere, sometime! I’d love for that to be explored in a story, at any age or perhaps more than once, as they get older. Anything exploring their relationship and how it develops in the future would be wonderful. There’s a lot of potential for angst and difficulty but also for love and sharing. Esther, of course, has her new sister-in-law and her brother in her corner when it comes to blending the old and the new, with her parents much more tentatively open, but Mary’s family is wide open for exploration, and so are the rest of their peers. I’d love gen or getting together or established relationship or pre-ship fic all equally.

The Professor — Charlotte Brontë
Frances Evans Henri
Hunsden Yorke Hunsden
William Crimsworth

I am fascinated the role that Hunsden Yorke Hunsden plays in this story, who is of the things that makes it different from Vilette, which is essentially a heavily-revised second draft of The Professor. From the beginning he alternates between needling William and performing these extremely thoughtful favors for him, although it's not always easy for him to get under William's skin as William perversely enjoys some of his bluntness. He brings out such an interesting side of Frances when he meets her, too—I love that promptly she gets into three arguments with him in a row, and the third time she doesn't even believe in the argument she's making; she just wants to fight with him!

I'm particularly interested in a story set when William and Frances are living in England and Hunsden is their neighbor. I love how he has apparently latched onto their family in lieu of starting their own, especially the way he seems to practically be a coparent to Victor when he’s at home. I would love more about their daily life as it's sketched all too briefly in that last chapter, or a story about something that happens as Victor gets older and goes to school, which William worries about.

I would also love threesome fic! William would be almost hopelessly scandalized by the prospect, I think, and surely Frances too, but then with the dynamic both she and Hunsden have with William where they love to tease him I can imagine it working out somehow. I do love stories where characters fumble their way into unusual relationships or sexual practices without quite knowing what they're doing or having the usual vocabulary to talk about it, which is sort of what I would picture here. But I absolutely would be just as happy with a story that explores the dynamic among them some other way.

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Happy birthday, Patrick Mahomes!

2025-09-18T02:13:24Z

Can't believe he's actually turning thirty already. Time flies when you're winning Super Bowls.

Now if his teammates could get it together so he doesn't have to literally try to win the games by himself, that would be a great thirtieth birthday present. He has more rushing yards than everyone else put together through two games, for fuck's sake.

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new lore drop

2025-02-27T00:59:03Z

We learned this week on New Heights that Jason Kelce has a conspiracy theory that Gritty is actually a ripoff of himself, because a.) he was introduced after Jason made a big impression with his famous Super Bowl parade speech and b.) he has substantial eyebrows. (Travis doesn’t buy this theory because c.) literally everything else about Gritty’s appearance.)

Had this bombshell been revealed before Yuletide, I would have needed to do a fair bit of revision to incorporate it into my story, but since it wasn't, I shan't.

We also learned that, sadly, Travis has never taken Pat to a hockey game. This is the NHL’s fault for not maintaining a franchise in Kansas City, which would be the most convenient location for them to go on bro dates. Travis yearns to share his love of hockey!

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Synchronized pitching!

2025-02-16T18:47:11Z

I know the deadline for proposing new sports for the LA Olympics has already passed, but consider how delightful synchronized pitching could be:

Originally posted here.

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The Chiefs don’t always lose the Super Bowl…

2025-02-10T02:43:22Z

…but when they do, they get fucking annihilated lmao fml

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Book rec: Fan Fiction and Early Christian Writings

2025-01-29T23:21:38Z

Fan Fiction and Early Christian Writings: Apocrypha, Pseudepigrapha and Canon is a title aimed squarely at my interests, so I had to check it out. There's an extract available on the publisher's website (although the amount that it will show you seems to vary since I can no longer see the entire introduction), and I requested it via interlibrary loan so I could finish it.

The touchstone that Tom de Bruin opens with and then returns to in each subsequent chapter is Anne Rice’s 2005 book, Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt, especially the author's notes from the first edition and then the paperback release. I think this is effective because throughout the book, we're looking at works that aren't the most prototypical examples of fan fiction, that the authors themselves definitely wouldn't call fan fiction (whether due to anachronism rendering it impossible or, in Anne Rice’s case, antipathy towards fic-writing fandom rendering it unwanted), and yet the comparison is apt enough to be useful and productive.

The first chapter examines the versions of the ending of Mark, especially the Longer Ending, in terms of fix-it fic (because, pace Kate Beaton, gospel of Mark fanfic can be a respected activity). The second chapter digs into a specific piece of apocrypha, Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, which claim authority for themselves by pastiching the voice of canon but also respond to it by clarifying motivations or fixing plotholes. The third chapter is about the scriptural canonization process, and the fourth chapter relates the disparagement of many works deemed noncanonical to fandom gatekeeping and policing certain types of fans. The final chapter looks at the concept of the “transmedia storyworld,” the full complement of illustrations and memes and fanon and current events and other paratexts that influence readings without fitting neatly into binaries like “this is a canonical text”/“this is a forgery.”

I would have liked it if this book dug a little deeper, on the fandom side especially but also with the early Christian stuff, but within the constraints of its length and the necessity of explaining a lot of stuff I already know about fandom almost from first principles, I thought it was really interesting and fun to read.

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He wants three!

2025-01-27T23:30:47Z

People thought that the 2024 Chiefs were frauds. People thought that Patrick Mahomes wasn’t a top three quarterback in the league and didn’t deserve to go to the Pro Bowl. People thought that Josh Allen was the dangerous one when he used his legs. People thought that this year could actually be the Bills’ year. People thought that their prayers to be spared seeing the Chiefs in the Super Bowl again this year might be answered by some kind of merciful deity. People thought a lot of things.

The Chiefs are going back to the Super Bowl. That's already farther than any other back-to-back winners have made it in the third year. Obviously I would prefer to complete the threepeat, but I think we're doing pretty okay so far.

Commanders @ Eagles — This game really got out of hand by the end and thus did not hold a lot of interest for the neutral fan. It did end up introducing quite a lot of more casual viewers to the concept of the palpably unfair act which is found in the NFL rulebook. Good times!

Bills @ Chiefs — People find it ridiculous when Chiefs fans say that the Chiefs will simply start playing better in the playoffs, but here's the thing: they legitimately do. They've adopted a paradigm whereby they play a twenty game preseason in order to prepare for a three- to four-game season.

This game was nothing like our regular season game against the Bills. Not that they wouldn't have liked to win that game, and they tried to win that game, but not the same way that they tried to win this game. It helped that we’d gotten various offensive and defensive players back, of course, but we were also doing things like calling Patrick Mahomes designed runs, which never happens in a mere preseason game. (I've seen fans of other teams not realize that Andy isn't calling any of these runs. Pat is just so good at reading the defenses and knowing when he can scramble successfully that it seems like it might have been designed.) Xavier Worthy made the Bills live to regret trading back with us to let us draft him. On the other side of the ball, Spags was calling blitzes so exotic that I think you might need a license to keep them. Genuine works of art.

They had to go ahead and be dazzling, because the Bills are a good team with a really good quarterback who happens to be living in his own personal timeloop hell. This is the fourth time in five years that he's had his postseason ended by the Chiefs and frankly he looked like a hollow shell of a man in the postgame. He seems like a pretty nice guy and it’s fun to watch him play, especially if I don’t need him to lose for seeding purposes, but honestly, I feel like it gives us an edge in each subsequent postseason game when he sees our uniforms and flashes back to the previous losses and that’s so helpful. Don't really feel bad for a lot of Bills fans, though, especially the ones who attacked our players with snowballs last year and hanged a Mahomes muppet in effigy. I hope they, specifically, never experience joy.

There was an adorable moment after Pat ran in his second touchdown when he tried to spike the ball and completely muffed it, possibly because Travis was all up in his personal space. I think he was just being proactive, lest any Bills players try to start something with Pat like they did when he ran in his first touchdown and Trav had to fend them off. ❤️

It's kind of wild that we’re rerunning our matchup against the Eagles after we already had a rematch with the 49ers last year. Jason has already committed to rooting for the Eagles against his own brother, much to Travis’s disgust. That subplot should be entertaining!

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divisional roundup

2025-01-21T03:36:07Z

Texans (4) @ Chiefs (1) — I appreciated that this game was scheduled for Saturday afternoon, the Texans' designated time slot, so that we could get it over with and I could relax and enjoy the rest of the weekend. Unfortunately, that also stuck us with the unbearable booth of Joe Buck and Troy Aikman, who sounded like they were downing a cocktail of hard liquor and haterade throughout most of the game. (Joe claims that they no longer drink while they're calling the games, and that may or may not be true for his own part, but I do not believe that Troy is sober at any time.)

They absolutely melted down over the "controversial" penalties that the Texans drew (that were 100% by the book, whether you agree with the way those rules are written or not) while trying to straight-up murder Patrick Mahomes like they took out Trevor Lawrence earlier this year. The fact that Azeez Al-Shaair refused to even pretend to be remorseful for that incident—like, you can just lie! No one can stop you!—and that his head coach actually backed him up makes me think that something is seriously rotten about the culture of that team. I feel extremely fortunate to have escaped from this game without any serious injuries, but it sucks that we're probably going to get stuck playing this team all the time because their division is weak and they're likely to keep winning it and get shoved onto our schedule.

Even in this highlight of the incredible touchdown that Pat threw to Travis Kelce as he was falling to the ground, you can hear that Troy is still bitching about how defensive players are so hard done by under the rules these days, until Pat literally forces them to first shut up and then grudgingly be complimentary for a while. I could watch replays of that touchdown all day long.

Commanders (6) @ Lions (1) — Jared Goff really Goffed this one up. I've been let down by Jared Goff before—namely, in Super Bowl LIII against the Pats—but I really felt bad for the guy by interception number four. I did not feel bad for a certain subset of extremely obnoxious online Lions fans who were in all the comments sections counting their Lombardi trophies before they'd even made so much as a single Super Bowl appearance for some reason. You're supposed to wait until your team wins multiple Super Bowls and then become completely insufferable about it!

Jayden Daniels looks like he's going to be a problem for other teams for the foreseeable future. You'd never guess that this guy is a rookie.

Rams (4) @ Eagles (2) — Snow game! This one got messy. The Eagles barely held off one of Matthew Stafford's trademark game-winning drives and they're currently favored to win the Super Bowl, since they're considered to have a slightly easier path to getting there in the first place. Exciting for the Kelce household!

It's bad enough that Sean McVay is two years younger than me and he's already been the head coach of the Rams for eight seasons, but people have started speculating that he will retire every offseason. He's not old enough to retire! Why would he retire???

Ravens (3) @ Bills (2) — I was torn about this game. I wanted the Ravens to lose, because it confirms my oft-stated position that Lamar Jackson is an incredibly overrated quarterback who collects meaningless MVPs in the regular season and crumbles in the playoffs and that he and the Ravens, in the words of the scouting report that the Dodgers gave their players about the Yankees, "will self-inflict harm" if you, like, make them play football. On the other hand, I wanted the Ravens to win, because then we would get to play them next. It's not that I don't believe that the Chiefs can beat the Bills, it's just that I believe that both the Chiefs and the Ravens can beat the Ravens, and that's more options.

We're getting a fourth playoff game against the Bills in five years, regardless of what I may or may not have wished for or the line that had the Bills as one point underdogs at home. They're currently two point underdogs in Arrowhead. I'd rather it be less close, but I would certainly take it.

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and the crowd goes mild

2025-01-15T00:05:44Z

Another batch of six wild card games are in the books and five of them were blowouts won by the home team. Sure, that sounds boring and perfunctory, but when you bear in mind that the Chargers were two-and-a-half point favorites as the away team because everyone involved in setting that line apparently forgot that they were dealing with the Chargers, one third of the games were upsets!

Chargers @ Texans — it's a testament to how fundamentally cursed the Chargers are as a franchise that I'm incapable of taking them seriously as a division rival even when they find themselves in the playoffs. Watching them get absolutely buried by a Texans team that had been largely left for dead engendered more secondhand embarrassment than glee, honestly. Justin Herbert threw more interceptions in this single playoff game (four) than he did in an entire seventeen-game regular season (three). That fun fact will be the entire legacy of the 2024 Chargers.

This game caused much weeping and gnashing of teeth on tumblr, a bizarre pocket mirrorverse where the Chargers are one of the most popular teams in the NFL, second only to the Joe Burrow Bengals. This lies in sharp contrast to the real world, where a woman became a viral superstar for attending a Chargers game and being discernibly invested in the outcome and people suggested she could be a plant.

Steelers @ Ravens — I had hoped that something interesting, maybe even an upset, might happen here, purely because this was a divisional matchup and sometimes those can get weird, but nah. Just another blowout.

Broncos @ Bills — The seven seed is an abomination. The Broncos did not belong here at all and it showed. I did enjoy seeing them get demolished, though. That is a true division rivalry, where hatred springs eternal.

Packers @ Eagles — You know this was not an entertaining game when it causes concern that the Eagles offense didn't do more in a game that they won 22-10. Again, seven seeds simply should not be here. I do also hate the Packers so I didn't totally object to seeing them lose.

Commanders @ Buccaneers — This is it! The game that was exciting for a neutral fan! The Commanders upset the Bucs by a field goal that doinked through the uprights as time expired. It could hardly have been any closer, and since I was quite neutral, I was entertained.

Vikings @ Rams — I don't know why I ever bother to get even a little bit invested in a Vikings team. All they ever do when they do well is find new ways to disappoint. I have to say, going 14-2 with a chance to seize the one seed and the bye in their final game only to get blown out, stuck in the five seed, and get blown out again in the wild card round was certainly new. I have to say, it was very considerate of Sam Darnold to turn back into a pumpkin in plenty of time to avoid creating a quarterback controversy. The most fun Vikings team to make an improbable run behind an unexpectedly-elevated backup quarterback before ending their season in a playoff blowout is still the 2017 Case Keenum Vikings, anyway.

It's been twenty long days since I saw a meaningful snap of Chiefs football. I can't wait for Saturday afternoon.

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FIC: No Dumb Yuletide Stories, Just Dumb Podcast Hosts (Jason & Travis Kelce, G)

2025-01-01T16:33:59Z

I wrote something very silly indeed for Yuletide this year! It was a lot of fun.

No Dumb Yuletide Stories, Just Dumb Podcast Hosts (1092 words) by mayhap
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: National Football League RPF
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Jason Kelce & Travis Kelce
Characters: Jason Kelce, Travis Kelce
Additional Tags: Humor, Characters React to Fandom, Yuletide
Summary: We gotta talk about it.

Although we still don't have a release date for Happy Gilmore 2, since I wrote this, the trailer did drop. Travis is totally living that self-insert life for real.

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Ready to engage playoff mode

2024-12-28T18:37:41Z

This year the Chiefs gave me the delightful gift of a non-stressful win for Christmas. No one-score margins of victory, no wacky antics as time expires, just a nice 29-10 stomping of the Pittsburgh Steelers, who are a playoff team, even, although I think they were already fading down the stretch before we got there, but whatever.

With Hollywood Brown back, we've finally realized the vision for what the offense was supposed to be, albeit with DeAndre Hopkins filling in for what Rashee Rice would have been doing, and that trade didn't even cost us that much. If we'd had this offense all year, those games wouldn't have been so stressful to watch in the first place. Regardless, we went 15-1 and locked up the one seed, even though the schedulers absolutely tried to kill us with the excessively-early week six bye and the late three games in eleven days gauntlet, and it's not like the wins count any less if they're crazy and stressful. Now with nothing left to play for until the divisional round we have a ton of time to rest our starters, get healthy, game plan, etc.

This must be absolutely infuriating to watch if you're a fan (or a player, or a coach…) of another team. It's so much fun for me, though!

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World Champions of Yuletide

2024-12-26T01:29:22Z

I got a super cute Dodgers fic for Yuletide this year!

Dodging Through the Snow (2174 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: 2024 National League Baseball RPF
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Tyler Glasnow/Shohei Ohtani
Characters: Shohei Ohtani, Tyler Glasnow, Decoy Ohtani
Additional Tags: Offseason Shenanigans, Happy Ending, Alternate Universe - No Girlfriends/No Wives, Zombies, or are there?, No beta we die like I definitely would in a zombie apocalypse, Snowball Fight
Summary:

Fresh off their team’s World Series win, Tyler Glasnow and Shohei Ohtani take some time to celebrate the holiday season. But what is this about zombies?

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unlucky thirteen

2024-12-18T18:52:57Z

The good news is that the Chiefs improved to 13-1 and still control the one seed! The bad news is that my poor baby Pat has sprained an ankle again. We already had one ankle scare a month and a half ago against the Bucs, although he refused to come out of that game and afterwards Andy told the media that he has, and I quote, “the loosest ankles in America,” which honestly sounds like an old-timey way of calling him a slut. This time it was bad enough that allowed himself to be removed from remainder of the game, albeit ungraciously, but he says that it’s not as bad as the sprain in the divisional round against the Jags in 2023 that he played through in the AFCCG and then the Super Bowl.

The most annoying thing is that it didn’t need to happen in the first place, like, at all. The Chiefs were already playing with a break-glass-in-case-of-emergency offensive line with Joe Thuney sliding over to left tackle because all the actual tackles are too hurt or too untrusted at the moment. It was suboptimal, but combined with some nifty play calling that had Pat constantly dancing out of danger, they were definitely getting away with it in the first half. It helped that Jameis, being Jameis, absolutely could not stop turning the ball over, so while the Chiefs offense was literally being pressured, in the larger, more metaphorical sense, there was very little pressure on them at all. In the second half, even though the Browns defense clamped down on the run and Pat was dropping back a million miles, chucking incompletion after incompletion and getting knocked around constantly, the Chiefs were still up 21-7 with five minutes left to play when Andy made the fateful decision to go for it on fourth and three. Pat dropped back to attempt yet another pass and got folded up like an origami crane.

He wants to play on Saturday because of course he does. It's not like I don't believe he can play through a sprained ankle, because, I mean, I've already seen him win a Super Bowl on a sprained ankle in 2023. I just didn't particularly want to test whether that feat was repeatable, especially since we're already rerunning the minimum viable receiver talent experiment of 2024. Doing both at once feels…challenging. Especially since then we have the accursed Netflix Christmas Day game on an even shorter week.

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Game Rec: The Booze of Monkey Island

2024-11-12T04:12:37Z

I was legitimately blown away by this new Monkey Island fan game, The Booze of Monkey Island.

It's a labor of love by actual indie game developers, so they do actually know what they're doing. They did it Curse of Monkey Island-style, with gorgeous digital watercolor backgrounds, animated sprites, point-and-click navigation, and the streamlined three-verb coin interface, which was the pinnacle of adventure game design. The music incorporates the classic themes from the original games, and it sounds great. The setup is that classic one where you need to convince three different people to do a thing, which in this case is come to a new bar, and you get to roam all over Booty Island until you've solved all the puzzles, which are appropriately convoluted. The dialogue feels slightly off-kilter, but it was originally written in Italian, and if you allow for the vagaries of multiple layers of translation from and to English, it's funny and in-character, and there's plenty of depth in the dialogue trees.

Definitely recommend this as a good way to pass a couple of hours for any Monkey Island fans.

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Champagne facials

2024-11-01T23:27:02Z

I'm not going to lie, I was a little concerned on Tuesday when the Yankees remembered how to hit. Not that Dave Roberts didn't do the right thing in game four—given the very limited pitching that he had to work with, he was 100% correct not to spend any of his high-leverage arms there, and it's easy to swallow a loss when you're up three games to none. Still, when the balls really started flying and the Yankees started feeling themselves, I could see where this might escape the confines of game four and spill over into games five+.

Fortunately, although the Yankees may have remembered how to hit, they fully abandoned all ability to field. I have never experienced anything quite like watching that fifth-inning five-run game-tying disasterclass meltdown. It reminded me of Hosmer's mad dash from the 2015 World Series, another clinching game five for the away team in New York City, except that it was a series of three increasingly baffling defensive miscues where what should have been routine became impossible. I didn't need the Dodgers' scouts to tell me that the Yankees don't prioritize defense when either selecting or preparing their players because I've watched them play and I have eyes, but stringing errors together like that is a whole other level of anti-clutch.

Before the fifth inning, I was still pretty sure that the Dodgers were going to win the series, but after the fifth inning, I was pretty sure that Dodgers were going to win the series in this game, which indeed they duly did. Even when the Yankees were up 6-5, I was like, yeah, nah. Bringing in Walker Buehler to close is the kind of bold move that has become low-key routine in the playoffs, so I wasn't particularly surprised when it happened—if I had been familiar with the backstory of how he'd been pitching himself to Andrew Friedman and Dave Roberts as an option out of the pen all day and getting the brushoff until his teammates played themselves into the exact unlikely scenario that required him to be in the bullpen and sent himself there, I would have been even more impressed.

A few minutes later Prior called Buehler on the bullpen phone.

“How do you feel? Did you throw today?” Prior asked.

“Yeah,” Buehler said. “I feel good.”

“I lied,” Buehler said. “I hadn’t thrown yet.”

He's ridiculous. If that was his last appearance in a Dodger uniform, it was 100% peak Walker Buehler and it was beautiful.

Freddie Freeman as the World Series MVP was obviously a given and could hardly have happened to a nicer person, but I absolutely can't believe that it turned out that he was secretly nursing even more injuries than the ones we already knew about. Absurd. I kind of wish he hadn't barely missed that home run in the last game to keep the streak alive as a cherry on top, but you can't have everything.

I love this time when the championship is decided and it's all celebrations and post mortems and inside stories, but I also really miss baseball already.

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Omens

2024-10-29T23:46:39Z

Without wishing to jinx it, this World Series has been amazing for me thus far as both a Dodgers fan and a Yankees hater. It was almost worth letting the Yankees advance for how little fun they are having through three games.

Jeff Passan brought us an incredible behind the scenes look at how Shohei came back for game three, including the text that he sent his teammates while they were still on the bus to the airport:

Nice game, guys. Last time, Bellinger’s shoulder was dislocated. This time, my shoulder was dislocated. This is a good sign for a world champion.

I’m not going to argue with that logic! He’s hilarious.

Inside the 48 hours that got Shohei Ohtani back [ungated]

Hoping to get the brooms out tonight!

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Scary

2024-10-27T17:04:34Z

I definitely feared the worst when Shohei Ohtani was lying on the ground in pain last night after attempting to steal a base, but luckily he just subluxated his shoulder and it’s not impossible that he will actually be completely fine?? The day off today and the 2-0 series lead are both helpful. Get well soon, Shohei!

Edit: Dave Roberts is already saying that Shohei will definitely play tomorrow. Seems early, but okay!

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Chills

2024-10-26T19:42:44Z

Approximately 99% of game one of the World Series was terribly tense or even downright distressing to watch, and yet Freddie Freeman’s walk-off grand slam in the bottom of the tenth with two outs was a shot of pure joy. That’s the magic of baseball.

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