#stoner talk | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

batsplat · 30 days

Note

hello i saw in your tags that you don't think people on here get casey stoner and as someone relatively new into the sport i would love to hear your thoughts <3

(context here) okay first of all, this post will be framed as ‘things I wish people talked about more with regards to casey stoner’, rather than arguing against what I think people think

I've tried to come up with a concise response to this ask but kept heading into thesis-length territory. so I decided to write a bullet point list and it’s still… yeah… but well it could be worse. if you, dear anon, wish to read thousands of words of casey stoner lore then please let me know. otherwise, here are just a few things I find interesting about this bloke:

casey has a very complex relationship with the concept of confidence, both in other riders and himself, in the sense that he KNOWS how important it is but also believes/wishes that he specifically is kinda above all that

this feeds into how he wishes that racing were Just Racing and not all this other stuff… not his brain not his body not other racers being assholes on/off track not talking to journalists or doing photoshoots not having to deal with politics etc etc - central underlying tension of his career

he has openly spoken about not ever really enjoying race day, saying the only thing he's missed after retiring is qualifying. very perfectionist, the anxiety, the over-thinking, craving control… all key casey traits

(which also ties in with the valentino rivalry, because valentino obviously adores racing (in particular wheel-to-wheel battle) but he’s also great at all that other off-track stuff)

some very rigid ideas of How The Sport Should Look, which you can see in everything from how he talks about racing standards to the introduction of CRT riders (he had it OUT for them, head hot every time aleix espargaro shows up in parc fermé) to valentino’s influence on ducati and the importance of the colour red

let him have his mean streak! the grim satisfaction in discussing jorge’s 2008 injuries after his early-season arrogance towards casey, the dismissiveness towards dani, some of the wilder valentino remarks (this isn’t a criticism to be clear, alien-on-alien violence is part of the natural order of things)

casey is a classic case of ‘just because you’re paranoid, doesn’t mean they aren’t after you’. definitely a suspicious guy and perpetual underdog 'me against the world' mindset. not to get too psychoanalytic-y, but I reckon this was partly born out of how he had to leave australia as a teenager (with his family completely dependent on him succeeding) because of how the racing establishment down under fucked him over

they definitely were out to get him a lot of the time, cf yamaha and then ducati drama plus the slander from some of the greats of the sport, fellow riders, the media etc etc (particularly egregious in 2009 when he was dealing with his mystery illness and a lot of people said some pretty unpleasant stuff in his absence - here is just one example)

his struggles were constantly downplayed. the chronic fatigue misdiagnosed as lactose intolerance led to people calling him weak-minded, broken, running away from the sport (part of why he was so allergic to the idea his results might in any way be connected to what was going on in his head). add in the undiagnosed anxiety and you have all this invisible strife people wouldn't even take seriously

that being said, he definitely did have a propensity for jumping to the worst possible conclusions

two specific examples: firstly from his autobiography, where he makes the claim that valentino may have been sabotaged in the 2006 title decider and was deliberately given a rubbish tyre to make him lose the championship - to which casey’s response was: “welcome to my world, mate”. he does have a tendency to believe he’s being sabotaged, and is constantly on the look out for conspiracies even when they are… unlikely

the other example is mat oxley talking about his issues with casey in his stint working for ducati, partly based on a misunderstanding:

something allegedly written about him in 2001!

let’s just say he can definitely hold a grudge

the moaner stoner stuff was definitely nasty, calling him mopey and whiny and all of that, but he also has never shied away from some good old-fashioned complaining (some of this was a bit of a spiral - complaining for good reason worsening public perception of him leading to more reasons to complain)

see also the lingering marc grudge, who probably did play a significant part in getting casey kicked out of honda (as casey has accused him of). whether marquez prevented stoner from racing in 2015 is more of an open question. casey still speaks about how honda made a mistake by only listening to marc (which, again, does have some truth to it)

casey was always very quick to shut down the idea that momentum, motivation, confidence etc could affect his results (unlike that of his competitors) because he argues he was always very rational & clear-sighted about when things were his fault & when things could be blamed on the bike + extraneous factors. he really goes into detail about this when discussing 2008 laguna seca in his autobiography, which he argues had no effect on him psychologically (but was followed by him crashing out of the lead of the next two races)

has definitely spoken more about his rivalry with valentino than valentino has, which probably has also helped shape perception of it over time

on ‘ambition outweighed talent’ - I feel like people almost understate just what a (hilariously) out of pocket remark it was in context. it was rossi’s second ever race at ducati (and the start of his season was impacted by his shoulder issues) - and the rain meant he had a ~win it or bin it~ approach because he knew it was as good a chance as he might get for some time (despite starting from 12th). the move on stoner for second place was at best optimistic, most definitely impatient and at worst foolish - but sort of understandable in that situation, rossi was definitely rapid, and this stuff can happen in the wet. in that sense, it was obviously more a reaction to the manner of the apology (and his frustration with the stewards) than to what casey himself described as a racing incident

stoner made a remark in his autobiography about how rossi had stolen 25 points in a title battle he was never going to be a part of (oof). whether you're obligated to race title contenders differently is already a bit sketch but certainly should not be a consideration for anybody in round TWO

he was forced to publicly retract the remarks, though he doubled down on them to a deeply funny extent in his autobiography by suggesting they were true of valentino’s entire career and that he’d just benefited from a weak era. rossi mostly took it on the chin especially when interviewed about it for documentaries, probably because with something like that you do just need to take the L

it's understandable how it’s become such a defining image of their rivalry (along with laguna seca), not least because of how evocative the whole thing is - rossi showing up still wearing his helmet, trying to make a PR apology stick while he’s been eating nauseating amounts of humble pie at ducati; stoner casual as you like, pissed off about the points loss while still indulging in schadenfreude about how the Great Big Ducati Adventure is working out for rossi

but again, I think it’s funnier because of just HOW over the top an insult it was in that situation (and more broadly how it does have a different vibe to their interactions when they were meaningfully competing, aka 2007-2008)

in conclusion: casey has his doubts and his insecurities and his obsessions and his foibles… a complicated guy in his own right

and a big thing I’d like to stress here is that the rivalry with valentino does benefit from treating them both as somewhat unreliable narrators

I just think he's neat

#ty for giving me an excuse to be annoying at length about one of my number one guys!!#casey stoner #valentino rossi #motogp #//#cs27 #vr46 #lotsss of other stuff you can go into here. he gets a bit sanitised sometimes I feel which is kinda a shame #u can be justifiably resentful and still be very resentful. spite is still spiteful when it's deserved. same with the misanthropic streak #being called weak-minded really got to him imo - and the thing is he's clearly not (& good lord did some big names say some nasty things)#the autobiography feels almost an overcorrection and then you've got him recently talking more openly about his mental health #(even if not specifically about how it affected him competitively - which is obviously a related but not identical conversation)#it's an uplifting development in a way and it's nice seeing how much more comfortable in his skin he seems these days #but he is also a little bitch :)

71 notes · View notes

comradekatara · 4 months

Text

the thing about the adult gaang movie is even if it’s somehow done really well, i don’t wanna see aang and katara as adults, that will actually make me really sad. whereas if sokka is the protagonist that’s fine because i already think everyone should heal and find fulfillment after the war except for sokka. i think sokka should get worse. i think sokka should continue collecting mental illnesses like they’re pokemans creatures. a qing dynasty court intrigue film with sokka navigating ba sing se politics (and iroh can feature as he dispenses occasional wisdom. but sokka is just like “call your son”), or a xai bau spy thriller (except tbh this one would work better as a novel), or even just. a mai and sokka roadtrip movie in the style of an early 2000s stoner comedy (this one would have no artistic merit but it’s also probably the best idea ive ever had). these are but a few examples of the many ideas i have for movies that put my favorite guy through hours of suffering without having to depict my other favorite guys as anything other than the precious babies i know and love.

#‘pokemans creatures’ is what i call them to piss my brother off so much #aang and katara are BABIES #do not ROB ME OF THAT #everyone in the world must age or die #but katara and aang!!!! are immortalized forever in babydom!!!!!!#why would you ruin that!!!!!!!#(okay im actually just going thru a separate crisis here wrt my brothers but don’t. we’re not talking about that okay)#also i think if you wanna make a movie that’s ‘darker’ and ‘for older audiences’ just make sokka the protagonist and boom problem solved #last time sokka got to be the protagonist he attempted suicide at the human rights abuses volcano #his mind is a dark dark place ok!#but also mai & sokka stoner comedy. is anyone writing this down? u should be writing this down #idk how to tag this #sokka #i guess?#postwargaang #also #bc obv these all happen in my complex tapestry of post war developments #gene yang could never #ask me about any one of these points for elaboration (PLEASE)

125 notes · View notes