we gon' burn the whole house down

- Was eventually trialed by governments of the world as a scapegoat and sent to prison

- She somehow BROKE out of said prison and currently commandeers a rogue paramilitary faction of Project Hail Mary loyalists who believe in her over world governments, who presumably are still hunting her down

- She currently is on the run and staying mobile on an ice breaker ship like some kind of james bond villain base (but you know, good) while STILL working on project hail mary the whole time

- Her rogue loyalist faction controlled enough resources they could go to space and collect the beetles Grace had sent. Alternatively, it was the world government that collected the beetles, and Stratt had a whole ass heist movie to steal them, which is why she had the little xenonite figure at the end of the movie. Either ways she was running circles around them.

you’re also blithely unaware of the fact that, in 2011, hbo produced a documentary series about the washington capitals vs pittsburgh penguins stadium series, and then i think it was on livejournal, wasn't it, that sidney crosby/alexander ovechkin hockey rpf began to really circulate widely. and then sid/ovi rpf quickly showed up in the collection of several prolific fanfic writers. then it filtered down through tumblr and ao3 and then trickled on down to miss rachel reid herself, who no doubt was the first to be brave enough to send it to print

we all know april 2, 2019. carlos was 15 and jannik was 17 when they met in villena, alicante. first-round match in that challenger, both wild cards. carlos won (and this was also his first challenger-level match ever) but he wouldn't win the tournament. alright then. they wouldn't face each other again until 2021

but almost a month after that match in villena, on april 26, jannik posts a photo on instagram. and carlos likes it. from that point on until the end of that year, he liked the vast majority of jannik's posts. we can still see them, all those photos are still up. and the rest is history. btw, that april 26 pic was literally the 7th post jannik had ever made on instagram

what kills me is that, in the grand scheme of things, they were two nobodies who had just seen each other once in an (at the time) kinda unremarkable match. and young guys in their position would face dozens and dozens of opponents every year. so many faces, so many places. most must eventually blur together, if I had to guess. but carlos found and followed jannik on his social media after that first match against him. and liked almost everything he posted. for years (and here we are still lmao). mind you, this wasn't reciprocated at all, you won't find a like from jannik on any of carlos' posts from that time. that didn't deter carlos

but what also touches me is that carlos doesn't only know the adult jannik in his 20s, the rising tennis star. carlos, in his own way, has also seen jannik grow up. he has seen a handful of his awkward phases. his blurry pics and too-long floppy hair, his cringy (adorable!) captions, his unflattering photos wearing ugly kits at his early tournaments, his clumsy selfies and thick glasses, his body leaving boyhood behind and taking the shape of a man

he has been observing jannik for a long, long time

btw, this is the photo, the first one carlos liked:

this is why the jannik laila stuff kinda turned me off :/ and if ppl argue "so you think scrutinizing jannik's lockscreen is bad but you have no problem sending anons objectifying carlos's body??" my honest answer is: it takes digging to sleuth out jannik's dating life and it takes turning on the tv to see carlos alcaraz bricked up on the court ✌️