love’s labour’s lost

we know for certain that stefanos unblocked daniil some time before the north american hard court swing of 2019, because daniil tagged him in the infamous washington dc kyrgios private plane instagram post, and as per daniil's own explanation:

(^from monte carlo 2019)

there's only circumstantial evidence that stefanos had blocked daniil again at some point afterwards, but we basically know the exact date of it: shanghai 2019, another one of their numerous public breakups, but probably the biggest one to date. this was stefanos's 5th consecutive loss to daniil, and the first one in straight sets. perhaps that's the reason he delivered this disasterclass in his press conference afterwards:

this quote PISSED daniil off. he was so pissed that when he was asked about this in an interview, he went on a tangent to try and mock stefanos but pulled an uno reverse card on HIMSELF bc he brought up something that happened in one of stefanos's vlogs......which revealed that he watched stefanos's vlogs. ig he also said he didn't take stefanos seriously anymore, but it's just a stunning cringe compilation highlight move to accidentally reveal that u watch ur biggest rival's vlogs while trying to clap back at him lmfao. anyway, this destroyed all hopes of them becoming amicable after ppl had speculated abt them making up w that plane pic in washington dc. and as we all know stefanos is all too trigger happy w the block button..

13th nov 2019 is just after daniil lost to stefanos for the very first time, in the 2019 atp finals RR match. i can't remember if this is before or after he was eliminated from the RR stage but yet another #cringe #🏳️‍🌈🤨❓️ move to lose to ur rival and immediately go like a post from their fanpage lol. stefanos won that year's atp finals, btw.

shortly after this loss, eurosport russia uploaded a (very long and very interesting!) sit-down interview w him, where daniil reiterated his sentiments abt not respecting stefanos, saying they don't have any kind of relationship anymore after what he said, officially declaring them enemies, generally acting like they were going thru a bad breakup, etc. ppl thought he was being salty bc he finally lost to stefanos, but it'd been filmed prior to the atp finals, so turns out daniil was just doing it for pure love of the game <3

So some fanartist drew a “sexy” (read: booby) version of a (cartoon) character who is traditionally very non-sexualised. Fans of the character got mad about it because it’s kind of groundbreaking how that character is written and portrayed and this art totally ignores the entire point of the character. They demanded the art be deleted. In response to that other people said, well what the fanartist did may be distateful but they have every right to draw what they’re into. The two sides fight for days and each starts a harassment campaign and even report their “opponents’” accounts.

So far so typical. But things eventually come to a head and they decide that this will be settled by votes - not through a poll. Through donations to a children’s education charity via each side’s portal. Whoever can get the highest amount of donation wins.