April 13, 2023

More brainstorming fragments… I’ve had them for a few days, but I originally planned to finish what I already have in the April 4, 2023 entry, flesh out what I have here, comebine the two, and then post a tidy version of my ideas. However, there was a change of plan. I had to post these ideas in their incomplete form because I needed to show them to Bing Chat via its web browsing capability.

*******

I don’t hate the players, the countries they represent, or their fans. I love them. It’s just that my characters may or may not all be ever so slightly depressed. Gosh, what if they all end up unlikable like Neon Genesis Evangelion characters? lol

Iga’s tweet in Polish

Roboty

Clay

Laying bricks

The Polish sentence "Powrót do roboty" can be translated word for word as follows:

Powrót - return

do - to

roboty - work

When put together, the sentence means "Return to work." This phrase is typically used to signify the end of a break or time off and the resumption of work or other duties.

Karel Čapek was a Czech writer. His play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots) indeed introduced the word "robot" to the world. The word "robot" comes from the Czech word "robota," which means "forced labor" or "drudgery." Karel Čapek used this term to refer to the artificial workers in his play. The word "robot" then entered the English language and other languages as a term for machines that perform tasks autonomously or semi-autonomously.

The Polish word "roboty" is related to the Czech word "robota" and has a similar meaning, signifying "work" or "labor." In the context of "Powrót do roboty," "roboty" refers to work or tasks that need to be done. Although the modern meaning of "robot" in English specifically refers to machines, the origins of the word in Czech and its relation to the Polish word "roboty" are rooted in the concept of labor or work in general.

So in my story Iga thinks about the Polish word roboty, the play R.U.R., and the English word robot, robotic, repetitive, tedious, mindless work, and her own training and rehab regimen, and the coming clay season, and the emoji she uses to represent clay, bricks, a robot laying bricks to build a wall around itself, brick by brick

Emma

Concerning- the wrist is potentially a career ending injury for a top tennis player

Popular

Guess that means she’s rather good at it. pretending to be bland

I’m always suspicious of the “likeability” argument w/r/t public figures anyway for various reasons – 1) “likeability” seems to encompass only a v narrow range of personality traits, 2) it doesn’t leave room for complexities of character, 3) we don’t actually know these people anyway.

Cultivate a fakey-fake corporate charm of

A lack of a personality

A blank projection screen

Great Britain ridiculous

Three lions

Communist countries

they still want The Right Sort Of Chap to win

Sir Andy

Knighted

Emma just couldn’t see the Sir in him, besides when it’s printed next to his name, of course.

Oh so chivalrous

Smashing his rackets and yelling at clouds every match.

Petulant court manner. Whiny tantrums. Mopey, taciturn and surly. Attitude.

Emma had read online that all the best sportspeople are moody, pissy and surly. But you should at least act like you aren’t, she thought.

GB is desperate.

Your knights are all such disgraces.

Hype

Built up and up by the press

We Brits are so unfamiliar with sporting success we’ll take it where we can find it.

Two quotes from people discussing nationalism and Murray:

Come on people, get your nationalities right. Andy Murray is British at the moment, not Scottish. He becomes Scottish as soon as he loses. These are simple English rules for potential sporting successes, and we should all follow them.

The thing about individual sports like tennis is that there’s no reason or rhyme to cheering based on nationalism.

Maybe the one thing that’s so “Sir” about him is his perseverance, Emma conceded.

I think that's called perseverance. Murray’s tweet

Speaking in terms of stars, Sir Andy is a red dwarf which became a white dwarf. He was never the red giant or supernova type. His winning strategy was to outlast all the other stars because stars that shine brighter burn out faster, too. Emma doesn’t want to be another Sir Andy.

Maybe she won’t even get the chance to be one. Maybe she’s even worse. A shooting star. Sometimes she also feels like a black hole.

Emma thinks about her antis on Twitter

There's this one account Raducant that stayed with her

Some things antis say about her

Cracks under pressure

A fluke who wasn’t good enough to win a slam anyway

Had Raducanu EVER beaten a top 10 player? Raducanu came out of nowhere and had a dream draw.

A wimpy wrist

Injury-prone body

laura robson

As if she’s living for them and not for herself

Living on spite. Going on spite. Her fuel to go on is spite.

Maybe she is Raducant after all. So what? If they want her to represent Great Britain so badly, then what does that say about them?

BJK Cup

Didn’t know when

comment

Snarky

She knew it was the wrong thing to say, but it felt good to say it.

Sometimes you feel like ruining yourself.

Better do it yourself before they can get to you.

Venomous

Vampire fangs

Emma hadn’t had the time to read her collection of vampire novels in a long while. Are their fangs even venomous?

It’s not like I’m even playing that much tennis to be too busy to read novels, Emma smiled bitterly.

Even when she’s not playing tennis, she made a conscious effort to avoid activities that would make it even more glaringly obvious that she’s not a top athlete who’s too busy to

Even Iga Swiatek makes time for books.

Running on spite is probably not sustainable for an athlete

Does Iga Swiatek ever run on spite?

Emma thought absentmindedly.

At some point much later in the story Emma and Iga can talk about this.

Iga asks Emma

Does it make you happy?

No.

Nor I, I don’t think.

Rybakina thinks about how surely others see her as the Boring Russian

Rybakina thinks about Sabalenka sticking her tongues out during Rybakina’s champion’s speech after she won Indian Wells 2023

She knows it was a deliberate act from Sabalenka to rob her of her spotlight and signal to the American audiences that she, Sabalenka, not Rybakina, is where the spotlight should shine because she is more spontaneous, bubbly, outgoing, more American.

After she deliberately lost to Kvitova, Rybakina thinks about how her coach Vkov will probably confront her about her peculiar performance in that match

Jessica Pegula

Reads about Iga’s interview in which she says Jessie is special and always so calm

Pegula scoffs and thinks about how she is not at all the person Iga describes

SVB crisis

A big chunk of the Pegula family’s money was in there

Pegula’s mother’s heart attack after hearing the news about SVB’s collapse

Bianca Andreescu wears the same outfit she wore when she won the US Open. She has since grown fatter, so it makes her look ridiculous. But all athletes have weird superstitions. Jack Grealish wears shin guards that are too small. It’s the same thing. It’s like she’s surrounding herself with what it felt like when she was winning, letting it envelop her like the womb hugs an embryo. She’s yet to be born. Fetal position. Her mother tried hard to get her to stop wearing it, but Bianca fought her on this and refused to budge. Perhaps her mother subconsciously understood the message the outfit sent, that her presence is not enough and not even as reassuring as the outfit

Sorry, mama, she thought.

Aryna tightened her right hand around the tiger tattoo on her left arm, feeling the faint roar of her blood rushing through the blood vessels.

Speaking in terms of ASOIAF house words,

Aryna’s motto would be “Hear Me Roar”, like House Lannister. “Ours is the fury.”

Emma's would be “Fire and Blood”

Iga's would be “Growing Strong”

Jessie Pegula's would be “As high as honor” or Family, Duty, Honor

House Hightower: We Light the Way

I like House Hightower a lot (because of Alicent). But I wonder if their words fit anybody in my fic. Wouldn’t it be deliciously ironic if it’s the words of the Black Organization that Azarenka is part of? (She’s not the boss. It would be BORING if she were. She’s just a high-ranking member.)

Bianca's would be "Here We Stand" Rybakina's would be "Winter is Coming"

The house words have no bearing on the plot. It’s just something fun I was thinking about.

2024 Wimbledon

When they came up to hug at the net, Elena whispered under her breath: “Did you deliberately lose to me?”

“Well, did you deliberately lose to Petra Kvitova at the 2023 Miami Open?”

Elena went stiff.

Iga winked at her.

even if you consider a match between two solo people JUST a match between the two yr watching (which it never is), it’s still the fact that the talent of one emerges only in response to the other… talent emerges from the “collective of two” who are performing together

Jessica Pegula tweet, Half-Korean, she’s totally right, I didn’t know this about her before I saw the tweet.

I saw a YouTube comment made by a Pole under an old match replay of Emma “Iga will be dominating her for the rest of their careers” That cracked me up. The unintended shipping.

Both Iga and Emma have won the US Open and that’s kinda gay, I just realized. Yeah I can be dumb like that.

Emma Raducanu said she uses her injury setbacks as on-court fuel after battling through the return of a right wrist issue to beat Danka Kovinic 6-2 6-3 in the first round of Indian Wells on Thursday.

“I just love competing even when you are fighting through it,” she told reporters when asked how she stays positive amid the health struggles.

“Having something that you’re going through gives you in some ways more incentive.

“I’ve got to be aggressive, I’ve got to dominate. I just find a way to use it to my advantage as much as I can.”

She said her strategy at this point was to not look too far into the future.

“I’m not 100% but you never really are,” she said.

“The short term plan is to manage it as best as possible. Managing the load, not train as much.

“Get through the tournament and evaluate after.”

Emma thinking about Bianca after she extended the offer to talk to Emma and feels conflicted

On one hand her pride recoils from the offer because she sees Bianca as somewhat of a loser

On the other hand she assesses herself honestly and realizes she is no better than Bianca now even though she used to think she is but she flew too high and fell

Quotes from some people comparing Emma and Bianca online:

Bianca is a grand slam champion hampered by injuries too. Bianca beat Serena for hers though… Emma beat Fernandez… big difference.

Exactly. People shouldn't compare these two. Bianca also has 2 Masters 1000 titles, I believe.