#I just don't like that from any team tho when they try push a narrative of 'family' but you can't just tell the vibes aint it

[graveltrapping]

Every time someone says Papaya in relation to McLaren I actually die inside a little. idk what it is but its like too long a word with to many syllables to be spewing over a foggy team radio and just dropping into a conversation, Idc if its their brand its just cringe and I don't like it a mixed with this forced family and 'buddy buddy' vibe they have it and it just sets me off like plz stop, you can just say team orders instead

[chussyracing]

give the opinions please I'm bored at work

getting myself cancelled? why not. i'm on mobile (and it's too late to make coherent sentences) but i'll try to put it all under the cut

in the order anon sent them:

Sebchal - one of the less bad ones but honestly? so much about it was idolised and cliche-ed out of proportions over the years. Seb was going through a lot at the time, as much everyone knew. As a 4 times champion coming to the most prestigious team, the pressure must have been enormous and he was failing the mission he set for himself. I think all of us dumb red horse team fans wanted him to win a championship with said team but it didn't look good and turned basically impossible the day Charles stepped a foot in the team. He probably had a bit of an boy crush on Seb who was still the mighty 4 times wdc and number 1 driver in his dream team. At least for some time it turned pretty sour especially on the track and ultimately every piece of content from that time (minus the infamous helmet message) falls a bit one sided and always has. Not to speak about how fan space is made up by fans first and content second and a lot of fans of sebchal just try to push the "he's like father to him" narrative that I can't help to find mildly disrespectful. I get and appreciate the fandom jokes about grid dads and grid kids and don't get me wrong, sometimes they are funny, but in this particular case it always felt like some people take it too far.

Chewie - one of the best ones honestly. I think they are friendly towards each other, Lewis hypes him like he always does with young drivers and Charles has a lot of admiration for him (and let's be real probably some jealousy too, because Lewis is the greatest driver there has ever been). So far so good but when people in the fandom get involved in shipping them I can easily imagine it as mildly problematic in the classical produced content (like fics fanart and stuff) - with age gap or stereotypes or whatever.

Piarles - I love that Charles has a bestie in the paddock that he grew up with and that he knows better than any other driver and hangs out with outside of racing too. But that's it. It was a lot sweeter back in the day and came out as more genuine. Maybe I just never paid that much attention or their different career moves changed them (and that's valid and definitely not something I should judge) but... if you follow the subtle patterns lately one side comes out as exploiting the opportunities that come out with hanging out of the other more. If you asked me years ago this might be my first go to though so to some extend I understand why people like it. What I don't understand are those who see besties hanging out together and start yelling about them being on a date or being in love or whatever. They got used to it no doubt, because one they're properly famous (which naturally comes with lots of people being weird about you) and two they're both fairly present on social media so I bet they saw things. That's on people who ship them and not on any of them personally tho. As someone who was on the receiving end of those "ur dating haha ur so in love" talks with multiple of my friends in the past, I can tell u that there's just a few things that made me so uncomfortable.

Chalex - this might honestly take the crown for the best current Charles ship? Alex knows him for a long time as well and also knows what it is like to be his team mate during the worst times (puberty lol). I can openly admit I wasn't always very fond of Alex because.... you guessed it, Red Bull. He just came out as quite arrongant (and I guess because for one you need to always be confident about yourself in this sport to continue doing it on such a high level and the moment you stop, you're out, and two of course your self esteem increases if you get a seat in a top team). I properly enjoyed him during the twitch sessions though, he always seemed (and seems currently) as the sweet happy-go-lucky person who knows how to live life fully. He's also a little tease and paired with Charles it just works somehow. Again, I just don't really enjoy when people take it too far and start speculating if it's real and what not. Alex is happily in a relationship and they're good friends who often joke with each other during driver parades.

Charge - this might be short, because there's not much to say. It's cute and I love the vibes. They give off the energy of George calling him snickerdoodle or gigglebunny or fuzzybear while Charles grows more confused and concerned each time and asks what if means to which George just thinks "goodness gracious...." and tries to patiently explain the british gibberish. Sweet, fun and niche but I don't think there's much to work with nowadays so twitch days were definitely more fruitful time for Charge shippers.

In short: I don't have any big problem with Chewie, Chalex or Charge (and if so, they're minor) but Sebchal and Piarles are not as ideal as people make them seem. But then again I don't consider myself a shipper at all, so as long as people use correct tags and don't flood charles' main tag with shipping posts I don't mind them.

[elizabethrobertajones]

aren't they devaluing team free will tho? jack just come and suddenly it's family and team free will 0.2, now this pushing of gabriel as part of it too, it's just a mock, so now anyone can be tfw even if they didn't anything to earn it, team free will don't exist anymore it's just a joke

I’m sorry this is rubbing you the wrong way. The way I have always seen it is that Dean calls them “Team Free Will” in 5x13 extremely bitterly and miserably. The sense that they aren’t going to win, and they aren’t enough to defeat Michael, at the beginning of his downward spiral where he will be beaten up enough to attempt to say yes to being his vessel. The term then wasn’t used again for 7 years, and even though it got a great fanon following used UNIRONICALLY, and NOT how Dean originally used it, to celebrate the fact that they HAD won and defeated Michael, the symbolism within the show vs the way fanon took it was always a bit wonky.

The actual composition of Team Free Will as a victorious unit can and should stretch to cover Bobby, who was there helping at the true victory at Stull, and Crowley who did his part and was one of their most useful allies in the last few episodes of the season; once he was on their side they ticked off the last few rings very quickly. 

And Gabriel’s speech in 5x19, no matter how he may have been faking it so as not to actually die, but just to shake Lucifer up, was earnestly on the side of the underdog once he FINALLY made his stand, and that stand was in line with the principles of Team Free Will, and he himself over his 2 episodes in season 5 learned to stop just trying to make the script play out - a very similar nihilism about it as Raphael had - and to stand up for humanity. Like it or not, he is one of the only other characters that season to firmly end up on the side of “free will” over picking either Michael or Lucifer. And that was awesome before he came back and I thought he was a brilliant character. 

Being what I consider a mostly to somewhat old school apocalypse era spn fan (that is, I was watching in total isolation from the start so my dates don’t line up to fandom or American viewing until season 7 onwards, but at least I was up to date on the show by season 6 :P) I had a brief moment of bleeh about his return, and then 13x20 and 13x20 won me over, so, fuck it, I’m a current, up to date Gabriel fan now :P We can look back on it that whether he would have been more useful helping them at their side or not, he was still the catalyst for them even having an idea of what they were meant to do, so that Crowley could start helping them, so that Cas, Bobby, Sam and Dean, the core of the real happy positive version of Team Free Will as a family, could defeat Michael and Lucifer. At this point I am firmly in camp “it’s season 13, whatever, they can do what the fuck they want as long as it’s enjoyable and makes some sense” when it comes to Gabriel. 

But, yeah. In season 12 they began foreshadowing the return of Michael to the narrative, and one of those things was having Dean say “Team Free Will” to Cas as the way to express what Cas with all his history as Dean’s friend/brother/husband meant to him and all they’d been through, and the easiest way for Dean to come up with a term that covers the name of his real core family that is the Sam Cas Bobby Dean family. With Bobby dead, it’s just the 3 of them, but that’s still a hugely important distinction to make, that there’s a version of the family where Cas is core, on the same level as Sam is to Dean.

(Which, if you read my watching notes for 13x21, is like how Rowena makes a metacommentary comment about the BM scene Sam, Dean and Cas are having together in the other room while she and Gabriel hook up, because it uses all the terminology we and the show uses to refer to the SalmonDean BM scenes to cover what TFW are doing, which is a wonderful way to indicate that the BM scene is no longer a Sam and Dean exclusive trope, and you KNOW Cas has been joining in on them since ever, but now it’s making it clear that when there’s a TFW BM scene in ANY configuration of Sam and Dean, Dean and Cas, Cas and Sam, that is an official trademarked Supernatural Brotherly Moment Scene, and the ™ doesn’t belong to ONLY Sam and Dean any more.)

And… I don’t know, it depends on where you are about Jack in a meta way, but on a character level way, Jack was hugely meaningful to Cas even before he was born, and once he was born, as ridiculous as you might find the concept of a satan babby plot, on the character level, and on the emotional level, Jack means a LOT to Cas, and the first episode is all about how Jack identifies Cas as his father, rather than Lucifer, and 21 episodes into the season now, it’s clear that Jack has a lot of good in his nougat centre, and his love for TFW is obvious not just for Cas, but that he reacts like that to Sam’s death, and that he has latched onto Mary, too. A blood relative and core of the family, first character to appear on screen in the entire show, now she is back, whatever you feel, again, on any meta level about her return, portrayal, or usage by the writers, she’s of critical emotional importance to Sam and Dean, because she’s MARY, emotional backbone of the show whether you like it or not. And she loves her boys, came to love Cas over season 12, and now she and Jack have bonded to the point of getting Jesus and Mother Mary inverse symbolism to show that she means as much to Jack as Mother Mary as she did to the boys (and the text thank GOD finally called out “Mother Mary” as a concept in 12x12). So if she’s around, she too will be at the core of the family.

Sam’s choice of dinner table family is his brother, his other brother/brother in law, the son he and his brothers have adopted and considers all of them his father, his own mother, and she of course has her own emotional link to Jack that Sam didn’t even know about for sure at that point, but despite being a missing link to him, is one we can fill in, and he could at least have hoped that knowing they were together and fighting together from Charlie’s report, would give him hope (rightly) that this is a true, loving set up his family could have one day. 

Gabriel was NOT at his dinner table, and he blurs a line between “powerful allies” as the recap says, lumped in with Rowena, who fills a spot Crowley ended up having in their list of allies, who is treacherous and you may still want to kill her like, yesterday, but then the next day you might want to fight and die alongside her, and hope she does the same. Gabriel from 5x19 was in that exact same dubious spot. But as Sam points out, he’s uncle to Jack and that’s a blood tie which the show might not value as much as found family, but it sure is a good reason to START to care and form bonds. Technically Jack isn’t “blood” family to Mary, but then if in a normal muggle family, if your son in law adopted a boy you would still consider him fast, good-as-blood family if you LIKED him and were in Mary’s position. Same as Gabriel discovering he’s an uncle. He has the chance to get in on this family in the weird sense that they’ve all bonded so much to the point of close family, that he’s now Dean and Sam’s brother’s brother, uncle to their son, etc etc. He might be more estranged, and in 13x20 they certainly - Dean especially - pushed him hard to explain himself and learn if they cared or not. But Gabriel passed the test and by the time they’re in the AU Dean would at least trust him to fight alongside them and really earn brother in arms at last, wary family member at least by ties, if not by full undying trust.

Like, none of what’s going on there is weird on a character, emotional level in the sense that they’re at least giving Gabriel a chance to come with them. 

I don’t think anyone said “Team Free Will” re: Gabriel so again we’re stretching a fanon term onto him, in the sense that until someone says it for sure, the only new addition to TFW since season 5 is Jack, and that is because Dean’s using TFW as a family term to cover himself, Sam and Cas, and now Jack is TFW by inheritance, as Cas’s son, like, to lack any other surname, this is what you’d put on their driving license if you don’t want to stretch Winchester onto them. I know a lot of fanon since ever has put Gabriel in TFW to balance Sam having an angel in Sabriel dynamics, or just because they like him and he did die for them in 5x19 etc etc as I covered, so if he were alive again people instantly want him to join. I think 13x20 made it clear Dean’s still somewhat holding Gabriel at an arms length before declaring him found family, but he’s at least through several thresholds already, I think TFW is still a closed door to him in terms of how the show has used its language to define him. The closest tie they’ve offered him so far in season 13 is his protestation he helped them in 5x19, and Sam saying they all need Gabriel in 13x18, and reminding him that he’s Jack’s uncle, which is still a large step removed from putting him in the core family unit. 

I think next episode, which is Buckleming, will either wreck this or shake things up or make some more of these connections anvil heavy clear, but at least before they get their grubby mitts on writing at least 11 main named characters all in the same location all at once (I just counted on my fingers, not a randomly chosen number. Ouch.) while trying to deal with the Jack and Lucifer dynamic and everything else they’ve piled up into one spot, this is how I see it all standing, and the dynamics and connections that they’ve built up.

I don’t think it’s a bad thing to have an ensemble cast, and I do think the term TFW has always been more flexible than the original use, in fanon terms, and in terms of if you were ever going to use it positively, it would cover any and all major characters involved in a fight for free will. Which means 10 of those 11 characters may end up in TFW if Buckleming really go wild with it and let like, Lucifer and Ketch and Charlie and AUBobby and so on into it along with Gabriel, Mary and Jack, for the sake of fighting Michael. Which at that point come back to me with the same complaint and I’d probably agree more but specifically about Buckleming being awful :P At the moment I think it’s well-balanced and the characterisation and levels of invested emotion in each dynamic make good sense, and therefore I’m not particularly worried about the emotional integrity of the phrase Team Free Will… At least for 4 more days :D