#and I also happened to want to talk about Important Things

[sarcosmiiic]

PLEASE KEEP THIS IN MIND:

we, as fans, do not have a right to private information. anything shared with us on this is a privilege. please do not abuse it. the cc's could shut down and never talk about it if we overwhelm them.

also, please keep in mind that ONE HERMIT and THE ENTIRETY OF HERMITCRAFT are NOT THE SAME THING. the entire fandom is not 'ruined' or 'completely unsafe' because of the actions of one person.

PLEASE DO NOT ASSUME THAT THE OTHER HERMITS KNEW ANYTHING ABOUT WHATEVER'S GOING ON WITH ISKALL. this is not some big conspiracy, it's the consequences of one person's actions. they weren't hiding this from us, that's not how hermitcraft works, they truly didn't know. they probably knew as much as us about this, so making it an 'us against them' situation is immature and shortsighted.

ALSO, I AM BEGGING EVERYONE TO PLEASE NOT SENSATIONALIZE THIS. PLEASE DO NOT TURN HATING ISKALL INTO A MEME OR A JOKE.

mcyt'ers being revealed to be less-than-great people is not a rare thing, sadly, but i've seen it turned into a joke/meme/trend in other fandoms. this both minimalizes the actual people's/victims' struggles, makes the entire situation feel less serious than it is, especially to outsiders looking in, and makes everyone in the fandom look immature, petty, unable to take anything seriously, and genuinely harmful.

this server, fandom, and community are not dying, it is not ruined forever, this is one (major, i'm not trying to minimalize it) issue that we're currently dealing with. it will be okay. we will move on. this is not the beginning of the end. please calm down. i love this fandom, god bless all of you. <3

edit: doc has said on stream that we will likely get more information as time passes. like i said, this is a PRIVILEGE. we are not OWED information. please be grateful for what we're given, and POLITELY ask questions if you must. if a cc doesn't give you the answer you want, or doesn't answer at all, LEAVE THEM ALONE. THIS IS NOT AN EXCUSE TO HARASS PEOPLE. the hermits are likely just as stressed out as us, if not probably more so, so please keep that in mind when contacting them.

don't freak out, we'll be okay, this is not the end of the world, nor is it the end of Hermitcraft. we will be okay.

second edit: please remember that (at least as far as we know) ISKALL AND STRESS WERE NOT KICKED OR BANNED. THEY LEFT OF THEIR OWN VOLITION.

ALSO!!! VERY IMPORTANT!!!

WE. DO. NOT. KNOW. EXACTLY. WHAT. HAPPENED.

PLEASE DO NOT ASSUME ANYTHING SIMPLY BASED OFF OF OTHER MCYT'ERS PAST ACTIONS/SCANDALS. WE DO NOT KNOW EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENED. WE MIGHT NOT EVER KNOW EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENED. WE NEED TO BE OKAY WITH THAT AND NOT DRAW OUR OWN CONCLUSIONS.

TWITTER LINKS TO VICTIM RESPONSES:

https://twitter.com/Kasszi_/status/1860670647946604985

https://twitter.com/emoslab_/status/1860697161245323559

[neon-sunsets]

okay. let’s talk about jayce’s monologue, since people are calling him ableist.

for context, not that it matters: I have a significant mobility disability and a progressive chronic illness which, even when managed, can kill me. I’m not in exactly the same boat as viktor since my disease isn’t terminal, but I’ve had very similar experiences to him. this shapes my perception of him and of this storyline.

this is the monologue:

You’ve always wanted to cure what you thought were weaknesses. Your leg. Your disease. But you were never broken, Viktor. There’s beauty in imperfections. They made you what you are. An inseparable piece of everything I admired about you.

first, it should be noted that “what you thought were weaknesses” is not the same thing as “things that are good.” jayce is not saying that viktor’s disease is or was a good thing. what he is saying is that he admired (loved) everything that viktor was, which included the things viktor thought made him a burden or a problem. remember also that jayce almost doomed the world because he couldn’t let viktor die; he would never imply that viktor dying was a good thing.

the next question, then, is whether viktor sees himself as a burden or not. I think it’s implied that he does — it’s certainly not unrealistic to think that viktor might have come to view himself, or at least his disease, as a burden and a flaw. disabled people often view ourselves that way either because of internalized ableism or because society constantly tells us that we’re burdens and that our bodies are abnormal and wrong. viktor displays behaviors that indicate internalized ableism, including hiding the fact that he’s coughing up blood from jayce the first few times it happens and generally refusing to be in the public eye in a way that is self-effacing and not just him being private. yes, he says in act 1 of season 1 that he believes in himself, but he does also call himself a cripple in a dismissive way in that same scene; also, he doesn’t have the disease at that point. arguably the entire scene where he runs despite clearly being in pain is an example of his internalized ableism, but that’s another post.

more evidence for viktor’s perception of himself being negative is that he clearly has a sense that he doesn’t deserve to be loved (specifically by jayce, but maybe also in general). we see this when he asks jayce why he’s still persisting in saving him. we see this with his generally self-effacing behavior. we see this with the fact that in all of season 1, the only person he allows to touch him is jayce, and that the only person he actively touches in the entire show is jayce. viktor is reserved and not good with his emotions, which is a huge part of his arc this season. all of these behaviors point to him having a negative self-perception.

I think it’s important to really consider how jayce perceives viktor and how viktor perceives himself. I don’t think this season handled everything perfectly, but I think they handled this very well. viktor has been written with a fullness and complexity that most disabled characters don’t ever get. him being morally grey doesn’t mean he’s “problematic” or “bad representation.” obviously I’m only one disabled person, but I really love jayce and viktor and I think their story is beautifully written.

[journalofimprobablethings]

I think the thing about your first response that is provoking knee-jerk reactions (at least, it did for me) is that it implies that character death's only purpose in fiction is to "maximize pain" for the readers, and that any other purpose it might serve can be found through other means. And I don't think that's true at all.

To a certain extent I agree with the OP commenter that it's not necessary to kill a character simply for 'emotional impact' or 'realism'. If an author's main goal with a character death is just to "inflict maximum pain" on the reader, then that's probably not very good writing, and not "necessary". The death needs to do more than just hurt the reader; it should affect the story in some way, either in how other characters react to the death, or how events change because of it.

But I also agree with friskdaferret's argument that some character deaths are necessary for the story that the author is trying to tell. That's the key. Could they choose to write it a different way? Sure. They're the author, it's their story, it's all made up. But then it would be a different story.

I know that you consider the Holes argument to be a bit of a tangent, but for the sake of using an example that's already been brought up, Sam's death in Holes serves a particular purpose in the story. It reflects real-world racism in a very direct way: black men being lynched for having a relationship with a white woman (or after being accused of assaulting/touching a white woman, whether they did or not) is a real fact of American history. It's an ugly fact, and it's something that Louis Sacher decided was important to include in the story. For some kids reading that book, it may even have been their first exposure to that sort of racism. Having Sam leave Kate for other reasons, as you suggest, would change the story, and would make a different point. It's not the story Louis Sacher was trying to tell.

Your argument, if I understand correctly, is that sometimes, the potential pain inflicted on a reader who is very attached to the character might outweigh an author wanting to make a particular point or tell a particular story. How then, do we handle telling stories that are inherently about painful topics? What is the "utilitarian calculus" as it relates to a story like Orpheus and Eurydice which is about grief; or tragedies like Hamlet?

I also think that if you're going to make that argument, you have to consider the other side - that is, what benefit do those deaths, as written, bring to readers? Why has the author included it in the story? What do people get out of it? That answer is going to be different for different readers and stories, but there is a reason that death has been such a prominent trope in human storytelling since forever. Death and grief are inherent, immutable facts of life, and so storytellers are going to find ways to engage with and examine it.

Two examples that came to mind while I was thinking about this post were The Fault in Our Stars by John Green and Babel by R.F. Kuang. Both of those books contain absolutely devastating moments of loss in connection with characters we have become very close to as readers. I don't think I've ever cried as hard at a story as I cried at those two books in particular.

Both of those stories would not be what they are, or say what they wanted to say, if those deaths didn't happen. They are a book about cancer and a book about imperialism and the violence it engenders, respectively. Both those topics are impossible to handle without at least talking about death.

Now, would I give people a warning before I recommend those books to them? Absolutely, because it's the sort of thing you probably want to be in the right headspace for. But do I think that those books should have been written differently, just because the stories were painful? Absolutely not.

I don't know that I agree with any sort of utilitarian argument about the potential effect of a character death on readers vs its function in the story, in part because that sort of thing is impossible to quantify. How would you ever possibly judge what was "too much"? It's entirely subjective, and in the end, authors do not have control over what a reader's reactions to their story will be.

I also think that to a certain extent, readers are responsible for their own reading experience. If a person does not want to encounter painful moments in their reading, that is their responsibility to tailor their reading accordingly. If they as a reader know they are prone to making deep connections with characters such that it might genuinely hurt them if that character then dies, they can take steps to avoid those sorts of stories, or to use sites like doesthedogdie.com to check whether a story has something that they don't want to/can't engage with. But it's not an author's responsibility to tailor their story so that it doesn't make anyone sad. That's not the point of fiction.

Fiction is a reflection of life, and a way for us as humans to examine and process all aspects of it, including the aspects that hurt, that are awful, the parts that don't make sense. It's perfectly valid for someone to not want to engage with challenging fiction, but to say that authors shouldn't be writing it at all because it might somewhere cause someone grief? I can't agree with that.

im starting to think you guys dont like it when stories make you feel things

[binomech]

Grasping at straws: Thoughts about Viktor's disability in Arcane

Disclaimer: In this post I try to give it some credit to Arcane writing from within the narrative. This is a Watsonian interpretation, not a Doylist one. Assume that underneath all of this I am beating Riot with LeGuin tomes.

Bootstraps and Denial

We get a glimpse into Viktor’s sense of self while he’s talking Jayce down from the ledge in S1A1E3: He is extending a sense of kinship to Jayce, who has just been stripped of his research equipment and autonomy by the Council when they relegate him to the care of his mother. He also considers the fact that he’s a faculty assistant in Piltover something he worked hard for, that was awarded to him despite his disability and immigrant status. His visible physical disability, accent, name, are all class signifiers that he must reject and dismiss if he wants funding, accommodation and recognition and it points to Piltover only allowing Zaunites as both a PR token and only if they reject enough of their Undercity culture. This is crucial: Viktor did not earn his position because he worked hard and believed in himself, he was rewarded for assimilating.

Becoming a Specimen

All of Viktor’s screentime in S1 takes place in Piltover to the exceptions of his visits to Singed, both in his childhood flashback and his adult visit to request help with the Hexcore experiment. Two things stand out to me in these interactions: The traumatic experience of being valued as a specimen, and the scrambling to the top of the ivory tower as a response to said trauma. He meets Singed and Rio in the immediate aftermath of a fall caused by his leg’s angle while he kept track of a device he built, a reminder that it would be the defining feature of his career, not his creations. Rio is shown to him as a lively, yet dying, specimen that must be preserved because it is a mutant, because it is defective and that defect makes her extremely valuable. I can understand how a young Viktor would latch onto the idea of saving something because it is faulty and project, and how finding Rio effectively dead and her body used for profit ended in an understanding that defects are only good if you can exploit them in some way, it’s not you, as a person, that they want. Conceptualizing a Viktor that is dead set on convincing the world that his work is important in and of itself goes through understanding that he sees his visible disability as both a hindrance and a weakness to exploit from the Piltover Academy.

Jayce encourages Viktor to do PR for Hextech with him several times, and right before the Progress Day speech, just as Viktor has had a coughing fit and is sitting down to rest his leg, Viktor says he doesn’t want to be seen as his partner, not in front of “them” (them being Piltover’s aristocracy). Viktor sees in Hextech a chance to leave a scientific legacy, and Jayce’s partnership is a way to keep the funds coming without his disability being an issue for investors. He believes in his partnership and Hextech as a joint endeavor between him and Jayce, but he knows what happens when Piltovans see a disabled Zaunite in any position threatening their hegemony. The catch here is that Viktor’s experience with Rio makes it so that this is not so much political awareness, as much as it is an avoidance so hard it loops back to agreeing with the oppressor, just to live a little more, just to make sure the world sees what you did.

When Viktor is diagnosed with Sump disease, a terminal condition caused by overexploitative mining and industrial pollution caused by Piltover’s factories and production exports, the sequence plays alongside an investor PR campaign from Jayce. It’s Viktor, who is already disabled, losing his place in the legacy of Hextech because he is dying at the hands of those who made it possible financially. It’s this Viktor, who sees his hopes of being remembered for his inventions dwindling, desperately going back to Singed and saying “I understand the value of the specimen. If rejecting my personhood buys me time, I will be what they want to see: A cripple, a corrupted Zaunite, a man desperate for power.”

The Hexcore has been trained to heal the subjects it’s used on, but Viktor was the one to train it: He was the one to determine what parts of the subject were considered sicknesses and flaws. To the degree that the Hexcore is, in many ways, a reflection of Viktor’s understanding of disease. It targeting his leg on first deliberate connection is a reflection of intent and desire more than any kind of agency from the device. Sky being used as fuel for the Hexcore’s learning is a point of contention for Viktor at that point because it’s the meeting point of the specimen and the scientist: Some lives are expendable if it means furthering your goal, and your life is the most expendable one. Are you ready to kill, be killed, for legacy? And Viktor panics because he is back, he’s looking at Rio’s corpse, born and raised for dying. Suicide for him at this point is an out, an unhealthy way of trying to go back to when he still had a choice. He asks Jayce to destroy the Hexcore and let him die because at that point he is still capable of dying without becoming a resource.

The Horror of Bioethics

Season 2 for Viktor is him becoming a specimen: Not a person, but a tool used to pave the road to a goal. In this case, Noxus’ acquisition of Hextech weaponry (which Viktor opposed ethically in Season 1, as he becomes the weapon itself in Season 2). He is resuscitated using the Hexcore against his will, a Hexcore containing both Viktor’s inputs for non-human healing and Sky’s research on applying those principles to the human body. He is a machine trained to heal, and he leaves for Zaun not under Viktor’s orders, but under the maxim to heal. He sees the widespread health issues caused by people that Viktor was bootlicking in Piltover, the direct result of him helping care for Rio until she died and was used to synthesize Shimmer as a drug, and where Viktor avoided his association with Zaun, the Hexcore resorts to the inputted instructions: Fix what we have established is broken. Viktor, who rejected his own disability, who rejected his home, his personal history, taught this thing to target the disabled, to target the poor, to target the sick. It is horrifying. The script presents it as vaguely unsettling but well-intentioned when it is blatant eugenics brought on by the loss of autonomy of a disabled man; the horror of it is not the cult, it’s knowing that all of this healing comes from someone having assimilated emotionally, politically, and physically, into his oppressors. It is not Viktor helping Zaun from the inside, it is Piltover’s allegedly meritocratic hellscape grafted onto Zaunites.

Who is allowed to be disabled?

Now, Jayce’s journey in the post-Hextech apocalyptic world is shown as a climb up from the Sump into the top of the Hexgates’ tower, almost reminiscent of Viktor’s journey as he understands it: You’re in a pit with a broken leg, in pain, hungry, desperate and you climb because it’s that or accepting death. You hope whatever is up there was worth the climb, but it’s a leap of faith. It’s remarkable, in contrast, how Jayce’s understanding of that climb is shaped by his own socioeconomic background. Viktor reaches the top and is punished for it, Jayce reaches the top and comes to an enlightened understanding. Viktor grows up disabled and is punished for the climb, Jayce acquires a disability during war time and he becomes the scientist-politician-hero. I appreciate how Jayce, upon encountering Viktor, fully armored even in his mind, can see a back brace, a leg brace, strained tendons. But it is also why a terminal illness resulting from Piltover’s economic chokehold on Zaun is conflated with a visible congenital disability, while they are manifestly not the same: This is a Viktor who got absorbed into Piltover’s vision of legacy, this is a Jayce who has grown up in it.

Legacy? What legacy?

In his final shot with Jayce as they erase the rune-stone, Viktor’s right leg is curving inwards, implying his femoral anteversion is something that he has finally incorporated into his perception, which was absent in every previous shot of this realm. Viktor's acceptance is for his own body, yes, but also for the consequences of giving up on it and dying.

This story as it is presented to us is a tale of avoiding annihilation through denial of one's limitations. While it's not a story that I enjoy, it is the one we were given. My hope is that through understanding it we can all tell better stories about disabled people.

[reddbuster]

I forget who made it but I saw a post the other day talking about how a lot of trans women come out much later in life than trans men tend to (and hence why “egg culture” tends to be mostly centred around transfemininity) and it really made me reflect on my experiences with queer spaces and how things have visibly changed as I got older. I’ve been pretty heavily involved in queer and especially trans spaces, both in-person and online, since I was a preteen. While spaces and events for people my age were much more sparse (and harder to attend while closeted) as a kid, they did exist. But one thing that always stuck out to me was the complete absence of trans girls even at events mainly aimed at trans youth. I met a good few other trans and gnc kids at these events, but all, literally every single one of these people were perisex and assigned female at birth. Not a single transfeminine person to be found. This changed as I got older. I started high school. Slowly but surely the circles I hung around in became more diverse. I met trans women. I met and befriended gay and gnc “boys” who would later come out as trans girls. Now, as a young adult, the ratio of transmasculine to transfeminine folks in my life is near equal. But even now, the demographic of trans girls in my life generally skews older than the guys. And of course this trend is very reflective of the effects of transmisogyny in general, how the media targets trans women as the scapegoat for their hatred, painting ‘trans girl’ as a shameful and deviant thing to be. It is reflective, more than anything, of how we all need to be more steadfast in our support of trans women both in our activism and in our day-to-day lives. But I also think that everyone needs to make more of an effort specifically to support young trans girls. Transfeminine kids, teenagers, even young adults. Because I have met so many women that I know for a fact would have enjoyed their teenage years so much more if someone, anyone had been there to tell them when they were young that it was alright to be trans. The first friend I ever lost to suicide as a teenager was a trans girl. And I live every day of my life with the knowledge that if I hadn’t been her one and only source of support, she probably still would have been here today. Believe me when I say that I understand the importance of respecting people’s boundaries. I do think that insisting every gnc person must be trans is a bad and counterproductive thing to do. But I’ve also seen firsthand what happens when trans girlhood is treated like it’s a downgrade, it’s very suggestion a taboo. When nobody is willing to be the one to say “hey, it’s okay if you want to be a girl”. I believe with everything I am that the life and happiness of a single trans girl is more than worth the discomfort of a million cis men. And if you disagree with that sentiment I think you either need to fix your heart, or you need to make peace with the fact that you are a thoroughly vile person and endeavour to shut your mouth about transgender issues forever.

[mcrdvcks]

i love you, in every time ࿐‧₊ 1974 - ...but it was never meant to be

chapter summary: You and Logan have been living in the Canadian Rockies for almost 6 months, enjoying the peace and solitude that comes with it.

word count: 8.9k+

pairing: Logan Howlett x fem!reader

notes: this is just fluff, at least until the end... but we're finally hitting the movies! and sorry for it being a bit shorter than the others, there are some ideas i'm saving for a future chapter :))

(p.s. the first sentence about the hotel in nyc is going to be very important to remember for a future chapter...)

warnings/tags: fluff, origins!logan, smut, oral (f!receiving), unprotected piv, creampie, (beginning of) x-men origins, character death

series masterlist - chapter 5 → chapter 7

Leaving was easy once you got past the one incident. You and Logan had stopped that day at a hotel a bit out of New York City only to be found by your father’s men.

But what happened was almost like magic. Logan, your Logan, took them all out with claws. At first you were bewildered, shocked at what you just saw. But now, after 6 months of living in the Canadian Rockies, it was normal.

Normal.

Mornings would start with the soft light streaming through the windows, casting a warm glow over your shared space as Logan brewed coffee and you stretched, enjoying the easy comfort of it all.

Logan had found work quickly enough as a lumberjack, something that kept him outside and busy, and it suited him. Meanwhile, you’d stumbled upon a small animal shelter in the nearby town. You’d started going once or twice a week, helping out with the dogs and occasionally picking up shifts to keep yourself busy and connected to some semblance of normal life.

The routines you fell into together were quiet, steady, and for the first time in a long while, you felt grounded. Though you missed New York sometimes, especially the volunteer work at the retirement home, the silence of the woods and the small town was a peaceful change.

Not only were things peaceful, but Logan had started opening up to you in the quiet of your cabin, usually in the early morning or after one of his nightmares. It started with little things—details about his mutation, his healing ability. Then, as the days blurred into weeks, he told you about his age and the wars he’d fought in, his voice quiet, words weighed down with old memories.

One chilly morning, you found him staring out the window, his gaze distant as he sipped his coffee. You moved up beside him, nudging his shoulder with yours. “Hey, you alright?”

He looked down at you, a flicker of a smile breaking through the shadows. “Yeah. Just… thinkin’,” he murmured, his voice rough but calm.

“Anything you want to talk about?” you offered, watching his face closely.

Logan considered this for a moment, then took a long breath. “I think… just realizin’ how long it’s been since I had somethin’ like this,” he finally admitted, a glint of honesty in his eyes. “It’s been a hell of a road, darlin’.”

You reached out, resting your hand on his forearm. “I don’t need to know everything, Logan. I’m just glad you’re here now.”

He gave a short nod, letting his hand rest over yours, a simple gesture that spoke volumes. He didn’t say anything, but his fingers wrapped around yours, holding them a moment longer than necessary.

---

Life in the cabin wasn’t extravagant, but there was a certain charm in the simplicity. Nights spent by the fire, mornings with the scent of pine and fresh coffee, and the comforting weight of Logan’s arm draped over you as you both drifted into sleep. But there were also the little bumps—like the time you tried making him dinner.

It had been a stew recipe, something you thought would be foolproof. You’d stirred, added spices, tasted… but when you served it, the look on Logan’s face was priceless.

He took a spoonful, eyebrows lifting as he held back a chuckle. “This a new recipe?”

“Okay, I get it—it’s not great,” you sighed, laughing a little as you took a bite yourself. “Alright, yeah, maybe it’s terrible.”

Logan chuckled, setting his spoon down. “It’s not so bad. I mean… it’s got heart.”

You nudged him, rolling your eyes. “Heart doesn’t mean it’s edible, Logan.”

“Maybe not,” he smirked, “but I’ll still eat it.” He winked, lifting another spoonful as he pretended to struggle through the bowl, making you burst into laughter.

---

Late one night, Logan awoke from one of his nightmares. You knew, even before he’d fully come to, just by the way he stiffened beside you. He sat up, rubbing a hand over his face, and you reached out, fingers brushing his shoulder.

“Do you want to talk about it?” you whispered.

He looked down at you, the muscles in his jaw tight. But after a moment, he nodded. “It was a long time ago. Just old ghosts.” He paused, exhaling heavily. “There’s been a lot of violence. Stuff… I don’t ever want you to have to see.”

“I know you’ve seen a lot,” you murmured, giving his arm a reassuring squeeze. “But you don’t have to go through it alone, Logan. Not anymore.”

Logan’s hand covered yours, and he turned his head just enough to meet your gaze, his eyes soft but searching. “You’ve been more than I deserve, Y/N,” he said quietly.

Your heart twisted, and you reached up to cup his face. “Logan, I don’t care what you’ve done or where you’ve been. All that matters is who you are now.”

He leaned into your touch, closing his eyes. “Then I’m one lucky man,” he whispered, his voice low.

He held you close that night, your presence calming the echoes of a past that seemed finally willing to rest, if only for a while.

---

One day you were trying to make something simple, roast chicken and potatoes before Logan got back from work. You diligently checked the oven, making sure that nothing was burning, until Logan came home, wrapping his arms around your waist as you stood up from the oven.

Logan’s hands settled warmly around your waist, his chin resting on your shoulder as he looked over at the oven. The familiar, steady weight of him grounded you, even as you felt your heart give a quick little skip at the simple, domestic gesture.

“Smells good in here,” he murmured, his breath brushing your ear as he took in the scent of roasting chicken and herbs. “Didn’t know you were this fancy in the kitchen.”

You let out a small laugh, shrugging one shoulder. “Fancy might be a stretch. I’m just hoping it doesn’t come out dry.”

His arms tightened just a bit, pulling you closer. “Even if it did, I’d still eat it,” he said, a hint of that playful glint in his voice. “Means a lot, havin’ you here. Feels like… home.”

A warmth rose in your chest, one that went beyond the physical, and you leaned back into him, a smile tugging at your lips. “You know, I could get used to this too.” You tilted your head, meeting his gaze. “Long days, quiet dinners, just us.”

“Us,” he echoed, his voice softer, thoughtful. There was a flicker of something deeper in his eyes, something unspoken yet weighty. His thumb brushed small, slow circles along your hip, as if anchoring himself in the moment, and he gave you a slight smile that didn’t quite mask the intensity behind it.

Logan was quiet for a moment, and you felt a shift in his posture, almost like he wanted to say something but was holding back. He looked at you in that way he sometimes did—like he was seeing more than just you standing there in your small, cozy kitchen. Maybe he was seeing all the days stretching ahead, those simple moments you’d have together, and the weight of that left him speechless.

“Logan?” you asked, brushing a hand along his arm.

He blinked, then smiled, the intensity in his gaze easing back into something gentler. “Nothin’. Just thinkin’ how lucky I am.”

You laughed softly, leaning your head against his shoulder. “Guess that makes two of us.”

The kitchen fell into a comfortable silence, with just the faint hum of the oven and the quiet, steady beat of Logan’s heart against your back. In the quiet of your little life together, things felt simple, natural. Here, there were no expectations, no obligations—just the two of you, building something real out of those little, ordinary moments.

But later that night, as you drifted off beside him, Logan stayed awake, lost in thought. His hand brushed over the small velvet box in his drawer, the ring that had waited all this time, the one that had been meant for you once before. He ran his thumb along the edge, thinking about when the right time might be—or if he’d even have the chance. For now, though, he’d savor each day, each quiet moment, holding on as tightly as he could.

---

You lay nestled between Logan’s legs on the couch, your head resting comfortably on his chest as you read, while he watched TV, idly sipping his beer. His free hand drifted up and down your arm absentmindedly, and you could feel the faint rumble of his quiet breaths beneath you. There was a calm in the cabin tonight—a peace you’d found only since being with him.

“What’s got you so hooked?” he asked, glancing down at your book with a smirk. “Looks like you’re deep in it.”

You tilted the book so he could see the cover, Jaws. “It’s a book about a shark.”

Logan raised an eyebrow, “a shark, huh?”

You turned back to the book, keeping a small smile hidden. “Kind of. It’s a little deeper than just a shark, though.”

“Deeper than a shark, huh?” Logan smirked, shifting slightly to glance down at you, looking mildly amused. “Didn’t think a fish story could be that interesting.”

“It’s not just any fish, Logan,” you said, letting your hand rest on his as you settled back into his warmth. “This shark’s on a whole other level—a menace, basically unstoppable. And there’s all this tension between the people in the town, like who’s responsible, what to do, whether they even believe it’s happening.”

He gave a soft grunt of understanding, taking a sip of his beer. “Guess I can see why you’re hooked. Townsfolk fighting over a monster they can’t get rid of… kinda familiar.”

You tilted your head to look up at him, a glint of curiosity in your eyes. “You got experience with monsters, Logan?”

“More than you’d believe, darlin’,” he murmured, his eyes holding that far-off look he sometimes got when his mind slipped somewhere else, somewhere harder. But his grip on you stayed gentle, grounding him here.

There was a moment’s quiet, then he smirked, leaning down closer. “But I could take out your shark, no question.”

“Oh, really?” you teased, closing the book and giving him a look of mock skepticism. “A great white shark, Logan. One that can bite clean through a boat. I think even you’d have some trouble with that one.”

He snorted, giving you an exaggerated look of disbelief. “I’m tellin’ ya, I’d have it done in five minutes.”

You laughed, poking his chest. “I’d like to see that. You, in the water, with a shark. You’d probably scare it off.”

“Probably,” he chuckled, his tone playful but carrying a hint of something genuine. “But I’d do it for you.”

His words caught you off guard, softening the teasing banter into something warmer, something real. You looked up at him, and the light in his eyes held a familiar steadiness, a promise you hadn’t expected. You felt a smile creeping up, one that made your heart beat a little faster.

“That’s sweet of you, Logan. But don’t go risking your life over a shark.”

He shrugged, giving a small grin. “Risking my life’s kinda my thing.”

With a smirk, you shifted to put your arms around his neck. “I don’t need you to fight any sharks. I just need you here, safe, preferably not trying to tackle any more sea monsters.”

Logan’s hands came up to cradle your face, his thumb brushing along your cheek. “Don’t worry, darlin’. For you, I’d stay outta trouble… or at least, try.”

Your breath caught as he leaned in, his lips brushing yours softly. You melted into him, feeling the solid warmth of him beneath you, the steady beat of his heart, a promise in every kiss, every touch.

When you pulled back, he let out a small sigh, looking at you with a softness that made you feel as though you were the only person in the world.

“Now,” you murmured, your voice quiet as you tried to keep the mood light, “how about you let me finish reading this book before you start making any plans to fight sharks?”

“Fine,” he chuckled, leaning back into the couch, his arms still loosely around you. “But I’m just sayin’, the offer stands.”

You rolled your eyes, shifting back to lean against his chest, your book in hand. But even as you returned to the words on the page, the comfortable silence between you filled every corner of the cabin, your heart warmed by the man beside you.

---

When Logan came home and removed his jacket, the sound of music drifted to his ears, mingling with the low hum of a vacuum. The cabin was warm, a sharp contrast to the biting chill outside, the smell of pine and faint wood smoke greeting him like an old friend. The soft glow of late afternoon sun streaked through the windows, and as he stepped further in, he caught sight of you.

You were standing in the middle of the room, barefoot, wearing one of his old flannels that hung loose on your frame, the hem brushing just below the tops of your thighs. The vacuum roared in your hand as you cleaned, entirely oblivious to his arrival.

Logan leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed, a faint smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth as he watched you. Something about this—a simple domestic scene—made his chest tighten, a warmth blooming there that he couldn’t quite name.

“Y’know, you’re not supposed to wear clothes that fit me better than they fit you,” he drawled, his voice cutting through the vacuum’s roar.

Startled, you turned it off with a quick flick of the switch and looked up, a sheepish smile spreading across your face. “Logan! You scared me,” you said.

“Didn’t mean to,” he replied, his tone warm as he pushed off the frame and walked toward you. His boots thudded softly against the wooden floor, and as he got closer, his eyes drank you in, lingering on the way the flannel gaped slightly at the neck, exposing the soft line of your collarbone. “Got a habit of sneakin’ up, I guess.”

You laughed softly, setting the vacuum aside. “If you were a little less loud, I’d think you were some kind of predator.”

“Oh, darlin’,” he said, his grin spreading as he reached for you, hands settling at your waist and pulling you close, “if I wanted to catch you, you wouldn’t stand a chance.”

Your breath hitched as his words settled between you, his voice a low rumble that always managed to make your knees feel just a little weaker. You placed your hands on his chest, feeling the solidness of him beneath your palms. “Good thing I’m not running then,” you murmured, tilting your head up to meet his eyes.

He leaned down, his nose brushing yours. “Good thing,” he echoed, before his lips claimed yours in a slow, deliberate kiss. His hands slid lower, fingers splaying over the curve of your hips, pulling you tighter against him. The flannel you wore rose slightly under his touch, and you gasped softly into his mouth as his fingers found bare skin.

“Logan,” you breathed against his lips, your voice a soft plea.

“Yeah?” he rasped, his mouth trailing down your jawline, his scruff brushing your skin in a way that sent shivers racing down your spine.

“Think you should let me finish cleaning,” you teased, though your hands had already slid up to wrap around his neck, fingers threading through the dark strands at the base of his skull.

He huffed a laugh, his teeth grazing the delicate line of your throat. “Nah, think I got a better idea.”

With a swift move, he bent and swept you off your feet, one arm under your knees, the other supporting your back. You let out a startled laugh, clinging to him as he carried you toward the couch. “Logan, the vacuum—”

“Vacuum’ll be there later,” he cut in, his voice gruff but tinged with amusement. “Right now, you’re the only thing I’m worried about.”

He set you down gently on the cushions, his large frame hovering over you as he knelt on the floor, his hands sliding up your thighs, pushing the flannel higher. The intensity in his gaze sent a flush rising to your cheeks, your heart pounding in anticipation.

“Been thinkin’ about you all day,” he admitted, his voice thick, raw. His hands paused, fingers curling just under the hem of the shirt. “Mind if I show you how much?”

You nodded, breathless, and he smiled—a rare, almost boyish expression that quickly dissolved into something darker, hungrier. He leaned down, capturing your lips in a kiss that left no room for doubt about where his mind was. His hands roamed freely now, skimming along the curve of your thighs, pushing the flannel higher and higher, exposing bare skin to the cool air of the room.

“Goddamn,” Logan muttered against your lips, his voice thick, raw. His hands splayed across your thighs, gripping them as though grounding himself, his thumbs brushing along the tender skin there. “You’re a fuckin’ dream, darlin’.”

A shiver ran through you, anticipation building as his kisses trailed lower, down your jaw, your neck, leaving a path of warm, open-mouthed caresses. You gasped softly, your hands tangling in his hair as he moved further down, sinking to his knees before you, his broad shoulders nudging your legs apart.

"Logan..." Your voice was barely more than a whisper, already trembling.

“Shh,” he murmured, his hands gripping your hips as he pressed a kiss just above your knee, his eyes flicking up to meet yours. The intensity there made your breath hitch. “Let me take care of you.”

He kissed his way up your inner thigh, taking his time, each press of his lips deliberate, teasing. Your heart pounded as you felt his warm breath against your skin, so close to where you wanted him, needed him.

When his lips finally brushed against you, his tongue darting out to taste, you couldn’t suppress the soft moan that spilled from your lips. His grip on your hips tightened, pulling you closer as he buried his face between your thighs, his tongue working you with an expertise that made your head spin.

“Fuck,” you gasped, your hands clutching his hair, your hips arching into him. He didn’t stop, didn’t let up, his tongue delving deep before retreating to flick against the sensitive bundle of nerves that had you trembling, your thighs pressing around his head.

Logan growled against you, the vibrations shooting straight through your core, and the sound of it—rough, primal—only spurred you on. He was relentless, his lips and tongue working you with a fervor that left no doubt about how much he enjoyed this, enjoyed you.

“Logan, I—” Your words dissolved into a whimper, your body tensing as he pushed you closer and closer to the edge. His name was a mantra on your lips, each syllable punctuated by gasps and moans as he pulled you apart and put you back together with every stroke of his tongue.

When you finally shattered, the release crashing over you like a tidal wave, he didn’t stop. He worked you through it, his hands holding you steady as you trembled, as your body arched and writhed against him. Only when you were completely spent, your breaths coming in short, ragged gasps, did he pull back, his lips and chin glistening as he looked up at you with a wicked grin.

“You taste like heaven,” he said, his voice rough, gravelly, as he rose to his feet, his hands still resting on your thighs. “I could do that all night.”

You laughed breathlessly, leaning back against the couch, your body still tingling, your cheeks flushed. “You’re insatiable.”

“Says the woman who was just beggin’ me for more,” Logan teased, his voice a low rumble as his lips brushed against yours. His kiss was slow and deliberate, his tongue sliding into your mouth with practiced ease. The taste of him mixed with the remnants of your own release sent a thrill racing through you, your hands gripping his shoulders tightly, keeping him close.

When he pulled back, his forehead rested against yours, his breath warm against your skin. “You sure you’re not tryin’ to kill me, darlin’? Feels like every time I get my hands on you, I lose a few more pieces of myself.”

Your lips curved into a soft smile, your fingers idly playing with the short hairs at the nape of his neck. “That doesn’t sound like such a bad thing.”

Logan huffed a laugh, the sound deep and almost self-deprecating. His thumb traced lazy circles on your thigh, his gaze locked on yours. “For you, maybe not. For me? I’m startin’ to think I wouldn’t mind it.”

The weight of his words hung in the air, a quiet confession that made your chest tighten. You reached up, brushing your thumb along the rough edge of his jaw. “I wouldn’t let that happen,” you murmured, your voice soft but steady. “You’re too important, Logan. To me.”

His expression softened, the hard edges of his usual demeanor giving way to something more vulnerable. “You’ve got no idea what you do to me, Y/N.”

“Maybe you should show me,” you said, your voice carrying a teasing lilt, though the heat in your eyes betrayed how serious you were.

Logan’s lips quirked into a small, almost mischievous grin. “You’re insatiable, you know that?”

You shrugged, feigning innocence. “Maybe. But you don’t seem to mind.”

He let out a low growl, his hands sliding up your thighs to grip your hips. “You’re damn right I don’t.”

In one fluid motion, Logan had you lifted, his hands firm as he repositioned you to straddle his lap. You let out a surprised laugh, gripping his shoulders to steady yourself as you settled against him. The warmth of his body seeped into yours, the solidness of him grounding you in a way that felt almost necessary.

“See? Told ya I had better plans than cleanin’,” he murmured, his lips brushing against your collarbone as he spoke.

You tilted your head, giving him more access, a soft hum escaping your lips. “I think I’m starting to agree.”

Logan’s hands roamed over you, calloused fingers exploring the soft curves of your body with reverence. There was no rush, no urgency in his movements. It was deliberate, almost tender, as though he wanted to memorize every inch of you.

His lips trailed a path along your neck, his scruff scraping against your skin in a way that sent shivers racing down your spine. “You drive me fuckin’ crazy,” he admitted, his voice low, almost like a growl.

“I could say the same about you,” you whispered, your fingers trailing down his chest, tracing the lines of muscle beneath his shirt.

Logan’s hands gripped the hem of the flannel you wore, his knuckles brushing against your skin as he slowly lifted it. He paused, his gaze flicking up to meet yours, seeking permission.

You nodded, your breath catching in your throat as he pulled the shirt over your head and tossed it aside. His eyes darkened as they roamed over you, taking in the sight of your bare skin bathed in the warm glow of the late afternoon sun.

“Goddamn,” he muttered, his voice thick with something between awe and hunger.

You felt heat rise to your cheeks, but the look in his eyes kept any hint of self-consciousness at bay. “You’re staring,” you teased, though your voice wavered slightly under the weight of his gaze.

“Can’t help it,” he said simply, his hands sliding up your sides, thumbs brushing just beneath your ribs. “You’re fuckin’ beautiful, Y/N. Don’t think I’ll ever get tired of lookin’ at you.”

The sincerity in his words made your heart ache in the best way. You leaned forward, capturing his lips in a kiss that was slow and deep, your hands threading through his hair as you pressed yourself against him.

Logan’s hands gripped your hips, holding you steady as he shifted beneath you, the hard press of him against your core drawing a soft gasp from your lips. He swallowed the sound with a groan, his grip tightening as he began to rock you against him, the friction sending sparks of pleasure racing through you.

“Logan,” you breathed, your voice trembling with need.

“Shh, I got you,” he murmured, his lips brushing against the shell of your ear. “Just let me take care of you, darlin’.”

His hands moved to your waist, guiding your movements as he kissed you again, his lips moving against yours with a deliberate slowness that left you breathless. Each roll of your hips against him was maddeningly slow, the steady build of tension making you ache for more.

“Logan, please,” you whispered, your hands clutching at his shoulders as you tried to quicken the pace.

He chuckled softly, the sound vibrating against your lips. “Patience, Y/N. I’m not in a rush.”

You huffed in frustration, though the warmth in his gaze softened the sharp edges of your need. “You’re cruel,” you muttered, though the slight smile tugging at your lips betrayed your words.

“Cruel, huh?” he echoed, a smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. His hands slid down to cup your ass, squeezing gently as he shifted beneath you. “Pretty sure you’ll be thankin’ me when I’m done with you.”

You couldn’t help but laugh softly, the sound dissolving into a soft moan as he bucked his hips against you, the friction sending another wave of heat coursing through you.

“Logan,” you gasped, your voice a mix of exasperation and longing.

He grinned, clearly enjoying the effect he had on you. “Yeah, darlin’? What do you need?”

“You,” you said simply, the single word carrying a weight that seemed to hang in the air between you.

Logan’s expression softened, his teasing demeanor shifting as something deeper flickered in his gaze. “You’ve got me,” he said, his voice steady, his hands firm on your hips as though anchoring you to him.

Your heart stuttered at his words, the raw sincerity of them making your chest feel impossibly tight. You leaned in, pressing your forehead against his as your fingers slid down his chest, the fabric of his shirt rough under your touch. “I’m glad,” you murmured, your voice barely above a whisper.

Logan’s lips found yours again, the kiss unhurried and deliberate, his hands roaming up and down your thighs. The heat of him seeped into your skin, grounding you as you moved against him. The friction was maddening, a slow burn that made you ache for more.

“Darlin’,” he rasped against your lips, his voice thick and strained, “you’re makin’ it real hard to take this slow.”

“Maybe I don’t want slow,” you countered, your tone teasing, though the way your breath hitched betrayed your own urgency.

Logan chuckled low, the sound vibrating through you as his lips moved to your neck, trailing kisses along your skin. “Trust me, you do,” he murmured, his teeth grazing your pulse point just enough to make your thighs tighten around him. “I want to feel every second of this.”

His words sent a shiver down your spine, your fingers tightening in his hair as he took his time exploring every inch of you. Logan’s hands slid beneath your thighs, lifting you slightly as he shifted on the couch, settling back further into the cushions.

The new angle pressed you more firmly against him, drawing a gasp from your lips that he swallowed with another kiss. “Fuck,” you whispered, your hands clutching at his shoulders.

“You okay?” he asked, his tone softer, though the hunger in his eyes was unmistakable.

“More than okay,” you replied, your voice trembling as you shifted your hips, testing the pressure between you.

Logan growled low in his throat, his grip on you tightening as his hands slid up your back. “You’re somethin’ else, Y/N,” he said, his words heavy with reverence.

You didn’t reply, too caught up in the way he was looking at you, as though you were the only thing in the world that mattered. Your fingers found the hem of his shirt, tugging it upward. “Off,” you said simply, your voice breathless but firm.

He smirked, obliging without hesitation as he pulled the shirt over his head and tossed it aside. Your eyes raked over him, taking in the broad expanse of his chest, the scars that marred his otherwise flawless skin.

“Like what you see?” he teased, though there was a hint of vulnerability in his tone.

“Always,” you replied, your hands trailing over his chest, fingers tracing the lines of old wounds. “You’re beautiful, Logan.”

He huffed a quiet laugh, his hands sliding back to your waist. “Don’t think anyone’s called me that before.”

“Well, they should have,” you said, leaning in to press a kiss to his collarbone.

Logan’s hands tightened on your hips, guiding you as you moved against him, the steady grind of your bodies making your head spin. “You’re gonna be the death of me,” he muttered, though the words were laced with affection.

“Not likely,” you quipped, a soft laugh escaping you.

He chuckled, the sound low and warm as he shifted again, one hand moving to undo the button of his jeans. Your breath hitched as you realized what was coming next, anticipation coiling tightly in your stomach.

“You sure about this?” he asked, his voice softer now, his gaze searching yours.

“Logan,” you said, your tone steady despite the way your heart was racing. “I’ve never been more sure about anything.”

He nodded once, his hands steady as he slid his jeans down just enough, freeing himself. You couldn’t help the soft gasp that escaped you as you took him in, your cheeks flushing at the sight.

“Come here,” he said, his voice rough as he guided you closer, his hands firm on your hips.

You moved slowly, adjusting yourself over him, the heat of him against you making you tremble. Logan’s hands were steady, his thumbs brushing soothing circles on your skin as he guided you.

When you finally sank down onto him, the feeling was overwhelming, a perfect mix of pleasure and fullness that made you moan softly. Logan groaned, his head falling back against the couch as his hands gripped your hips tightly.

“Fuck, Y/N,” he rasped, his voice raw. “You feel... Jesus, darlin’, you’re perfect.”

You didn’t reply, too caught up in the way he felt, the way he filled you completely. You braced your hands on his shoulders, your breaths coming in short, uneven gasps as you began to move.

Logan’s hands guided your movements, his grip firm but not controlling as he let you set the pace. His lips found yours again, the kiss deep and consuming as you rocked against him, your bodies moving in perfect sync.

The steady rhythm built slowly, the intensity growing with each roll of your hips. Logan’s hands roamed over you, sliding up your back, tangling in your hair, grounding you in the moment.

“Y/N,” he murmured, his voice thick with emotion.

You met his gaze, your heart skipping a beat at the way he was looking at you. It wasn’t just lust—it was something deeper, something that made your chest ache in the best way.

“I’ve got you,” he said, his hands tightening on your hips as he thrust upward, matching your movements.

The new angle sent a wave of pleasure crashing over you, a soft cry escaping your lips as you clung to him. “Logan,” you gasped, your voice trembling.

“Right here, darlin’,” he murmured, his voice steady despite the strain in it.

The intensity between you grew, the slow, deliberate pace giving way to something more urgent as your bodies moved together. Each thrust, each kiss, each touch pushed you closer to the edge, the tension building to an almost unbearable peak.

When you finally shattered, it was like nothing you’d ever felt before. Logan held you through it, his hands steady on your hips as your body trembled, his name falling from your lips in a breathless mantra.

He followed moments later, a low, guttural groan escaping him as he buried his face in your neck, his grip on you tightening as he found his release.

For a long moment, neither of you moved, your breaths mingling as you clung to each other, the world outside forgotten.

“You okay?” Logan asked finally, his voice soft, his hands rubbing soothing circles on your back.

“More than okay,” you replied, your voice muffled against his neck.

He chuckled softly, pressing a kiss to your temple. “Good. ‘Cause I’m not lettin’ you go anytime soon.”

“Didn’t plan on going anywhere,” you said, a smile tugging at your lips as you leaned back to look at him.

Logan’s expression softened, his hands moving to cup your face. “You’re somethin’ else, Y/N,” he said, his voice filled with quiet reverence.

“And you’re mine,” you replied, your tone steady despite the warmth spreading through your chest.

“Damn right I am,” he said, his lips curving into a small, almost boyish grin.

The two of you stayed like that, tangled together on the couch, the rest of the world fading away. For now, there was only this—only him.

---

You turned off the water that was filling the bathtub and dipped your hand in to test the temperature of the water. The water was just right—hot, with steam gently rolling off the surface. You stood, wiping your hands on the towel, just as you heard the front door creak open and close with a soft click. Logan’s footsteps padded quietly through the cabin, but you could still feel that familiar presence, that comforting weight of him even when he wasn’t yet in sight.

You barely had time to turn around before he appeared in the doorway, eyebrows raised as he took in the sight of you standing by the tub. “Now this is a surprise,” he said, a hint of a smirk playing on his lips.

“Thought you’d like a soak after all that work you did today,” you replied, a little smile tugging at your mouth. You stepped aside, gesturing toward the water. “Go on, it’s ready.”

Logan’s gaze softened, though his smirk never quite faded. “So you’re spoilin’ me now, huh?”

“Maybe a little,” you teased, leaning against the doorframe as you watched him. “Can’t have you overdoing it. You might be practically indestructible, but a hot bath never hurt anyone.”

He chuckled, unbuttoning his shirt and shrugging it off. “Got a point there,” he admitted, tossing it onto the nearby chair. You tried not to stare, but you couldn’t help your eyes drifting over the familiar planes of his chest, scars crisscrossing his skin like a map of all the years he’d survived. He didn’t seem to notice—or maybe he didn’t mind—just kept undressing as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

Logan stepped into the tub, easing himself down with a contented sigh as he settled into the water. He leaned his head back, his eyes fluttering shut as the steam rose around him. For a moment, you simply watched him, a fond smile on your lips.

“Good?” you asked softly, breaking the silence.

He cracked one eye open, glancing at you with a lazy grin. “Better than good. You joinin’ me?”

You laughed, shaking your head. “This one’s all yours. I’ll go make us something to drink.”

Before you could turn, Logan reached out, his wet hand catching yours. He looked up at you, his expression softer now. “Stay, darlin’. Least for a bit.”

His thumb brushed gently over your knuckles, and you found yourself nodding, unable to refuse him. You sat down beside the tub, close enough that you could still feel the warmth of the water, and he let his hand rest in yours.

Logan kissed the top of your hand, a mischievous glint in his eye. "Sure ya don’t wanna join me? Promise I don’t bite."

You raised an eyebrow, smirking. "Uh-huh. That's what they all say."

He chuckled, his fingers still wrapped gently around yours, as if he was savoring this quiet moment between you. “Could use a little company, that’s all,” he murmured, his gaze never leaving your face.

“This is supposed to be a bath for you.” You replied, your own eyebrow quirked.

“I’d enjoy it more if you were in here with me.”

You raised an eyebrow at Logan, the corner of your mouth quirking into a teasing smile. “Is that right? Well, maybe if you’re lucky.”

Logan’s smirk deepened, a playful glint in his eye as he leaned forward, resting his arms on the side of the tub. “Oh, come on. I’m always lucky when it comes to you.” His voice was a low murmur, pulling you in with that familiar, lazy charm he always seemed to have.

“Uh-huh, says the guy who tried to convince me he could take on a shark,” you shot back, crossing your arms, leaning casually against the wall. “You’re just full of bold ideas, huh?”

He chuckled, giving a shrug. “I stand by that. But I’m talkin’ serious here.” His hand reached out, fingertips grazing your wrist in a way that sent a warmth through you. “No sharks, no messin’ around. Just you, right here.”

The sincerity caught you a little off guard. The tension settled into something deeper as you looked at him, his hand steady on yours, like he was holding onto more than just the moment.

“I guess… I could keep you company,” you said softly, the lightness of your earlier words giving way to something quieter. You slipped out of your shirt, feeling Logan’s gaze follow you, his eyes dark with a warmth that made you feel both nervous and excited.

Sliding into the water, you settled in close to him, leaning back as his arms naturally came around you. The water was hot, relaxing every part of you, but it was Logan’s touch, the gentle press of his fingers tracing over your arm, that made you feel completely at ease.

“See?” he murmured against your hair, his lips grazing the top of your head. “Told ya this was a good idea.”

You hummed, closing your eyes as you leaned into him. “You did. Guess I should listen to you more often.”

Logan’s hand slid along your shoulder, trailing down your arm with a steady, careful touch, like he was trying to memorize every inch. You felt the warmth of his breath against your neck, followed by the soft press of his lips just below your ear. The tension of the day melted away, leaving you relaxed and content in his embrace.

For a few moments, you both just stayed there, the only sounds the quiet rustle of water and the occasional creak of the cabin settling. Logan’s fingers traced small, lazy circles along your arm, his other hand holding you close against him, anchoring you to him like he was afraid you’d disappear if he let go.

“So,” you murmured, breaking the silence, “this isn’t so bad, right?”

Logan let out a low chuckle. “Could get used to it,” he said, his voice rumbling against your back. “Peace and quiet. Just the two of us.” His hand dipped below the water, wrapping around yours.

You squeezed his hand, feeling a warmth bloom in your chest. “Thought you’d be the type to get bored out here, all this peace and quiet.”

He gave a noncommittal shrug, though his thumb continued to brush over the back of your hand. “Can handle a bit of quiet if it means you’re here,” he said softly, almost as if he was talking to himself.

You smiled, tilting your head to look at him, your faces close. “Guess that makes two of us.” You felt a strange flutter in your stomach, the weight of those unspoken words lingering between you both.

Logan’s eyes flicked down to your lips, his gaze soft and intent. “You gonna kiss me, or do I gotta ask real nice?”

“Always so impatient,” you teased, but you leaned in, closing the distance, your lips meeting his in a soft, lingering kiss. His hand moved up to cradle your face, his thumb brushing your cheek as he deepened the kiss, slow and unhurried, like he was savoring every second. When you finally pulled back, you were both breathing a little heavier, your forehead resting against his.

Logan looked at you, a small, crooked smile on his lips. “See? Worth the wait.”

You laughed, shaking your head, but there was no denying the truth in his words. “You really know how to charm a girl, you know that?”

“Only got one girl I’m tryin’ to charm,” he replied, his voice rough but warm.

Your smile softened as you nestled back against him, letting the silence settle over you both once more. The warmth of the water, the feel of his arms around you—it felt like a small eternity in that moment, like nothing else in the world mattered except this.

---

Trying to turn the conversation away from what Logan told you, about Stryker coming to visit him about a ‘mission’, you started to talk about your day, with Logan’s head in your lap as you ran your fingers through his hair.

“The stray was matted but Tina started calling him Wolf. Said the dog reminded her of another animal.”

Logan hummed, his eyes still closed, “lemme guess, she showed you a picture of the animal from her book.”

You giggled, “yeah, she did. Gotta admit that dog looked quite similar to the wolverine in her book.” You tilted your head downwards to look at him, “Reminded me of you. Grizzly, sometimes dirty.”

Logan opened one eye, a smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Oh yeah? Grizzly, huh?”

“Maybe a little.” You grinned, your fingers drifting through his hair in slow strokes. “Not just the dirty part, by the way. Wolverines are pretty fierce, don’t let much stand in their way.”

He let out a low chuckle, closing his eye again, seeming to relax further under your touch. “Guess I’ll take that as a compliment, comin’ from you.” There was a slight pause, and his voice softened a bit. “Not everyone’s a fan of the grizzly type.”

You scoffed lightly, continuing to thread your fingers through his hair. “Well, good thing I am. You know, even wolverines have a soft side somewhere.”

Logan huffed a small laugh. “Yeah? Don’t think I’ve got much of that left, but I’ll take your word for it.”

“Oh, you definitely do.” You brushed a thumb gently along his temple. “Trust me. Like today—taking the time to help out with that old couple’s truck, even after a full day’s work.” You smiled down at him, admiration clear in your gaze. “I see it, Logan, even if you don’t.”

He tilted his head a bit, opening his eyes and looking up at you, his expression unreadable for a second before he sighed, a smirk breaking the moment. “Keep sayin’ things like that, and I might start to believe you.”

You laughed, rolling your eyes. “I’ve got plenty more where that came from.”

Logan’s gaze softened, but he kept his usual, laid-back tone. “Guess I’m lucky you put up with me, huh?”

“You know it.” You winked, letting your fingers trail down to his jawline, and you felt him relax a little more, like he could melt under your touch. “Plus, someone’s gotta keep you in check.”

“Not an easy job,” he muttered, a glimmer of amusement in his eyes as he leaned into your hand, his voice barely above a murmur. “You’re somethin’ else, Y/N.”

The two of you fell quiet for a moment, the warmth in his gaze making your heart beat just a little faster, and you couldn’t help but lean down, pressing a soft kiss to his forehead. When you pulled back, he just looked at you with that familiar mix of amusement and something else—a depth you didn’t need him to explain.

You shifted slightly, a small smile still on your face. “Now, about that dog—think you could convince Tina to bring him around here?”

Logan’s eyebrows lifted, a smirk tugging at his lips again. “Bringing a stray mutt up here? You sure?”

“Why not? He’d be a good watch dog for you when I’m not around,” you said, with a wink.

He chuckled, a bit softer this time. “Guess I’ll think about it.” Then, his eyes crinkled with that familiar spark of humor. “But only if you promise not to call me Grizzly in front of anyone else.”

You laughed, leaning back against the couch, his head still in your lap. “Deal.”

For a few minutes, neither of you spoke, and you just let yourself soak up the comfortable silence, the simplicity of Logan resting there, perfectly at ease. And as your hand drifted gently through his hair again, you couldn’t help but wonder if this—these quiet moments—might be what you’d both been needing all along.

---

You were driving down a narrow road, the trees thickening as you made your way toward town. The familiar hum of a cassette player filled the car, and you tapped your fingers against the steering wheel in rhythm. It had been a good week—a small but sweet milestone with Logan, half a year together, and you’d even managed to keep things peaceful in that cabin of his. Tonight was supposed to be simple, a little surprise you’d planned: a tiramisu. Probably the only thing you could bake to perfection.

You rounded a curve, smiling to yourself when—

The sight in the distance made your stomach twist. A figure stood in the middle of the road, dressed in black, unmoving, watching you with an unsettling focus. You slowed the car, blinking to see if you were imagining things. But no—he was still there, large and unflinching in the middle of the narrow path.

As you approached, your heart hammered against your ribs. Something about him was familiar, but not in any way that felt safe or warm.

You pressed on the brake, bringing the car to a cautious stop. The man took a slow, deliberate step forward, his face coming into view under the faint sunlight streaming through the trees. His eyes were cold, almost amused, and his mouth twisted into a cruel smile.

It was him—Victor. The man Logan had mentioned a few times, enough to make you know he wasn’t someone you’d ever want to meet, much less find waiting for you like this.

“Going somewhere?” he asked, his voice deep, mocking, and calm in a way that was anything but reassuring.

You tried to keep your face calm, hands gripping the steering wheel tighter. “Just heading into town,” you replied, voice steadier than you felt. “Is there…something you need?”

He tilted his head, like he was sizing you up. “Logan ever mention me?”

A chill crawled up your spine, but you kept your expression guarded. “Maybe once or twice.”

Victor took another step forward, his gaze raking over you with a twisted curiosity, almost like he was toying with the idea of letting you go—but only almost. “See, I’ve been meaning to have a little chat with him,” he drawled, his tone venomous, “and here you are, just making it easy for me.”

You felt a pulse of dread, instinct telling you to turn the car around and get out of there, fast. But you knew better than to provoke him. “Logan’s not here,” you said, hoping that would be enough.

He smirked, that same cold expression never leaving his face. “I’m aware,” he murmured, taking another slow step toward you. “You think he’d leave someone like you on your own if he thought you’d be safe?”

Your heart raced, a knot of fear tightening in your throat. You wanted to say something, anything, to stall him, to get yourself out of this, but nothing came to mind. The realization was dawning, and from the look in Victor’s eyes, he knew it too. There would be no bargaining, no reasoning with him.

"Didn't think Logan would be the type to leave someone behind. Guess I was wrong," he said, sounding amused.

You tightened your grip on the steering wheel, refusing to give in to the fear swirling in your chest. "Logan’s not here," you repeated, your voice firm.

"Like I said, I know," Victor replied smoothly, taking another step. His eyes traveled over the car, then over you, a twisted curiosity behind them. "But I figure, maybe you can pass along a little message for me."

Every instinct told you to run, but the car blocked you in, and Victor was only feet away. "What do you want, Victor?"

He grinned, his sharp teeth glinting under the dim light. "Simple. Tell Logan I said 'hi'... if you get the chance."

The dread in your stomach crystallized as he lunged forward. You tried to move, to react, but he was too fast. His hand closed around your throat, lifting you out of the car as though you weighed nothing, and you fought, kicking, clawing, anything you could think of to get free.

"You know," Victor’s voice was disturbingly calm, "he’s been through a lot. But there’s always that soft spot, that weakness he can’t seem to shake."

Desperation flared within you, and you kicked harder, one foot making contact with his chest. It only made him laugh, and he tightened his grip, his face drawing close enough that you could see the cold cruelty in his eyes.

"You’re just like all the others," he murmured, voice almost thoughtful. "Maybe a little more stubborn, but that’s hardly new."

Black spots began to dance at the edges of your vision, your breath coming shorter and shorter. You knew there was no getting out of this—not with him, not with a monster like Victor Creed.

But Logan...

---

Logan walked through the vegetation right by where he and the other guys were cutting apart a tree. He stopped short once he saw the head of an animal laying on the yellow grass.

“What you doing, Logan?” One of the guys asked from behind.

Logan looked around before seeing large scratch marks on a tree trunk, lined with red. “Y/N.” He whispered, before running down the hill and through the forest.

Once he hit the clearing, he could see the truck on the side of the road. Logan reached the car, his hands gripping the window frame as he scanned the empty interior. “Y/N…?” His voice was rough, the crack of worry breaking through, echoing in the quiet forest.

His eyes darted down to the disturbed earth, faint scuff marks in the dirt telling him where you might’ve been dragged. His heart hammered as he followed the path into the trees, every step growing heavier with dread as he moved through the dense underbrush, the silence unsettling.

And then, in a small clearing, he found you.

You were lying there, so still, your skin pale against the forest floor, hair fanned around you like a dark halo. Blood flecked the ground, stark and terrible against the greenery. He staggered, dropping to his knees beside you, reaching out with trembling hands, one of them clenching briefly before he let himself touch you.

“Y/N…” he whispered, voice breaking as he cupped your face, his fingers brushing a smear of dirt from your cheek. Your eyes were closed, lips parted just slightly, as if you’d been trying to say his name. For a split second, he could almost pretend you were just asleep, and that any second you’d open your eyes, make some joke, or reach up to tug him down to you.

But there was no warmth, no spark, nothing.

Logan’s breath caught, and he pulled you close, his arms cradling you as if he could shield you from the reality already etched into his heart. The rage simmered below his skin, burning through the grief, fueling the ache with something primal. He rocked back, jaw clenched so hard it hurt, his face buried in your hair, trying to hold on to any last trace of you, the faint scent of you still lingering, even as everything around him felt like it was falling apart.

“You… You were supposed to be safe here,” he whispered against your hair, voice hoarse. “I shoulda been here. I shoulda…” His words trailed off into silence as he sat there, unmoving, clutching you in his arms as if the weight of his grief alone could pull you back.

He looked down at you, his thumb grazing over your cheek one last time, as though trying to commit every detail of your face to memory. “Y/N… I swear… I’ll make him pay.” The last words came out like a promise, a vow laced with the kind of anger only a man like Logan could bear. He leaned down, pressing a soft kiss to your forehead before letting out a long, broken breath.

When he finally tore his gaze away from you, his eyes turned cold, a new resolve searing through him.

This wasn’t over.

umm... sorry??

i tried to make a different version of how logan got the name 'wolverine' to try and fit reader's personality, since she probably doesn't know about the myth kayla did.

next chapter will be x2!

[dear-ao3]

riddle me this. what does a 50 million dollar drive, a giant helmet made from recycled materials, the british media, safety infringements, an aborted start, six red flags, rain, team orders, the first black flag in seventeen years, the dutch national anthem and ayrton sennas 1990 mclaren all have in common? 

stumped? well i’ll tell you. 

it’s the 2024 brazilian grand prix.

the last race of our second to last triple header. a sprint weekend. and chaos in its highest form.

today is november 23, 2024 and make sure you get a snack because this is a long one. 

we started the week off pretty strong with lance stroll getting broken up with on his birthday.

well, maybe. 

his girlfriend deleted all of the pictures of him off of her instagram account on his birthday, which really doesnt look good. and this really set the tone for the week of bonkers shit that was now upon us. 

things like lando being asked about the dreaded Last Week With Max incident. in an interview he was asked (told?)

“Are you aware that people watching at home don't want to see the fight between you and Max for the world championship ending in radio messages, tedious steward inquires, time penalties? They want to see you racing nicely and cleanly.” 

lando was in agreement clearly because he said 

“And so do I! And I do.”

max on the other hand still remained max about the situation 

he was asked  during the press conference: “a lot has been said since mexico. are you going to change the way you go racing this weekend?” 

and max said, like a badass:

“yeah, ive heard that before in my career. its my tenth year in formula 1. i think i know what im doing!”

christian horner brought receipts, as in actual data sheets, to his mexico gp media session about how max’s penalties from mexico were unjust. i don't think that anyone really listened to any of this though because the penalties were never unturned. 

one penalty that they did figure out what charles’s swear penalty from the press conference in mexico. the fia finally made a decision. charles will be pleased to know that he does Not have to do community service with max. but honestly (and this is now my own opinion here) why give one guy community service and not give it to the other? max apologized for his language Before he said “the car is fucked.” charles apologized After once he realized what was going to happen. not really sure here why the fia is out to get max but whatever i don't make the rules. also. the fines and the community service seem to Only be confined to the press conferences because as we know. people have cursed in the cool down room (lando in singapore notably) and also many have over the radio (checo, franco, charles, george, etc etc) and they have not been told anything. hm. in any case though, we have more important things to focus on than weird swear bans. 

like charles leclerc nation going insane when this video was posted, which is a new contender for best weird yet still sexy video of charles on the ferrari page

liam lawson told everyone that he is “not here to make friends, im here to win.” following his Incidents with fernando and also checo at the us and mexican gps. which is interesting for a few reasons. 1. hes in a vcarb and statistically they have not won a single thing all season because they are vcarb and 2. he was soon after seeing being besties with yuki.

oh and also. max reacted to (was asked about?) the whole liam flipping checo off while they were driving in mexico thing, and max said “Checo, I think if I did that to you, I would be quite afraid leaving the country.”

and there were also the usual “this is checo’s last race weekend” general threats. weve seen these before. so theyre not worth wasting typing space on because i cant imagine that theyre going to fire him this late into the season. and why would we talk about the goofy red bull rumors that always are swirling everywhere when we could instead talk about lewis hamilton and franco colapinto.

lewis hamilton praised the crap out of franco colapinto. at the press conference on media day. as we all know franco is a lewis fangirl. so. he honestly might still be in a state of shock.  

“It's always great to see young people, young talented individuals get the opportunity to come through and shine, and he did that in the first race. We had a great little battle and it was super safe. It was hard but fair. [...] He's saying it's not for him to decide, but my advice would be - I would be pushing on my side to make sure I'm doing absolutely everything. At the end of the day, he's got to continue to focus on doing his job every weekend, as he is, and hopefully, he's got good people behind him who are doing the right job to make sure that he's here racing next year.”

and low and behold a few hours later franco did make a fangirl post about it.

also. brazil is Not franco’s home race, but they are now officially in south america, so it was like a home race adjacent for him (hes from argentina) and the crowds were definitely in agreement. we will get back to that later. 

there was a fan at the race who saw him in the paddock and yelled at him “FRANCO. CAN YOU SIGN MY SHIRT? IT’S A KNOCKOFF ONE. FRANCOOOOO” and he lost his shit over that. because remember a few weekends ago he told everyone to buy williams knockoff merch cause it was just as good and not as much money?

we also had some helmets. valtteris had coffee on it because its something that brazil is known for.

oscars had funny little androids on it that were all different hims (he also said he only recently learned that it was polite cat and not sleepy cat)

esteban had some brazil themed stuff

lewis had a senna/brazil tribute helmet

lewis was also going to get to drive ayrton senna’s 1990 mclaren after qualifying on saturday.

oh and of course we had stake do a funny little meme thing on their twitter because theyre quite known for their funny little meme things.

is this a terrible glimpse at media day? yeah absolutely but u know what i have 7 pages of notes front and back from the races themselves so deal with it i suppose. unlike what some of you may think, i 1. do not want to be writing this post forever and 2. also have other things i need to do.

one person was not at media day though and it was fernando alonso and it was because he was in the hospital im pretty sure somewhere in spain for what im also pretty sure was intestinal issues. he had also been out last week for media day due to sickness, but he was back for the race. between this and lace’s probable breakup it was shaping up to be a banner weekend for aston martin, and it was only going to get worse!

someone who definitely didn't miss media day though was sebastian vettel. if you don't know who sebastian vettel is, he was a four time world champion, menace, shit stirrer and boy toy twink esque guy who is now mostly unreachable and is the epitome of “hey i cant do nothing to nobody no more” and comes out of hiding maybe twice a year to subject the grid to a new arts and crafts project. but do not be fooled. this is the same guy who was asked, after winning his first race, if it was the best moment of his life and he said, and i quote “you obviously weren’t there when i lost my virginity.” anyway, this time his arts and crafts project was a giant helmet made from recycled materials paying tribute to ayrton senna. and yes, he made the whole grid get in the helmet. his whimsey is still off the charts.

he was also wearing really terrible shorts. as in they were long, over the knee khaki shorts. some things never change. 

he also tried to make a bet with sky germany about max winning the championship. sky germany refused.

ok im not even going to Pretend to know what happened during the practice session. max got a 5 place grid penalty for sundays race because he took a new engine.  i think george’s car briefly broke? idk. he did get it fixed tho and ended the session in p2, behind lando who was p1. and then we had a special guest in p3.

who was it? well i will give you a clue. it was NOT kevin magnussen!!! why? because he wasn’t feeling well.

so, everyones favorite (team dubbed) “super sub” jumped back in the cockpit once again. 

you guessed it, it was ollie bearman!!! originally i think he was supposed to just be in for practice (and yes he did get p3 in practice). but since its a sprint weekend (yeah, i forgot that too) that means theres only one practice session and then sprint qualifying later that day. and so. the way formula racing works. is that whatever driver drives the car for qualifying also needs to drive the car for the race. they cant get replaced if the car has already qualified. 

ollie by the way had never driven in brazil before. he said that he did it once in a video game. and now he was about to do it irl in a real car. he also got a phone call at 6:45am saying heyyyyy buddyyyy you wanna jump in the car this weekend? we happen to have an opening! and well that's not the exact quote but that is what happened.  

and then haas announced that kevin was not going to be racing that weekend due to sickness. ollie responded in a definitely very normal way which was “of course condolences…i mean, give my best to kevin.” and then he was officially In The Car for the weekend. what could do wrong???  

well lets just say that a Lot happened:

starting with lovely and wonderful Sprint Qualifying. yes that’s right. this is a sprint weekend. why does the fia do this to us guys. 

two things were important to note. 

there was a slight threat of rain

2. the track had been resurfaced and it was bumpy, which is not great when you're driving over 200kph. it really can affect your vision and also your back

lewis had trouble with the car a few years ago when it was porpoising and he was also not doing great at this race. but merc said that he was “all good.” he was not the only driver complaining about the bouncing though. it was extreme and it was dangerous and we will hear more about it later. 

i think that franco took a nap at some point. at least its in my notes so it must have happened. and i think that it was also in the car. unfortunately i don't have a photo. like many other things on this post you will just have to trust me.

aston martin had decided that their car sucked to massive degrees and rolled back their upgrades all the way to suzuka. u know, just to see if they could figure out what the fuck was wrong with their car. Unfortunately though they could not because both of their drivers got out during sq1. 

one team was pleased with what was happening and that was mclaren. they had a new rear wing that was brazil specific and also apparently legal unlike the last one and they were Flying. in sq2 lando took the fastest time with a 1.09.0. on medium tires. last years fastest time was 1.10 on soft tires, so in the words of the commentators, “norris is on another planet!” this was good for them because they hadnt actually been sure they were going to be able to race. theor freight for their car (and some other teams cars) had all been delayed cause they were shipped in wooden boxes and you cant ship things in wooden boxes to brazil because they need to protect the rain forest.

the commentators, mostly karun, also lamented about the swear bans, which they rightfully thought were stupid as hell. he brought up a good point though which was “are you going to have translators for every language? how are you going to monitor it?” because very few of them speak english as their first language and most speak more than 1 language so it is possible they could just curse in Not English

but we don't have time for that right now. not when ollie bearman had just knocked checo out of sprint qualifying. that’s right, ollie went just slightly faster, pushing checo from p10 down to p12. 

liam and checo also almost crashed. which wasn't a surprise but it was still funny.

also surprising was that oscar pulled out a pole lap at the very end of sq3, a 1:08.899, only a few thousandths faster than lando. 

“where did that come from?” karun asked. “was he saving something in his pocket away from his teammate? that is a very fernando alonso trick”

regardless of what it was, he was still on pole. for the second time during a sprint. 

“very very happy,” oscar said in his interview. “try and win obviously…starting from the best seat in the house, make sure it stays that way.” which is an important surprise tool that you should all remember for later. later being the sprint race. 

they all lined up

oscar, lando, charles, max, carlos, george, pierre, liam, alex, ollie, lewis, nico, checo, franco, valtteri, fernando, esteban, yuki, lance and guanyu. 

and before we get into the sprint, lets get a little reminder on the championship standings.

1 Max Verstappen 362

2 Lando Norris 315

3 Charles Leclerc 291

4 Oscar Piastri 251

5 Carlos Sainz 240

6 Lewis Hamilton 189

7 George Russell 177

8 Sergio Perez 150

9 Fernando Alonso 62

10 Nico Hulkenberg 31

11 Lance Stroll 24

12 Yuki Tsunoda 22

13 Kevin Magnussen 14

14 Alexander Albon 12

15 Daniel Ricciardo 12

16 Pierre Gasly 9

17 Oliver Bearman 7

18 Franco Colapinto 5

19 Esteban Ocon 5

20 Liam Lawson 2

21 Zhou Guanyu 0

22 Logan Sargeant 0

23 Valtteri Bottas 0

so max, lando and i believe also charles and maybe oscar?? were still in contention for the championship title. and as a reminder. oscar was starting on pole, with lando, charles and max all behind. lando was able to knock some points off of max in mexico with the time penalties that he racked up and was really hoping to continue to do that in brazil. so max needed to get around charles at the start asap so he could start duking it out with the mclarens.

and speaking of mclaren, there was some good speculation that we might get faced once again with the “papaya rules” aka mclaren team orders. as in, oscar might have to let lando past.

and so. lets see what happened on lap 1. 

well. max did not pass charles. lewis dropped several places, ollie dropped several places, and the two mclarens started to pull away from the rest of the pack, especially oscar who managed to get half a second ahead of lando. 

so we had a slightly new running order:

oscar, lando, charles, max, carlos, george, pierre, liam, nico, ollie, alex, checo, franco, lewis, esteban, valtteri, yuki, fernando, lance and guanyu

and then max and charles started battling on lap 3. by lap 4 charles had taken the fastest lap. and by lap 6 he had closed the gap to lando and was in an epic drs train because lando had also closed the gap to oscar.

george had also started struggling, probably because he was in a mercedes, and was trying to get passed by pierre gasly, in a alpine. 

lando meanwhile, was still up in p2 and not entirely pleased. 

“yeah, im not sure what were doing here i thought we talked about this” he said over his radio right before he locked up and fell out of oscars drs and into charles and then also max’s drs. he was probably referring to, why the hell hadn’t mclaren done their team orders business yet?

well, his race engineer, will jacobs, had absolutely no information to offer for him, he instead said. “understood keep doing what you’re doing.” 

“yeah whatever,” lando said, unimpressed. 

there was some announcer speculation that oscar might give it up to him on the last lap, on the last corner, similar to what lando did to oscar way back in hungary. hungary? idk. its been a long season. and its still even longer.

anyway. checo had been stuck down behind nico hulkenberg in 11th for a very solid nine laps, unable to pass him. he finally managed it on lap 9. his reward? another haas to pass! ollie bearman! he managed that a few laps later and was met with quite possibly his biggest foe: liam lawson. who, just to add even more insult to injury, was in the last points position of the race.

mclaren meanwhile had decided to do some team orders, but not the ones that lando wanted. they told oscar to drop back to give lando some drs, to rescue him from the charles and max inferno that was chasing him. and oscar did. the top 4 though were still separated only by 4 seconds. 

and charles, he understood the assignment. he was racing absolute balls to the wall, elbows all the way out. doing anything and everything to keep max behind him. 

max was though, unimpressed. 

“ah come on charles man, so many mistakes,” he said over the radio. 

charles was told about this post sprint, and he had a funny little reaction. unfortunately i could only find that reaction in gif format.

in any case, i believe this was a clip from sky sports, possibly probably alex jaques who said after that radio "that is max verstappen urging a rival that he's had since his childhood to stay with the McLaren because he wants the ferrari to stay there. but that error has created now two battles instead of a four car battle for the lead."

to make it worse for max, lando could have gotten ahead of oscar here, but alas there were no team orders. so he could not. and also he was still slightly too close to charles and max to not be under threat from them. still, oscar was told to floor it to open the gap between lando and charles, for the potential swap. 

and there was nothing that charles could do about it cause he had absolutely no battery power. 

will jacobs finally decided to mention the team orders threats on lap 17. “we are happy to hold these positions until the last lap.” 

to which lando said “yeah i will overtake.” 

and so it seemed that the commentators were correct. there was a prophesied last lap swap coming from mclaren. 

in case you're tired of this mess, checo was still battling for 8th place with liam. he managed to get it very briefly. and then he lost it because he locked up. 

oscar went fastest on lap 18. and then max also passed charles. 

so it was game fucking on at the front of the grid. and everyone, including gp, max’s race engineer, knew it. because he told max on lap 19 “cmon mate, lets chase em down.” 

mclaren responded as anyone would. by telling oscar “verstappen we believe is faster than leclerc” on lap 24. which is like. fork found in kitchen. max is the king of putting that red bull in places that it should never be allowed to go and that is the front of the grid. 

speaking of red bulls, checo finally managed to pass liam lawson for 8th. and he did it cleanly without locking up this time. and liam didn't even flip him off.

and mercedes, to no ones surprise, had no race pace. 

then! interestingly! there was a yellow flag! but the cameras didn't quite cut fast enough so we didn't really see what happened. turned out that nico hulkenberg had pulled off with an exhaust issue. he was technically off the track, but it was not in an overtaking spot (can overtake during yellow flags) and he seemed to still be trying to maneuver the car further away from the track, so the announcers said that this would not hurt the overtaking battle that was looming between the mclarens and max. the cameras then jumped back to that, kind of ignoring nico. 

they had still not swapped, and max was gaining. 

then the cameras cut Back to nico hulkenberg. and he was now out of the car. standing on the grass near some barriers. and this picture doesnt really do it justice but he is about 15 feet from a live race track

(there was still a yellow flag in that specific sector but he was OUT OF THE CAR next to a FORMULA 1 TRACK with NO SAFETY CAR) 

there was now though a Threat of a safety car. gee i wonder why. his car was stopped not too far from the track and he was standing on the track, it was a massive disaster waiting to happen. 

and so, mclaren gave the team order to swap positions. 

lando and oscar did. 

and immediately.

and i MEAN IMMEDIATELY they called a virtual safety car. 

oscar had dropped back into the clutches of max verstappen and max had just revved up to pass him when suddenly! no no! safety car!

which was interesting.

but we will get back to that in a minute.

now, under a virtual safety car, cars need to keep the gap between them, but the track can go green at any moment and without any warning. 

and max was on top of that. “pay attention to this!” he said over radio “because if hes (oscar) on purpose driving slow (to give lando a bigger gap) report it!” 

oscar though seemingly remained on his best behavior. 

and on the last lap the virtual safety car was announced to be ending. 

max was getting antsy behind the two mclarens and pulled up next to oscar in preparation for the track going green, but it went green a second too late and oscar was able to pull away and make a beeline all the way to the checkered flag while still keeping max behind. 

lando came in first, followed by oscar, max, charles, carlos, george, pierre, checo, liam, alex. lewis, franco, esteban, ollie, yuki, guanyu, and lance and nico DNFd. 

oscar was clearly very disappointed about the result (remember he said after sprint qualifying that he wanted to hold onto his p1). and karun wondered aloud if “mark webber will negotiate a bonus for oscar with that, he should.” cause remember, mark webber was the infamous number 2 red bull teammate to sebastian vettel who was forced to pretty much give up anything and everything for him. and, need i remind you, this weekend seb was running willy nilly around the paddock getting drivers to get in his giant recycled helmet. all very distressing things for one mark webber. 

oscar also said that it was “a bit tricky….bit bumpy….learned a lot for the race tomorrow.” 

lando said that “we work well as a team together….i thanked oscar….he deserved it but you do what you have to do.” 

later, in the press conference, an interviewer congratulated oscar on his win. oscar, confused, said “i don't know what i won but thank you” 

max said that he “had to wait for some mistakes and luckily they came” in regards to overtaking charles. “it took a bit too long with charles…but whenever hes on the drs, hes very hard to attack!”

charles said in a later interview about max “i think max was a lot more on the reserve at the beginning then started pushing at the end. he had more pace, he did a better job with tire management”

lets remember that these two are Not Teammates. 

max though was brought to the stewards though for a vsc infringement (when he pulled next to oscar) because that is Not Allowed. and he ended up with a time penalty that demoted him to fourth. so charles ended up finishing third. and he got a penalty point on his super license.

but what about that safety car call? 

well i am so glad that you asked. 

the post race show opened with one will buxton talking to one andrea stella, the mclaren team principal. and here was what he had to say about the mclaren 1-2:

“very good news, a mclaren 1-2… [we had a ] clear conversation with both drivers [before the race]” here he then called them both number 1 drivers again (which everyone thought we were past) “[it was] very risky swapping even with 1.5 seconds [to max], we were waiting for a few more seconds to materialize, but it never did” 

will buxton, ever the shit stirrer and also as we know, probably the number 1 person pissed at mclarens team strategy this year, then asked why lando was so upset over the radio. 

andrea was having none of it. “well i already answered the question didn't i? when you're a number 1 driver you get nervous when you are behind…we needed to do a very good job to stay ahead of him [max].” 

he then departed and james hinchcliffe quite literally Stumbled into frame with his own thoughts on the mclaren swap. “it ended to plan, it didn't go to plan,” he said. “they got very lucky with the vsc.” 

he then talked about the vsc. “the timing of the vsc was weird to me” you know with the driver being a solid 10 feet from the track with zooming cars? “i don't think it was done the best it could have been done.” 

and this seemed to be the general consensus everywhere else online. why on earth wait to call a safety car when quite literally we had a driver who was out of the car and standing next to the track? that is quite literally a Safety Problem. and given the timing of the mcalren swap, it seemed Possible that perhaps race control had been waiting for mclaren to swap before calling the car. which is, as im sure you could all figure out, kind of weird and sketchy.

but aside from that. there was still much praise for max. “max played it so smart today,” james said, referring to max selectively murdering charles’s tires by fighting with him for the first half of the race. “with not the best car on track hes still performing above expectations.” 

there was some proper francomania in brazil. so much so that flights from argentina to brazil had sold out. franco said on the post race show that “the rivalry between brazil and argentina is in football not motor racing.” 

pierre had scored a p7 which he was happy with. mostly because it was a points position and those are kinda hard to come by at alpine. 

lewis though just about wanted to quit. they asked him how his race pace was and he said “horrendous. one of the worst races ive had” which is really saying something when you remember that he has had 353 race starts. he wanted to change the car entirely before quali. 

and lance stroll also winked at esteban ocon while they were interviewing ollie bearman. 

most notable quote from the post sprint was this, by max:  

the interviewer asked him: “lando said ‘i don't have to change my driving style, if anyone has to do it, it's max.’ do you agree? you won't change it?” 

and max said: “[im a] three time world champion. i don't have to change anything.”

max, as some of us may forget, is a very good driver, he’s just in a shit car this year and other people are very very fast. finally. but he is in fact a 7 time world champion. he won every race except 3 last year. he’s insane and he loves this sport. it never pays well to underestimate max verstappen.

and with that absolute banger of a line, let’s get into qualifying. 

what's that? its delayed? why is that? 

oh! cause its raining!

like comical, almost biblical amounts of rain. 

during the delay we had one will buxton and one james hinchcliffe speaking to us about all the current drama.

for example: is checo doing enough? apparently christian horner has dialed back the intensity of his support, so whos to say! but then again, this is red bull, they drop people for anything and everything

and they briefly mentioned the audi seat cause everyone is in contention for the audi seat apparently, including gabriel bortoleto, who is currently leading the f2 championship and a mclaren academy driver.

but they mostly debated their favorite topic: what the ever loving fuck is going on at mclaren. 

specifically, this edition: Why Didn't They Swap Cars Sooner????

(please know this conversation was had in rain jackets in the pouring damn rain and it looked like they were like uh we got no broadcast happening cause downpour we need to fill the time we need to fill the time hmmm what to do oh! we got will and hinch! give then a microphone and let them go for it! and that they did)

james thought that they left themselves exposed to max and charles for too long, and apparently mclaren said that it would swap the cars at the first opportunity originally but then they didn't swap when they said over the radio that the gap to leclerc was significant. 

will buxton had a theory: “they’re trying to do it without upsetting either driver” 

he then, in true will buxton fashion, went completely and totally off the rails about it: 

“andrea stella wrote the guidebook for team orders when he worked at ferrari. where is that? [why aren’t they saying ‘you work for us, you do what we say’?]”

“the team [the drivers] needs to understand who pays the bills here” james added.

“if they don't lay down the law now they put themselves in an awkward position or later” will said about how this would affect the future of mclaren because if they were already starting to win now and be in contention for the championships then whos to say that they couldn't do it again next year?

and then, somewhat inexplicably, they stopped talking to us and we had no screens no nothing no view on anyone for about 40 minutes. all we could assume was that qualifying was delayed. 

and that it definitely was. 

once we finally got a visual on the track again it was in fact still raining, and only getting worse. 

but if theres one thing about formula 1, its that they know how to have fun in the rain.

like how they let ted loose in the pit lane and he stalked through the mercedes garage, and proudly told the whole world that bono, lewis’s race engineer, has a carbon fiber cup of tea. and then the camera zoomed in on it.

 

he then also tried to talk to toto by picking up a headset and shouting into it “we miss you toto!” but instead of getting to toto the message went to jack, toto’s son?  

and then someone, i don't remember who, perhaps it was karun, told ted to “look at fred vasseur, hes a handsome man most of the time.” 

the crowds were shouting “ole ole ole franco!” which was different from their usual chant of “ole ole ole senna!” and will buxton told franco that “flights from buenos aries to sao palo have sold out, that's the affect you are having” franco was impressed.

ollie bearman, who has objectively, by the way, been thrown now into three increasingly more insane race weekends (saudi arabia with like a few hours notice, singapore, and now the hellscape that was the giant rain storm in brazil) decided to do the sensible thing and take a nap.

"at his age it's gonna be his bed time soon, right?" one of the servus tv announcers said about ollie.

lewis decided to brave the rain to take some aesthetic rain pics

which he then posted on his instagram story

kimi antonelli was not so lucky. he got shoved into the rain by some mercedes mechanics. for sport.

george meanwhile was off jumping in puddles

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and looking like a polite bowling pin wearing maybe some toe nail polish

and jack doohan made everyone tea in the alpine garage

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oscar had a lovely little chat with fernando alonso

and then so did mark webber 

perhaps the most insane part of this was that no one and i mean no one knew how they were going to decide the grid order, should qualifying not happen. and as it got progressively more and more delayed, that was looking like it was going to be the case. 

the race director told everyone at one point that it was “not really possible to qualify” which was you know, a problem, since that needs to happen in order for them to race. 

hilariously, there was nothing in the regulations for if someone like this were to happen.

next years regulations said that championship standings could be used for qualifying order if qualifying was not able to occur, but that's not this years regs so they couldn't do that. there were though regulations for what should happen should qualifying for a sprint race not be able to occur and that was use the standings from practice 1. and there was also regulations for what should happen if qualifying could not occur on a normal race weekend and that was use the standings from practice 3. but this was a sprint weekend in the main grand prix. so should they use the standings from practice 1? that would be particularly advantageous to haas who had ollie bearman come in third. should they use the standings from the sprint race? that would benefit mclaren. 

“i’ll add this to the list of reasons why i’m glad im not a steward,” karun said.

they continued to debate. everyone went back and forth. theyre going to use practice 1! theyre going to use the sprint! they’ll use sprint qualifying! 

they got a hold of mike krak (the aston martin tp) who said that it was “a bit too dark and a bit too gloomy and a lot wet” definitely too wet for racing. 

sure enough qualifying was then switched from “delayed” to “postponed” perhaps indefinitely. 

there was a chance that they could move qualifying to sunday morning. but the weather was not good for then either. and so the session ended, with no one knowing what the fuck was happening and sir lewis hamilton interrupting f1 ceo Stefano Domenicali’s interview saying:  

"I wanna go out give us better wet tyres and warming blankets so we can go out!" 

and that was it

now, rain at the interlagos circuit is not exactly unheard of. mostly because it is literally interlagos (between two lakes, in portuguese)and theres been some insane rain races here before. namely 2016. max, who was still nearly a rookie and only in his first full year at red bull at that point had qualified fourth but ended up down in 16 with 15 laps to go due to some oversteer and pit stopping. he managed to make it all the way up to 3rd by sheer willpower and insanity alone and toto wolff called it “the verstappen show” because it was “physics…being redefined.” 

another infamous rain race was the one in 2008, the season finale race and where lewis hamilton won his first world championship title at mclaren. he almost lost the title to felipe massa at ferrari. felipe won the race, and lewis was running in 6th around the last few corners to the checkered flag when the person driving in front of him, timo glock, started going slowly and he managed to pass him for 5th place, which was all he needed to get to win the championship. but there were a few minutes of celebration in the ferrari garage where they thought they had won the drivers championship, until lewis crossed the line. and “is that glock going slowly?” is one of those very famous facing quotes

and last year at qualifying in brazil it ended with an absolutely biblical storm (according to crofty) and we got the infamous max verstappen storm lap for pole position

the running fan theory though as to why there was such massive amounts of rain this year was that nelson piquet was in the paddock. why does this matter? well. nelson piquet (a three time world champion and also father of max verstappen’s current girlfriend kelly) was fined 1 million dollars and banned from entering an f1 paddock again as punishment for racist and homophobic comments he made on video about lewis hamilton. and he was just there. in the red bull garage. like nothing was wrong. (this is made infinitely worse by the way that f1 drivers have since been banned from making “political statements” on the track and etc, mostly because lewis in 2020/21 did a bunch of advocating for black lives matter and got some other drivers in on it (he was stopped by the fia for wearing a shirt that said “Justice for Breonna Taylor” and sebastian vettel did some other advocating for the environment and also lgbt community, so they cant really even complain too much about this) 

lewis did though tweet this tweet after that whole incident.

but anyway. qualifying. what was to come of qualifying??

well. let me tell you. 

qualifying was postponed until 7:30am on race day, local time. and the race was moved up to i think 10:30 ??? am? to try and avoid as much weather as possible. which was good progress for f1 cause usually they don't do this. 

it wasn't great for the drivers though who had to be awake at about 4am, barely ate food and jumped into the cars. esteban ocon set his alarm at precisely 4:31.

and george had coffee on an empty stomach. lando had a nutella sandwich. and off they went.

and by off they went i mean, it was still raining. “wetter than a fisherman’s boot” according to crofty.

but they were qualifying.

ollie had never driven an f1 car in the wet before. which he was about to get a whole lot of experience doing.

some drivers though really love the wet. rain at at f1 race, while scary, is sort of a neutralizer because it really comes down to the skill of the driver and not so much the car. george loves the wet (a la spa 2021 when he managed to qualify a shitbox williams in p2) and so does esteban and lewis and max among others.

lance also likes a good wet race. “well hes canadian, lance stroll,” crofty said. “he’s rather good on the ice.”

and to make it extra fun, theres no tire warming blankets for the wet tires to save money, which seems a little counterintuitive, but they don't really get used very often. 

everyone was whipping around, dodging the puddles as best as they could, trying to clear the track of water a little, and we had some interesting people up in the top 5. as in the top five was esteban ocon, fernando alonso, yuki tsnuoda, checo perez, and lance stroll. 

and then, could it be? in this economy? a red flag??? 

it indeed was! and it would not be the last!

it was franco, he had found the wall. he was okay. but the car was not. 

and there was not a lot of time to fix it.

karun took this time to tell everyone that he thought that franco could not possibly get the red bull seat (which was a thing that was being debated hotly in the paddock despite franco saying that he was not in talks for a seat last weekend) because of incidents like this due to his own inexperience. 

crofty brought up a separate but interesting point which was that in all the previous times that we have had qualifying on a sunday, a german has been on pole. 

he is of course, correct. 

japan 2004: michael schumacher

japan 2010: sebastian vettel

australia 2013: sebastian vettel

texas 2015: nico rosberg

japan 2019: sebastian vettel

and there was of course only one german on the grid right now. nico hulkenberg.

“its written in the stars!” crofty proclaimed loudly and to the general annoyance of karun, who did not want there to be a german polesitter this race because then crofty would be “insufferable” about it. 

while they were debating that, the red flag had cleared and everyone went out again. including george russell, who was so impatient to get out that he overtook in the pit lane and despite being impeded a few times, still managed to put his mercedes in p2. 

max got his lap time deleted and was now stuck down in 12th. lewis still needed to get out of the bottom 5 and lando was stuck in 15th. 

everyone had one more lap. 

lewis managed to only go 14th. then got pushed to 15th.

lando managed an okay first sector but needed “a middle and final sector of his life here” in order to clear the elimination zone. and he got a personal best in the middle sector but still only managed to go 14th. he was safe, but lewis was out. along with ollie, franco, nico and guanyu.

(“your run of german poles on a sunday is gone,” karun happily told crofty)

lewis, as could be predicted, was very unhappy with his car. as he should have been. according to crofty he is “one of the top 3 drivers of all time in the wet” and yet. here he was. in the wet. out in q1. 

at the start of q2 it was not actively raining, which was good news. but it was still slippy and people still had on wet tires for the most part. 

george went for a little spin but he was okay. no damage and no walls for him.

carlos was not so lucky. 

he found the barriers. another red flag. 

later he said that he had clearly misjudged the grip.

his crash was pretty big, bigger than francos, and again, theres less than 5 hours until the race. 

everyone was ushered back into the pit lane as the track was cleared and repaired. 

at the time, oscar was leading, followed by george, lance, max, liam, checo, valtteri, fernando, charles and carlos with lanco, pierre, alex, yuki, and esteban in the drop zone. 5:51 to go. 

when they came back on track fernando alonso somehow managed to go fastest. could it be his first pole in over 4000 days???

and as everyone was on their final flying lap, including lando and max and checo, the yellow flags came out. it was lance stroll, he had gone off. 

again, like in the sprint, the cameras did not immediately cut to him. but the announcers said that “i think race control are waiting for these laps to count before calling the red flag.” because several people were on flying laps and it was the end of the session, so it would not be resumed after the red flag.

lando crossed the line. he went fastest. almost immediately the red flag was called. max and checo were unable to finish their flying laps. 

the red flag has had to be called cause lance was in “a dangerous position” 

later, there was a half baked excuse that they thought that lance was trying to get the car moving which was why they did not call the red flag. this, by the way, was the state of lance’s car:

it was clearly not in any state to be driven. 

and yet. it took them 40 whole seconds to call a red flag for this. the previous two red flags were called in under 5 seconds. 

and, need i remind you, that the delay of this red flag allowed for lando to get himself out of the bottom 5 and also knocked max and checo out of the qualifying session. 

now might also be a good time to mention that max had a five place grid penalty for changing his power unit. so he would be starting all the way down in seventeenth. 

and he was fucking pissed. 

because remember. the 40 second delay of this red flag allowed Everyone to finish their flying lap Except for max and checo. so q2 ended with lando in first, followed by fernando, oscar, liam, alex, charles, esteban, george, lance, and yuki with valtteri, max, checo, carlos and pierre all getting eliminated. 

also this is a very very valid safety complaint. it should not take that long for a red flag to be called when the car is not moving, had three clearly broken wheels and is also 15 feet from the track. all the worst accidents in f1 happen when there is a car that is already not moving from an accident or a problem and then it gets hit by another car. there have already been people who have died this way. it does not need to happen again. 

aside from the bs flag call, checo was also pissed at red bull for entirely separate reasons and those reasons were because red bull had waited really long to go out for the final run which was part of the reason why they were not able to finish. 

“cmon guys,” he said over radio. “we gotta do that better…if everyone is already waiting at the end of the pit lane why don't we go?” 

fans were outraged at this. one commented on instagram under a post about the teams qualifying positions “what is checo's garage doing? seriously???” and a red bull mechanic named greg commented underneath it saying “giving him the same tools as max.” then, a second red bull mechanic named charlie commented responded to greg, saying “why you lying for”

so. shit is certainly hitting the fan in more ways than one at red bull. 

but back to qualifying. 

there were no red bulls. which was odd. but we did have nine cars: both mclarens, both rb’s, and one aston, one mercedes, one williams, one ferrari and one alpine. what an interesting mix. 

and it was about to get even more interesting because fernando alonso found a wall. 

another red flag. 

“red flag was much quicker that time,” crofty said. “19 seconds instead of 40.” 

and another wrecked car.

the standing order, with 6:59 left on the clock was lando, alex, oscar, esteban, george, charles, yuki, liam, fernando and lance. 

and the rain could be coming back. 

but there was good news for some people! like alex albon who was, according to crofty “on course for his highest start” as he was currently sitting in p2 rather comfortably. 

and in anticipation for the rain to re start, everyone had already queued up in the pit lane, despite the fact that the track had not yet been green flagged. 

“it’s like the post office on a tuesday morning. you go down to get a box of stamps and they're already queuing up!” crofty said, making absolutely no sense. 

thankfully there was no need to dwell on it because the track went green and they all spilled out again. 

yuki went off and into the gravel, but was able to get out. so there was no red flag. 

that came a few minutes later, for one very, very unfortunate alex albon. 

yes, the same alex albon that had been on course to have his highest ever start. that alex albon. 

and it was a big crash. he ping ponged right across the whole track like a very expensive and very broken ping pong ball. 

he had no idea what happened either. over the radio he asked if the brakes failed. 

and now williams had two very, incredibly broken cars to fix in just about three hours. remember that this team is held together by an excel spreadsheet. 

three minutes, thirty one seconds to go. 

and esteban ocon was seated at the front of the pit lane, waiting. behind him, the remaining six cars still left in the qualifying session from hell. remember this was all before ten am. at least two of them were running on only coffee and nutella. 

“if i were him [esteban ocon], i’d select first gear and then wait ten seconds,” crofty said, speaking about how to impede lando and waste time, who was behind him, when coming out of the pit lane. 

“oh you’re naughty,” karun said. then he went on a rant about how you physically cannot lie to the stewards because they will find out out. he apparently knew this from experience. 

esteban did not impede lando and oscar upon exiting the pit lane. they all came out as they should. 

“glad to see esteban found his first gear no problem and is out on the track,” crofty said. “[this is] quite the day in the championship battle.” 

and that it really was. five red flags, seven cars still standing, max verstappen starting p17, lando finally starting to really close the gap to him in the championship, qualifying at 7:30am on a sunday, race in three hours, rain, back end of a triple header, no one’s been home in a month, and everyone was awake at 4am. 

still, lando managed to improve his time, staying on provisional pole. oscar locked up and didn't finish his lap, he stayed p3. 

liam lawson was gaining. he went second. 

he was then replaced by yuki. for second. 

then esteban ocon pulled out a third, splitting the two racing bulls.

lando extended his pole lap a second time. 

and then george pulled out a p2. 

charles unfortunately did not get in on the p2 fun. he stayed 6th.

and so. 1 hour and 45 minutes and five red flags later, with only barely 3.5 hours to the race. we finally had the starting order of the 2024 brazil gp.

p1: lando norris

p2: george russell

p3: yuki tsnuoda

p4: esteban ocon

p5: liam lawson

p6: charles leclerc

p7: alex albon

p8: oscar piastri

p9: fernando alonso

p10: lance stroll

p11: valtteri bottas

p12: checo perez

p13: carlos sainz

p14: pierre gasly

p15: lewis hamilton 

p16: ollie bearman 

p17: max verstappen

p18: franco colapinto

p19: nico hulkenberg

p20: zhou guanyu

one person wasn’t satisfied with their position and that was charles leclerc. 

“that's p6” his race engineer told him over the radio. 

“that's fucking shit” charles said.

the top three were definitely pleased though.

“a lot going on today,” lando said, accurately. “a little surprised.”

“really pleased to be lining up p2,” george said.  “i loved it [coming in early] to be honest. maybe this is the format for sunday morning.”

“very tricky,” yuki said. “certainly enjoyed it. feels much better than yesterday, good pace.”

yuki also ran into all of his mechanics in victory.

and we got this hilarious picture. 

and i know what you're thinking. did everyone manage to repair their cars in time for the race? 

yes. everyone except for alex albon, that is, who had to withdraw from the race due to significant damage.

what? that was not what you were thinking? 

oh. you want to know if lewis got to drive sennas 1990 mclaren?? 

yeah! he did! before the race! and he did it no handed, in the rain. not to be biased here, but that's my fucking seven time world champion.

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and. finally. without any further ado. the race. or more accurately, the drivers parade. 

charles was standing with pierre and then Yanked his had away from him so that he could shake hands with max. they seemingly developed somehow even more of a soldiers bond here, having a weird unspoken agreement that they were going to stop mclaren at whatever costs, because honestly what else could these two be yapping about, looking like they were teammates? especially when max was one minor inconvenience away from burning down the entire paddock?

meanwhile george and alex were causing all kinds of problems, completely oblivious to the scheming going on around them

and that about sums up the drivers parade. 

onwards. 

to the race. 

it was still slightly raining when the cars all pulled off for their formation lap. and unfortunately that was where the chaos began. 

with lance stroll going off during the formation lap. he then turned out of it and got himself stranded in the gravel after boinking into the wall and was effectively stuck. 

and so there was an aborted start. some drivers, the several at the front, started to go around the track again, but their was confusion from others (like max) if aborted start meant that they did go around again or if they just sat on the grid and waited for the mechanics to come back out. in any case, everyone ended up going around again. 

in the end, it ended up being that lando, the polesitter, was not supposed to go around again. and he did. and a lot of people followed him around. and no one knew if anyone (like his engineer) told him to go around again or he just did it on his own. he was still noted for going, and the whole mess was going to get brought up to the stewards later. 

because what were they supposed to do in that instance? penalize everyone? 

“yet another reason why im glad im not a steward,” karun said.

one thing was for sure and that was that lance definitely should buy his mechanics dinner that night as an apology because they had worked very hard to fix his car only for him to bin it again. (though the car had been in several pieces not too long again and there was a chance something was not connected correctly, he did say later that the car had felt pretty bad to dive in the formation lap) 

this isnt even the first time that a car hasnt completed the formation lap in brazil. just last year charles leclerc crashed on the formation lap due to steering failure. 

once they all arrived back on the grid after formation lap 2 the mechanics came back out and started rechecking the cars and etc while they waited for lance’s car to get cleared. and the mercedes mechanics made a sneaky little adjustment to the tire pressure, hoping that no one would notice. unfortunately, they noticed. 

onto formation lap 3! and thank god! everyone made it this time!

so with 18 cars and a rainy race ahead, lights went out and away they went into lap 1.

george was able to hold onto the lead! 

and at the end of the first lap (which everyone blessedly survived) we had the following order: george, lando, yuki, esteban, charles, liam, oscar, fernando, pierre, lewis, max, franco, ollie, valtteri, nico, guanyu and checo.

that's right. max made up seven places. seven. and lewis had made up five. they were coming. max especially

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checo meanwhile had briefly gone spin, hence why he was now down in last place. 

max passed lewis for 10th, already back into the points by lap 2.

george took the fastest lap on lap 3, already leading by 1.5 seconds. lando took it from him on lap 4. there was no DRS due to the rain, so lando was going to have to pass george the old fashioned style. 

ollie bearman briefly went off the track after a small incident with franco, but he was able to rejoin.

and max passed pierre for 9th on lap 5

and then was up to 8th on lap 6 after passing fernando

meanwhile, along with lando, george, yuki and liam were all also noted for the starting procedure infringement at the beginning of the race. they would have to go with lando to the stewards after the race to hear their fate. meaning that no matter what the outcome of the race was, there was still a chance that they could get slammed with penalties after, so who knew if the real winners would in fact be the winners. 

max, who had followed the rules for the starting procedure, took fastest lap on lap 7 as he started to close the gap to oscar in p7.

lando had started to eat into george’s lead a little, and george was now only .8 seconds ahead. 

and the stewards noted the incident between ollie and franco. ollie received a 10 second penalty for causing a collision. which didn't really make a lot of sense to people as franco didn't really even have any damage.

max was declared to be the fastest man on track, faster than george, as he still zoomed up to the back of oscar. 

meanwhile, lewis’s car had started bouncing, but george seemed unaffected as he took the fastest lap again on lap 10. 

max passed oscar on lap 10, now in 7th. “he came from so far back,” oscar said, entirely not expecting it. 

“max has tremendous confidence,” karun said.

and might i remind you all that it is RAINING

and then he passed liam for 6th on lap 11. unsurprisingly, liam was more compliant with max passing him than he had been with checo passing him in mexico). he was only 2.5 seconds behind charles, who was in p5. he had already made up 11 places in 11 laps in the pouring freaking rain.

lewis was not having as good luck. he went off the track and then got passed by franco. 

“if i was haas i’d be annoyed with the penalty,” the announcers said, referring to ollies 5 second penalty. “nothing is wrong with that williams.”

by lap 15 there was a four way battle brewing for third. yuki, esteban, charles and max. who again i will remind you was 17th a mere 15 laps ago. this performance was starting to put even his 2016 brazil rampage to shame. 

lewis was still not doing nearly as well, he tried to pass franco and failed. 

lando was still in second behind george on lap 17 and said that he was struggling to overtake and that they were slow on the straights. 

and to top it all off. the rain was set to get heavier in 15 minutes time. 

charles, meanwhile, was managing to keep max behind. maybe he had brushed up on his skills since yesterday when max had called him out during the sprint for making so many mistakes over the radio. 

no one had boxed yet. and the rain was starting to come down a little heavier. “getting slippery with these worn tires in the wet” nico said on lap 18. 

and now as we know, its a crapshoot at best figuring out when to box for tires when its not raining. all that gets compounded into a fuckshoot when its raining. because it its expected to rain more soon, you'd want to put on new tires closer to then so that you have a better chance at clearing the water. plus theres always a chance it could get red flagged and then you could get a free pit stop. so the teams needed to get to the point with the big rain and then box for tires and hope that that was the right choice and that no one went off before then.

lando was back to gaining on george on lap 18

and ollie passed lewis for 14th

hamilton was clearly struggling in the mercedes, but george was leading? so was it a lewis problem? was it a car problem?? no one knew

max, meanwhile, was still under a second behind charles, no drs, on lap 20. charles had managed to hold him up for 9 laps and counting, which was a true feat when you remember how many places he has already made up. 

“car’s not driveable mate,” lewis said on lap 21. “locking up, bouncing everywhere.” apparently the mercedes had some kind of a brake problem, but george was managing it just fine. he was still leading. 

on lap 22 max tried to pass charles

charles, clearly, did not let him

“that was charles leclers knowing exactly where max was going to go and defending it a long way out!” karun said.

“he was squeezing me!” max complained. “he didn’t leave a car’s width!” 

no one else seemed to have this view though because the stewards did not note the incident. 

carlos was seemingly having some kind of car problem as he stopped behind ollie and lewis after going off the track briefly. 

and this was all looking like it might be a good time for some new tires. 

by lap 24, with heavier rain rolling in any minute, here were the standings:

george, lando, yuki, esteban, charles, max, liam, oscar, pierre, fernando, nico, ollie, lewis, franco, carlos, checo, valtteri, and guanyu.

the drivers had to make the call for the tires to go to the wets, according to the announcers. its something that the driver has to feel, not really the team, because the driver is the one in the car. 

charles pitted for inters on lap 25.

not full wets, which was interesting (wets have more groves on them, inters have less, and they were about to have a shit load of rain)

lando asked to box to overtake george on lap 26. mclaren wanted him to stay out, despite his protests that he wanted to box for new tires. so he stayed out. 

liam lawson meanwhile went off the track due to contact with oscar. he came back on in 9th.

nico hulkenberg pitted for inters on lap 26

lando was half a second behind george on lap 27

and apparently those inters didn't work too well for nico hulkenberg because he went off track and managed to get stranded on some banking.

a virtual safety car was called on lap 28, though not before esteban ocon managed to pass yuki for third.

again, who knew why it took them so long to call the safety car. 

many people decided to pit. 

oscar, fernando, lewis, ollie, carlos and checo.

and at this point, mercedes was finally reported for adjusting their tire pressure on the grid, which is not allowed! and also very bad news for george should he win the race because usually that behavior results in a disqualification and i don't think that george could handle another dsq after winning this season.

nico hulkenberg, meanwhile, was able to get back on the track

and the virtual safety car ended.

right as george and lando went to pit. which was incredibly unlucky

prior to this, george came on the radio to say that he thought that it was now red flag conditions. and he was probably correct.  

“i think this is going to go red mate,” he said on lap 28. “this should go red. we cant keep a car on the road like this. theres going to be big crashes. theres a big puddle through 4 and 13. there will be a crash there. i think stay out. it should go red.” and that would be good because then george could get his free pit stop and also maintain the lead of the race. 

“understood, understood,” his engineer said. “so box, box.”

“i think, no, its going to go red,” george repeated. 

“box box. box, box. box, box. we need to box,” his engineer said. and so george had no choice but to box. 

someone who didn't box was esteban ocon. he chose to stay out and with both lando and george pitting he was now leading the race on lap 29.

liam lawson and yuki tsnuoda pitted. 

and after all the pit stops, we had:

esteban, max, pierre, george, lando, yuki, charles, oscar, fernando, valtteri, lewis, carlos, checo, ollie, franco, guanyu and nico.

“after a truly awful season,” crofty said. “alpine is 1 and 3.” that they were. somehow. maybe it would stay that way. 

and after all that. lando finally managed to pass george. but only for fourth, not for first. 

and the safety car was deployed for rain.

so now no one could pass anyone. 

esteban ocon had a 7 second lead on max verstappen. 

and franco colapinto took this opportunity to pit for new inters. 

oscar got a 10 second penalty for causing that collision a way long time ago with liam lawson.

and merc were still under investigation for the tire pressure thing.

and then all the others were still under investigation for the start procedure mishap as well. 

at this point, max had gained 15 places. pierre had gained 10. 

and behind the safety car they all pootled along. esteban, max, pierre, lando, george, yuki, charles, oscar, fernando, liam, lewis, valtteri, carlos, checo, ollie, franco, zhou and nico

that was, until franco had a huge crash.

and once again, there was the return of the red flag. 

so now williams had crashed three whole times during the weekend. remember, they have no money and hardly any parts. and the mechanics were distressed beyond belief.  

lando hopped on radio, annoyed with the mclaren strategy error because now everyone at the front (two alpines and max) would get free tires and he would not have the opportunity to get back to the front after they pitted. 

george on the other hand….

“so, red flag, red flag,” his engineer said. 

“fuck!” george cursed. “i fucking said it! shouldve stayed out!”

yuki got a pep talk immediately after getting out of the car from team principal laurent 

and oscar jumped out of his car and immediately apologized to liam lawson for the incident.

“theres a proper variety bag of pick and mix penalties that need investigating,” crofty said. 

including nico hulkenberg who was being investigated for restarting his race after getting assistance from the marshalls pushing him back onto the track

and the results were in. he got a black flag. meaning he fucked up so bad he was disqualified. he was out. and it was the first black flag in 17 years. team haas was really doing it different this year. cause remember kevin got the first race ban in 12 years this season as well.

and ted just happened to watch nico get told this. he felt very awkward about it.

“i cannot watch this anymore, it’s too depressing,” ted said, turning away.

it was then announced that the race would be restarted as a rolling start. in 10 minutes. 

max sprinted down the pitlane. meanwhile george and lewis peacefully scootered. they might still get disqualified for the tire pressure. they didn't seem to care.

george even stopped to get his boots cleaned as he stepped into the car (which yes i know is a thing cause they were wet with water but it looked so funny to see the mechanic wiping his feet like he was a princess)

and alpine, as we know, would be starting 1 and 3. they had not been in the top 5 all season at all whatsoever. 

george did not like that there would be a rolling start. “that’s more dangerous than a standing start,” he said over the radio. 

and carlos thought that they needed 2 or three laps behind the safety car to decide. cause remember it is still very much raining.

but it was officially a rolling start. in six minutes. a rolling start meaning that they wouldnt line up on the grid, they’d go out and do a slow lap and then just zoom! go!

carlos had a problem with his tires as they pulled out onto the track. “ricky,” he said. “these are not new inters. which ones are these? ….hello?” ghosted by his own team.

and they went racing

zhou and bearman ended up in the grass pretty quickly, but they were able to get back on.

lando also went off and came back on just ahead of george. george took the position back.

and charles briefly went off. 

on lap 34 esteban was still leading and had managed to stay 1.5 seconds ahead of max

hamilton overtook alonso for ninth.

ollie went spin spin spin into the barriers on lap 37. he was able to get going again but he had boinked his front wing. which had already been replaced during the red flag.

and yuki suddenly didn't have pace anymore because he was down in 8th. and getting hunted down by lewis.

ollie went off again. “interlagos is really testing him,” crofty said. yeah no shit. prior to this race he had only driven the track once in a video game (not even the sim!) and he has no experience with f1 cars in the wet, much less this much wet.

on lap 39 esteban ocon was still leading by 2.8 seconds now.

and then carlos ended up in the barriers. no red flag, just a safety car. 

he was okay. but he didn't get out of the car. it then became clear that he was trying to get the car out of the barriers before getting out. and thent here was a tractor on track. with a safety car. in the rain. cause that's safe and totally didn't happen at all during the fatal 2015 japanese gp.

it was at this point that they realized that most people who had gone off track had done so because they had gone over the white lines. and remember, the track had just been resurfaced. and despite the anti slip paint, they were still slipping. hm.

also, the last time that alpine had gotten a double podium was back when they were lotus with kimi raikkonen and romain grosjean in 2009 (?)

and, because this race wasn't already interesting enough, there was potential for more rain at the end of the race. 

the safety car ended and they all went racing again on lap 43. ocon, verstappen, gasly, russell, norris, leclerc, piastri, tsnuoda, hamilton, alonso, lawson, perez, bottas, zhou, and bearman. the remaining 15 cars.

and max finally managed to get in the lead. all the way up for 17th place at the grand prix from absolute weather hell. 

lando went off! dropping all the way down to 7th!

meanwhile liam passed fernando for 9th

and fernando went off the track, triggering a brief yellow flag.

max was already 1.5 seconds ahead of ocon. doing what he does best and making a gap. no one had ever won from 17th before at brazil either

and he took the fastest lap too, on lap 45

so our new order was: 

max, esteban, pierre, charles, george, oscar, lando, yuki, liam, checo, lewis, ollie, valtteri, guanyu and fernando 

mclaren popped on the radio with some infamous papaya rules and told oscar and lando to swap positions, so now oscar was in 7th and lando was in 6th, minimizing the damage to the gap that lando had just managed to close in the drivers championship very very minutely. 

charles was noted for rejoining unsafely

and max took another fastest lap on lap 48

“massively impressed with the alpine’s pace in these conditions,” karun said. 

the last time that two french drivers finished on a podium was in 1997 in spain

on lap 50 checo and liam lawson started to battle for ninth. the commentators brought up the ever present talks that checo might not be in f1 next year. 

oscar briefly went off the track, but managed to stay ahead of yuki, who was chasing him down.

and lando, despite the swap, was still quite stuck behind charles, despite having more pace. and we had already seen charles keep max behind for many many laps, so there was no doubt that he would continue to fight with lando. he and max were low key now teammates, after all

and yet, there still might be more rain

checo was still trying to pass liam lawson. he was still failing. 

fifteen laps to go (finally)

max was still leading esteban, pierre, george, charles, lando, oscar, yuki, liam, checo, lewis, ollie, valtteri, guanyu and fernando on lap 55

and checo still could not pass liam

max had an 8 second lead

and even if the race ended up getting red flagged and not resumed for rain, everyone would get full points because the race was more than 75% complete

checo and liam had a minor incident. it was noted. “he drove into the side of me!” liam complained

on lap 57 ted popped on to give his Insignificant and Unnoticed Award of the Day “to fernando alonso, he was 20 seconds down and now hes cut it down and is going to overtake zhou.” 

 max took yet another fastest lap, he was now 10 seconds ahead of ocon

“hes never changed one iota since he came in,” crofty said about max. “sometimes when you get penalized for the same thing over and over you do need to change.” though honestly, max was proving that he really didn't need to change, because he went balls to the wall with confidence unlike any other, and was leading a race he had started in 17th by 10 seconds. in the rain.

and george had managed to get within a second to pierre gasly

if pierre could hold onto third, alpine could jump from 9th to 6th in the constructors championship. which was estimated to be a difference of 50 million dollars in prize money.

lando was told over the radio to go close to leclerc. “i am!” lando said. “what do you think im doing?” 

by lap 63 max was still leading. this time by 13 seconds.

max was set to get 18 points more than lando at this race, and that was before any start penalties that lando might get awarded. 

and he took another fastest lap

on lap 66 max was leading esteban, pierre, george, charles, lando, oscar, yuki, liam, lewis, checo, ollie, valtteri, fernando and zhou

“looking like he [max] will be a 4x world champion and hold off the threat of mclaren,” crofty said.

and then, fernando alonso’s radio crackled to life. 

“i will finish this race for the mechanics, they did a very good job today,” fernando said. “but my back hurts so much, there is so much bouncing. this is not normal.” and he did sound very in pain saying that. this re brought up concerns about the porpoising on the track. lewis had complained about it earlier and its been at no other track this year, meaning that it must be a track thing. meaning further that the track was probably resurfaced badly. because this is not normal. and yes, fernandos been having a terrible time during the triple header. hes been sick, he was in the hospital, he missed media day. this is still not normal though and cant be attributed to that.

lap 68. nearly to the end now. and max was leading by 18 seconds. 

“he’s got more god given talent in a finger than some drivers every have,” karun said,

and meanwhile his teammate was down in 11th, trying to pass lewis for 10th. and failing.

last lap! finally!

and max won by 19 seconds! and he broke the record for most consecutive days leading a championship, breaking the record previously set by michael schumacher. and made it from 17th to first in the rain, despite all odds, in a car that barely worked, no drs, just spite and rage and pure talent. a true world champion

one by one, everyone else crossed the line

p2: esteban ocon

p3: pierre gaslu

p4: george russell

p5: charles leclerc

p6: lando norris

p7: oscar piastri

p8: yuki tsunoda

p9: liam lawson

p10: lewis hamilton

p11: checo perez

p12: ollie bearman

p13: valtteri bottas

p14: fernano alonos

p15: zhou guanyu

“brilliant for alpine today, disastrous for mclaren,” crofty said

max, predictably, was absolutely thrilled saying that it was "SIMPLY LOVELY"

he sprinted to his mechanics, screaming and celebrating everywhere. he kissed kelly. he did not kiss christian. 

this was only the 5th time, in this history of formula 1. 1125 races. that a race had been won from 17th or lower. 

alpine was also thrilled.

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the funniest part was esteba ocon’s radio, where they asked him “did you think we were going to be here?” and he said “funnily enough, no!”

ruben barichello did the post race interviews. 

max said that he “stayed out of trouble, made the right calls.” he had 17 fastest laps. which you can watch here.

and you can watch all of his overtakes here.

esteban was also thrilled. “what a day that was after a difficult season! very happy to be on the podium!” they didn't know that the car would perform this well in the wet. 

and pierre was equally as excited. “its incredibly for the whole team…in these conditions everything was possible. im absolutely buzzing right now….would have been easy to just give up but we never give up.” 

because lets remember where alpine started at the beginning of the season. heaviest car on the grid. and also the slowest. and now, here they were, with a double podium. and scoring the most points out of any team at the brazilian gp (35)  

alpine even made a little graphic, reminding everyone of this:

also, id like to remind you, that pierre and esteban don't really get along. they used to be friends and now theyre not for complex reasons, and they were so overcome by the emotion of their double podium that they effectively ended the french civil war

the cooldown room was quite excitatory. never had we ever seen a podium where everyone was so insanely happy to be there. max said in the cooldown room to esteban that "You were fast. You were so fast I was happy to settle for second."

and of course. we got our dutch national anthem. she was back ladies and gents! she was back!

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and we had the goofiest looking podium selfie

esteban and pierre dropped their champagne bottles down to their mechanics. they celebrated. they were on top of the world.

prior to today, esteban had 5 points. today he scored 18.

“red bull might feel a bit more back in the game,  but they still need 2 drivers,” crofty said. “mclaren are leading by some 46 points.” 

max though, now had a 62 point lead on lando.

and so lets see what our favorite dynamic duo, james hinchcliffe and will buxton, had to say about all of this in the post race show.

“i don't know what we were missing,” james said. “we had everything.” and he was right.

starting off with the fact that max absolutely showed who was boss and now lando has to score 21 points every weekend in order to beat him in the drivers championship. prior to this weekend max hadnt been within 20 seconds of the winner at all in the last ten races. and today he won by almost 20.

and alpine hadnt finished in the top 8 all season!

“i take my hat off to them” will said. “they were 19th and 20th in bahrain, their car was overweight, there was no hope and they got their heads down and they got it done.” 

then we were joined by yuki and liam lawson.

“it was like floating around!” yuki said about the conditions.

“i nearly crashed probably 10 times,” liam said. “i came into the pitlane and i tried to stop nad i wasn't stopping. crazy race.” 

the two of them said that they just didn't have good luck today and got stuck behind others in dirty air. “shame pierre got p3 and they overtook us in the championship,” yuki said. “but we keep going.”

then they examined the start. lando, george and yuki all went for the second formation lap. esteban ocon asked over the radio if he was supposed to say where he was and the tea, said yes. but then they eventually told him to go. james said that this was not great and someone from the team should have reminded the drivers of the procedure. 

lando, george, yuki and liam were all going to see the stewards about the start.

then they moved on to discussing lando. “lando did not have his day when max showed his absolute best,” will said. 

lando said in his own interview that he was “just unlucky with the vsc pit. just that's life sometimes, not talent, just luck….still made a couple of mistakes in the end, little unfortunate….4th was the best anyone who boxed could do.” which, its unclear what hes really talking about here. if hes saying max just had good luck or if he had bad luck. in any case, insane to call a run from 17th to first just luck and not talent. and will buxton agreed.

“verstappen proved once again that he is the best in this sport. to beat the best you need to be better than the best.” and today lando wasn't.

james was in agreement with will, saying that mclaren did make some bad calls and also that max has a habit of putting his car where it doesnt deserve to be

first lando lost to george, then the safety car pit, then his mistakes on track, then he lost position, then he swapped positions and still couldn't get past charles. it was “enough mistakes that it does come down to his driving,” will said. “max was ruthless today. there was no drs and he [still] found it.” 

“doesnt take many mistakes to lose to max” james added.

mclaren also posted one of the strangest post race videos ive ever seen. usually theyre like somewhere in the paddock or whatever. this week they were in what appeared to be a weird dark closet, with lando and oscar only half in frame. oscar sitting on a desk and lando sitting in a spinny chair next to andrea. and it vaguely looked like they were all being held hostage. oscar aso said that “lando has one sock on inside out and that sums up our weekend.”

then they moved on to mercedes. 

“my take is that iv we stayed out we would have been at the front,” george said. “i was pretty angry at the time cause i wanted to say out” because he was confident despite the conditions and thought it would get red flagged. 

by comparison “lewis hamilton looked like he was having a horror show today in the first half,” will said. 

“hes been unsettled with the race car,” james said. “his highlight was before the race even started,” as in driving sennas car. and it was. 

lewis had this to say on instagram about the whole thing

“Grateful for the team and the engineers, we did our best out there but it was a hard race throughout in really tough conditions. This could’ve easily been a weekend to forget but the energy and passion from the fans have made it memorable for me. I still can’t put into words how it felt to drive Ayrton Senna’s car. To share that with this crowd means everything to me. Thank you Brazil for the support and the love. I feel it, even on days like this, and I send it back to you 🇧🇷🫶🏾”

checo, they said “was having a good comeback drive, but then that incident with lawson threw him off.” 

and ollie “equipped himself pretty well.” he said that it was a “tough race…finished p12, quite close to the points…really tough day, learned a lot that's for sure…racing in these conditions the water is quite rare and valuable.” 

will was disappointed in the stewards decision with his 10 second penalty. and they gave him two penalty points as well. 

will tried to also look on the bright side for sauber by saying they could have gotten their first points. 

james was unimpressed by this take.

“i’m trying to out a spin on it, i just want them to get one point this season!” will said. 

they then moved to feranndo alonso, commenting on the amount of pain that he was in at the end. “very 2022,” james said. “havent heard that in awhile, especially with the wet” so it was definitely the track surface itself. 

there was also a clip of fernando getting out of the car post race where he almost needed help from the mechanics.

and they were unimpressed with lance. “he had the ability to get it onto the black and he drove it into the gravel.”

and nico, to them, very obviously got disqualified because he had help from the marshals, something he should have known would happen.

they agreed that it was a tough day for williams. especially losing a place to alpine in the championship.

ferrari also have a “tough day…at the end of two brilliant gps” and charles was “kind of in no mans land today.” 

james agreed. he said they “just never had that spark….salvage what you can kind of weekend.”

“all good things just come to an end,” james said, realistically. 

also on the not having a great day list was oscar. though he thought his penalty was deserved. “it was tricky,” he said. “just trying to stay on track was difficult at some points” 

they also spoke with oliver oakes, the alpine team principal. “big result today,” he said. “we were confident [staying out] was the right chouse but we werent sure [about other peoples choices to stay out]. today is a bug result, doesnt chage what we are doing….gotta stay humble and keep pushing.” 

and alpine were definitely humble about their win

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but they also hula hooped in the trophy

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“i just want to say so many words but i need to calm down first,” pierre said. “unbelieveable, its historical for the team….its been difficult..at the end of the day we never give up…no one thought one alpine could make it onto the podium this year and we made it two…there is so much to say but from p13 to p3 im so happy.” 

and esteban said “i don't know ig we are in reality right now it this is just a dream…my alarm rang this morning at 4:30 and we had no idea….[ive kind of been] thinking when is my rime going to come, if we all had the same car…the cars they level out in some tracks.”

and finally, we had max. “I was very frustrated in qualifying, but tried to use it as motivation in the race….made all the right calls again…was hoping for two points so this is amazing.” he was also asked how driven he was and he said “we had moments, but after that quali where i knew we'd be fast, i nearly destroyed the entire garage. i was barely able to hold myself in. but i started the race very driven. i think i'm the best when i driven, i don't show it an awful lot, but usually yes.”

he was also asked about lando and he said that “if you look a few hours ago it was the other way around…three hard races to go, we need to make no mistakes.” 

so turns out, after all that, max’s quote from earlier in the weekend was correct. he is a three time world champion and he doesnt need to change how he drives. 

this though was too much for the british media to handle and they didn't bother to show up to the press conference. which max called them out on.

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in the end, no one ended up getting penalties from the start and mercedes did not get disqualified. mercedes got fined 5000 euros for each car. and the stewards agreed that "The gate to access the grid was not immediately opened. The FIA accepted that given this short notice it was extremely difficult if not impossible for the teams to follow the procedure prescribed in the technical directive"

which meant. this was our current championship standings. 

for the drivers

max verstappen: 393

lando norris: 331

charles leclerc: 307

oscar piastri: 262

carlos sainz: 244

george russell: 192

lewis hamilton: 190

checo perez: 151

fernando alonso: 62

nico hulkenberg: 31

yuki tsunoda: 28

pierre gasly: 26

lance stroll: 24

esteban ocon: 23

kevin magnussen: 14

alex albon: 12

daniel ricciardo: 12

ollie bearman: 7

franco colapinto: 5

liam lawson: 4

zhou guanyu: 0

logan sergeant: 0

valtteri bottas: 0

and the constructors

mcalren: 593

ferrari: 557

red bull: 544

mercedes: 382

aston martin: 86

alpine: 49

haas: 46

rb: 44

williams: 17

stake: 0

“fun to watch it all, cool to watch it all, but at the end of the day you have to congratulate max verstappen for another championship win,” james said. “by far most dominating performance of the year and one of the most ever.” 

“we leave you with one message resonating louder than ever,” will said, staring directly into the camera. “mess with the bull, you get the horns. we will see you in las vegas.”

the 2024 formula 1 silly season and drama master post, part 2 (part 1 here)

Hello and welcome to ah fucking fuck auto caps fuck fuck fuck how do i turn off auto caps AHA there we go okay. take 2

hello and welcome to the great and very insane formula 1 2024 season drama post, part 2. if you are new here or are just looking for part one (which contains the previous 16 (?) races, the off season, pre season testing and everything else, that can be found HERE. (a word to the wise: open it in a browser, not the app, and preferably on a computer to avoid crashing. its fucking long). 

what the hell is formula 1? car go fast. fastest cars in the world zoom around tracks at top speeds of over 300kph, piloted by the top 20 drivers in the world. it might not sound dramatic, but oh man. you will Not be disappointed. this post focuses on the drama, the insanity, the sheer what the hell how is this a serious sport. no legitimately. we've just about seen it all this year. grindr, dogs, watersports, ice cream brands, its all here.

the point of this post? to educate, to catalog the insane drama, and to just have a good time. people like to gatekeep this sport, there is also a lot happening. i try to make it easy to understand. again, probably best to start at the beginning of the post because it does a pretty good job of explaining things, which i began way back in january, and can be found HERE (again, shes long, be careful)

and, as usual, if you do not want to see this post EVER AGAIN, block the tag #saph explains silly season 2024

and a second caution, i assume this post will be getting long as well. including this one we have minimum 9 updates left!

anyway, those of you who have been following along the whole time, welcome back! i know we got a little delayed. and i know we’re on a new post, so lets just briefly take a second for me to explain what the fuck happened. first i had an anatomy test, second i work 2 jobs with fuck ass hours, third tumblr decided to stop letting me look at any of my drafts, fourth tumblr support ghosted me about the drafts issue and the post was half saving half not so i just decided fuck it, were going with post 2, electric boogaloo, and fifth, i decided to start typing this instead in a google docs so. many changes. if you're new here i am usually more on top of this.

but here we are. were back on street circuits. we’re in baku, azerbaijan, for the start of the last third of the season. 8 races remain, world championship titles are still within grasp of multiple people. the drama is dramaing. and today is september 22, 2024 and lets fucking go. 

first and foremost, on account of the fact that this post is late (again, see above), were going to have to do a bit of a speed run. if you're new here, i promise that this is not representative of my normal dedication to the update post. and for those asking, yeah, ill probably compile it somewhere better than a tumblr post after its all said and done, but we don't have time for that now. 

what we do have time for is the Off Week (and like some of the media stuff). and it was filled with silliness: 

george russell decided to wear what can only be described as slightly ugly yellow short shorts with his taylor swift shirt that he got at the eras tour. this was baffling for several reasons, the main reason being that i don't think the internet knew that he was capable of wearing a graphic t shirt

fernando alonso got his aston martin valkyrie finally. in case you are unfamiliar, a valkyrie i think is the worlds fastest street legal car. he posted tweets about this that made it seem like he wanted to fuck the car. hilariously, the car broke down an hour later.

we also had the very thrilling conclusion to grill the grid. oscar won and he somehow managed to look more pleased about his grill the grid win than his first race victory. 

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nico rosberg went to the green awards and he wore a fantastically insane teal blue suit. yes i know hes not a current driver. but you all like hearing about him so ask and you shall receive. unfornunately i cant find a picture of it though

and also not a current driver is mick schumacher, but my roommate asked me to include that he was seen on his girlfriends instagram being bad at golf. like. exceptionally bad at golf. like he hit a tree 20 feet in front of him.

also playing golf was lando norris. except he managed to look like try bolton from high school musical 2.

he also talked about the world driver championship with his friend max fewtrell while they were playing golf. unfortunately i lost this link in the sea of technical difficulties, but the gist of it was that he was saying that there is still hope for him to beat max in the championship (hes about 60 points behind right now). lando doesnt usually talk about the championship because he doesnt want news outlets to paint him as “desperate” so this was interesting

charles leclerc had an insane off week. first he rear ended someone in monaco. then he spoke at a yacht conference. he was not scheduled to speak at said yacht conference, he was there doing something else and they were like hey you're cool people know you, heres a microphone. he alsp ended up on a weather channel while promoting a karting event he was doing for the jules bianchi foundation (his god father, the one who died during the f1 race in japan 2014). he also changed his instagram pop and re centered it because some random tiktoker told him it matched his aesthetic better.

oscar piastri posted a photo of himself sitting in the cockpit of a plane and then promptly deleted it. because he posted it on 9/11. for anyone who doesnt know what that is, that was when some terrorists hijacked commercial planes and few them into the world trade centers in nyc and the pentagon in washington dc

max verstappen also posted a plane pic with himself and lando norris, but he did not delete it.

we also had the return of daniel ricciardo’s jpg instagram account, which is kinda like a finsta for photos that hes taken. i think lando started this a few years ago. 

heading into the race week we certainly got a weird ass batch of pr. including but not limited to:

lewis hamilton was back on top and slaying in the fit game. as was yuki. 

lewis hamilton also exposed george russell as listening to katy perry pre race. katy perry and taylor swift (this was after he claimed that he liked listening to old school rap music.) though, lewis then started singing wrecking ball???? confusing vibes all around

george was not off the hook yet tho because some intern definitely make him say skidibidi toilet or whatever the thing is idk, i might be gen z but im not insufferable, okay? actually george in baku was just all kinds of unhinged

george and alex also got up to something, what it is no one knows but it is clearly something

max pulled up to the paddock de aged about 10 years. picture one is of him in baku in 2015 (i believe he was 17) and picture 2 is this year. no i am not kidding. 

and franco walked into the paddock telling everyone about argentinian mate (which is a drink, not a friend)

and max shoved a microphone out of the way so everyone could gossip

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then of course, we had some slightly more relevant drama

haas announced that ollie would be replacing kevin at baku. in case you forgot, kevin magnussen received a total of 12 penalty points over the season so far, which means he gets one race ban. how did he get the points? well he was mostly wreaking havoc on everyone else so that his teammate, nico hulkenberg, could drag his car into the points. lets all remember the time in saudi arabia where he managed to get 20 seconds of penalties by basically driving like a mad man just to make sure that nico could keep his position after he pit stopped. anyway, nico was kind of pissed about the race ban situation and said “maybe the guidelines for F1 penalties need to be reviewed as the stewards ‘want to get involved’ no matter the contact.”

in any case though, k mags was out. and ollie was in. we’ve seen ollie before. notably he subbed in for carlos sainz at the saudi arabia gp when carlos had appendicitis. he managed to get points as well. since then, he has been announced as a haas driver for 2025 and is now subbing in for k mags (haas, later in the week called him a super sub. clearly no gen z person read that over.) he can do this because ferrari has a haas engine so they share reserve drivers.

adrian newey finally got employed. i know! i can hardly believe it either! but he did! and youll never guess where! 

ferrari? no that would be too obvious. 

mercedes? nah

williams? no too much of a shit show

aston martin? ding ding ding! just the right amount of shit show! 

that is right. newey is going to aston for 2025. 

apparently he was offered a “good package” according to himself, which i assume means pay and also the fact that lawrence stroll made him a shareholder? stakeholder? whatever its called. in the team itself. basically he has a lot of power. 

he said that he always wanted to work with fernando and lewis. and he couldn't do both. and aston had a better package than ferrari. 

fernando looked positively evil during all the announcement pictures. and called the team "definitely the team of the future" and for those of you who don't know, fernando is positively evil. hes just been stuck in a shit box and we havent seen very much of him, but man does he know how to evilly slut it up. so that will be fun to see.

by contrast, people said that lance was not excited enough. and well. lance 1. has resting bitch face and 2. never really looks excited about anything. also he lives in a world where take your child to work day somehow became his job. (his dad owns the team).

lewis hamilton was asked what he thought about adrian not going to ferrari, and here's what he had to say:

"i feel like, while I have mentioned before that it would be an honor to work with adrian, i have been privileged to work with two championship winning teams that didnt have adrian."

mclaren announced pato o ward would do FP1 in mexico. who is pato o ward? hes one of mclaren’s indycar drivers and one of the f1 reserve drivers. he is incredibly charming and definitely runs his own social media as seen here:

mclaren Also claim they figured out who their number 2 driver is and they claim its oscar. i say they claim because the statements were a lot more complex than that. essentially, according to andrea stella, the priority is to the team first, then lando and then oscar. so they didn't outright say that oscar is the number 2 driver and i am willing to bet real money that this is because mr mark webber, oscars manager, has something in oscars contract that prevents him from being a number 2 driver. this is of course because mark webber was one of the most infamous number 2 drivers in f1 history to none other than menace war criminal sebastian vettel, who in their time as teammates, managed to win 4 back to back world champions. or, top to bottom if you're mrs darbus from high school musical. 

lando was asked about this and he said that yes, the team does support him. though he would not expect oscar to give up a win for him and that it is more complex behind the scenes. i suppose we will see if there are any papaya rules coming out this weekend….

and oscar said "i think the main point is its not purely just going to be me pulling over for lando every single race, because thats how none of us, including lando, wont want to go racing, if we feel that someone has done a much better job on a weekend, whichever way it is, we want that person to be rewarded."

max verstappen commented on the mclaren situation as well. which was funny mostly because red bull has one of the most defined number 1 and number 2 drivers of any team. he said "you look at it form oscar's perspective, he is closer to lando than lando to me. they have to deal with that."

and allow me to put on a tin foil hat as we are about to talk about the future of the red bull seat. because all i have to offer here is a baseball hat and a red bull can. 

a long time ago we talked about the red bull cans. the ones that red bull makes to promote f1. at the end of last season red bull put max and checo on the red bull can. this season at the start it was just max on the red bull can. well. now checo has reappeared on the cans too. and i will tell you what i think this means. it means that checo is not getting swapped this season, which was a possibility for awhile. 

but! there is more! 

daniel ricciardo made an instagram post this week. and it was very interesting. but most interestingly he was wearing a red bull hat.

which he does occasionally, no big deal really. he did race for the for several years, he technically does currently. BUT then he showed up TO THE PADDOCK wearing the red bull hat.

which is Big Interesting. usually you show up in a statement outfit or wearing the team kit. and daniel is not a red bull racing driver. he is a visa cashapp racing bulls driver. they might be owned by red bull but they are Not the same team. so why the red bull hat. in the paddock. well, the rumor is that hes taking checos seat for 2025. and the rumor is that this will be announced before mexico. so checo can have a proper send off. 

and with that. the baku lore. 

theres a lot that has happened at baku. as i said its a street circuit. and i think its the fastest street circuit. but over the years theres been some notable events. 

such as the great kimi raikkonen radio for gloves and steering wheel:

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they gave mini kimi this week gloves and steering wheel in honor of that

the max and daniel crash in 2018 when they were running p1 and p2 respectfully

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and of course. how could we forget. charles’s infamous “i am stupid” radio.

speaking of charles, he crashed again in fp1. not quite in the same spot, but nearly. he took a picture with the marshalls. 

then in fp2 he rage quit, basically saying that the car sucks. 

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but he was back and better than ever in practice three because he managed to top the time charts. welcome back fuck ass ferrari.

some other teams definitely experienced the lows but not really the highs of baku during practice. like lance stroll who came on the radio to say “this is not a car” (good thing they have adrian newey now, right? 

franco colapinto also cut his ear before practice on the neck strengthener stretcher thing that they all use and the team wanted to give him stitches but he was like no no no i need to be in the car in about 5 minutes im not doing that. so he jammed on his helmet and jumped in the car. he also crashed and when he went to the medical center he took off his helmet and there was blood everywhere and they were like no no no you cannot race! and he was like no! this is not from the crash! and then explained it and they let him do qualifying. 

also im pretty sure? ollie bearman crashed? in practice? but frankly i don't have time to google it so whos to say. 

but alas. qualifying. 

i know i know this is kind of a shitty update. i promise ill go all out in singapore. i PROMISE. 

so as i said. its a street circuit. high speed. 90 degree corners. and also windy as hell. we also had the dynamic duo of karun and harry in the commentary box. 

max led the first practice, george led the second and i think charles led the third. or some order like that. 

slipstream here is almost essential (slipstream: going behind another car to reduce the wind drag so you can go faster) 

charles has the last three pole positions (first in qualifying) here in baku, but he has never won. by comparison, red bull have never had pole here but they have won. 

and franco has never been to baku before. 

i think that's all the exposition that we need here. 

q1 started with max complaining about his car. “the car is jumping around like crazy on the rear axle” he said. despite this he was sitting in p3. 

the mid field battle though….the mid field battle was heating the hell up. mostly because none other than franco colapinto, who if you will remember, has never been to baku before, had split the two ferraris. he was in third for the moment, .109 seconds behind carlos sainz and .159 seconds ahead of charles leclerc. we still had a lot of qualifying left to go, so this was probably not going to stay, but it was still insane. he was pushing insanely hard, nearly kissing the walls. clearly he had learned from his crash in practice. 

the two mclarens waited until the very end of q1 to do their final flying push lap, and oscar made it through, but tragedy struck for lando. 

lando was in the middle of his last flying lap, time was ticking down, and there was a Very Brief yellow flag on the track. now, according to rules, you cannot complete your flying lap if there is a yellow flag. so lando pitted and was stuck down in 17th and out of qualifying. this would be the first time that he was out in q1 since vegas last year (which if i remember correctly was also not his fault) 

now though, of course nothing is ever that cut and dry. people thought that there had been a mis showing of a flag. yellow flag means that a car is stopped on track, white flag means that a car is going slowly on the track. and people thought that there had been a yellow flag shown when it was actually supposed to be a white flag (if there had been a white flag then lando would have been able to keep doing his flying lap) lando himself said that he had no idea what people were talking about because there is a light on the steering wheel that lights up when flags are called and he had a big yellow light. so it was clearly a yellow flag. 

if you're concerned about lando being able to pull it out of the bag, id like to point you in the direction of the mexican gp last year where lando qualified 17th and finished 5th. on a track that was hard to overtake on. he can be absolutely insane when he wants to be. worry not gentle reader. 

in any case. also out in q1 was daniel ricciardo, valtteri bottas, zhou guanyu and esteban ocon.

and notably, williams, who was on fucking fire this weekend as we already saw, finished q1 with alex albon in second (ahead of oscar) and franco colapinto in 8th. pierre gasly had somehow managed to also get into 4th. and nico hulkenberg was in 7th with ollie bearman in 13th. i told you the mid field battle was heating the hell up. 

q2. everyone zoomed straight out of the gate. they didn't want to get lando norris’d. but, speaking of that, if lando managed to get no points in the race and charles managed to win, charles would overtake lando in the drivers championship. mark webber himself told this to charles, who was absolutely baffled. 

in any case, charles was kinda suffering right now and that was because he was not getting slipstream from carlos to make his lap faster. meanwhile, carlos seemed to be actively trying to give charles the slipstream because he came on radio to say “he keeps missing the tow” 

and amazingly, franco colapinto was 4 tenths AHEAD of alex albon. alex albon who had not been unqualified by his teammate once since the start of 2023. ex red bull driver alex albon. that alex albon. 

max topped the times in q2, followed immediately by charles. insanely, fernando alonso managed to drag the aston martin to fifth. and franco was right behind him in 6th. by comparison alex albon was in 10th. 

and from q2 we lost ollie bearman, yuki tsunoda (who has never qualified lower than 8th in baku), pierre gasly, nico hulkenberg and lance stroll. so yes, ollie bearman managed to outqualify nico hulkenberg. this is ollies second ever f1 race. 

steaming on forward to q3. 

we had, for review, in q3 the following: 

both ferraris, both red bulls, both mercedes, both WILLIAMS (has not happened since vegas 2023), plus fernando alonso and oscar piastri. 

right out the gate it was wild. 

“red bull! theyve re found their mojo! or have they!” karun said. red bull were in 5th and 6th and not entirely sucking for the moment. 

everyone did one flyer and then came out at the end for a second flyer. 

here were the standings: 

charles, carlos, oscar, george, checo, max, lewis, alex, franco, fernando

and everyone was making it to the line and all was going smooth until-

wait a second what is that

could it be! alex albon! with the air box fan still on his car! surely not!!!

oh but it was! and harry and karun were like oh wow so unfortunate for williams tisk tisk

meanwhile ted jumped on the radio to Loudly announce to everyone that this was insane and if i have time here i will put the rant he ranted cause it was Fantastic.

and what do you know i have time

so we had 3 minutes left qualifying and everyone was pulling out of the pits for their last flyer when oscar hopped on the radio to say

"the williams still has the air box fan in"

"oh what an error! disaster for williams!" karun and harry said. they speculated if the marshalls could get it or if the session needed to be red flagged. but alex threw the fan off the car.

and then they asked "ted have you ever seen that before?" and ted did not hold back:

"ITS A MASSIVE YELLOW FAN HOW COULD YOU MISS IT???!!! HOW COULD THE MECHANICS MISS IT???? I CANT BELIVE THEY WOULD MAKE SUCH A MISTAKE DOWN AT WILLIAMS! SUCH AN EXPERIENCED BUNCH OF GUYS AND GIRLS! WHAT IS GOING ON AT WILLIAMS OPERATIONALLY? HOW COULD YOU SEND A CAR OUT LIKE THAT?"

alex, obviously, got fined for an unsafe release 5k euros. he also had to throw the fan off to the side and got slightly covered in dry ice. he did not get to the a second flying lap. 

franco did tho!

and here were out qualifying results: 

p1: charles p2: oscar p3: carlos p4: checo p5: george p6: max p7: lewis p8: fernando p9: franco p10: alex  p11: ollie p12: yuki p13: pierre p14: nico p15: lance p16: daniel  p17: lando p18: valtteri p19: zhou p20: esteban 

oh ho ho but we werent done yet. because pierre gasly got disqualified from qualifying. for failing fuel flow regulations. and lewis was going to have to start from the pit lane for changing his power unit. 

everyone, and by everyone i mean oscar max and checo, pretty much said that charles was going to get pole no matter what, they knew this coming in and the best they were trying for was second

onto the race. 

notably, this is considered a checo track. this was one of the three races that max did not win last year. because checo won it. its a track that he does well on, evidenced by the fact that he qualified above max in qualifying. so people were expecting big things from him.

and so, we head into lap 1.

charles managed to hang onto the lead. checo passed carlos straight out of the gate for third and max managed to pass george to take fifth. lando had managed to get ahead of nico and up into 13th. notably, franco held onto 8th and ollie was able to hold onto tenth. 

someone who was not doing well was lance stroll, who came on the radio saying that he had a puncture. this was from contact with yuki. lance had to pit for fresh tires and was pretty immediately thrown to the back of the grid. 

by lap 2 lando had managed to get past daniel and was in 12th, he was trying to get past yuki next, which he managed by lap 3. yuki also lost a  spot to nico. 

also slaying in the mclaren was oscar, who took fastest lap. then charles took fastest lap.

and lewis hamilton, who had started from the pit lane, was up to 16th. already. somehow. though he was displeased with the tires, sayig that “this tire is pretty bad” over the radio. 

yuki meanwhile was clearly having a problem because he had started going very very slowly. thought the pit wall said that he had no problems. this would later turn out to be false but we will indulge them for the time being. 

franco was STILL ahead of alex albon on lap 6. STILL. 

lando on lap 8 managed to push his way into points positions, overtaking ollie bearman for 10th. though this was where things were about to slow down for him because in front of him were alex, franco and fernando, who were all very close together and would be hard to get past. 

george was back in bad luck hell as a plastic bag entered his airbox. will he ever catch a break. 

on lap 11 nico hulkenberg finally caught up with ollie bearman and passed him for 11th. 

and max’s car was not working. to potentially no one’s surprise. “i have zero bite in the car” he said. and this was probably true because checo was a whole 6.5 seconds ahead of him. insane gap. 

several pit stops later that i will not detail out because we simply do not have the time, alex albon ended up in 4th and lando ended up in fifth. and oscar was about to get undercut by checo. 

“mojo seems to be back for checo perez” harry said, correctly. 

mojo was back for him indeed. and now he was right behind lando. 

and if you will recall, according to mclaren themselves, priority at mclaren is the team first, then oscar, then lando. but oscar was ahead of lando. so what did mclaren do? 

they asked lando do hold up perez, but not compromise his own race. 

remever a long time ago when i said mclaren wouldn't have any internal drama this season? man how i was wrong.

lando managed to hold up perez for around a lap or two before he got past. this was crucial because this was during when oscar was in the pits. 

thanks to lando and the power of the papaya rules teamwork, oscar ended up coming out in 4th, only .706s ahead of checo. 

mclaren are working together everyone! mclaren are working together!

meanwhile, turns out that yuki did indeed have problems because he retired on lap 17 with a hole in his sidepod from the contact with lance on lap 1. this was now two races in a row where he had had to retire for reasons out of his control. 

several more people pitted. and eventually charles was back out in front, oscar was in p2. until he wasn't. no, he didn't dnf. he overtook charles! he was in p1! he popped out of nowhere! nowhere being 2 car lengths back and just flooring it to spring around charles like a little silly slinky! karun called it a “good, fair and robust defense,” which sounds like its descibing notes in wine. but this was not wine. this was the baku gp. and we were only half done. 

ollie bearman was defending against lewis hamilton, holding on tightly to 14th place. 

charles was still behind oscar and he could not get past, despite the fact that he was still very much in spitting distance. “they are pushing like crazy or they have more grip than us” he said. 

carlos got past both lando and alex albon and was up into 4th

this brought max up behind lando. max was on 11 lap old tires and lando was on 24 lap old tires. but lando still defended like hell and managed to hold onto sixth. max was 0.632 seconds behind lando on lap 25 when he said that “my brakes are not working.” this was hardly a surprise. max has hated the car since china.

also experiencing technical difficulties was sir lewis hamilton. he was stuck down in 14th and was first told to do “everything you can do to get the surface temp down” of the tires. he said “im trying” then several laps later on lap 29 he came on the radio to say “are you seeing how i have to drive this thing?” “yes,” bono, his engineer said. “quite effective though.” 

max was still half a second behind lando. mclaren faked a pit stop call over the radio to get max to pit. he did not. 

but, george russell did manage to pass him. which was “not good for max’s world champion aspirations.”

this was also when ted very bafflingly said that “if i had a sofa in the pit lane i would be jumping up and down on it” im not sure what that was in response to. 

meanwhile, ollie was still holding off sir lewis hamilton. and charles was trying to get oscar to pit again by lying over the radio. it was not working. 

lando did a pit stop finally and came out a whole 15 second behind max. he was hoping to catch max by the end of the race. but it might be tight. lets go last lap lando. 

“lando, imagine andrea on your shoulder saying ‘zero wheel spin’ in every exit,” lando’s race engineer said. if you're confused, everyone else was too. 

10 laps to go and here were the order of affairs:

oscar

+.449s charles +1.865s checo +2.989s carlos +16.530s george  +1.909s max +11.535s lando +9.715s fernando +2.589s alex +2.451s nico +4.667s franco +1.590s lewis +1.261s ollie +1.791s pierre +9.205s daniel +23.919s esteban  +.789s lance +3.862s valtteri +3.631s guanyu 

lando was determined. he took fastest lap on lap 43 and was 8.8s behind max

at this point, the leaders were starting to lap the cars in the back. “the back markers are starting to come up,” checo’s engineer said to him. “its going to get messy.”

“hold onto your hats and if you don't have one go get one and hold onto it” harry said. harry would turn out to be correct. 

we had the top 3 all running very close to eachother, that was oscar, charles and checo and “welcome to the party carlos sainz!” who was now 1.2 seconds behind checo in the four way battle for the lead.

definitely not leading was lance stroll, who retired on lap 47 with a brake problem. 

oscar managed to pull ahead of charles by 1.5 seconds, finally knocking him out of DRS range. so now it was a three way battle for second. and charles had “no rear tires. no rear tires at all.” 

and, just like i said he would, lando managed to pass max on lap 49. he was closing the gap slowly in the championship. 

“verstappen’s day goes from bad to worse,” harry said. because lando still had fastest lap, so he would score 3 more points than max. which is important if lando wants to beat max in the championship (though i think hes still like 60 points behind)

meanwhile! franco managed to pass nico hulkenberg for 10th! he was in the points!!!! at his second race!!! 

but this was short lived because there was a crash! a big smackeroo! between carlos and checo!! checo was mad, carlos didn't know what happened. 

what happened was that carlos was trying to pass checo but checo did not move over. it was deemed an equal fault accident. both of them were utterly confused at what happened and apparently spent 20 minutes in the medical center being utterly lost and aparently saying that sometimes this sport sucks. and! contrary to what several people said! checo did not bang on carlos’s helmet after the crash. 

the crash actually caused chef's dad to have a heart attack. he is stable now.

and well. this clip of george from the post qualifying interviews definitely didnt age well:

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but! since we were a matter of a few laps from the end, this meant that the rest of the race was finished under a virtual safety car. 

which meant 

OSCAR PIASTRI WINS THE AZERBAIJAN GP

and george inherited p3! 

and on his own merit too! no safety cars, no team orders, no weird shit! 

“yes!” he whispered over the radio. 

he almost fell getting out of the car, then gave us all the “one moment” hand gesture before properly celebrating. 

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he also got driver of the day! 

(this was marginally better than george russell, who said over the radio “i cant get any rubber (to pick up on his tires) all im getting is leaves”)

gunther steiner also hosted the post race interviews. which was interesting. 

george said that the most difficult part of the race was “driving full gas into a wall of carbon fiber on the penultimate lap…the vsc should have come out sooner” 

charles bashed ferrari because they didn't do any high fuel runs in practice. 

oscar was entirely pleased. “i managed to overtake and hold onto it for the next 35 laps..one of the better races of my career.” and honestly, oscar winning a race straight after mclaren basically announcing that he was their number 2 driver is nothing short of hilarious.

and! mclaren was now leading the constructors championship by 20 points! for the first time in ten years!!!!

the top three had a moment outside of the car that was filled with baffled: 

and oscar's engineer tom got to stand on the podium with him. he usually takes a selfie with oscar after each race he podiums at, but he was too excited to so george took this picture for them

(george also aparently demomished oscar in a game of uno on the plane, immediately humbling him)

george also shielded himself from the champagne on the podium

the cooldown room reacted to the crash in a very straight forward manner:

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and very quickly cause its midnight and the singapore gp starts in 8 hours, the post race, speed ran: 

-mark webber told off laura winter for thinking that oscar didn't have good tire management

-alex albon was “super happy, that's a lot of points for us” (williams finished in 7th and 8th). he cut his own interview short when ollie bearman arrived, saying “I can go, im happy to go” and then waving comically. 

-williams was so pleased with this result they blasted everyone with champagne. and they overtook alpine in the constructors championship! this was also their best race finish all season

-(and a quick note, if youre going to really blame logan for being that shit of a driver here, please remember that the car he was driving was several rounds of upgrades behind alex's pretty much the entire time he was driving it)

-ollie became the first driver to ever score points in his first two races for two different constructors because the double dnf pushed him up to 10th place. he said that there was not much difference between the haas and the ferrari, the ferrari was just red

-franco continued to charm everyone and flirt with the reporters. 

-they interviewed george and lewis and the camera had to be adjusted for george's height. it was comical and resulted in my favorite edit so far of the season (sound on)

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-lando looked pleased and happy for once. he said about holding off checo that “i didn't hold him up i just had to cool my tires a little.” he was delighted to be leading the constructors for the first time in ten years and he defended alex albon saying “i struggled to get past alex for a while, which is common, alex doesnt make mistakes.” he also ratted on max for going to fast during the VSC and said “i didn't complain, facts were stated.” and to sum it all up he said that “im executing things well, i’m very quick…i’m not going to be the happiest guy, but i am never the happiest guy….car is performing well everywhere…some red cars behind us seem to be our biggest competitors right now” 

-by comparison george insulted all of pirelli. the tire people. “pretty infuriating that it (the pace) changes this so much….its black magic, people who make the tires don't understand the tires…..for 20 laps we had a car not worthy of points and for 20 laps we had a car fighting for victory and the only difference is the tires.” 

-lewis was notably upset after the race and walked through the paddock with his helmet on, not wanting to talk to anyone. but he did talk to franco and ollie and congratulate them on a job well done defending against him and racing against him. franco even fangirled over this on his instagram. 

-charles was clearly upset with ferrari. he was so upset he posted a thirst trap.

-and oscar. oscar was very happy this afternoon. and his mom was there! she doesnt usually come cause it scares her, but nicole was there today! 

-mclaren celebrated with a hell of a lot of champagne. both oscar’s wina and lando’s insane recovery, and the fact that they were leading the championship. red bull have been dethroned, at least for now. 

-there was so much champagne that lando took off his socks to spray it. all seems well at mclaren. 

-at least one thing is for sure, oscar had a better time here this weekend than last year when he got food poisoning and only ate four pieces of toast

and with that. we head into singapore. quite literally as it is starting in a few hours. again, i apologixe about this post. its a little sad, but the next one will be better. pinkly promise. 

see you all soon!!!

[leviathanxprincess]

Introducing the Gehenna Devils to Your Plushies - Pt. 1

The Gehenna Devils deciding to show up to your room for sex end up getting met with you deciding to sit down and show them all your plushies!!

I've decided to split Gehenna into two parts for my mental sake.

Notes: mildly sexual content, nothing to crazy. Gender neutral reader! This part includes: Sitri, Amy, Paimon, & Leraye!

Satan and the other Kings found here !

Sitri

Honestly, he'll hold back on sex for as long as you wanna talk for.

He listens intently, hanging on to your every word. He's taking notes in his head, jotting down names, any lore you have if you do.

Your the most important person to him after, so every word you have to say is equally important!

He adores being one of the only ones allowed to see this side of you as well.

He has such a soft, endeared smile on his face as he listens to you talk.

Even if you spend hours talking he doesn't mind! He'll let it happen.

Of course, the fact he was here for sex doesn't change, that's always in the back of his head.

And by the time you're done talking he's practically smothering you in affection anyway because of how adorable you are! So of course that leads exactly how you think it will.

And if you just happen to get flustered by said affection, well then that's even better for him! Your heart rate does increase then, after all.

Amy

He's gonna be kinda blunt about it I think. You start talking about your plushies and he's just like "Okay but I'm here to fuck."

You can give it to him right away, or you could make him wait and keep talking! It's more fun if you go that route.

Tell him he's being too impatient and he can wait a bit!! And then just go on and on and on until he can't take it anymore.

He's annoyed, but most importantly, it's kinda turning him on more.

On the other hand, he also can't deny you're cute like this.

I feel like he's the type to get cuteness aggression.

He's gonna try and start grabbing your cheeks and biting you, once again you could give in. But you could also swat him off and force him to wait longer.

If you really wanna make it worse on him through a little comment his away about how he's acting, a little degrading if you want.

Honestly with the amount of teasing you do to him and how long you make him wait, he's not retaining a single damn piece of information about those plushies.

Be careful your next steps, if you don't stay in control of the situation once you actually allow him to fuck you (which won't be hard if you're trying to dom him), he will take it back. And he's not gonna be the nicest given how frustrated he is lol.

Paimon

Oh my goodness, you're the cutest thing to him right now!!!

He's practically covering you in kisses, all giggly watching you talk!

He's bound to have a few plushies himself, he'll be sure to show them to you later.

Right now though, he's letting you do your thing. You won't succeed on telling him about every single one in one setting, but he'll listen to however many he can.

Unfortunately you won't be able to talk the more he gets worked up.

He's just thinks you're so adorable!! Eventually he's gonna snap and just start squishing and pinching your cheeks!!!

He can't control himself! He's throwing so many compliments at you and not letting go of your face and giving you kisses!!! Your head is gonna start spinning at the rate he's going.

Of course this leads back to the original reason he was here.

I wouldn't be surprised he gets cuteness aggression too lol.

So prepare for that!!! If your covered in bites after don't even be surprised.

Leraye

Hey, he has a lot of plushies too!!!

Well, they're all headless. But it's fine!!!! He cherishes them a lot still!!! Mostly because Satan was involved in the being headless part but still !!!

I think he'd be so interested in listening he'd completely forget the original reason he was here for.

I don't know how much he remembers, but he at least knows their names!!!

Honestly I think he just likes hearing you talk. Doesn't matter about what! If you're happy than he's content!!!

By the time you're done, he's just wrapping you in his arms and giving you kisses!

Like I said, he kinda forgot about sex.

It'll come back to him at some point during him kissing and cuddling you. Probably.

Definitely will if it someone starts thundering at least?

Worst comes to worst just ask him what he was here for then you're back on track! And well, maybe turn your plushies around so they won't have to witness what follows.

[ilyrafe]

𝒏𝒐𝒕 𝒚𝒆𝒕 ✧ 𝒅. 𝒔.

pairing: drew starkey x f!reader

warnings: miscarriage but its so fluffy yall :((

word count: 1.2k

a/n: this is so shitty y’all i’m sorry djfjdk

pls he looks so cute here

when you said you wanted him to enjoy the moment with his family, he thought it was strange, but he didn’t argue. you’ve always understood how close he is to his family, and this moment in his career is important, you want him to celebrate with his parents, siblings, and closest friends.

you’ve only been together for a short time, and you’re not close enough to his family to be at family gatherings, you don’t want to make anyone uncomfortable.

“we can celebrate later, just you and me.” you said, sealing your promise with a kiss, before you left his apartment, three days ago.

drew found it strange, but he thought you were just giving him space, which he appreciated. after a lot of family celebration, he went to your place, ready to spend at least a whole weekend, which you loved. there’s so much to talk about.

when you think about it, you didn’t think this thing with drew would go as far as it has been, because his schedule is chaotic and so is yours. when you first met, he was about to go to morocco to shoot outer banks, but he kept texting, calling.

“i know this is kinda all over the place right now, but i wanna see where this is going. do you?”

“i do.”

and that was it. you knew then and there, with only three weeks of dating (online dating for the most part), that you were in love. he’s so sweet, and so silly, too. somehow, you trust him. after being let down so many times, he’s made you feel safe from day one.

you’re not scared to tell him.

you’re on your bed, just waiting for him to get out of the shower. you’re barely paying attention to the tv, you’re just mindlessly scrolling through reels on your instagram, just waiting.

he comes out, shirtless, with damp hair and wearing the sluttiest thing a man can wear - black boxers that fit him just right. he’s such a beautiful man.

“d’you wanna take a picture?” he jokes when he catches you staring.

“you do it on purpose, don’t you?”

“of course i do.”

he gets under the covers and immediately latches onto you, resting his head on your chest. all he really wants is to feel you near him. it turns out, he wanted you with his family. he wanted you there, he wanted to properly introduce you to his loved ones, but maybe you’re not ready and he’ll give you all the time you need.

“i’ve missed you so much,” he says, his voice muffled by your skin.

you smell like french vanilla, and he loves that scent on you. he delights himself in your touch, when your nails lightly scratch his scalp and the nape of his neck.

“i’ve missed you, too. very much.”

he smiles against your skin and takes a long, deep breath, finally allowing his body to relax.

“um… so, i was kind of wanting to talk to you.” you say, trying to sound calm. well, you are calm, but you are also just a tad nervous.

he sits up, no longer relaxed.

“what is it?”

you sigh, look down and extend your hands, as a silent request for his. drew understands and places his hands on yours. your face is serene, but he can tell something is wrong.

“babe, tell me. i knew something was wrong, you were too distant these last couple of weeks.”

you chuckle - you can’t hide anything from this man.

“i’m gonna preface it by saying that i am okay, i am fine, but something did happen, and i’ve debated whether or not i should tell you, and i thought that you deserve to know.”

“you’re scaring me.”

“no, please, it’s… it’s okay. just let me say it all first and then you can speak, okay?” drew doesn’t respond, but you take his silence as a nod. “so, a few weeks ago, i was taking a shower and felt a weird abdominal pain, and then there was blood. i wasn’t on my period, so i got a bit scared and went to the hospital. i had a few tests done and found out… um…” you trail off, because this is surprisingly hard to talk about. he lightly squeezes your hands, encouraging you to keep going. “i had a miscarriage.”

oh.

wait.

what?

“a miscarriage?”

“i didn’t know. the doctor explained that it was common for women to have a miscarriage before even knowing they were pregnant.”

drew is quiet, absorbing the whole information. you were pregnant, and didn’t even know it. you had a miscarriage and he wasn’t there for you.

“why didn’t you tell me? i would’ve taken the first flight back to be here with you.”

“i know you would, that’s why i didn’t.” you explain, kissing the back of his hand right after. “also, i needed to figure it out by myself first. i was shocked to learn through a miscarriage that i was pregnant. it was a lot to process.”

“i can’t even imagine. but… how are you now?”

“i’m okay, i promise. i have one last appointment next week.”

“i’ll go with you.”

“okay. that’d be great, actually.”

he sighs, a bit relieved. at least you’re okay.

“i thought you should know because, well, i was pregnant. and if nothing had happened, i would still be pregnant, and i know it’s early, we haven’t talked about these things and i’m not pressuring you to do or say anything, but i still wanted you to know. felt really wrong to keep this from you.”

“no, you did the right thing.” he says, kissing the back of your hand. “i’m just sorry you went through all of this alone.”

“it’s okay, though. i wanted you to be the first person to know. and maybe the only one. i don’t think we should tell anyone else about this. like, it’d be just… pointless.”

“right. but, uh, if you do want to talk about kids, we can.”

“oh?”

“i mean… i’ve thought about it.” he admits. “i’m the eldest of the family, my mom has already started asking me for grandbabies, she says liliana needs a cousin.” you giggle. “but at the same time, the life i live today wouldn’t be possible with a kid, if i’m honest. i barely have time to sleep, let alone raise a child, and if i’m meant to have kids, i want to be there.”

“when i would think about children, i thought about pregnancy and how i needed to avoid it like the plague during my teenage years,” you laugh. “even when some of my friends got pregnant, i never really saw myself in their position, you know? i guess it wasn’t a priority for me, and still isn’t, but… i’m not ruling it out.”

“i’m not either.”

“so… there’s that.” you shrug, relieved that it all went well. “thank you for listening, i was a bit nervous.”

he nods, completely enchanted by you. he wishes he could navigate difficult topics the way you do. so natural, so easy. you seem to have your shit together and he’s so jealous of that.

“you can always tell me anything.”

“i know.”

“if something like this happens again, tell me. i don’t want you to go through anything bad alone ever again, okay?”

you nod, letting him hug you. oh, you love him.

“we’ll have plenty of time to talk about it and other stuff, too.”

i love feedback! let me know what you think!

[lavellaned]

Actually I think one of the reasons why this game is so awful to get through is how it treats abuse, abusers, and abuse victims.

Under cut due to length of rambling:

First of all, Morrigan. Abused as a child by her mother, Flemeth aka Mythal, learned about the world and how to interact with it in a skewed way. Was treated in a way that no child should be by anyone let alone their parent.

Fast forward to Inquisition, particularly a worldstate in which Kieran is alive. The scene in the fade where Morrigan confronts Flemythal is one of the most important and special scenes in all of dragon age to me.

Growing up through abuse as a child you never think "I don't deserve this", you mainly think things like "Why is this happening to me?" and "Bad things happen to me." You know that these things are bad and make you feel bad, but when your baseline for how you should experience the world is abusive, you don't have the point of reference to think otherwise. And then you grow up. You look back on the abuse through the eyes of the child who experienced it but also through the detached, adult view that you currently have and have to reconcile the two. It's not easier nor pleasant. Getting to the age your abuser was/getting into the position of power your abuser had over you is difficult. Being at that stage and picturing yourself doing what was done to you to someone else is fucking sickening, and then you start to realize "I wasn't the problem, it WASN'T my fault, YOU are the one that's fucked up." But a lot of people can't and therefore the cycle of abuse continues.

But Morrigan does. She straight up tells her abuser "I will not be the mother you were to me." To have a character who survived childhood abuse be able to reach a point in their life where they can take back their personhood from their abuser is pretty damn important, actually. To this day I get weepy just thinking about it.

And then fucking veilguard happened.

Not only does it not matter if Kieran is alive or if Morrigan drank from the well (something that would BIND HER SPIRIT TO HER ABUSER), but Morrigan straight up let Mythal hitch a ride in her. The very thing that Morrigan tried to prevent ever since the first goddamn game? And we're all just supposed to accept and be ok with this?

The only way I can see this not being a complete character assassination of Morrigan is if Mythal just straight up possessed her unwillingly/killed her. Have Mythal use Morrigan as a information receptacle for new players, but also use old players' already-implemented relationship with her as a way to manipulate them. Either way, shit sucks.

Then there's the Crows. You know, the guild who takes children from brothels, orphanages, the streets and puts them through Hunger Games levels of training in which they either die or survive to become a slave assassin for the rest of their life. Not in veilguard. We're all just one big happy family. We rule Antiva, yippee!

Finally, there's Solas. One could argue his entire existence is the product of abuse, and everything that has happened in Thedas is because of it. I think framing his regrets as physical manifestations that want to kill him is a really interesting narrative choice. Unlocking the regret murals was one of the very few parts of this game that invoked a strong emotional response from me, not just because I'm an unapologetic Solas Enjoyer but because the implications are heartbreaking.

And then the game has you sit through the most fucking unbearable CBT group therapy session to talk about them with some of the most annoying damn people in Thedas who treat the literal apocalyptic levels of abuse Solas went through for millennia as something like a joke? And we the player are not given the option to challenge this? This game makes the point to force the player to agree with the flippant attitudes brought up from this.

Then brings up the final scene with Solas. Do I think the meeting with Mythal and Solas was handled well? Yes and no, but that's for another time. Solas is so far in the trenches of the trauma of abuse that he will not stop until his abuser pretty much tells him "I'm done abusing you." I think this was good and bad, again another time.

The way Solas interacts with his abuser is the direct flipside of how Morrigan does. You see more than one way someone can heal/not heal from it.

Morrigan, someone with arguable little power in the world, stands up against her abuser unflinchingly.

Solas, described through history as a GOD, someone with unfathomable amounts of knowledge and power, cowers and offers his abuser a literal weapon to kill him with, unprompted.

If this was a good game, it would be about regret but also about survivor's guilt, something that those who survived abuse have to deal with for the rest of their lives. But it's not, because it's a a bad game.

[wolftarotcrafts]

Hope you enjoy this short tarot reading.❤️

Pile One

TW: Family issues and abuse (I'm not getting anything too serious, but I just wanted people to be warned and not blindsided if something in a way resonates with those topics.)

Hello, pile one, your spirit guides want you to know that it's okay to speak up and use your voice. Communication is important, and it is your key to success. I see you are at war with yourselves and others. I see that some of you are struggling to speak up about something revolving around your past. This could be something revolving around your childhood, or if you have kids, this could be talking about them. I think you are the one holding yourself back talking about a situation or something that's been bothering you. I think this has to do with your home life, like past grievances with family that have never been resolved, but people just pretend like it isn't happening or happened; possibly you are not proud of your actions when you were younger, someone hurt you in some kind of way, or you could be dealing with a custody battle. You could be struggling with a person. Whatever it may be, your guides want you to speak up and use your voice, because you shouldn't have to keep quiet to make others happy because this will only keep you trapped, and others' happiness should not always be put on you, nor should it matter more than your happiness. You should have to make people's lives easier and, in turn, make yours harder. You need to have courage and remember that your guides and the people that love you will be there to support you every step of the way. So, whatever has been weighing on your heart and mind, it's time to let it out and speak. The truth will set you free.

Extra: She Used To Be Mine by Sara Bareilles, 4, 9, 15, 16, 40, 444, 777, "Everything will be okay," pain, trapped, chained up, worried, anxiety, clarity and truth, family, children, August, February, Gemini, Taurus, Aries, B, I, P, R, snakes, purse or bag, scorpion, claws, therapy, crying, Cinderella.

Pile Two

Hello, Pile two. I think that your guides want you to know that you are going to level up. What I mean by that is, some of you may start taking your spiritual and religious practices to the next phase. You are getting more serious about your practice. An example being you may stop just reading books on deities and may try to start communicating with one in particular. For others of you, I see you leveling up in your career or studies. I see some of you may be in law school, and you specifically are going to level up in your studies, but there is also an importance of leveling up in your self-care. I see many of you getting a promotion and getting in a higher position at work, like a supervisor or manager, something with authority. They want you to know that all these good things are going to happen to you because you deserve it and because of the hard work you put in. You should be proud of yourself. 

Extra: Put Your Records On by Ritt Momney, 2, 4, 16, 18, 33, 42, 888, Libra, Aries, Sagittarius, Taurus, Capricorn, earth signs, D, C, Level up, spiritual, religion, win, promotion, money, law school, hardworking, fighter, "keep going.".

Pile Three

Hi pile three. I see that you have been struggling with your finances and career. You have been fighting this battle, and don't worry because the end of the battle is near. I see you are going to come out on top, and, very clearly, your guides are cheering you on and encouraging you not to give up since you are on your last stretch. You are heading for a calmer state of mind. Your hard work is going to be paying off very soon. They just want you to know to keep going and don't give up because they got your back. 

Extra: Wishbone, smiley face, anchor, K, A, R, The caduceus, medical field, snake, love life might start improving too. War is over. I might have picked pile two as well. 

I also have paid readings available here. ❤️

[reboundttv]

Here's a Bunch of Words Expressing Frustration with Online People Part 2 I Guess? Arcane.

(Part 1 was about reactions to Wonder Woman #14, but that was on Twitter and it's gone now.)

It's been long enough. People who haven't seen it have successfully avoided spoilers. SO. Let's talk about the CaitVi sex scene.

Because there are a LOT of opinions about how it was handled, how it was written, etc. And I've seen a lot of...basically, Purity Culture, over how they never worked out their feelings, and Caitlyn never had to answer for trying to kill Jinx, or getting Vi to become an Enforcer or hitting her in Ep.3 or the dictatorship or the fascism or-

Here's the thing: Neither Caitlyn nor Vi know what's going to happen. They don't know tomorrow. They don't even know six hours from now.

We don't need a bunch of preceding episodes where somehow they have the time to get psychoanalyzed on-screen so that when they're finally intimate it's completely moral and unproblematic.

Arcane was never about being unproblematic. It was a show about broken people doing horrible things for selfish reasons, for better and for worse. Singed LITERALLY TELLS YOU AS MUCH (Season 2 Episode 5):

Caitlyn: "Why? Why do all this?" Singed: "Why does anyone commit acts others deem unspeakable? For love."

For context, he wants to conquer death so that he can save his daughter. And look at how it's worded. "acts others deem unspeakable." The awful things he's doing, he's rationalized them as necessary so that he can accomplish his goals. Whether it's him, or Viktor, Jayce, Caitlyn, Vi, Jinx... ALL of the characters in Arcane are like that. No one in this show was perfect. Far from it, actually.

And in that scene, Caitlyn and Vi are two broken, messed-up people. Their whole worlds have been upended. Vi believes that she's lost everything and everyone important to her, and that it is of her own doing. Caitlyn is questioning the only thing that's ever made sense in her life: her duty to Piltover and how that's run up against her own morals and how she has changed to accommodate them, rather than stayed true. Caitlyn also has guilt over being intimate with Maddie. (fuck maddie all my homies hate maddie)

And the only thing they have, in that moment, is each other. The only kind of, sort of constant in their lives. Is it perfect and unproblematic? No. Is it healthy? Arguably not. The scene is messy, and clumsy, and for fuck sake they're having sex in a prison cell.

But are those the things that actually matter? Is that the story that's trying to be told? NO. No, it is not. Broken people, just trying to make sense of what's going on around them. Trying to find others to hold on to, to anchor themselves. Find that closeness and intimacy, and even if it doesn't work out the way they want, they'll still have each other.

[lipstickchainsaw]

Things I would've liked to see in Arcane S2, in no particular order:

Caitlyn doing some more heinous shit after becoming dictator. Let her be evil, damnit! Let her fuck up the Firelights' sanctuary to achieve whatever goal! Make some people mad!

More of a sense of the power struggle between Ambessa and Caitlyn. Let Caitlyn look into the disappearances as well, or at least give us a sense of what she thinks is going on. Maybe give Shoola something to do after even Salo left. Make the upper class of Piltover feel more alive.

Give Caitlyn the initiative in her turn away from Ambessa, mirror Vi choosing to trust Jinx while facing to Warwick here, and have it take a little more to get them on the same page.

Let Ekko and Jinx actually rally Zaun in the final act. The way they're seen by their people was a pretty big deal, and I would've liked to see that go somewhere in the climax.

Actually, have Zaun actually discuss what to do in the Noxus/Piltover war. Both sides oppressed Zaun pretty badly, so maybe there's some people who want to support Noxus (a very small group), or who figure they're happy to let their enemies fight it out. Let Sevika, Scar and the Jinxers about this.

Hell, let Sevika show up at all after episode 4! Isha was important to her too! Have her and Jinx suggest building a statue for her, like Silco did for Vander, as another notch to help Jinx stand upright.

When Jayce and Mel come back, have them reckon with what Caitlyn did to their city, and have them take some time to forge the place back together.

Let Zaun negotiate with Piltover for their aid! Give them more than just one seat on the council amongst people who already look down on them (although I think Sevika is canny enough to get the most out of it, it's a real consolation price for a group of people willing to abandon their own homies to rally to the defense of yours), and make Ekko a prominent voice here.

Warwick in episode 9 didn't really do much for me. Any of the emotional beats there were already covered in episode 6. Not sure what to do with him instead, though. Maybe make Vi and Jinx protect others from him more explicitly?

By emphasising the Piltover/Zaun conflict more, you can have Vi be more conflicted about where she falls on that divide.

Ambessa also lobbies to get Zaun on board, maybe pulls some Renni shenanigans again. Actually get me invested in that grand climax.

Same goes for Viktor, honestly. Maybe give his conversation with Mel and Jayce a bit more weight. His turn to Ambessa and Singed's side is a bit abrupt (and also very much caused by Jayce killing him, so his moral high ground in that conversation is a bit weird).

Don't make Jayce talk shit about Viktor's terminal illness, goddamnit. Heimerdinger's whole arc was about how corrosive that attitude was, and the conclusion of it was that you can't sit down on your laurels because change will keep happening with or without you. I think that makes for a much more compelling argument against Viktor's philosophy at this point.

No notes on Singed. What a ledge.

Overall, I think the show needed a bit more breathing room to build up to the level the climax was operating on. It left a bit too much of what I cared about behind to get there, and adding an act could've been a way to alleviate some of that.

[derpydoteddrake]

Viktor is under some kind of influence, but at first glance it's hard to tell the exact nature of it.

But I believe its more simple than one would think.

The core is basically jingling keys in front of him and telling him to look at them.

But I believe its more simple than one would think.

The core is basically jingling keys in front of him and telling him to look at them.

Firstly, why is the sky hallucination sus? could it just be his own mind?

Her guiding him to her book and later showing up next to the shimmer addict could be explained as just his conscious.

However, he also woke up to her screams and it was her voice that guided him to the addicts, both things go beyond what could manifest only from his own perception of things.

Not only that, this is the exact place where he later cocoons himself again. So it's no accident he ended up here.

It's also good to note how Viktors saw her differently then how she was, he sees him as a more idolised version of herself, which is als a good indication that she is not real.

But then in act 2 she appeals completely harmless, she doesn't push him into anything, and it looks like she offers some sense of emotional support.

And that's the point, it's feeding into viktors weaknesses as a person, all it needs to do, is give him the illusion of company, and keep him in his head.

Viktor was always a loner, but he also seeked out second opinions and he was in fact very lonely and wished for company.

This is exactly what the core is giving him the illusion of. A second opinion and company.

By herself “sky” does not offer any new information to viktor, she is either stathing things he is already aware of, things viktor thinks she would say, or reassures him.

“She liked me, she would be concerned about me!”

“I remember telling her that once!”

“She was caring, she would be upset at someone's death!”

In fact, it might even try to distract him from the important things, we don't see a lot of it, but the moment Viktor starts to wonder what's up with Jayce, she attempts to move his thoughts elsewhere from thinking about what is wrong with him.

Viktors perception of the world is fundamentally changed, this is already pretty isolating but now he has a mind buddy! He's Not alone anymore, there's someone who talks to him, who cares about him, who he can share ideas with,

someone who loves him.

I'm going to concede, I do think their relationship has a romantic undertone, if for nothing else it's because viktors perception of sky is pretty heavily defined by her love letters to him.

Regardless of your reading (how much do you think he reciprocates that), it is giving him the company he wished for.

Why is that bad?

It's because it keeps him docile, and so far up his own 4ss that he doesn't realise how messed up what he is actually doing is. He is stuck with his own regurgitated thoughts.

The only thing he ever gets is reassurance that what he is doing is in fact good, he doesn't have an outside perspective on what's happening with him or around him.

He doesn't have the head space to self reflect cuz something always chimes in, always keeps him thinking, solving problems, solving puzzles.

We never once saw him actively trying to talk to any of his followers, the only people who he does are not affected by him, and come to him directly, he didn't even bother seeking out Jayce himself.

The only way he communicates with them is when he wants to do his creepy puppet thing and if the only thing left in his followers head is gratitude towards him and he never examines what it did to them as people, no wonder he doesn't notice a thing.

He just unquestionably spreads the core's influence.

No wonder the first awful idea anyone gave him in who knows how long that isn't his own stuck with him.

He always had a tendency to get sucked into his work and dont bother with people (ironically that is one of the reasons sky got dusted) and don't bother with anything else, and now the conditions are orchestrated for this to basically keep him in his own head.

He doesn't really care about his followers either, he watched one of them get smashed and didn't give a damn.

He doesn't care for them as people, they are more akin to problems he can solve and move on. He was barely even bothered about Jayce's condition, probably assuming he will come to him and he can fix him right away.

We can see this in his visions of how he conceptualizes himself, he looks very human, and yet he got these unsettling yellow eyes. He is blind to the ways he changed, just look at how he acts in them.

At first glance he appears a lot more emotive and it also tells us that he is fairly enjoying himself and his new perception of the world but also the main thing we see of him is his endless curiosity about things, not his empathy towards them.

He is well meaning of course, but he doesn't/cant reflect enough to see what he is really doing. Namely taking away the things he saw in these people, their dreams.

And he constantly has problems to solve, we saw how many people went to him, he always has something to think about, and he always has someone to talk to about it without needing to waste precious time on seeking out a second opinion.

In s1 he barely reacted to the beginning of a civil war going around him, now people depend on him and in the middle of a civil war he doesn't have any way of protecting these people.

He barely gives a damn about him slowly deteriorating. He doesn't live in reality anymore. He cannot see the forest for the trees. (though he might have had some plans we don't know of, since Salo was gathering materials for him.)

And his guilt just amplifies this.

From s1 one of his strongest traits was how much he believed if he gets the right tools, and the opportunity, he can help people.

“Do you think my life ambition is to be an assistant?”

“If you are going to change the world don't ask for permission.”

“All I did was believe in myself.”

This is what skys death puts into question.

This is why he almost jumped afterwards, this fundamental belief in himself was put into question. He got the chance to do what he wanted and someone died.

This is where his guilt comes into play, he isn't making his own dream a reality, we saw that what he really wanted is to give people tools that they can use to create, but that's not what he is doing.

He is doing what he believes Skye's dream was.

It doesn't even look like he invents things anymore, he just mostly uses his powers and studies botanics. (tho we saw Salo steal some stuff for him so he might have some plans that we don't know yet?)

This is even the context he brought her up to jayce: she had such dreams.

From her notes we can assume she hoped to help make a zaun that is cleaner and more connected to nature.

This is the reason why he is so receptive to skyes positive affirmation, its because in his head he is correcting his wrong, her affirmation and forgiveness gave him back the belief that he can still do good.

Now he has the right tools and the opportunity to do it, so he won't fail again.

He is literally wearing her symbol on his clothes.

He is doing this out of some kind of repentance for his sins.

So the way he sees it: he is helping these people, who on they own free will just happen to stay here cuz its nice and he conveniently can puppet them if needed, he doesn't question that cuz he never bothers to talk to them and skys happy and she talks to him so why bother when no one sees the world like he does.

What he doesn't realise is that he is pretty much meant to die there.

There's a reason why his palace was builded here, he literally got told to build it there. It was there so he could die and cocoon himself again.

When he first saw jayce and encountered the singularity, he was literally describing himself.

“self annihilating and replicating” That's him, this entity is connected to him, he is meant to die and be reborn over and over again. He might not completely embody it yet, but he is a product of it. (and he will probably gonna try to harness it, that's what the beginning of ep 6 set up.)

I don't think he expected jayce to shoot him, when he saw what he was going to do he looked pretty shocked, but he was intentionally kept docile by the core basically guaranteeing that even actually he will die out.

And then he had the audacity to conclude it must have happened cuz people just suck.

He tried nothing to prevent this and he is already out of options.

To his defense he was probably really lost in the sauce at this point.

This is also why he was making his following, he was supposed to draw power from them after he dies so he can be reborn again.

This also means that singed and ambessa are probably interfering with this process.

It would explain why he looks so wrong in the poster.

In conclusion, the core keeps Viktor in a mind state where he is docile enough not to question what's happening around him using his already existing flaws against him in order to spread itself.

One last thing I would like to add is that I don't think this will be his final transformation, I believe the final one will either happen at the top of the hex gate or at the bottom of it.

[autumnhobbit]

Genuinely think half the problem here is a lot of parents are not in a place themselves where they can teach their kids how to recognize when something is good, and how to handle the intricacies of emotions, attraction, and decency while navigating social relationships with other people.

When I was growing up, the way adults talked about relationships, both amidst themselves and directly to me, gave me the idea that marriage just sort of happened, like it was something you tripped into without conscious choice and were now stuck with. This led to a conclusion by me that any male I met could possibly be my future husband, which colored every interaction with stress and awkwardness and fear and kept me from actually being normal around other kids, because I had artificially inserted this importance into interactions that should have just been. Well. Interactions.

Looking back on it now, I can see that every single crush I had had absolutely nothing to do with looking at another person objectively, judging their character and decency, or even seeing if I liked them; if they made me feel safe, or engaged, or reinvigorated. I only had crushes on boys who I found cute or attractive. None of those necessary thoughts ever went into it, and none of the boys even liked or noticed me. Maybe one or two of them were actually people I liked and talked to. Hindsight also helps me see that when a guy was interested in me or had a crush on me, I was oblivious to it and was incredibly uncomfortable, because we were all kids and didn’t know how to talk or act and it just came off like them showing off around me or trying to talk to me when I didn’t know them, which led to avoidance on my part.

My husband was the first guy I ever met whom I actually liked and was interested in, and he was the first one who actually seemed openly interested in me. When I daydreamed about marriage as a kid, the only thing I thought about was a boy liking me. I never thought about what I would like about him, just about being appreciated and valued myself. Selfish, right? But I was emotionally neglected and it came out as desperately longing to be important to someone. And then when I found it, I realized it naturally came with a reciprocal effect on me. I do find my husband fascinating and comforting and I enjoy his company, I want to do things with him, experience new things with him, build a life with him. That couldn’t have happened if I dismissed him right away because I wanted to avoid the awkwardness of getting to know him.

I am aware we got incredibly lucky with each other, and I’m grateful for it. But what we have also took work that we both consciously chose to do. We had the guidelines of knowing that premarital sex wasn’t an option for us, and that certainly helped. But it’s tragic to think how many people could build happiness with someone if they could just let go of their fantasies and expectations long enough to see what’s really there and what could be if there’s mutual effort. But how could they? No one taught them, because no one knew how themselves. So many families of origin weren’t formed by conscious choice but by natural consequences of behavior, even if your parents are decently healthy and love you, they might well have no clue how to navigate relationships with others.

trads who use the term "courtship" are an immediate red flag to me

[idontlikeem]

hi! i'd like to talk about losing. you don't have to read this if you don't want to, but i wanted to write it, and guess what, it's my blog. i just like this team a lot and i'm feeling a little maudlin about my guys and a little sick to fucking death of the shit i'm seeing all over kingdom come from 'fans'. so here we are.

So You Became A Fan Of A Living Legend But The Hockey Team Is Bad: a commentary.

look. this is not the most fun i've ever had watching hockey, and i'm quite sure a lot of people feel the same way. the penguins are bad this season! they were bad last season too, but there's something very special about the extent to which they are shit right now. and those are not fun games to watch.

but here's the thing: who cares.

like, idk. there's so much god damn negativity surrounding this team and its performance right now, and i'm guilty of contributing to it as well, because yeah of course i'd rather watch a team win in decisive fashion most nights. of course i'd rather dream about may and june and the stanley cup. of course i want to watch that happen again for my favorite players. like, duh.

but. it's probably not going to. not if these players get what they want, which is to play together on this team until they're ready to retire.

and you know what? that's fine. if they're fine with it, who on earth am i to not be?

i think we all have the same reaction when we see idiots online saying things like 'sid doesn't deserve this trade him to a contender'. and that's because we are smarter and more refined fans who understand that what sidney crosby DESERVES is to select how and where and when his career ends. is it on a team that sucks? then that means being here is more important to him than getting that fourth cup. staying with geno and kris and the penguins as a whole, never putting on another NHL logo, is more significant to him personally than another victory. and isn't that special? isn't that worth celebrating?

of course we know all of that because we're better at being fans than the uncles online who are writing weird fanfic in their heads. but. guess what that comes with:

losing.

and losing badly, in the case of this season.

i am here to tell you that sitting and bitching about it helps no one. right now, what we have to watch and celebrate is our favorite players still playing at a high level. they're still doing cool stuff on the ice. and they're doing it TOGETHER. this is what they wanted. so your options are either to hate it and sit in negativity about it each and every game, OR readjust your mindset and learn to enjoy what we have while we have it.

we are watching myth-making happen live. we are watching living legends play hockey. this is a privilege and an honor and it's not something most fanbases get EVER. and we have two! can you believe it?

there are things i would have rather seen done differently over the last couple of years. as far back as 2019 there were moves i disagreed with and changes that could have been made that perhaps could have extended their window. and of course the 2022 series against the rangers, that was a very good team that got hit by injuries at the absolute worst possible time, and probably that was their last chance as a core to compete. it's frustrating to watch that stuff happen when you have no control over it.

the pittsburgh penguins were high-end competitors and contenders for seventeen years straight. that's insane and unheard of in this league. they're not anymore. and the price you pay for almost two decades of dominance is...being bad. when you're competing you trade prospects and draft picks for win-now players. sometimes those work out, most of the time they don't. with the amount of winning this team has done, even the trades that didn't work were worth it, because it meant they were trying.

there are no fanbases who are going to feel bad for penguins fans right now. that's also why we're getting so much attention from the national media. people aren't used to this team being as bad as it is, and people like watching downfalls. that's fine. most of those fans have never watched their team win, and most of them never will. so if their joy is coming from sidney crosby's team being bad....well, love and light, you know?

and we shouldn't feel bad for ourselves either. this is what happens. this is how it goes. this is the price for the band staying together.

i dunno, guys. this is a disjointed rant. it's just so effing hard to be kicked in the nuts everywhere you go with unrelenting negativity. it's on twitter it's in the articles and yes, it's here too. but if you can't be a fan of a team when they're bad, then i'm sorry but you're not a fan of the team (or certain players), you're a fan of winning. and NO team wins all the time every year. that's not how sports work.

we are lucky. at least, i feel lucky! don't you? gosh, sidney crosby scored his 600th career goal tonight. evgeni malkin is over 500 goals on his career. can you believe that? it's amazing to watch.

and it's going to be over in less than two years. do we really want to waste it by wishcasting something that's not going to happen instead of enjoying what we DO have?

if the media bums you out, don't listen. don't read the articles. don't go on twitter. dry your tears on the stanley cup banners that sid and geno hung up—there are three to choose from!