#and the media is silent about it

[my-opinions]

Why Oscar Piastri Has Not Made a Mistake

Bear with me on this one because I feel that the minute discussions start about Oscar and how he got into F1, Daniel Ricciardo stans (not all of you just the very few in a minority which is making the rest of you look bad) say he’s a traitor and doesn’t deserve his seat. People are also saying he “should’ve gone to Alpine” like he had a choice.

Let’s look at this clearly. Oscar got his seat because of his stellar junior results. Winning F2 and F3 back to back in his rookie years (and Formula Renault in his second year in 2019) is no easy feat. That is why he got his seat. He’s good. Really good. That is why so many teams were fighting over him.

Now, I feel like a fool for saying this because it has been said so many times before but, Alpine didn’t want Oscar. They weren’t going to give him a seat. If Sebastian did not retire Alonso would still be at Alpine. (And then Seb would be getting podiums, but I try not to think about that) But essentially, Alpine liked Oscar as decoration never someone they actually wanted to put in the car. They didn’t even give the man a practice session (pre-drama). Only when Alonso dropped them did they want Oscar.

 I saw an article (I don’t know how true it was) that said that he didn’t even have a proper contract for his reserve driver role. They just submitted a terms sheet to the FIA, which, I’m not sure how much people know about contractual law, but a terms sheet is not legally binding. This happened because Alpine’s legal department was understaffed and they just never sent Oscar or Mark Webber (ex-F1 driver and his manager) the official contract which stipulated his role as a reserve driver and then what he would do from 2023 and beyond. This was supposed to be THREE years at Williams and only then would he go to a MIDFIELD team in Alpine. (It was different for George because he was promised a Mercedes seat. A seat at a team that has been dominating the sport for years is different from one at a team that hasn’t even been top of the midfield.)

Now lets look at this from Oscars point of view. You have already skipped out a year during your best years because your team couldn’t secure you a seat in time. Then you’ve been offered a seat at the worst team on the grid for multiple years or a seat at a team who has been comfortably in the top 5 for the past 3 years. Lets remember, ALPINE WAS NEVER AN OPTION FOR OSCAR. IT WAS WILLIAMS OR MCLAREN.

Looking at the grid now, it is clear that maybe McLaren isn’t the best team. But I don’t think anybody could expect how monumentally shit they were going to be this year. Of all the predictions I have seen, everybody was saying that Williams would be the worst team, and honestly scoring a total of 8 points last year, I wouldn’t go there either if I had the option of a midfield team.

After this he signed with McLaren in early July, he cant just go to Alpine after signing with another team. Maybe we can blame Oscar for not communicating this but I assume sans the whole drama with Alonso it was supposed to come out a bit more naturally because Daniel was still contracted until the end of 2023.

Anyway what I’m trying to say is, everybody hating on Oscar for “choosing the wrong team” must just shut up because you look stupid. It was McLaren or Williams, Alpine was never an option and we know McLaren can and will improve while Williams is not given. Also by going to McLaren, even if the car is awful, the comparison between him and Lando (who is talked as though he’s the next WDC, which is fair, I mean he’s great) is enough. Like Lando is ridiculously good and if Oscar is anywhere near that then he’s seen as doing a fantastic job.

Anyways all I have to say is please stop hating on Oscar, he deserves to be there and is doing a fantastic job.

[morganbritton132]

Steve, accidentally interrupting Eddie’s interview: Hey, can I tell you something and you not be dramatic about it?

Eddie: Seems unlikely

Steve: Can you be dramatic quietly? I’m getting a headache

Eddie: *thinks about it. nods*

Steve: No summer school

Eddie, whispering: Really?!

Steve: Yep, fully staffed. Didn’t need me this year

Eddie, whisper shouting: DO YOU WANT TO GO TO THE GRAND CANYON???!!!

[planetvries]

i yearn for the mines

[lgbtlunaverse]

So I watched A Silent Voice with some but minor knowledge of the story going in. And right at the beginning when Shoko's bullying started I had the nagging worry that while Ishida would be redeemed they'd leave Ueno and Kawai as one-dimensional bullies. Painting the girls as the "real villains" while the male protagonist got to have depth. Anyway I just finished the movie and I would like to formally apologize to Oima Yoshitoki and Yoshida Reiko I should never have doubted you.

[toomanydramass]

So i finished 5th book of silent reading all that's left are extras and I feel so empty i spent beautiful three weeks reading it every day so i feel like a part of my life is ending, i really grieve this book idk, thank god that the series is coming cause otherwise I would probably have to end it (jk)

I will report tonight when I actually finish it i will probably spent the night crying and I will need to vent my emotions

Pray for me pls

[lambda-core]

I am way too tired/jetlagged to make this post right now, but the reason Armada Starscream is so specifically well done to me actually isn't just the way he's got more depth than just wanting to take over Megatron. It's the way he falls back on this image he has of himself as someone who is solely focused on Megatron. And he is obsessed with Megatron, but the disconnect between Starscream and his image of himself is what gives him actual depth.

The reason this is so cool to me is like, that self-image--that he is single-mindedly obsessed with Megatron and will sacrifice everything else for that goal, no matter who gets hurt--is pretty close to what every other Starscream is. (The selfishness you associate with Starscream is a little more subtle, but it's there in the "no matter who gets hurt" clause imo.)

So if you go into this as a Transformers fan, you're already expecting Starscream to betray Megatron and try to best him and rule the Decepticons. But so does Starscream, even when he's demonstrably proven to both his peers and the audience that he's more than that. It's almost like his past incarnations--or the audience's expectation of him--haunt him. It turns his own internal man-versus-self conflict into this really cool man-versus-narrative conflict.

And what's crazy about this is, through the last moments of this arc, Starscream does grow beyond the narrative we'd expect from other Starscreams! But he never admits that to himself, because it's easier for him to cling to the idea that he's laser-focused on his hatred of Megatron. Every time he helps the minicons--every time he helps the humans--even in his last words, he LIES to himself and everyone around him that everything he did was always about Megatron. Because it's easier to simplify himself than to grasp that he might be a complex character. Because he's a person and he has all the messy conflicts that come with that. He falls back on the same ideas every single other Starscream did, and THAT is his undoing. Not that he is self-centered because he's Starscream. Not that he is obsessed with Megatron because he's Starscream. That he THINKS he is all of those things and he will not LET himself be anything else.

I would argue that that's a bigger theme in Armada, as well. Optimus and Megatron more or less spend their final fight coming to terms with their story roles in Transformers. I really feel like if you sneezed on them, they would realize they do this in every universe and in every timeline. Starscream's is the most interesting example to me, though, because he's such a departure from other versions of Starscream; hell, he acts (and looks, lol) a lot more like some incarnations of Thundercracker. But he's still got classic Starscream in him in this roundabout meta reference. He's like an homage to his namesake. It's so cool! And it works perfectly with the story he's a part of.

[solanj]

sometimes in the fandom you see some art that is SO beautifully made but goes SO against the grain of how you perceive the drawn character(s) like I want to reblog it so much because it's so visually gorgeous and the artist is amazing and deserves to know this but I'll fucking die before letting that particular interpretation of the character(s) anywhere near my blog

[polysyndetonaddictsupportgroup]

Everything about the battle at yokohama was Amazing, I love all of your thoughts and world building in pez dispenser. If you have time (and feel like it), could you explain ‘this entire sub-analysis on Idaten’s internal culture and how it intersects with broader heroics standards’. (i was ENRAPTURED by your hero economic analysis)

ps. when i saw in the tags about how the class just. broke down. and asked for their parents, it was like sucker punch to the face, i couldn’t imagine how the actual heroes felt when they saw them. if the public saw that side of class 2a, would they lay off? probably not, but damn. your world building and ideas are just. so good

So my decision about Idaten and its subculture actually hinges on one question about canon: Why did Stain go after Tensei?

Stain was all about attacking people who had committed some kind of perceived failing of heroics. But Tensei seems to be legitimately above the board. He didn’t seem to engage too heavily in the consumerist culture around heroics. He did good work. He was a good hero. So what about him made Stain decide to go after him?

I didn’t want it to be an “IDK he thinks all heroes but all might is fake” thing because 1) that cheapens the character and 2) it doesn’t match what canon shows. Don’t get me wrong, he was a lunatic who thought he needed to kill a fucking kid over his extremist ideals, but he let Izuku go the second Izuku established he conformed to his moral system.

Stain kills when he perceives a reason to. That doesn’t mean he’s always right. But he needs an excuse first.

I decided that there was one detail about Idaten that would be his most likely motive: the number of sidekicks he had.

Tensei is canonically taking up his parents’ mantle. This is a family business he’s heavily suited to and excels at. He has working beneath him a much higher than average number of sidekicks. And we know from canon that he’s not the type to take advantage of his team. Fuck, he seems to emphasize taking care of his team and working together above all else.

But we know that from canon. Stain doesn’t. What he sees, from the outside, is a young hero who took over his parents’ agency and is bolstering his own career on the backs of his sidekicks, which is what so many heroes were doing at that time.

Because stain is an extremist. He doesn’t once consider that maybe Tensei is the exception to the rule. He didn’t think to ask the sidekicks who he was, in a way, taking action on behalf of what they thought of Tensei.

Which is consistent with his character. It took him less than five minutes to decide “yeah I need to put down this grief stricken fifteen year old boy” do you????

Iida becomes the kind of hero that meets his ideals. Stain would have killed him the first time Iida gave him a reason. He’s shown to not always be right or do due diligence to determine if someone is even consistent with his crazy fucking moral system. He was just wrong when he went after Tensei.

And a big reason why he was wrong is because Idaten, as a culture, is far from the typical agency experience. It’s just that no one knows this, because Idaten is shown to be all about maintain a strong and confident facade. It’s not releasing its fucking employment contracts. The public only gets the calm, in control demeanor of the team. It doesn’t see how the sausage is made.

Do you know that millionaire ceo who realized his employees lives sucked and voluntarily took a huge pay cut so that way he could raise all of their salaries to a huge degree and the company as a whole got much, much better because the workers cared about it now and they made more profits and his salary eventually increased too as the company improved and all of his employees loved him? And he published the results thinking maybe other ceos would follow them after it was proven to make their companies more successful? And literally not one single one of them did?

Yeah that’s Idaten.

We talked in the earlier post about how heroics culture, for the most part, is abusive and built on the backs of sidekicks who are being widely taken advantage of. Idaten just… isn’t. Their compensation is incredibly fair and above board. People get credited for busts based on who was in charge of that particular bust or went above and beyond. They genuinely take care of their team, which is consistent with how Tensei seems to treat his team in canon.

For the most part, the sidekicks don’t want to even leave Idaten and become big name heroes themselves. They are all so genuinely happy and fulfilled that most of them happily spend their whole career as a sidekick.

But that’s the exception, and not the rule. And from the outside, Stain saw another sidekick farm propping up a pretend hero.

Which is one of the reasons why all of the Idaten sidekicks got together to hunt him down like a sick dog when he escaped. Tensei was babygirl to them and Stain hurt babygirl. He besmirched babygirl’s name over something he didn’t even do. Tensei didn’t even coordinate that mission the sidekicks made a group chat without him and went out to kick that fucking guy’s ass.

Idaten is a model of what heroics could be if it wasn’t focused on self profit and promotion. It made sacrifices to be this way. But it resulted in a team of excellent heroes who are all able to focus on protecting society without going home and feeling like they got fucked.

Stain has this mental image of heroes who should be helpful and good and save everyone without any personal incentive. But when you’re breaking your fucking back and going home to a shit apartment while your boss does 3 hours of work per day and has five houses, you start to ask yourself why you have to fucked for society to be safe. The sidekicks’ “greed” took the blame for the meltdown with Tartarus, but really, people should have been pointing fingers at every single agency head who refused to treat them fairly.

Idaten is this sparkling model of a business that is incredibly successful because the company heads are actually fair and good. They are the exception. And they are operating within a system where many of the other agencies are treating their talent like disposable cogs in a machine. The system needs to be regulated to force everyone else to act like Idaten—Idaten’s independent success is not a sign that the system works on its own.

As to your second question—no. The world saw little snapshots of Class 2A melting down in the aftermath and it got traded around like every other moment. Someone took a picture of the moment I talked about with Iida just sitting on the curb and crying when his brother’s men came to relieve him of command, and it was just another famous picture of many on the internet do that incident.

It was just—a horrifically public event. All of the kids had to be hospitalized in the aftermath. The world knew that. Izuku took a hit during his big fight with Mirio against the major villain team. He got stabbed, and it was poisoned. He knew from the villain’s history that the poison they produced was slow acting, though, so he quietly took Todoroki aside, had him cauterize the wound, and kept fighting until more heroes came. There’s a fuck ton of photos of him lying down on the sidewalk with his head in Todoroki’s lap in terrible shape waiting for the ambulance to come get him. And the world took that as a “Look At How Strong He Is, All Might Reborn, He Fought All Night With That Terrible Wound And He Still Prevailed” not “wow, that actual child had to fight for hours through the night not knowing if he’d live long enough to make it to a hospital.” Which is like. What happened. Izuku didn’t tell anyone but Todoroki that he took the hit. They both knew that if he didn’t get the antidote in time, he was dead. And they also both knew that there was no way he was going to be able to have even a shot at a hospital until morning, so they just had to keep going.

The world also took that as fuel for the ongoing ship war around Izuku and Todoroki, that they are only marginally aware of. Which like. Would not be comforting, that that’s what they took from a picture where both of them were legitimately afraid that Izuku was going to die.

The world knew they were young. They knew they were a bunch of amazing kids who had done something spectacular. To a lesser extent, they knew that those kids struggled in the aftermath. But that was never going to save them from the media machine. The fact that this fell to kids who visibly struggled in the aftermath was picked apart and used as a bat to hit opponents with in the debates that followed.

The picture of Iida crying on the curb with his brother’s sidekicks around him is considered one of the seminal photos documenting modern Japan’s heroics. It is the kind of thing that is probably going to end up in a textbook down the line.

Iida hates that photo. He hates that he had one moment of vulnerability in the aftermath when he managed to keep it together the entire rest of the event, and people still pass it around like a trading card. He had worked so, so hard not to lose it, and right when he thought it was safe to, it got posted on the internet.

When Iida sat on the curb and started crying, he was barely standing. He was injured himself. Momo had a tremendous fight that left her in terrible shape, and everyone was afraid that she was not going to make it. Izuku had just revealed, by the way, guys, This Happened, and now everyone was afraid he wasn’t going to make it. Bakugou was like two days out of the medically induced coma Uraraka put him in when this happened and apparently the doctor’s warnings that he could only be on light work was a hard requirement because he was completely non responsive for the since the fighting stopped and now everyone was afraid he wasn’t going to make it. The entire class was concussed, exhausted, and wanted their parents.

And he just really, really wanted his brother. He wanted his big brother to come in as the hero he had always admired, sit down with him, and tell him it was over. That he did good, and he could rest now. His brother’s sidekicks were the closest second available to him.

That picture made Iida feel like he had failed. He hadn’t held it together, and he hadn’t had the same strong facade as his brother always did. His anguish became another thing for the world to chew on. And that was true for all of those kids at that fight.

[househaunterz-art]

I don’t look like a ghost, do I?

Hot take, I really like Maria’s outfit in the remake :)

If you like my art, my comms are open!

[bittersweetresilience]

for strange and unknowable reasons i have spent the past seven and a half hours making this emotional catharsis amv instead of sleeping. my personal love letter to the art that has changed me over the years.

homestuck / avatar: the last airbender / everything everywhere all at once / soul / homestuck / infinity train / koe no katachi / gravity falls / up / frozen / blue planet / the prince of egypt / night in the woods / the good place / everything everywhere all at once / blue planet / wonders of the universe / night in the woods / monument valley / monument valley / homestuck / journey / the good place / infinity train / homestuck / koe no katachi / gravity falls / infinity train / omori / avatar: the last airbender / everything everywhere all at once / blue planet / the prince of egypt / homestuck / spider-verse / monument valley / journey / homestuck / frozen / moana / mulan / avatar: the last airbender / kung fu panda / frozen / avatar: the last airbender / omori / everything everywhere all at once / gravity falls / kung fu panda / my little pony / infinity train / omori / how to train your dragon / soul / frozen / up / journey / koe no katachi / omori / undertale / infinity train / gravity falls / monument valley / àiqíng gōngyù / soul / the good place

[erinravenseeker]

Just had a middle-of-the-night “ohhhh” moment as I just figured out that Kim Dokja needs the Fourth Wall not because of the scenarios but because it was essentially his survival mechanism for life.

Now I have only read the novel once so I could totally be forgetting stuff & way off-base but this is what I remember. Inane rambling under the cut, major spoilers included.

We know he’s generally antisocial, placing himself outside of society like a reader, and he internally smoothed over Sangah’s rough points even before the scenarios, making her into a ‘character’ (a caricature of herself) that fit into an archetype.

Dissociating from reality & viewing himself as a reader is his coping mechanism & “WoS coming to life” provides a convenient excuse to keep ignoring that fact.

This kind of ties in with an idea I’ve been forming about the Fourth Wall, which is that KDJ is fundamentally incapable of believing that “The Characters” (read: everyone) can experience growth as a result of his actions. He exists outside of the story, he is in the audience beyond the fourth wall, so he cannot affect the characters.

Hence the paradoxical nature of the Fourth Wall. For as long as he is a Reader, the Fourth Wall is maintained. And as long as the Fourth Wall is maintained, he will continue to be a Reader.

(Warning this is where it gets incoherent and messy.)

Kim Dokja fundamentally NEEDS the Fourth Wall to be maintained. Not just because of the OD stuff, but because it’s the way he’s learnt to cope with existing. It’s also why dying is so easy for him—we know he cannot deal with the guilt of making people he cares about suffer, but if he’s just a Reader, that means he can’t really have any meaningful impact on their lives, so it’s fine for him to just… disappear.

Kim Dokja is not actively suicidal, he’s just invested himself so far into the worldview of himself being a Reader that to him, his temporary deaths no longer register as dying. More like… stepping out of the theatre for a bit.

It gets complicated when we hit OD. Because then we realise the KDJ we’ve been accompanying is essentially a self-insert OC. So we can ascribe the way he thinks to OD, including all the coping mechanisms and self-distancing. But where OD manages to escape the narrative along with SP, at the same time the KimCom Crew escape the narrative, KDJ actually kind of… doubles down?

Like, OD does what any Reader does and learns from the book. When KDJ says “I, someone of no redeeming quality, could be loved by the others.” It’s not just him learning this lesson. It’s actually kind of the opposite. OD is Reading this lesson so he learns that he’s allowed to accept the mercy of SP & the 999 crew. So they escape the narrative.

KimCom also manages to escape the narrative but KDJ… can’t. He comes to the conclusion that he was actually backstage all along. But that means he’s still not ON stage. A Character can’t feel for the Script Writer or Director or Stage Manager. So he doubles down on his separation from them, stepping into that role. And then then KimCom comes banging on his door backstage because they’re not just characters, they’re the Actors now, and KDJ disappears because he can’t deal with that, because he fundamentally cannot exist on the same plane as them.

I think that’s why I’m hopeful at a post-epilogue ending. KDJ The Reader exists at essentially a higher tier than the people around him, and so he believes he cannot be loved in a way that has a lasting impact on them. But he DID spend years being affected by WoS, by Yoo Joonghyuk. If he becomes the Character, and them the Readers… maybe, just maybe, he can actually accept that love.

[strawbubmint]

maria

[applejongho]

lina telling me writers literally get a rb:like ratio of sometimes as bad as 1:6 is destroying my psyche like if you don't rb gifs and you certainly don't rb fics then what the fuck are you doing on this site?

[coquelicoq]

watching cdramas with french subtitles is the best idea i ever had. if the show is in a language i don't speak i'm already going to have to be closely reading the subtitles, so why not also use it as language practice? the subs go by so fast i don't have time to translate them internally into english, i just have to absorb the meaning without doing that (which is how it's supposed to work but i've never been fully able to do that before). AND the best part is that when i'm going about my day i'm finding that some of my internal monologue is just in french now?? i think it's because subs are almost entirely dialogue...i'm getting hours of dialogue practice without actually having to converse. it's also fun with cdramas specifically because i have by now picked up some chinese vocabulary from watching tv and i get to see how that vocabulary is translated into french. idk man i'm just having a great time.

[skleech]

i think silent hill, bloodborne and evangelion should all hold hands

[blood-teeth]

ALT TEXT: Elena’s thumb moves back and forth across the Traveler’s cheekbones. Back and forth. Back and forth. “Can I tell you what I thought about you the very first time I saw you?” She doesn’t wait for a response. “That you don’t hide your heart. That told me you were kind, that you love first and think last.” She smells Elena’s strawberry flavored lip balm, can taste the fragrance across her lips. Dizzy. “That you hold everyone you come across in your heart, and you won’t ever let them go. No matter how badly it hurts you.” She’s quiet for another moment. “I admire that. It’s a quality I wish I had."