#i know a lot of this sport's narratives are built on this idea of you're only as good as your last race

[leqclerc]

omg the is carlos sainz this generation’s nico rosberg questions are so ridiculous! like put some fucking respect to that monaco based youtuber who beat two 7x wdcs in equal machinery. the only similarity they have is having a world champion influential father. thats it.

and no he is not underrated when in the span of 3 races he has gone from a good driver to the next wdc who is going to beat max verstappen 👍

Frrrrrr 😤

Thankfully some people still see sense and called the whole thing out (saw this in a Reddit thread post-Melbourne), chalking the hype up to recency bias (rightfully so.) Admittedly he's been in the right place at the right time both times (in Singapore and Australia) but I mean... passing Max (who was already having issues with his car basically from the get go) and then just. Keeping the lead (while your teammate gets instructed point blank not to even attempt to overtake you) is hardly comparable to keeping a title challenge alive against your generational talent teammate arguably at or nearing the peak of his abilities. Also the things Nico did in 2016 were insane and I honestly haven't seen this level of commitment since. This man didn't renounce cycling, wear ankle stocks, remove stitching on his gloves and refuse to sleep in the same bed as his wife for like eight months for people to be comparing him to Carlos 😭😭😭

I could maybe see where they're coming from if Carlos went to Red Bull (since now suddenly he's their number one candidate apparently) and managed to keep up with Max over the course of a season as teammates, enough to actually realistically challenge for the WDC. But like this? Benefiting from the annual Red Bull Singapore stinker and then Max having race-ending car issues? People have clearly forgotten what actual racing for the lead looks like and it shows😑

I think he's definitely been benefiting from recency bias and also people being jaded after... let's say a season and a half of Red Bull dominance. I still think Australia was a pretty meh race in itself and it's only getting hyped because the result was a non-Max win 🤷🏻‍♀️

How he can be considered "criminally underrated" when some influential pundits/journalists have been rating him more highly than Charles for the past three years and saying he deserves to be Ferrari's lead driver is beyond me. Imo he's one of the few drivers that has consistently been getting their flowers and been vocally backed by numerous influential media figures. Even when he had very anonymous flop periods they were usually glossed over and/or quickly forgotten (early 2022 was magnanimously chalked up to "he's still getting used to the car/he can't perform at this best when his future is uncertain and more recently the back half of 2023, pretty much Japan to Abu Dhabi where he was making a lot of mistakes and generally trailing behind Charles, has been conveniently erased from collective memory now that he's the man of the moment.)

[msmargaretmurry]

wait no get on your they DO make sense soapbox about matthew/leon please!!!

okay, just for you and @irrelevanttous and the several anons who asked once i said no one had asked about them yet ❤

to be clear, obviously this is a ship i enjoy a lot and find very compelling, but i'm not going to try to talk other people into liking it. i just find this kind of stuff interesting and fun to talk about. i know it's the annoyingly popular ship and if someone has decided it's too annoying or not for them at this point, they're so valid. as a person who wasn't into basically every other super popular hrpf ship in the past 15 years i know intimately how it feels to not be into the popular ship so like. godspeed and good luck 😂

what i DO want to talk about is how i see people throwing around the ideas that as a ship it doesn't make sense, it's not based in anything, it's not the kind of ship that's ever been popular in hockey fandom before — because that all feels ahistorical to me? and i just wanna babble thru my feelings a little, please bear with me.

so first of all, rivalry ships are foundational to hrpf and sports rpf in general and like. fandom in general, you know? sid/ovi, sid/claude, mceichel are the big examples that come to mind but even smaller ones that got a lot of chatter but not a lot of fic like ladd/kesler back in the day. enemies to lovers is a classic trope for a reason. people love that shit. people have always loved that shit.

it is imo unexpected that the ship kept going so strong after matthew got himself traded to florida and we mostly stopped getting content, but also when a ship gets really popular it's not weird for it to mostly run off vibes instead of canon content. you see it in media fandoms all the time, and i would actually say all of the past really popular hockey ships at a certain point were running more off fanon vibes than "canon" content even for teammate ships. and people complained about that with those ships, too, so matthew/leon is not unique in that way 😂 like, it's fine to think it's annoying or wish the fic were more closely aligned with your own headcanons or perceptions of real life. but it's not a unique phenomenon at all!

anyway, on the "it doesn't make sense" "it's a ship based on nothing" front... it is extremely based on things though? i know a lot of people got into the ship after matthew's trade to florida or toward the end of his time in calgary so i think it's very possible that they truly just don't know that when matthew was in calgary, every battle of alberta was content. the ship is very much based on a very observable and specific interpersonal rivalry dynamic that developed over six seasons and had a few highly notable public moments!

obviously it doesn't have the same level of "canon" content you'll get with a ship between good friends and teammates but that's fine! it's a rivalry ship! mceichel was built on way less. sid/ovi was built on barely more, but the heyday of that ship ended while the rivalry was ongoing so it wasn't as noticeable. rivalry ships are not about "look at all this content that proves they're in love," they're about "wow those guys hate each other. it would be hot if they fucked." which is as equally valid a reason to ship something as anything. with matthew and leon, it's helped by them being guys that a lot of people also find individually compelling and so the idea of constructing narratives to explore that relationship (or make them fuck nasty) is really appealing. if it doesn't appeal to someone, that's also fine! but that doesn't make it based on nothing.

(sidenote though to say that i also think it's fine to have ships based on nothing. you're allowed to smush any hockey men you want together for literally any reason. this is rpf. the most "evidence-less" ship is just as fake as the most "canon" ship because there is no canon. it's rpf. it's all fake. none of that is real. shipping is not a contest. everyone please remember that it's all fake and the showrunners won't make any of our ships canon. except willy and pasta, apparently.)

(also sidenote to say i think it's actually fine when mattdrai fans themselves joke about the ship being made up. it's just self-awareness — with a rivalry ship you do have to do a lot more work making up the trappings that keep your guys together for your little stories! doing that work is part of the fun!)

anyway. matthew/leon does not need me to defend it, and that's not what i'm trying to do here. i don't need people to like my ship, i liked it plenty before i knew how many other people also liked it. but i have been a little irked by those narratives flying around because, you know, they're not true? you can dislike the ship and ship other things without doing lies on the internet about it? so i needed to speak my truth. and like, if someone is sick of matthew/leon and wants a different matthew ship or a different leon ship to be the next big thing, i hope they pour themselves into writing for that ship and find friends to join them! so that i (a person who will read almost anything) have a wider variety of stuff to read about my guys!

i do have a lot of thoughts about matthew/leon as a ship and as a trope dynamic and as individual characters, and the different ways people write them and feel about their dynamic and characterization, but we will save that for another post. because this post is already so long 😭

[everythingsinred]

Hey, has it ever occurred to you why Mikan doesn't like her hair down?

This is a pretty interesting question! I'll try to answer to the best of my ability, but to be honest this is all conjecture. Also I made this a NatsuMikan post because discussions about Mikan's hair/Natsume's back turn into NM on principle.

Very long NM rambling under the cut...

Yes, Mikan seems to be very uncomfortable about her hair being down.

In Chapter 24, Mikan is dressed as the prince and has her hair down for the role. She's instantly insecure and contemplates putting her hair up again. She needs outside validation from an opinion she cares about (Hotaru's) to make her feel okay about it in the moment, but after this she continues to keep her hair down.

A lot of it seems to come from feeling like she looks weird somehow with her hair down, and prior to this she says she feels "antsy" with her hair down. At no point does she elect to have her hair down between this and when she's stuck in the labyrinth. If she ever switches up her hairstyle, she still keeps it up, like at the Christmas Ball or New Years. Even when she sleeps, she keeps her hair in pigtails or braided.

I am not sure why having her hair down bothers her so much, but let's discuss some possibilities.

Mikan's iconic pigtail hair style is pretty childish. That makes sense, because she is a child, but when she's aged up by the Gulliver candy, she defaults to the same style, which prevents her from looking more mature. I might say from a narrative sense that Mikan's hairstyle being so childish is supposed to set her aside as being more immature than the rest of the kids in Class B. Hotaru's short and practical hairstyle seems leagues more mature and chic than Mikan's cute little pigtail thing.

It might be nothing more than a habit. Mikan likes sports, and keeping your hair up comes in handy when you're exercising. Whatever the initial reason she built this habit is, she might be so unaccustomed to seeing herself with her hair down that it feels bizarre and wrong.

But I genuinely don't know what an in-story reason for her behavior is, because it seems much stronger than a mere preference or habit. She doesn't like herself with her hair down at all, and never has it down until this moment in Chapter 24. Maybe she's just insecure for whatever reason and thinks she looks bad with her hair down (though she definitely doesn't).

In any case, my idea is that it feels vulnerable to have her hair down. She describes the feeling as "antsy", like it doesn't feel right. I think her wearing her hair up is a comfort zone thing, where she feels more protected with her hair in a do. In a way, it might be comparable to her insistence on smiling. Mikan is, despite everything, actually very hard on herself. She doesn't think she's smart, capable, pretty, useful. She is surrounded by smart people, by people with interesting and useful alices, by people she perceives as "strong" while she is weak. And, of course, people who are beautiful, when she is not.

Just like Mikan gets very pathological about her smile after being told it's a charm of hers, I think she might rely on her hair being up. She is not pretty on her own, but if she puts extra pizzazz into her hair, maybe it'll make up for how plain she is? Maybe is she uses different hair-ties, sometimes with ribbons, sometimes with flowers, she can be a bit cute sometimes? Mikan thinks very little of herself but is very interested in making up for it.

What's really interesting is when she starts wearing her hair down more. When is that? Oh, yes, during the time she's trapped in the labyrinth after coming to terms with her love for Natsume, who told her once that she looked better with her hair down.

Mostly she wears her hair down in the labyrinth when she goes to sleep, and that could easily be brushed aside as a given EXCEPT that Mikan has always had her hair up before, even when she was going to sleep!

So what makes this time period different? Why should Natsume have anything to do with how she wears her sleep when she goes to sleep anyway? It's not like he's living in the labyrinth with her. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that she can hear him calling for her every night...

She does keep her hair up in pigtails when she's wearing her school uniform, of course, but when she's out of it, we see her exclusively with her down. The best example of this, of course, is on Christmas when she stays in her room because she's not allowed to go to the party.

She dresses it up a bit with those fluff balls, of course, but it's still down. And that's a big change when we consider that Mikan used to EXCLUSIVELY have her hair up, no matter the occasion.

When I was analyzing this chapters in my essays, I did say it helps make the confessions scene seem more surreal, having him dressed like a lil bat and her with her hair down, both of them out of their uniform. The surreal nature of the scene makes it dreamlike, for both of them, almost like it never happened, and I think that's important, but it didn't occur to me at the time how important it is narratively for Mikan that her hair is down for that.

I will concede that Hotaru told Mikan in Chapter 24 that she doesn't have to put her hair up, that it looks cute down. She does say that. But what Natsume says in Chapter 38 is a bit bigger. He doesn't use words like cute or pretty, but he makes a point of saying he prefers her hair down, that her pigtails won't suit her in a few years.

He doesn't say it out loud, but this is a compliment, and it clearly means a lot to her. If Mikan feels like she's not pretty (and she is called plain by so many people in the manga it's hard not to imagine that's how she views herself), and her putting her hair up is her way of "making up for it", then Natsume saying he likes her better with her hair down is, essentially, saying she looks pretty as she is, without all the trimmings.

It's kinda akin to those love songs where a girl swoons that a guy likes her better with her makeup off. Mikan wears her hair up because if her hair is cute or styled, then it can distract from her otherwise plain appearance. But Natsume prefers her as is, that the extra work she puts into tying her hair isn't necessary because he does think she's pretty, that she has nothing to make up for.

Once Mikan realizes she's in love with Natsume, and that this love is fully reciprocated, she wears her hair down more (or at all), because it's her way of connecting with him even though she can't see him as often. Her hair is down, and it doesn't need to be up, because somebody told her she looked better with it down. And, even more than that, she wears it down when she hears his voice, or there's a chance she might catch a glimpse of him, because she wants him to see her with her hair down.

Mikan, who got "antsy" in Chapter 24 with her hair down, sees Natsume in Chapter 144 and 145 and doesn't feel antsy about her hair at all. In fact, it's down because of him. For him.

I'm not saying girls should base their entire appearances off of what boys what, but that's not what this is either and I think that would be a cynical takeaway. Please don't misunderstand me! This is a boy making a girl feel better about how she looks, to the point where she feels like her hair down is a selling point, not another plain element to her appearance. There is nothing wrong with wanting the person you like to think you're pretty, especially when the person you like helped you feel prettier in the first place.

Anyway, that's basically the summation of my thoughts on this topic. I'm really grateful to you, Anon, for bringing this to my attention. Obviously, I did know Mikan didn't like her hair down and that Natsume did, but I have never observed it all that closely. This is one more aspect to the manga I was given the opportunity to analyze more and I'm so happy with having one more reason to love these two together!