Five years ago today, I was lying on the couch in my family home, watching the words of a person I had grown to find pieces of myself in as he bared his soul to the world just to make somebody like me feel a little less alone.
[girl lying on her stomach on the couch, looking at phone]
He said something at the end of that video,
[Illustrated video screenshot of Dan saying “You are valid. It gets so much better.”]
And I’ll never forget hearing those words. Never forget drying my tears, quickly, before my parents came back.
[Three panels: girl wiping tears from face, putting phone down, silhouette walking through front door]
See, the girl on that couch was planning far, far away futures. She couldn’t believe his words just yet, but now she could hope to.
[open shoebox with rainbow flag inside]
Five years later, today, I wish I could tell her:
You don’t have to move halfway across the country to set a flag out on your desk.
[school building and stack of books]
Your parents are coming over tomorrow to help bring you home for the summer. (They’re only an hour’s car ride away.)
[cartoon sun and car]
And see that?
[rainbow flag in a mug with a cat whiskers design]
Yeah, that’s the one decoration you haven’t packed yet.
And that something he said at the end of the video, I still quote it to this day.
[computer playing the Dan birthday livestream with "Misty" on a Zoom call in the corner]
Better yet, I believe it now.
[same girl, older and with shorter hair, holding mug with flag and looking back at someone off-camera that’s saying “Ready to go home?”]
THE STAR: Renewed hope, healing, and self-development
My first piece for @dnptarot!!! The Star has always been my favorite card, and I thought a Basically I'm Gay theme fit the meaning well enough :]
[ID: Digital art of Daniel Howell, as an interpretation of the tarot card The Star. He wears the outfit from Basically I'm Gay, the sequin jacket fading into a star-filled view of space. He's surrounded by twelve larger white stars, and his expression is calm and happy. Faint rainbows from lens flare and lighting surround the piece. End ID]
“a sexual awakening so intense it registered on the richter scale” is the single best and most accurate description I have ever heard.
pov: you're 16 years old and doing the final test for your super license ahead of joining f1 as the youngest ever driver. you expect the doubt and hate, and you know you can prove on track why you deserve to be there once you actually get in a car, but until then, you just have to be the subject of everyone's headlines and criticism for a factor you can't control.
then this guy comes along.
race winner who got himself to a top team and is beating his world champion teammate, a cool older handsome charismatic guy with a giant smile and big brown eyes, beloved and kind while still being fiercely talented, competitive, and hungry? the guy who you met in 2011 and who gave you the time of day before you were old enough to sniff at the f1 grid. he's not even going to be your actual teammate (yet), but he still takes the time to tell you he's looking forward to seeing you on the grid when so much of what you've heard is nonstop criticism.
he tells you good luck for your super license with a big grin meant just for you
and this is how it makes you feel.
this is live footage of daniel ricciardo becoming a permanent fixture in max's spank bank. it's one of those foundational crushes you have at a young age that sticks with you for life and unconsciously affects "your type" forever and never truly goes away.
also, i just think everyone should hear the way max very softly says "he's a really nice guy, yeah" with so much affection packed into every word.
how are you not to psychosexually imprint on him? one look at that video and max was ready to risk it all. he's been metaphorically tucking his hair, kicking his feet, and giggling since day one. he found a guy who he could race hard, who would challenge him on track, but who would still make the miserable pr days better for them, who was always laughing at max's jokes every time he did his little glance over to ensure it landed. max is so fiercely loyal to his people, and daniel has clearly earned that trust.
tldr: max verstappen is number one dirlie and if he were on f1blr, he would be writing long posts with onboards, data, and that ☝️🤓 attitude of his explaining in detail why everyone is wrong about daniel, and i hope it haunts all the max fans who get their rocks off to calling daniel a washed asshole loser that max's porn folder is daniel late braking compilations.
Here is the promised best-of of the Pomme/Antoine portal stream ! It's my first time doing a best-of, so I did my best to keep it understandable while cutting unnecessary stuff. Red subtitles are for Pomme's sign.
Some slang and translation comment under the cut because I'm a bit of a language nerd :D
Pomme uses a lot of slang on her signs. The most common thing she does is using verlan. Verlan is when you inverse a word, but I keep the same meaning.
For example, she says, "c'est tipar" for "let's go." But "tipar" is not a french word, it's just "parti" switched over, but the word keeps the meaning of parti -> to go.
Obviously hard to translate, but Pomme also just writes things wrong for the funsies. I don't mean just grammar mistakes, I mean just plain wrong : "comment on fait" becomes "comment kon fait" because it's sounds funnier, no other reason. I wrote "how do we do" for my trad because I think it also sound silly but understandable.
She also does something we do in spoken French when two or three words kinda squish together to become one : "tu as vu" (literally "have you seen") becomes "tavu". In this context, to keep the feeling, I translated it to " ya know" because it has the same vibe for me
Antoine is way easier to translate in general, he has an easy French. Only thing hard thing to translate is that he uses a lot of French meme/reference and often punctuate his phrases with "là" , "bah", wich says a lot about the tone and intention of the sentence but sadly translate to nothing in context
And one last dumb thing : COMMAS. In comparison to written French, they are so many (too many one may even say) commas in English. I had to basically cut almost half of the sentence with a bunch of commas to make it understandable.