#non-edit stuff

[tampire]

I'm right about my otps btw

[boredlime]

when you're Probably Not Cis but you present as it anyways because you're too lazy to do anything about it

[sofy-tofy]

A Maria (SH2 remake) light edit test i made for fun + the OGs comparision

[randomminty]

Enchanted by akatsukis princess carryisms

[hungryblackbird]

CONTROL ▼

[autistickaitovocaloid]

[buwheal]

the uh. Keru. :-3

[an-albino-pinetree]

Jeez, I wonder what got him so angry-

[backmarkerr]

please....can u speak on the conspiracy

So the conspiracy (more like a theory, really) is that Kimi was pushed out of the team starting in 2008 to make way for Fernando, who was more appealing to the big sponsor coming in. Before you click out thinking "Max, that's stupid, no team would throw a championship for a sponsor." I agree! But keep in mind that they didn't throw the championship, they fully expected to win the WDC with Felipe (and almost did) and did in fact win the WCC in 2008 with Felipe and Kimi despite everything. But there were really suspicious things going on. So with that in mind...

It's 2008. Kimi has just won Malaysia, the second race of the season. Three days after his win, there's this:

.

Ok, kinda weird, but whatever. F1 runs on rumours, right? Suggesting that Kimi might retire when he's doing so well is silly. And in the article they seem to be pretty ambivalent over whether it would be Felipe or Kimi to leave.

Fast forward to Spain two races later. Kimi scores his second win of the season and takes the championship lead. The season is shaping up pretty well for the defence of the title, you’d think this would be a good time for him, but again, the story du jour is Ferrari wanting Alonso in Kimi’s seat for 2009.

[x] I guess now we know at least Massa's seat is secure...?

If you’re like me, that sounds stupid. The reigning champion just won the last GP and his contract runs until the end of 2010, so this media narrative makes no sense. Something pretty catastrophic would have to happen for that to ever come to fruition, right?

So anyway, he gets a first row start in Monaco. Great, that's almost a surefire win/points, right? Wrong, he got a drive-through penalty due to the team not fitting the wheels to the car on time before the race start. Not a great race and he ends up outside of the points. Lewis is now ahead in the WDC by 3 points. Not really a disaster, but...

[x] what on earth...

[x] again the talk of retirement.... I mean, it's weird, right?

Zero points in Canada due to being rear-ended in the pitlane, which the team can’t control. Then he’s back to being neck to neck with his teammate and Lewis by the time the British GP is done in early July, with all three drivers on 48 points. Good news, right? Just gotta stay on track and not fuck it up somehow.

[x] sigh... (this one's a little harder to source as it was printed media, but I've seen this exact interview quoted in different pages)

So anyway, they change his front suspension for the next race in Germany. Kimi has always been very sensitive to changes in the car, so he knew something was wrong. Ferrari (via Michael, who was then head of development) say he's just not adapting well to the upgrades. Maybe, sure, but why aren't you bringing upgrades that are geared towards your world champion?

(an interesting remark from Mark Hughes here if you scroll down to the comments, which adds weight to Kimi not being listened to when it came to car development in 2008)

Bar a podium in Hungary, Kimi scores 0 points in 4 out of the next 5 races. It takes until either Monza or Singapore (hello crashgate!) for Ferrari to put his suspension back as it was.

He proceeds to get 3 podiums in the remaining 3 races but it’s not enough to catch up. By Singapore he was already 27 points behind his teammate (reminder this is the old points system) and very much expected to play the supporting role. In the penultimate race in China he very obviously gave up P2 to his teammate:

"I know what the team expects." [x] / [x]

Yet the narrative in the media and from Ferrari themselves is that his motivation is bad and he's not assertive. It was so pervasive that to this day people still parrot it and say he just didn’t care after 2007, despite Kimi always stating he was fully committed and clearly getting annoyed whenever journalists asked about his motivation even years later.

Montezemolo at the end of 2008 even 'joked' that "Kimi in the recent races was replaced two or three times by a friend, but next year he'll be back." Basically saying that Kimi wasn't really present, you know? An interesting thing to say when this absent driver scored 18 points in the last 3 races (three consecutive P3s), while the one who was amazing and had the team's full backing scored 20 (P7, P2, P1).

A whole 2 points' difference, maybe someone should hire that "friend"...

So why did they do this?

Well, the theory is that Santander (I promise this isn’t like the dumb Sainztander takes) wanted a Spanish-Brazilian lineup due to financial interests (Spanish bank, big market in South America with a looming IPO in Brazil), so Kimi was basically being pressured out of the team from early 2008 onwards. Like I said at the start, the team weren’t really throwing away 2008, as they expected to win the WCC with both drivers (they did) and Massa to be able to win the WDC, which would of course be beneficial for their new sponsor. And he almost did. Almost.

[x] they're not in charge of driver selection but this specific driver line-up would good for them. (this archived copy of the article is from 2010, but the text makes it clear it's from 2009)

Of course at this point we have to wonder if a team like Ferrari would bow down to a sponsor's demands. I can't tell you what the internal considerations were or how much money was on the line, but it's also not like Santander were telling them to get rid of Kimi for a bad driver, you know? Fernando is a great driver, so from Ferrari's perspective they were just trading a great driver for another great driver who also appealed to this huge sponsor, and an Alonso-Massa line-up would be solid. And with the previous talk that Ferrari and Alonso had already inked a deal in 2008... It's just difficult to believe there isn't a grain of truth here.

So the alleged initial plan of having Alonso in 2009 was foiled when Kimi activated the renewal option in his contract. It was then that he was bought out of his last year (apparently paid for by Santander).

[from the book The Unknown Kimi Raikkonen]

As we can see, by the end Kimi was also fed up with what was going on, especially people pointing the finger at him and at his motivation, and his frustration is very clear in interviews like here at 2.35 and here:

Publicly, Ferrari said they wanted someone more in line with how Michael used to be (ironic since Montezemolo allegedly didn’t like how Michael made the team his), who could communicate with the team and give better feedback (ironic when Todt, Dyer, Stella and others said Kimi was very clear and precise.) Kimi himself has always stated that he wasn’t the issue, that his motivation was never lacking and that the real reason he was pushed out was politics and money.

[x]

[x]

If it had only been the mechanical stuff, I’d be willing to chalk it up to just bad luck and incompetence. Shit happens. But with all the rumours around it even before things went bad on the track and Kimi stating that his work and performance weren't the reason he was let go it becomes impossible for me to think there wasn’t an actual push going on to replace him.

Hell, even famed Ferrari fanboy Sebastian Vettel didn't think it was realistic for Kimi to return to Ferrary in 2014 precisely because Kimi isn't one for "bullshit" and "politics". Why would he choose to say that specifically? And according to Finnish media Kimi’s 2014 Ferrari negotiations included Montezemolo personally apologising to him. Now why would he apologise if they hadn’t done something wrong?

Personally I think Kimi's "certain people did certain things" refers to this. He never trashed anyone and always said he had no ill-feelings. And I believe him. But it doesn't mean nothing happened, lest we forget how well he handled Lotus not paying him.

The thing that really bothers me is that Kimi got the reputation for having low motivation and not caring about what he was doing (I heard that take just last month from an F1 youtuber, how Fernando was hired in 2010 because Kimi had mentally checked out 🙄), when obviously someone who wasn’t motivated and didn’t care would have simply called it quits under these circumstances. Instead he got P3 in the standings in 2008 (I know he’s talented, but he must have been trying at least a little), trained hard to lose enough weight to use KERS in 2009 (why would he do that if he didn’t care) and took the team’s only win that year despite the car being shit. Interestingly, pundits acknowledged his good performance complicated things when it came to Ferrari’s rumoured hiring of Alonso. So imagine how much more complicated things would have been had Kimi done better in 2008?

Anyway, this is long, but if you want something longer then I definitely recommend this post here. You might not agree completely with the original authors (there are parts where I wish there was more info), but I think they offer a lot of good research and information regarding the overall situation back in 2008/2009, and it's a good jump-off point for your own research.

But yeah. 2008 could have been everything. Or at least better.

[laurasimonsdaughter]

What if Disney adapted the Turnip Princess?

I had actually never heard of this fairy tale before!

I've put The Turnip Princess and Other Newly Discovered Fairy Tales on my wishlist for later, thank you for bringing it to my attention ^^

[whumpuary]

it's so interesting to me how popular the dialogue prompts are

there are 101 total prompts, 13 of which are dialogue prompts. and yet, so far, they make up half of the current top 20 votes.

[xagave]

I lied x2 electric boogaloo I'm back AGAIN last time promise but I really need more homestuck blogs to follow. If you post/rb a lot of hs like this post and I'll check out ur blog!!!!

[canisalbus]

Vasco seems like a honeycomb (candy) type of guy tbh

Never heard of it before, but it looks nice. Apparently it's really easy to make at home as well? Is it good?? The texture seems interesting.

[machiavellli]

How I look in public while listening to Ma non tutta la vita by my grandparents

[rassicas]

My tags and other references

Pinned post. Please refer to this before sending me an ask! Note I don't answer every ask I get. I answer voluntarily and often on a whim, but sometimes I'll dig up months-old mail to answer.

First, an obligatory Splatoon Obscure Lore Reference Doc plug. Secondly, please don't DM me looking to start a general conversation about Splatoon or to ask me a Splatoon lore-related question. Put it in the ask box.

#asks is my general tag for asks, but it's a lot to look through. for more specific tags to see if what you want to ask has been answered already...

#splatoon lore - posts that include solid canon info. I'm a bit loose about tagging this.

#splatoon headcanons - posts that contain more speculative/headcanony info. I'm a bit loose about tagging this.

#splatoon translations - posts that involve JP -> ENG translations. I take requests if I find it interesting and reasonable.

#inkling language - posts related to the (deciphered) languages used within the splatoon world. I helped write this publicly available and editable page on inkipedia. I am begging you PLEASE look at the wiki page before asking me anything related to the Inkling language. You do not need to tell me if you've translated some small piece of text either, you can go ahead and add it to the wiki yourself if it's not already there. no im not doing it for you

#splatoon species - any talk of species beyond the standard inklings/octolings/salmonids goes here. NOTE: if you're wanting to ask "does X species exist in the splatoon world?" check the tag or PLEASE look at this list first because it will answer your question. if it's not on the list, it hasn't been mentioned in canon. If you have an ask about marine mammals in splatoon, I have a video essay on that. I won't budge on my stance that they're extinct.

#society - for anything related to society and culture in the splatoon world.

#biology - anything related to inkling/octoling/other splatoon creature biology.

#rotm #octo expansion - story mode-specific asks

#inklings #octarians #octolings #salmonids -species-specific tags

there's also character specific tags like #mr grizz and #off the hook ...ill have to clean these up later.

btw my art tag is #rassicarts. my main for posting funnies and anything not splatoon is @raptorials.

To askers: please note that sometimes I may end up coming off as blunt or rude in my responses. I don't want to be mean but there are a lot of people on the internet who try to talk to me, and sometimes, even to the nice people, I don't have the energy to sugarcoat my words. Please don't take it as ill will if I respond to you in this way. Thanks.

if your ask is just something nice, i don't reply to those, but i see them and appreciate it a lot. thank you

[chronicallyleggless]

Me when somebody mass likes/reblogs my posts: