#since when do i post things on this website

[things-about-cars-in-posts]

The MOMENT I laid eyes on that rollbar I thought "Huh! How Caterham-like!", lol. Turns out I know my favorite car well.

Funnily enough, the Caterham Seven has been given a sleeker body before, by Caterham themselves no less, and this new year marks 21 years since that happened. And given the result was named Caterham 21, and specifically because Caterham had been making Sevens for 21 years by then, this would be a very funny coincidence if I hadn't planned it.

Okay, there is to say the name may also have been influenced by the goal of making something like the legendary Lotus Eleven racecar...

...but enough dwelling, let's get you a picture of what this thing looks like!

Oh, what's that there?

But that's my blogpost on it I wrote eight years ago, on the news section (bafflingly) of automotive publication Car Throttle!

"Wait, you wrote published automotive articles eight years ago?"

Well, not really.

See, Car Throttle did have an articles section, but at heart it was a car-centered social media platform. There were larger, more structured posts in the "Blog" community, and the editors sometimes picked the better ones and shared them in the Official Featured Articles Of The Staff Whose Job It Is To Do This section. And a couple of my posts were picked, which at my then tender age of [too young for unsupervised internet networking] was an inconceivable honor.

But then at some point they decided, I believe to quote the chief, their attempt "to make the Facebook for cars" was ill-conceived, because "the Facebook for cars was already Facebook", and the platform pivoted to just being a news outlet. And, infuriatingly, pretending they never were a social to begin with. Forget preserving the posts, we weren't even given a tool, a deadline, a warning for archival. Posting ability was removed and everything was just hidden and hushed away slowly and gradually enough to frogboil away all attention before deleting all those posts I and countless others poured heart and soul into.

Except the Editor's Picks - a layout change could make those look like proper articles and pad their offerings. Clicking the author name leads to a cryptic "Forum" section. No mention of upvotes -embarrassing memories- but the comments are there, they make it look like a visited website. Who's this blank circle? Can't click the username. Who are they tagging? Page wasn't found. How do all these commenters seemingly know each other? Good luck googling them. Now visit our shop.

So, in the spirit of fuck that, here is that article remastered for Tumblr - a platform that, for all its ills, refuses to shut its doors in the face of all sense and all the internet rowing against its model of a free, unalgorithmic feed where all forms of content are welcome.

Fair warning: you'll need to be up to speed with the story of the Seven itself. Here's the link again - last chance!

Caterham did something other than the Seven? Yep. This is the 1994-1999 Caterham 21, the only other production Caterham. It was pretty much a more comfortable, everyday-use Seven.

What's with that crazy silver look? That's the aluminum prototype. The production version was made out of fiberglass, and looked like this:

Hold up… Why do those taillights look familiar? Well, you know how it is with small sportscars... and when the design team cruised the motorway looking for lights that would suit the design...

And the parts sharing doesn't end there either.

And what about the interior? Was it comfortable? More than the Seven, of course (in the end, that was its goal): It had more creature comforts, such as proper doors, actual glass windows (which, as a trade-off, didn’t roll down), a dashboard that actually looks like the product of design work, and a soft-top you closed rather than assembled. Though comfort was still one of its weaker points.

Why so? Isn’t it a lot wider? Where did all the extra width go? Well…

Yes, this is for real. You could have a football match on those sills.

Engine-wise? UK car industry experts are waiting for me to say it - and indeed, the almost stereotypical Rover K-series engine (found from the Land Rover Freelander to the FSO Polonez and a wealth of little British sportscars in between) was offered either as a 1.6 (offering 1or as a 1.8.

Oh, yeah, and it had one of those cool forward-opening bonnets, since the whole front was a single piece so good luck with any other way.

Any specs? Plenty.

The 115hp 1.6 reached 60mph (for yankees, that's the same) in 6.4 seconds and carried on to 118 (for non-yankees, that's 190km/h). That's a pretty low top speed, but these cars were always oriented towards acceleration and lower-speed roads. If you wanted more though, the 1.6 Supersport upped the power to 138, lowered the 0-60 to 5.8 and reached 131 (210km/h). The 1.8 started at 122hp but its Supersport variant developed 138... and the Supersport R 190, rocketing to 60 in 4.5 seconds. But those are very rare.

How was the sound? Better than a Viper’s. At least, according to Mike Rutherford from this Men and Motors segment from 1998. If you want to spare yourself some ear-piercing music, skip to 2 minutes for the bold claim and some chatting with Jez Coates (Caterham’s technical director) about how they managed that.

How did that power get to the wheels? As standard, it had the Ford Type 9 transmission, the one you’d find in a MKIII Capri or a Sierra, though a Caterham-made six-speed gearbox was offered as an option. It also had a limited-slip differential, of course.

So, how was it like to drive? Probably better than the Seven: the chassis was 50% stiffer, the wheels were further apart and the suspension was tweaked for a better ride. And while it was bigger and heavier than the Seven it was based on, we’re still talking about less than 4 meters and 1500 pounds (for Europeans, that's about 1800 euros at today's exchange- wait no).

Oh, and then there was the GTO, a racing version with the Seven R500's 1.8l engine. Some specs? 230 hp, 0-100 in 3,8 seconds, and all in 1994.

And, as if it wasn’t mad enough already, it later received the Levante’s V8 - supercharged to 500 hp! In a car that weighs not much more than that in kilograms!

Wow, what a cool car! How come it failed to replace the Seven? That was never its goal! The production was already meant to be limited to 200 cars a year. Which of course, multiplied by the five years it was sold-

Lightnings strike. Thunders echo. Typhoons blow. Lotuses handle. But their quest to revive the Seven's ethos called for much more than coasting on that fact of life. They pushed aluminium manufacturing itself to new bounds to create a chassis less Seven tier rigid and more seven times that. The engineers' pursuit of lightness was so absurd that their own electric window mechanisms were lighter than their supplier's manual ones. The result was a beautiful mid-engined sportscar with proper development budget about as light as the 21 and only £200 more than its base version, which it beat in 0-60, top speed and being preassembled. Yeah.

It was the raw British performers' iPod. Compact, light, capable, yet refined, simple and comfortable to use... a great enough product to push its brand away from the edge of hasbeendom and towards a new renaissance, ushering in a boom of its category... which was really more a boom of just itself, given how few other real beneficiaries there were.

Sure, you could buy a Morgan if your tophat stayed on during sex. You could buy a TVR if your views on ergonomics aligned with The Joker's. You could even buy a Creative Nomad Jukebox. But then, you'd still probably want a car with a radio to plug it into. So, while yearly Elise production, targeting 750, peaked at 5000 (or, spot the theme, seven times that), not 50 Caterham 21s were ever produced. Of which just two were Supersport Rs. I told you they were rare.

But that still doesn't explain it, does it? Sure, the Elise might've made it redundant at best and even stolen its spotlight when first showcased in '95, but the 21 still had a full year when the Elise was but a rumor, so surely, at least for the briefest while, there was room to shine for the idea of a plusher take on the cheap, basic British sportscar recipe, ri-

Yep. The 1989, or 1990 depending on your address, Mazda Miata. The iPod of the British sportscar. And no, I'm not refuting my first use of this analogy. The original concept behind the Miata was putting the ethos of the traditional British roadster in a package so usable the everyman could have it not just as their weekend car but as their only car. The original concept behind the Elise was updated because of pesky regulations to, ugh, have doors. We are talking about two very different levels of commitment there - and by extension two very different breadths of potential customers. To clarify: the uproarious success of the Elise led to the production of a whole 55 thousand between its every variant when production stopped in 2021. That's half of all cars Lotus ever made in its seven decades. In 2016, Mazda produced its millionth Miata.

Yeah.

And sure, the 21 was much lighter and faster than the Miata, but those who wanted that enough to both pay a £3k premium and put up with an unreliable, temperamental handmade British car, but not enough to go for the even lighter and faster Seven were evidently... not enough.

Which is a shame, really, isn't it? However much I may love the Seven's looks, I'm not blind to them being... let's use "polarizing". To have something not just more conventionally attractive, but also much more approachable (you know, things like knowing you won't have to frantically fiddle with two dozen buttons if it starts to drizzle) could, for the right person, not just make the proposition more appealing, but be what pushes it into the reign of justifiability.

Right, it sucks for those people! Now that it’s a rarity, prices must be sky-high… Well, you’re about to be pleasantly surprised: those Caterhams you saw above are actually up for sale, and with prices that rival used Sevens, too!

Okay, that was eight years ago, but from what I've been able to tell any time a 21's gone on sale since then the price has closer to the first figure than the second - when not lower still!

And that's the end of the article, engagement prompts aside. That transition from small edits to a whole new section was pretty jarring, eh. Writer improves after third of life. More at 7.

Anyhow, here's your first post of the year - and here's to one more year here on Tumblr, making the kind of content every other social platform welcomes as merrily as the plague.

Thank you all for sticking around for it. Means a lot.

Scoperta, 2024, by Camal Studio. A sports car based on the Caterham Seven is to be offered by Turin-based design studio. The cars will cost €150,000

[getdestroyed-staydestroyed]

'Day by Day by Day' or: The Great Five-Year Hiatus

So it's been quite a little while hasn't it?

Five whole years to be exact.

A stretch of time that anyone would rightfully call more than "a little while" if we're being honest. And for that I don't really have anyone to blame but myself. For the longest time I have struggled with maintaining active presences across multiple websites and platforms, at least in an organic way that doesn't involve services like Postybirb. I want to get better at that, and right now there's no better motivation for that than the start of this year, considering what I've got in store!

While the past five years have seen me doing everything from commissions, to adopts, ask answers, and illustrations on platforms like Tumblr, then Twitter, and now Twitter + Bluesky, I've pivoted to making the push I should have done a while ago: full length comics. What does this mean? Well quite a number of things!

As I stated in the first post on here I've uploaded since 2021, I've been working on constructing a website for the second half of last year and save for a few final finishing touches, I'm slated to go live with it during the first quarter of this year! This site is mainly going to be a hub for hosting all the comics I'm going to have going forward! From one-shots, to long-form narratives, it's all gonna be at this easy to find domain instead of trying to hunt me down across infinite platforms. I'm still going to be doing my best to maintain a renewed presence here and other sites, but that's going to be the "headquarters" so to speak!

And we won't be starting out things empty handed on a barren site mind you, oh no. To kick things off the first comic to be uploaded in full on there is going to be: Step-Monster! And not just the first volume that started it all folks, the long awaited Volume II is going to drop to wrap things up. 5 full new chapters to conclude the story of Matilda, the Millers, Roy, and their tale of circumstance, parenthood, trust, and love. Hard dates for these chapter's release will be coming soon, and teasers will drop as well so keep your ears to the ground! As the deviation that went up was titled: "Big Things" are indeed coming! I can't wait to finally bring you folks along for the ride on the stories and ideas I've been sharing pictures of online for so long. The time is here! It's time for comics! Time for stories!

I want to extend a massive thank you to everyone who has continued to follow, support, and encourage me during this loose "hiatus" of sorts. To hear through other folks that people are constantly bringing up and talking about Step-Monster even in this period of abesnce has done nothing but inspire me to get serious. Because if this is you folks when I'm not making comics I can't imagine what things are gonna be like when we get the ball rolling! Stay tuned everyone!

[iphyslitterator]

2024 Tumblr Top 10

tagged by @liminalmemories21 (thank you, I LOVE stats)

How it works: Share your top 10 tumblr posts from last year! Visit this site, scroll down to "Find your Tumblr Top 10," type in your username, and select 2024. When you get the results, simply click "Share to Tumblr"   and you'll get an auto-generated draft for a post with links and previews. Make any adjustments you see fit.

1. 650 notes - Nov 28 2024

Did some very cursory research, and it turns out having mental health issues on your record can seriously complicate...

I'm thrilled this is my top post. First of all, it was very funny to ruin everyone's day on Thanksgiving. But mostly I think it was a useful and important topic to introduce to the fandom ecosystem, especially after some back-and-forth with the venerable @bekolxeram.

2. 495 notes - Jun 27 2024

Picture, if you will, Buck and Tommy's pre-teen daughter sitting Tommy down and asking how he knew he was gay. And he takes a...

I love this post, but it did age badly 😕 Buck's answer is going to be complicated after all.

3. 466 notes - Aug 26 2024

sharing my vision of chimney dragging tommy into a comedy b plot and rambling to him at 6 in the morning until tommy says...

I was surprised this did so well, but the people crave Chim & Tommy.

4. 437 notes - Aug 13 2024

when I'm feeling down, I like to imagine early s8 Tommy calling Buck and saying, listen, I know it's your night with Eddie, but...

Man, remember over the summer when people thought Eddie would have a serious mental health struggle, and Buck (and Tommy) would be supporting him, and Buck & Eddie & Tommy would have to renegotiate their dynamic? I miss that.

5. 394 notes - May 7 2024

One of my favorite things about 7x06 Bucktommy is that at no point are they trying to impress each other. Buck at the bachelor...

Earliest post on the list. Solid meta, but the most notable part is the footnote from someone blissfully unaware of Henleygate.

6. 388 notes - Sep 16 2024

tommy with a nonstop eight-minute rant about last night's baseball game while he's getting ready in the morning, mostly yelled...

I love this 😭

7. 380 notes - Aug 29 2024

"Hi!" Buck calls out when he hears the door open from where he's sprawled sideways on Tommy's couch, engrossed in a book on the...

This was supposed to be a little thing, but it got a bit longer than I expected, so I ended up posting it on AO3 - my first official fic since November 2020 🥰 Part of a genre, but as far as I know no one had done it with a couch.

8. 342 notes - Jun 4 2024

i just want to see eddie treating a severely injured buck while tommy struggles to keep him conscious and following...

Love this post + equally love these additions from @dadvans and @zeraparker (the end of the second one haunts me).

9. 322 notes - May 17 2024

oh my god he's walking on his knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting

The only non-Bucktommy post on the list (it's Bobby in Step Nine). Post "Wild Geese" during a commercial break = easy website.

10. 288 notes - Nov 28 2024

Flame

Day 1 of 118 Daily Drabble, and my most popular because it turned into a spontaneous collaboration with @peppermintquartz. I was SO excited to write back and forth and see people get invested; nothing like that had ever happened to me! I also liked getting the notifications (despite writing significantly less lol 🤭 hey, there were no rules). The original drabble is sad, but after five installments we got to a happy ending.

tagging @espressotonicc @jamieroyjamieroy @do-androids-dream-ao3acc @bucksdaffy @tommykinard217 and the people tagged above

[liialii]

✧ atlas ✧ t̷͕̏͐̾h̷̨͙̙̗̽̓͝͝ĕ̴̠͉͉̈́ ̴͚͇̥͉̂s̵̱̗̺͗̐̕e̵͇͔͚͊ą̵̣̱̋̔̍̅ͅt̷͇͛̀͆̾ ̸͕͓̈́o̶̢͓̱̹̽̎͂f̴̖͊͗̄ ̴̳̞̖̽͊ͅá̸͚̬̼̠̽z̸̧̾́͜e̸̻͂́̄̆m̷̨͔͗͛ ̫͉

[ittybittystarryshow]

adding onto this: if you're unsure about certain colors and how they work together your best bet is to use a contrast checker! the one linked here is a good example and gives a good indicator for both small and large texts! but any other website will work well too i believe! generally though i still advise to at least provide a plain text version (or use the alt image thingy) if the image you have has text ^^

likewise if a post doesn't have an alternative way for reading the text attached (both for images and babytalking honestly) then you are totally allowed to ask if you can provide it for them (or just provide it for them regardless) for that post if you have the time and ability. while it's important for people to do these things as people post i also acknowledge that people aren't perfect and will either forget to provide alt text or can't at that moment, so it's okay to reblog their post or comment providing an alt of your own (likewise if you have someone providing an alt text for your post, don't take it personally nor rely on them for it when you can do it yourself !!)

id also like to mention since i'm here that (while partially unrelated) as someone who has a family member with epilepsy and as myself who doesn't but said things give my eyes a lot of discomfort id like to also mention on here (while this is a general issue more than it is about the agere community, nor do i think this is rampant in the community), that its always EXTREMELY important to either provide a photosensitivity warning for certain images (flashing lights/colors, eyestrain/extremely bright colors, fast moving/rapidly-changing images if neccesary) or to just not use images/gifs that have these attributes at all to be safe. it's not only inaccessible to those with physical issues in relation to bright colors like eyestrain and headaches but also it can literally be deadly for someone to have a seizure, including those triggered by flashing images, like the post says, it's your account but please do keep this in mind (though, again, not as rampant of an issue i'd just like to mention it because its still important to keep in mind ^^)

also, thank you for telling this to the general community (genuine) a lot of this stuff i wasn't actually all that aware about, especially the censoring part (though i do wish there was a way to not censor and not crosstag at the same time..)

Can I talk about how inaccessible the agere community is or will I get yelled at -_-

[icewindandboringhorror]

indeed my exact process once every 8 months or so

[lesbianlenas]

bought pre-cut fruit & am finally able to eat fruit 👍 i love fruit but my adhd HATES having to cut things & i cannot just bite into a fruit bc it creates a sensory issue for me when my face gets sticky i can’t stand it so like i have had to narrow down so much the ways i can eat fruit 😭 but anyway being able to just eat it made me actually eat the fruit i am so happy 😩 next i need to get smth that will cut onions for me so i can cook like 90% of the things i want to cook but can’t make myself bc i don’t want to chop an onion so badly…..

[scribblemakes]

[ID: A collection of black and white sketches showing everyday objects that are haunted by little creatures. These creatures fill in gaps with black space and white dots for eyes /End ID]

As some of you might’ve seen: I’m no longer posting art on Twitter, so Tumblr is now the only social media I’ll be consistently posting art to. However: I’ll also be posting it to my website and possibly other social media platforms in the future.

I also post monthly sketch pages to my Patreon (April’s is on this post) with early access for Patrons, and I’m hoping to add more things to it soon!

Thanks everyone for your support (your tags mean a lot to me!) and I’ve put more of my thoughts in the tags.

[angerygoomba]

getting into bob ross again cause of jet set radio. the pipeline is real.

[gobbluthbutagirl]

lol so like 100000 years ago, like literally all the way back in MARCH when i was still living in my shithole apartment, i ordered stuff from some company that i had assumed was legit, and i had ordered it to be delivered to my dad’s house because i knew i was about to move out of that shithole and their website said to allow 2-3 weeks for processing before it shipped. well. 2-3 weeks went by, then 2-3 months, and it never shipped. and i noticed some stuff was off about the whole thing, like in the shopify app you couldn’t actually browse the products like you can with literally every other shop, you have to go to their website directly to even see their shit. and because of this there’s also no shop rating in the shopify app like there is with literally every other shop. so i’m like, ok, whatever, i got scammed, and i’m out like $100, but i have other shit going on right now too so i don’t really care that much about that. and i did report it to shopify a couple times like, hey, i never got my shit, but obviously nothing ever came of that. and i’m also separately having a weird problem with my email address where it’s like 14 years old and the provider has actually been defunct for a while now and i literally don’t even know if that’s actually why but ANYWAY every time i try to send an email from my email app it just bounces and doesn’t send and i can’t even log into my account on their website either because the 2-factor authentication they have on there literally does not even work, like it sends me a code and then i put in the code and it’s like, wrong code! even though i know for a fact it’s the right code.

and so anyway all this to say i couldn’t email the company directly either so i was just like whatever. but then i also didn’t want to try to get my bank to refund the charges either because i was like, what if they do eventually ship it? and obviously they wouldn’t do ever do that if i managed to get my money back, and i did want that stuff clearly because otherwise i wouldn’t have ordered it. so i just kind of forgot about it for a while and made a million other online purchases on shopify since then all of which i’ve had zero issues with. so it was just kind of this thing in the background that i was just choosing to not deal with.

but then fast-forward to today. the “order placed” just randomly changed to “shipped.” and there’s no tracking number and i never got any type of email saying it had shipped. and the only time i’ve ever had a package not have a tracking number is when i’ve ordered overseas from the uk and this company is ALLEGEDLY based in the la area so i’m just like…lol. and i don’t know at what point this happened but i tried to click on their website today after this and the domain literally isn’t even registered anymore. so like again…lol. and i’m thinking either this package hasn’t actually shipped and will not actually ship and it was just marked as shipped so they don’t get in trouble for never having shipped it at the six-month mark which is coming up really soon OR if it did ship it did NOT ship from los angeles and instead shipped from somewhere overseas(presumably china) and could i guess actually theoretically arrive at some point within the next month. which of course will be ~6 months after i ordered it. which AGAIN…lol!

[livvyofthelake]

oh they should’ve given my man the oscar who the hell did he lose to and can we kill that guy jesus christ

[anthonycrowley]

sometimes i remember catalogues used to exist. imagine sending in $100 and hoping a couch or whatever would show up one day.

[realcowboysdrinkjuice]

barely anyone follows me so this will get zero notes but i do not care i am so excited and need to share this somewhere

I GOT MY FIRST COLLEGE ACCEPTANCE LETTER!!!!! FOR THE UK!!!!! SO NO MATTER WHAT THE OTHERS SAY I HAVE A YES!!! AND IM SO EXCITED HOLY SHIT!!!! ITS ALL I WANTED!!!!!!

and i was so fucking scared especially with covid making my gap year long and making everything scarier but i did it and no matter what happens i have a place to go and things are finally moving forward again and holy fuvk i’m going to study illustration overseas like i wanted to before shit went BAD because OOF CLASS OF 2021 NOT A GOOD YEAR especially not a good year in the united states of america where they didnt do jack all to try and prevent it DEAR GOD !!!! bUT OH MY GOD!!!!!!!

usually i’d yell to my family but everyone is asleep oops because it’s almost 6 am my sleep schedule is WRECKED RN so nobody is awake and i did. text anyway cause it was big enough to do it anyways but i was still just yelling into the void so i’m yelling into the void here too

[13eyond13]

.

[icewindandboringhorror]

I’m always paranoid of my tumblr being deleted or malfunctioning or something like that someday, so here’s other places to find me/follow me, just in case lol

~ instagram - https://www.instagram.com/lucalicatte/

~ main youtube - https://www.youtube.com/c/LucaLiCatte

~ games/sims youtube - https://www.youtube.com/@cloudycatte

~ facebook page (I rarely use this because I hate facebook but.. it at least allows text posts better than instagram does, so idk maybe I’d use it more if tumblr went away? lol) - https://www.facebook.com/cloudycatteart/

~ Other Links (stuff I don’t use often/isn’t Main enough to list here, like twitter, neopets, other tumblr sideblogs, youtube channels, etc.) are here - http://icewindandboringhorror.tumblr.com/otherlinks )

[waybrightgender]

google how to get someone to stop reading about crypto and using degenerate