#the sponsoring the woman in the post did was not doing it right

[crypticpine]

Wanna add or WILLING to help them find someone who can provide these things. There are places that raises money specifically for women who decide to keep their child but cannot afford it or do not have the support they should. Most pro-life centers can help you in these situations.

Basically if they need help with something and you're trying to help them, "I don't know" is not an acceptable answer. Be willing to figure it out with them, to provide things that's going to cost you time and money, or to direct them to people that can help them. Know what you're willing to give. Know who is willing to give what you cannot. Love the parents and be a kind person to them, you're basically sponsoring them to have this baby.

[bunny-jpeg]

hello! i stumbled upon your blog and i must admit i LOVE the bakery theme. can i get a berry trifle and coffee with oscar piastri please? thank you so much!!!

bakery menu

want to submit your own order! check the original post for all the information & prompts! as for this prompt, i am loving that people are into the whole rivals idea. i love writing rivals for f1, it's like the soap opera aspect of f1. it's very funny.

berry trifle ('wrong, try again') + coffee (rivals) served to you by oscar piastri (formula one!)

cw: smut/pwp, (failed) rivals au, driver!reader, driver!oscar, a dash of breeding kink, unprotected sex, references to masturbation, cowgirl position,

okay, oscar didn't hate you. despite what the press had been alluding to after hungary, oscar didn't hate you. in fact, he had respect for you, you were breaking barriers for women in the field.

but by god, did you light a fire in him.

when he first met you, you were in the semi-baggy driver's clothes. the fabric didn't give you much shape. so oscar just thought you were the cute new driver.

that was until you attended an event for ferrari with leclerc, the dress-code did not include the driver's suit. that was when oscar got a good look at your figure. there was a strength to your form that could clearly be seen by the lack of full sleeves on the dress you wore.

oscar didn't know he was attending the gun show!

but that only made his carnal craving for you grow deeper.

"she's turning a lot of heads." charles remarked before he took a sip of his drink, "i told her that if she really worked on it, she could get some hefty sponsors."

"or a date." lando remarked as the three men watched you talk your way through the room. eventually lando said, "i'd smash." before he downed his drink and got up to get another one.

charles looked to oscar and asked, "what are your thoughts on her, piastri?" he was genuinely curious, oscar was quiet about you.

oscar sighed and made a face, "i want to crush her on the track." he turned to the other man and shrugged, "i don't care if she's a woman, i'm here to win."

-

you beat him in belgium. you also beat norris, leclerc, and verstappen. you held that trophy over your head while the national anthem of your home country played. oscar swore that he saw tears in your eyes.

there was a buzz about you over the course of the summer break. oscar took it as an opportunity to invite you to england. all driver's ran in the same circles and oscar was just extending an offer for you to get out of monaco for a week!

"i promise, it does get sunny... sometimes." he said to you over the phone. he didn't admit but when he heard you beautiful voice on the other end of the line, his hand was already around his cock.

he was in anticipation for your visit and was more than happy to pick you up from the airport. you threw yourself at him and laughed.

"you were right, it is hot!" you were wearing a light sweatshirt, "i honestly thought you were fuckin' with me. you must be cold, mister australia!"

he scratched the back of his neck, and his eyes went wide when you hastily took off the sweatshirt, exposing more of your body to him. he didn't know that ferrari made such tight tank tops.

oscar's plans to really cement you as a rival failed upon impact. he thought this trip was going to be really getting to the core of you and cementing himself as you rival. but, instead you were helping him make breakfast because you 'felt bad' that he was doing 'everything'.

it was two eggs in a pain and couple of sausages.

you lingered around him, he noticed by the second day you smelt like his body wash when you got close enough to him. you were all bright smiles, soft gazes and tight little tops.

oscar ended every night with his cock in his hand, idly masturbating until his legs cramped up. the sick little kink he often let his mind wander about was the breeding kink.

his dream was two seasons with you at mclaren (sorry, lando). you in the bright orange across the paddock. then halfway through the second season, you start feeling unwell. you'd be too stubborn to take a pregnancy test, but with the amount of tests drivers have to take, it wouldn't be long before you were confronted by the fact that oscar got you pregnant! then you start a bright new future as mrs. piastri, and lando can come back (yay, lando!).

that was why his plan to make you his rival failed, because his need to get his cock wet overrode everything else.

it took a week before you two started sleeping together. you could only drink, laugh and play so many video games before you led him back to his bedroom like a siren.

it was met with giggles and bad jokes. hands touching skin and finally the clothes were shed.

oscar liked you on top, as did you. you liked having the control of your movements as your pussy was a vice around his leaky cock. you were on birth control (duh), but the other driver didn't need to know.

he honestly thought he was taking you raw.

"tell me who's going to win it all this year?" you asked as you rolled your hips. his cock was snug in you, you had to admit, the other driver was packing some heat between his legs.

and he wasn't afraid to use it.

oscar rubbed his thumb against your hip and said, "yeah, number eighty-eight for mclaren." he smiled cockily.

"wrong, try again." you said as you laughed and tapped him on the nose, which made him groan. you bent over himself as you rocked your hips and kissed at his face. he looked visibly relaxed.

"oh c'mon!" he laughed as he tried to set the pace himself. but you placed your hands on his chest and anchored yourself. you were not letting him take control.

you leaned in to kiss him again. the air conditioning in the room prevented it from getting too hot. but, oscar could see the slight sheen of sweat on your naked body in the afternoon light.

"you don't think i'll beat you?"

you shook your head and continued to move up and down on his cock. you pushed the hair out of your face, "oh, don't be silly, piastri." you playfully slapped his toned chest, "we all know i'm going to beat you." then flashed your press smile.

words like that made him want to breed you even more. but, he kept those thoughts to himself. he didn't want to risk losing such a sweet pussy in his close proximity.

it'd be hard to win championship when you were carrying the other driver's baby!

you rested up against his chest and rolled your hips. you had taken his cock to the root and it nudged against you with each thrust of your hips. you could feel his balls up against your pussy.

"shit, fuck. you feel so good."

"i bet you say that to all the girls you bring back to this place." you laughed as you really worked at riding him. you panted heavily as you moved against him.

he ran his fingers through your hair, "nah, nah. no girl's as pretty as you." oscar's plan slipped through his fingers, he wanted you more as a wife then a rival.

"well, aren't you sweet, oscar."

the two of you continued to fuck in the afternoon light. the pleasure pumped through your body as you rode him. you knew you weren't going to last long, that was one thing you could admit about oscar.

he was a good fuck.

the bed squeaked a little bit under the both of you. oscar's orgasm hit him hard and he finished inside of you in a huff. his nails dug into your hips as you continued to ride him till you found your completion.

he looked in a bit of a daze as you continued to hump against him. you felt the sweat on your back and oscar's strong chest under your nails, your short nails scratching against the skin.

"shit, oscar." you groaned as you reached your climax.

you were both out of breath. you didn't know what to do after you stopped your movements besides just giving him a firm pat on the chest. you panted, "good. good."

he laughed, "excellent. now c'mere."

you soon laid out on his chest and linked your fingers with his. your legs tangled together as you laid there trying to catch your breath. it was almost intimate.

you kissed at the other's collarbones, "so what do you say, piastri? another round and then we can get some dinner?"

-

that evening you called charles up, you were seated on the balcony of the flat with your legs kicked out on the small table.

"leclerc residence, charles speaking." he yawned on the other end.

you replied, "it's barely eight o'clock. you're getting too old." with a hint of laughter in your voice. in all fairness you were a little tired too.

"glad to see you're alive in england. how's oscar?"

"good, good. our little mission is a success." you beamed on the other end, "oscar will be as docile as your little leo."

charles chuckled on the other end, "if he is, he's going to need more training. i don't get why you didn't start with lando? he was into you too."

"yeah, but oscar's accent got me first." you sighed, "i mean, eventually the two will tear each other apart." you shrugged.

"or tear you apart." charles remarked.

"i'm not too worried there, leclerc. you men are quite funny sometimes. i'll tell you everything when i get back."

your teammate replied, "whatever, just don't come crawling back to me when they both catch on and you've got cum coming out of your ears."

formula one was a man's world, but if you could keep a man like oscar piastri on his knees for you. then maybe you had a chance of winning the championship.

[themaclean]

We Don't Have To Be Friends (1/2) Characters: Cooper Howard/Lucy MacLean. Summary: 3,507 words, Post Season One -- character study that was meant to be PWP, but then ended up being entirely plot. Part two will be smut or I will krill myself. Warnings: Nothing you wouldn't see in the show. ( Ao3 ) > Part One | Part Two | Part Three <

Cooper never thought much about Hollywood anymore.

He had no reason to and no time either— but the thoughts bubbled up when he saw how the gold thread of his shirt dulled and familiar street signs melted into slack arches. Sometimes, he’d catch sight of a tattered newspaper with names he recognized or faces of people long since dead.

But nothing made him think of Hollywood the way Lucy did.

It hit him one afternoon with a nasty churn, that flash of the old world that locked his knees mid-stride. It was pathetic, really, when he thought about it now.

It was the flash of Lucy's Vault-Tec-sponsored smile over her shoulder, her thin hand with a necrotized finger pointing ahead of them at some landmark she’d heard of. With her head turned at just the right angle, and the sun was low as it caught the edges of her cheeks and lashes…

She had the sort of face girls in the movies had: clear skin, big eyes, and neat hair. Pretty — beautiful, actually, but not as a matter of compliment. Beautiful in the way she’d make a good price at any given market if he was inclined to sell her. Beautiful in the way people loved to exploit.

That’s the lifeblood of Hollywood—that churning mass of young talent desperate to prove they had what it takes. They’d sweet talk whoever they needed to, go to the parties, and chat his ear off about how amazing he’d been in whatever movie had come out lately, about the sponsorships they’d been offered, and about the dresses they got sent. They’d slip him their number and hold his bicep too long like they’d been taught to by managers and mothers alike.

Dozens of pretty women rushed to audition for the role of arm candy. They’d audition to play the mayor's daughter, the farmer's daughter, or so-and-so’s daughter. They’d always been the damsel. Then, whatever cowboy he’d been hired to play would toss the pretty woman onto the back of Sugarfoot and ride off into the sunset. The sort of girl who'd be gone by the next movie or end up married to a director, so she'd quit acting.

And, much like all the girls in Hollywood Cooper had spent time with, Lucy had changed. She had the same optimism, but it’d dulled; her marketable face now held tired, empty eyes. It was like she finally caught onto the world’s current: no sunset and no next movie.

Cooper couldn’t fault her. It's a strange journey to discover what to do to survive.

“Hey Cooper — is that it?” Lucy asked, repeating herself. The sprawl of buildings ahead was dotted with torches and candles.

Cooper nodded, his hand firm on Dogmeat’s collar.

A short strip of buildings stood out against the expanse of desert and dry shrubs. Each building leaned towards another, with sheet metal fastened with unskilled welding. Several turrets puttered away, seeking whatever wasn’t humanoid enough. Strips of fabric and tin cans garlands peppered the buildings' front. The smaller buildings on either side were your standard fare: a repair shop, a medic, a trader with a little diner area.

But the one Cooper was after stood out for its neon sign—Hell’s Oasis.

Hell’s Oasis served its purpose—it was a decent place to get information, and the people minded their business. They weren’t too bothered with ghouls or mutants as long as you had caps. The place often served as a meeting ground for bounty hunters and their contractors. It was also one of the more upscale places, as they wouldn’t harvest organs unless you died of natural causes.

And, if you couldn’t fight or forage for survival, you could fuck for it.

(Not that Cooper ever wasted caps on the whores who took residence within Hell’s Oasis. He’d sooner pay people to fuck off than spend the night with him.)

Cooper grabbed Lucy by the nape of her neck to yank her close and keep her firmly by his side. Most people he brought here, he left here — call it a force of habit to handle her so roughly.

“I can walk, y’know,” Lucy hissed.

“Stick close,” Cooper clicked his tongue at her, and a slight hiss followed. His grip flexed to further the message that she’d do well to follow his guidance.

They made their way through the hotel lobby, the moldy carpet slick against the floor with dirt and grease from the world outside. A few people chattered away in the attached bar, laughing at jokes Cooper couldn’t make out. Casino chips clattered on the table as they played made-up card games.

Long dead plants clung to arid dirt, the sticks of old ferns wilting against one another. Metal crates were lashed together in each corner of the alcove where the front desk sat, providing a makeshift cage between the staff and the patrons. Several girls rushed past Cooper and Lucy, jeering and cackling as they approached the bar. They were clad in lacy nightgowns. He couldn’t tell if they knew they were lingerie rather than clothes or if they’d even care.

“It’s so lively here,” Lucy said, a pang of something in her face.

“It happens in pockets,” Cooper said with a shrug of his shoulder. Little uh… spots of life.”

“Must be why they call it an oasis.”

Cooper rolled his eyes as they reached the front desk. Magazines sat in thick stacks with information about local tours in the area and a guide to the national parks. An abandoned handbag was tucked against the desk, which Lucy eyed with curiosity.

Cooper slapped the front desk bell a few times, a gargling growl low in his throat.

They needed this break after a couple of weeks on the road together. Water was getting sparse, and he wanted to be ready to meet with whoever the fuck Hank had run off to. And in such an open desert, there’s no sense traveling at night, and all manner of dumb shit came up along the way.

It was always something. People needed help or some dumb cunt trying to pick a fight, resupplies, rest… He didn’t like helping people much, but Lucy argued with him whenever they tried to go on without at least trying. And whether the people lived or died, at least they tried. That was her argument.

But Lucy listened to him a little more now, and he was as patient as he could be with her.

Cooper rang the bell again. He wanted a room, and the chattering laughter in the bar was only making his aches worse.

Priscilla appeared from behind a moth-eaten velvet curtain. Her hairline was hidden beneath a thick headscarf with puffy blond curls bouncing beneath it. The last time he’d been here, her hair had begun to rot out of her skull. He guessed it’d only gotten worse. She’s still pretty, mirroring that old-world red lip with pin curls.

“Oh my God, is that you, Coop? I haven’t seen you in a long time,” Priscilla said in a slow, low voice. She had a rasp to it, always had, though he wasn’t sure if it was from the radiation or a smoking habit.

“Was underground,” Cooper said with a lazy smile. He wouldn’t mention that he’d been underground in a literal sense, trapped in a coffin.

“Well, it’s nice for you to come to see us and…” Priscilla’s gaze slid to Lucy, that usual surprise swelling up at the sight of a genuine Vault Dweller. They weren’t hard to spot. “Ah, you turning her in for a bounty?”

Lucy’s head snapped towards him, a mixture of shock and disgust.

“No,” Cooper shook his head, his grip firm on Lucy’s neck to turn her head away from him. His fingers tensed before they dropped away altogether, brushing across Lucy’s shoulder. “Tag-along. Helpin’ her uh…” He picked through the words that came to mind, cautious not to share too much. “Adjust to the surface.”

Priscilla’s jaw squared as she stared Lucy down.

“We’re just lookin’ for a room, some food,” Cooper said before she could pry further. “Usual fare.”

“Please,” Lucy said, like Cooper had forgotten, and it was important to say. “The usual fare, please.”

“She speaks,” Priscilla said in a purr.

Cooper had to give Lucy credit. She’d stayed quiet much longer than he’d expected.

“Oh, we’ll also need water,” Lucy said, looking up at Cooper. “For cleaning and drinking. I’m not sure if you separate it that way or if you reuse it unless you have showers.”

Priscilla narrowed her eyes. “Running water? We can get you a bucket of water, sweetness. That alright with you?”

“It works great for me. Big fan of buckets. They’re the backbone of agriculture and cleaning, really, if you think about it…” Lucy agreed, her smile as bright as the neon sign by the front window.

Priscilla looked at Cooper and then at Lucy, repeating the loop before she sauntered behind a moth-eaten velvet curtain strung up with zip ties. The distant hum of a generator underscored the silence as Cooper picked over the board of caricatures. Plenty of people were banned from the premises or with a bounty on their heads — no one stood out on the board, at least.

“She was giving us a weird look,” Lucy leaned closer to Cooper, feigning a swipe of her hand through her hair. The floor creaked as she shifted her weight closer to him. “Is it the bucket thing? I panicked.”

Cooper scoffed from the back of his throat.

“It is safe here, right? You trust her?”

“It’s safe,” Cooper bared his teeth at Lucy, begging her to return to the docile silence she’d thrived in.

“Then why — ”

Cooper hissed for her to shh through clenched teeth.

Priscilla pushed past the curtain. She gripped a little blue card with faded gold edges. A key with a golden ball chain was attached to the edge. It felt strangely archaic to be so formal about lodgings, but it was why he liked this place.

“I guess it makes sense,” Priscilla said as she slid the key to Cooper. She nodded to Lucy. “You wanting a girl who’s more… Old—world flavor. It reminds you of the golden years, hm?”

“Six, right?” Cooper ignored her question, his gaze fixed to the card.

“Six,” Priscilla repeated, her gaze on Lucy.

Cooper tossed a few caps onto the front desk, the clatter of metal their own punctuation. He notched his head towards the stairs, and Dogmeat and Lucy followed in stride. He was eager for the simple things — water, food, and a moment to let his bags rest.

“Wanting a girl…” Lucy smiled, mumbling more of Priscilla’s words under her breath.

After several flights of stairs and a few hours, Cooper felt all the better. He’d eaten his fill and enjoyed the peace of an enclosed room. He didn’t often allow himself such a luxury, as being in a settlement put a target on your back for any larger groups. But it’d been two weeks since they’d had proper rest out of the elements.

Tracking Hank wasn’t easy, either. That suit meant he could skip over all the pocked landscape and roaming threats. What would take him an hour to travel by air was a day for them sometimes, a fact that spurred Cooper on. But they couldn’t rush, as rushing would only get them killed.

One wrong step and you were deathclaw chow.

“God, more, please!”

And there went the silence. Cooper’s eye twitched; his lipless mouth sneered at the screeches.

Whoever had taken up residence in room five was making the most of their money — an hour straight of screams and moans, an hour straight of Lucy pretending to read. She’d picked up a holotape at the last outpost they’d stopped at; something about a sequel she’d always wanted to continue reading.

By the second hour, it wasn’t so much that room five stopped fucking. But they at least got a lot quieter about it. The occasional shriek or moan rattled through the air vents, but it was far and few between.

Lucy lay across the double bed, her boots discarded beside the door. Her vault suit hung from the defunct radiator. Her washing was all done, and she’d freshened up, the usual Lucy shit. She’d helped herself to the water and changed into some pajama set she’d pilfered from a house a few days back.

“I think it’s nice,” Lucy said into the open air of the hotel room.

Cooper looked up from his shotgun, teeth bared like he was trying to smile. “The quiet?”

“No,” Lucy smiled at the wall between them and room five. “That people can find love, even now.”

Cooper couldn’t stop himself from laughing at that. The cackles shook from low in his lungs and caught him so off-guard he hacked up some foul muck into his palm. He hissed through a wheezed breath as he fumbled with his RadAway puffer.

“I mean it! It’s not funny!”

“That ain’t love, Vaultie,” Cooper coughed out, his eyes narrowed as drool and tears mingled on his cheeks. He wiped his face, fine skin catching against the scarred, leathery mess. “That…” He pointed to the wall. “S’probably a whore and her John making the most of the caps.”

Lucy’s eyes darted as she picked apart what he’d said. “John..?”

“John’s a term for uh…” Cooper’s jaw strained against a smile, though it was far too cruel to be kind. “A guy who pays for sex.”

“Ah, wasteland slang,” she said with a solemn nod, as if it made sense she hadn’t caught on immediately.

“Old world slang,” Cooper corrected.

Lucy looked around the hotel room anew, like she’d finally caught on to what this place really was. She scooted to the edge of the bed, to sit with her legs angled towards him. “That woman at the front desk said you’d want a girl who’s old world — she thought I was a prostitute. ”

“Maybe.”

Lucy crossed her arms as if she had more to say on the matter. But then she remained quiet, uncharacteristically so.

“S’waste of caps.”

“Hiring me to have sex with you? Actually, I know all about sexual gratification, so I think it’d be a great use of money — caps.”

Cooper stared Lucy down as if he couldn’t parse what she’d just said. “Paying anyone money to fuck you is a waste.” Cooper tongued his lips apart. “Bullets. Meds. There’s shit worth paying for. Sex is — ”

“Important.”

“Sex ain’t worth much.”

“To you, maybe,” Lucy frowned. “It’s an act of love and intimacy, and… It’s how humanity continues, and it’s — fun if done well.”

“You wanna waste your caps on some cock?” Cooper snapped, his hand flapping at the door. “Be my guest.”

“No,” Lucy shook her head. “I don’t want to, but I’m saying that I… I think killing people is probably worse than sleeping with people for caps. If it’s to survive, I think it makes sense. Morally speaking.”

“Don’t,” Cooper snarled.

Cooper didn’t like how Lucy spoke to him most days, but this was a new, worse permutation. Her Vault-addled morality was sickening enough on its own, as she embodied whatever bullshit had been drip-fed to her by the company who’d bought her vault. Not that he was without sin, given the shit he’d done to survive this long.

But sex and love and all that shit was not front of mind. He needed to find his family and to know what happened to them. He didn’t need a two-cap blowjob from a stranger in the dim light of some bar. Though, in all honesty, his drug habit mixed with the amount of alcohol he’d drowned himself in, some nights got hazy.

There’s that animalistic, self-destructive part of him that won on his worst nights. The same part of him that kept him alive, the same part that let him do all the miserable shit he needed to do to survive.

But it’s certainly never been love. Not since Barb.

Never again, he’d wager.

"I had sex once," Lucy said this like it was a point of pride, now on her feet. She idled beside the bed, her gaze settled onto the empty space she’d been lying. "With my husband, but…" Her face twisted with this delayed amusement. She turned towards him, closing the gap between them.

Lucy’s eyes remained unfocused as she stared at the marked table between them, where his shotgun lay across a dirty cloth. "Does that make us both widows..? You said you have a family, right? So, you were probably married and had at least one kid. Not trying to presume, so tell me if I’m wrong, but… You said that in the observatory. That’s what you’re after."

Cooper parted his lips, a nasty tilt to his hairless brow.

Lucy gave a tight smile. "I was married. Only for a few hours, but… It was an arranged marriage, I didn’t meet him until the wedding. It turned out he was a raider from the surface posing as my match from Vault 32 and…" At this point, Lucy caught herself. “I feel for you, if you lost someone. That’s all.”

“You ain’t a widow.”

“Technically — ”

Cooper stood up, unable to stay seated. “You say you’re a widow like it’s a fact outta some book. The shit you went through — you’re an experiment gone wrong, not a damn widow,” Cooper said, his voice flat.

Lucy’s face twitched at his words as if she struggled to keep her smile. “Well, guess what? We’re all an experiment gone wrong, whether you’re in a vault or not.”

Cooper’s eyes twitched, narrowing in the dark of their hotel room. Room five was quiet, which made this moment all the worse. He didn’t like how she spoke about him, as if she knew what was happening in his mind. He wasn’t some wounded man looking for sympathy.

He wasn’t anything.

“Go back to your holotapes,” Cooper said with a jut of his chin. “You’ve been up here a few weeks, acting like you know how it is.”

“Well, I know we’ve all been screwed over by people hundreds of years ago, and I’m sorry if I’m not as beaten down by it as you, but — I’m just trying to share things with you, to…” Lucy struggled through her words, her arms crossed protectively over her chest. “We don’t have to be friends, but we have to be — something.”

The couple in room five screeched. Cooper tensed out of habit but relaxed again when he reasoned what the noise was. It didn’t solve the fierce look on Lucy’s face as she stared him down, her fists clenched by her pajama-clad thighs.

“I don’t want to fight with you,” Lucy said, shaking her damp hair out of her face. She stood idle by the table as if she had just realized she had stepped towards him in their argument. There was a bird-like shake to her chest, her heart and lungs quick beneath bone.

It was moments like this that made his nature crystalline to him — that thin line she couldn’t perceive of how easy it’d be to string her up by the ankles and bleed her dry. Of how easy it’d be to slide into that ache for warm flesh between his teeth and blood down his throat.

Ghouls aren’t welcome in most settlements for a reason, and Lucy is too damn optimistic to learn that lesson.

Cooper tongued the inside of his cheek, and his teeth gnashed at the frayed edge of his lip. “We have to be something, huh?”

Lucy’s brow twitched, and her jaw strained as she tried to stand taller. She nodded as something like hope softened her stern expression.

It wasn’t hard to close the gap. It was even easier to grab that ponytail she always wore and yank her head close, fist tight in her hair as he brought her close. Her hand scrabbled against the table, and nails dug into the wood as their eyes met.

“Don’t you ever talk about my family again,” Cooper said, his voice level. “We clear?”

Lucy’s breathing redoubled, but she nodded. Her nostrils flared as he let her go with a firm shove. There was a real sense of satisfaction as he felt her perception of him shift as if she’d forgotten she was dealing with a monster rather than a man. As if the rotted skin and exposed tensions, or the gaping hole where his nose had once been, weren’t enough warning.

Pretty girls in Hollywood were overlooked as much in his time — all in the name of survival in a race that no one really won. You took your part and played it until the work dried up. Then, you prayed for sponsorships, deals, and other things to spare you from the real world.

He watched it with co-stars, time and again. It wasn’t much different now, just less rhinestones and more rads.

[svechnikovvv]

happy birthday

trevor zegras x fem!reader

a/n: in honor of z’s birthday today, i wanted to post this 🫶🏻

masterlist: here

y/n.insta

liked by trevorzegras and 969,034 others

y/n.insta happy 22nd birthday to the bestest boyfriend in the world. you’re my favorite swiftie & you never fail to bring a smile to my face. there’s more i could say, but let’s keep it simple. i love you zegralicious <3

(👤: trevorzegras)

view comments

trevorzegras why did you post that first photo?

y/n.insta i’m reminding you of your roots 🥱

trevorzegras you’re not funny

y/n.insta i will take back my happy birthday, my i love you AND i’ll archive this post. i don’t see any of your little boyfriends posting you 🙄

trevorzegras don’t bring the boys into this

y/n.insta just did, what are you gonna do about it?

trevorzegras report your account multiple times

y/n.insta you, me, kroger parking lot. 5pm

jamie.drysdale mom, i’m scared

y/n.insta go back to bed, sweetie. your father and i are having an adult discussion

jackhughes zegralicious?

y/n.insta it’s like fergalicious, but better

user1 it’s confirmed, y/n is the better parent

user2 i love how they all play along

user3 ZEGRALICIOUS DEFINITION MAKE THEM BOYS GO LOCO

liked by y/n.insta

_quinnhughes i’m gonna need you to send me that first photo

y/n.insta check your messages, huggy

_quinnhughes you’re the best 🙏

y/n.insta just doing god’s work 💁‍♀️

_quinnhughes like ariana grande said, “god is a woman”

y/n.insta damn right, and her name is ellen hughes

jackhughes real

y/n.insta adam sandler, what’re you doing here? 😧

jackhughes you can’t keep saying that everytime someone shows up somewhere

y/n.insta sigh, you’re taking away my paddles to my curiosity voyage

jackhughes no wonder you and z are on the verge of divorce 🙄

y/n.insta and this is why cole was trevor’s best man 🥱

lhughes_06 i just know he’s blasting 22 by taylor right now

y/n.insta this is the third time he’s played it. i’m about to que we are never getting back together

lhughes_06 you should que never gonna give you up

y/n.insta …genius

jamie.drysdale always knew he was a fake duck 👎

y/n.insta you got your amazing intuition from me 😌

jamie.drysdale thanks mom?

user4 i love the ganging up on z moment we’re witnessing

user5 fake duck ‼️

masonmctavish23 22 years ago today, a 🐐 was born

y/n.insta that explains why he’s not potty-trained yet

trevorzegras i’m taking jamie from you y/n.insta

y/n.insta you. wouldn’t. dare

trevorzegras wanna bet?

masonmctavish23 oh no.. what did i start

jackhughes the custody battle of ‘23

_quinnhughes blind leading the blind

_alexturcotte this is an amazing post

y/n.insta thank you, turcs. at least someone appreciates it

colecaufield tell my husband i’ll be home from war in a few hours

y/n.insta trevorzegras you’re cheating on me now?? 😧

trevorzegras cat’s out of the bag now, surprise?

y/n.insta i’m feeling very ricky bobby betrayed rn

anaheimducks happy birthday z! 🧡

y/n.insta (trevor typing here) thank you!

trevorzegras on a real note though, thank you baby <3

y/n.insta you’re welcome my love

user6 i’m glad to say i lived to witness the custody battle of ‘23

jackhughes

liked by y/n.insta and 978,894 others

jackhughes happy birthday zegrasi. live it up man 🧡

(👤: trevorzegras)

view comments

trevorzegras not you too, hughesy (but thank you)

jackhughes i had to 🤷‍♀️

trevorzegras did y/n make you do this?

jackhughes i would never give in to conformity 😧

y/n.insta what a loser that trevor zegras is

trevorzegras i hope you think the couch is comfy, because that’s where you’ll be sleeping tonight. you made your bed, now lie in it

y/n.insta i feel like i’m in salem with that threat

colecaufield two 🐐 in one picture

y/n.insta run while you can, caufield

colecaufield hello???

user7 FETUS ZEGRAS

user8 y/n’s comments are what fuel me

user9 so true

_quinnhughes is this an anti-z club?

y/n.insta yes and i’m the ceo. julie is my sponsor. mama zegras for the win 😎

trevorzegras and to think i gave you all that praise, quintin

_quinnhughes nobody told you to do that

y/n.insta when do you start _quinnhughes ?

_quinnhughes today

_alexturcotte favorite duo 🤝

liked by jackhughes

njdevils happy birthday to our favorite duck! ❤️

trevorzegras thank you!

user10 i love that first picture

lhughes_06 by the end of the day, that first picture is going to be engraved in my brain

jackhughes let it consume you

lhughes_06 what??

colecaufield

liked by y/n.insta and 965,032 others

colecaufield happy birthday zeg2nasty 🧡

(👤: trevorzegras)

view comments

trevorzegras WHY IS EVERYONE POSTING THAT PICTURE??

y/n.insta it’s a zegras cult and i’m the ring leader

trevorzegras you terrify me.

y/n.insta you signed up for this

jackhughes just a couple of boys

liked by colecaufield

y/n.insta you’re a godsend for this

colecaufield can i join the club now too?

y/n.insta what‘s your availability?

colecaufield yes

y/n.insta welcome to the club!

user11 so everyone’s just gonna post that picture?

user12 oh yes kids, i remember the zegras cult of ‘23

user13 i love y/n’s friendship with all of them

user14 i wonder which friend will post next

_alexturcotte the good ole days

colecaufield now we’re old and decrepit

_quinnhughes when y/n starts something… it spreads

y/n.insta you make me sound like a disease

trevorzegras because you are

y/n.insta go back to where you came from

jamie.drysdale

liked by y/n.insta and 897,043 others

jamie.drysdale happy birthday z! i hope it’s a good one 🧡

(👤: trevorzegras)

view comments

trevorzegras STOP POSTING THIS PICTURE. I’M BLOCKING ALL OF YOU AND TAKING YOU OFF MY CLOSE-FRIENDS

y/n.insta ah, i’m so scared

trevorzegras i hope you get cholera

y/n.insta stub your toe, zegras

trevorzegras i’m kicking you out my room. you can go room with jamie now

y/n.insta i’m a delight, i’ll have you know

jamie.drysdale they’re typing this whole conversation while sitting next to each other on the couch with straight faces

trevorzegras nobody likes a tattletale, jimbo

y/n.insta ONE OF US

jackhughes ONE OF US

colecaufield ONE OF US

user15 these posts just keep getting better and better

user16 can we talk about how good they both look in that second picture though?

user17 yes.

masonmctavish23 jimbo’s finally joined the zeg train

jamie.drysdale it was either now or later

anaheimducks that first picture is golden

liked by jamie.drysdale

colecaufield jamie is the better duck (confirmed)

trevorzegras after all i’ve done for you?

colecaufield sorry not sorry

jackhughes he’s never going to forgive us for this

jamie.drysdale oh definitely not

y/n.insta the grudge is already forming

trevorzegras formed*

y/n.insta welcome to the club, jamie!

jamie.drysdale wow, it truly is an honor to be here today. i’d like to thank my mom y/n for telling me to never give up and that someday i’d achieve my dreams.

y/n.insta so proud of you son 🫶🏻

user18 i’m scared for what y/n’s gonna post for the others’ birthdays

trevorzegras i’m starting a gofundme to free me from these shackles. #freeZ

tags: @goldenbrokenheart @liquidflyer @woodruff-edwards @hockeyboysarehot @ajbird2010 @hughesx3 @iheartzegras @theywantedplayer @k1ttyt3ar @jackhughesily @fratboyzegras @marauderzkinnie @babydollmarauders @akengii @livs-garden @nowandkei @starsandhughes @jackhues

[brf-rumortrackinganon]

yes, that French Olympic Opening Ceremony was so fantastic that  the International Olympic Committee has now deleted the YouTube video of its own opening ceremony and is issuing DMCA copyright claims against anyone who posts footage (even legally allowable small snippets), and getting people banned from X. Way to go Olympics!

For an international forum that is supposed to be about unity of nations around shared love of sports....., offending hundreds of millions of Christians worldwide, grown men exposing their genitals in front of children and general degeneracy seems to still matter. If inclusivity means that families with children worldwide have to tolerate a celebration of debauchery without comment...... then inclusivity needs a redefinition..............

Now the French are making the argument that it wasn't a depiction of "The Last Supper", but of "The Feast of the Gods" by Jan van Bijlirt..... but then I have to ask the question: why is the figure in the middle wearing a glittering "halo" headdress like Jesus in the DaVinci's "Last Supper" painting???? Also, as to your argument that the Mona Lisa is also a DaVinci painting and is in the Louvre..... I have to say, then the French maybe should have mocked the Mona Lisa instead of a painting they don't own!

Apparently, we have gotten to the point where it is not possible to celebrate our togetherness and unity without some group of people being insulted and offended by their inclusion or exclusion. So corporations, sponsors, TV channels, the IOC, social media etc. are going to have to decide who exactly they want to leave offend......

I wonder if you've done any reflecting or re-calibration on your take the French Olympic Opening Extravaganza?

Nope, I haven’t. Because

1. I have other things and issues that are more local, more consequential, and more personal for me to worry about than a 15-second blink-and-miss-it tableau performed halfway around the world 2 days ago. Issues like losing my rights to exist as a free independent single woman and sick elderly nonagenarian grandparents.

2. I don’t spend my free time doomscrolling the news, social media, and the internet and getting sucked into algorithms that exploit my dislikes.

3. I have better things to do on a weekend than sit at home and fixate on criticism of an event that had nothing to do with me and that I *chose* to watch. I watched it. I liked it. Then I went to Waffle House and moved on.

4. I believe in personal responsibility. If I’m offended by my *choice,* then I understand I can only be angry and upset with *myself* so accordingly, I blame myself. I don’t go around blaming everyone else and forcing everyone else to be accountable to my personal mistake and bad choice.

It’s France. The French have different attitudes, different beliefs, and different cultural expectations than anywhere else around the world. They are much more lax in their attitudes towards romance and relationships. They are much more liberal in their attitudes towards religion and personal rights. If you knew that - and if you were watching the ceremony then you knew that - and you *still* chose to keep watching the program to see the drag queens and this mockery of Christianity that you’re so upset over, than that’s *your* choice. If you kept watching after Lady Gaga’s performance where the dude in short-shorts accidentally exposed himself, that was *your* choice. If you kept watching after the love/threesome scene, that was *your* choice. If you kept watching after the US livestream showed a statue of the woman who got abortion rights encoded in French law, that was *your* choice.

You didn’t have to watch the program. You didn’t have to keep watching the program. Woke hedonistic leftists did not break into your house, hold you at gunpoint, and force you to watch it or consume media/content about it. That was *your* choice. You could’ve turned it off at any time. But you didn’t. And so you saw things you didn’t like and now you want an entire country and culture to grovel and beg in an apology for *your* own personal decision to watch in the first place?

The IOC is caving to your demands because they need the money and support from the US to exist. That’s the only reason why they’re pulling videos down and censoring the ceremony. Not because the French did something wrong, but because a special group of Americans with enough political and media power to cancel their support and donations perceived it as a direct, personal attack and are angry over it.

5. I think that people who use the Bible, religion, and faith as tools to control and judge people for actions and beliefs that have nothing to do with them or that personally affects their day-to-day lives have forgotten, or don’t understand, what it actually means to be a christian. Matthew 7: “Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.” Or Leviticus 19: “Love thy neighbor as thyself”…which you might know more colloquially as the golden rule, “treat others as you wish to be treated.”

In other words: You be you. I’ll do me. I’ll let you be you however you want to be you and you let me be me however I want me to be me. But if you can’t let that be and you force me to be more like you, then we have a problem. This is what I meant last week when I said “don’t start with me and I won’t start with you.”

I don’t care what the topic is, if we’re talking about Meghan and Harry or the BRF or religion or politics or the Olympics or French culture. The second anyone demands I need to reflect or recalibrate or change my opinion is the second our conversation is over.

Look, you have every right to be offended and angry by what you saw. But you have no right to force everyone else to see it the way you do. I’m sorry if that upsets you, but I’m not changing the fact that I enjoyed the opening ceremony and thought it was a good time. It’s an opinion. Everyone’s got them, and everyone’s opinion is different. If you don’t like mine, then I wish you farewell and bid you good luck as you look for more likeminded company.

This is everyone’s final warning. If you keep coming at me about my opinion that I liked the opening ceremony, I’m going to clap back at you and it won’t be polite or respectful.

[racingliners]

Livery Watch 2024: Special Editions

Breaking News: Local woman still isn't done yelling about car liveries.

idk how many one-off liveries the teams are going to do this year, but in any case I love McLaren's livery for Japan, so if there's any more across this season I'll be updating this post as they appear throughout the year!

McLaren - Japanese GP Vuse "Driven by Change" livery

I LOVED this when the promo images dropped at the start of the week. The livery was designed by Japanese artist MILTZ and is inspired by Edomoji (a style of Japanese calligraphy), the design reminds me a lot of The Great Wave off Kanagawa but I'm pretty sure because they both have a wave motif.

I absolutely love the splashes of blue and white, I wish they were on the black portion of the car instead because the livery would look so much brighter, but I still love how it looks on the car regardless.

9/10

Ferrari - Miami GP Blue livery

Adding list to the very long list of the ways that Ferrari have disappointed me, and ngl I'm so tempted to put it right at the top.

After all the hype Ferrari had been putting out on socials I was expecting the car to be all blue (which, is in recognition of the 70th anniversary of Ferrari selling cars in the USA) and instead we have... this.

Like, no one would have forgotten that Ferrari's are meant to be red just bc the car went all blue for one race, especially because the team kit and overalls are all-over blue for this week (I am extra mad bc the shades of blue that's on the car are so stunning and would definitely have stood out compared to the other blue livery cars).

Also don't get me started on the silly amount of HP logos on the car, if I was a tifosi I would be beyond embarrassed rn

2/10 and that's me being nice.

Racing Bulls - Miami GP livery

Ahhhh. That's better.

I LOVE the multi-colour gradient (even if it does slightly resemble the instagram logo). I would have loved to see it all over the car because the chrome silver bull would look so nice against it.

But apart from that it's so bright and fun and it's going to look fantastic on track this weekend. I'm not even mad that it's matte.

9/10

McLaren - Monaco GP Senna livery

*shouting in the general direction of Maranello* You see this Ferrari? THAT'S how you do a special livery!

Yes, it's incredibly yellow (to the point it looks like a Benson & Hedges sponsored Jordan if you squint) but that's the whole point. (Also bonus points for the car pretty much being completely painted!!!)

As an ode to Ayrton Senna, it's pretty much spot on. For me the first thing that always sprang to mind when Senna is mentioned is his helmet design featuring the colours of the Brazilian flag. I also love the diagonal lines as a nod to the Marlboro McLaren livery.

Oh and did I forget to mention that IT'S NOT MATTE!!!

10/10

Red Bull - British GP "REBL CUSTMS - Stallion Red" livery

Like last season, we're getting three fan-designed RBR liveries this year in honour of the team's 20th anniversary and this is the first!

And god, I wish it was the main livery. The brushes of neon red are so bright and actually look interesting instead of the super corporate unchanged livery we've seen since 2016.

Usual 'I hate that it's matte complaints' but spart of that, it really looks great.

8/10

Williams - British GP livery

So in the design stakes, I definitely prefer last year's white accents design. However, on the sentimentality stakes (of which I will never be immune to), I love it so so much.

As it's been mentioned a lot in commentary already this week, the car features the names of all 1005 Williams team members - and founder Sir Frank Williams, which is just so so lovely.

6/10 for design, 10/10 for the sentiment behind it.

Alpine - Belgian GP "Deadpool & Wolverine" livery

ngl friends I have spent the whole time since this dropped staring at this going 'hmm'.

I definitely don't hate it, I think I once again find all the exposed carbon very off-putting, but at least there is more paint on the car this time compared with their core blue and pink liveries. (And, tbf, given how Deadpool's colour scheme is red and black, it does make sense from that pov)

The concept behind this is very fun, I genuinely cannot remember the last time we had a full promotional livery for something (Aston Martin did run the James Bond logo on their cars when No Time to Die came out, but that was it).

I think it would have been nice if there was more yellow (as cool as the Wolverine claw marks are), but overall it's definitely very fun. I really want to see how it's going to look on track.

7.5/10

Mercedes - Singapore GP "Petronas 50th Anniversary" livery

Not gonna lie, after the well documented events of the 2019 German Grand Prix, I honestly never thought we'd see Mercedes run a one-off livery ever again, so seeing this upon opening Instagram this morning was a nice surprise!

Might be worth saying that this livery is in honour of Petronas' 50th anniversary as a company (their title sponsorship with Mercedes only dates back to 2010), and the choice of debuting this livery at Singapore is that it's the race closest to Petronas' HQ in Malaysia.

(Powers that be pleeeeeeeeease bring back the Malaysian GP in Sepang!!!!!!!)

So, all that aside, I do very much like this livery. The Merc colour scheme of black, silver and teal is super iconic and works in pretty much any iteration. Design wise though I wish there had been a tiny bit of effort put in because they've literally just swapped round where the silver and teal is on their core livery.

I do think the car will stand out on track really well against the dark tarmac of the circuit, and the fact that from this picture at least the teal portion of the car looks glossy so it should look stunning under the floodlights at night.

8/10

Racing Bulls - Singapore GP "Hugo Boss Denim" livery

I want to get on board with this, I really really reaaaaaaaally do.

I just can't because they didn't properly commit to the bit and do the whole car in denim.

Unlike RBs Miami GP livery in which they got away with keeping the dark blue engine cover and halo because across the whole car the colour scheme still felt cohesive, on this livery (or, as we're all calling it, jivery) the saturated blue does not feel very put together with the rest of the denim. And I am a little bit mad about it bc if the denim had been all over the car I think it would have looked both amazing and really different on track. And for once, I don't mind the matte finish bc as we all know denim is not ultra-glossy - another reason why keeping the dark blue engine cover from the core livery just makes the whole thing look odd.

Love the concept, really not on board with the execution - 6/10 overall.

McLaren - Singapore GP "OKX Legend Reborn" livery

oh this FUCKS.

It's somewhat turned into a tradition of McLaren debuting a one-off livery in Singapore. In 2022 the sky blue accents on the core livery were swapped out for a stunning hot pink, and last year we had the mostly carbon stealth livery (you can find my thoughts on that in my Livery Watch 2023 tag).

And this year, as the name suggests, McLaren are running a livery inspired by the iconic Marlboro McLaren livery of the 1980s, with papaya orange in place of Marlboro red.

and to repeat myself, it FUCKS.

I love the stripe of white down the middle of the car, it really stands out compared to the slash of exposed carbon on the core livery and combined with the orange the car just looks so much brighter and is really going to stand out on track.

Is it a little bit Finding Nemo? Yes. Do I care? No.

For the tiny bit of exposed carbon it loses a point so - 9/10

Red Bull - Singapore GP "REBL CUSTUMS - Camo Bull" livery

I will update if I find a better picture, the RBR website is silly.

The funny thing about updating this post as the year goes on instead of doing a reblog for each new livery is that all the various off-track (ie. Red Bull scrapping their two remaining fan designed liveries because the paint they were going to use made the car too heavy) happenings do get a bit lost within the passing of time.

But, as this is my house and I can do what I want on Livery Watch, I'm gonna yell about what would have been RBR's Singapore GP livery anyway, as it has thankfully been put onto Hamda Al Quibaisi's F1 Academy car (plus matching overalls!!!) for this weekend.

And as I said on a post earlier today (as I write this) I am mad that RBR chickened out bc this is SUCH a sexy livery. It pays tribute to the og Camo Bull livery from 2015 pre-season testing so well and it's just DIFFERENT and FUN and is gonna look SO good on the circuit and the pops of neon red are just stunning. I love it.

10/10. no notes.

Haas - United States GP livery

Not only are Haas going to be arriving at the Circuit of the Americas with Toyota Gazoo Racing logos on the car after the announcement of their new technical partnership with Toyota, they are also as seems to be turning into a tradition running a stars and stripes inspired livery for what is 'officially' the team's home race.

(I say officially as while the F1 calendar does have 3 US races, the race in Austin is the only one branded as the United States GP).

I do very much prefer this livery compared to the one they ran last year. The brighter, more saturated colours, work well against the predominantly black base, though I find the red driver numbers a bit hard to read as the white outline is a bit too thin. But I love the scattered star motif on the front wing and sidepods - I think it's very fun!

While I do get why the main emblem on the car is a hybrid of a lone star (bc Texas is the lone star state) and the head of an eagle (ca-caw, wtf is a kilometre) it does slightly give off 'concept art for an NFL team logo' vibes, and I think running with just the star motif would have gotten the same message across just as well.

(I will say though, I think the eagle art itself is pretty good! It just feels ever so slightly too much.)

7/10

Alpine - United States GP "Indiana Jones and the Great Circle" livery

As the semi-official Livery Watch reporter for f1blr news, I do feel it's my journalistic duty to point out that Disney have not managed to pay Harrison Ford even more money to come back for another film, but that this livery is actually promotion for the upcoming video game of the same title.

My second thought upon seeing this livery (my first, like everyone else, was that it looks like a McLaren cosplay) was that I felt quite mad Alpine have painted more of the car for this one-off livery than they have done for their pink and blue core liveries, and I'm once again mad at the missed potential for what we could have had.

(My thoughts on the Alpine core livery can be found in my Livery Watch 2024 tag).

I did have to do some digging, and thanks to this video posted on Alpine's twitter feed and this post by one of Alpine's graphic designers, I am fairly confident in saying that the car is not in fact all over orange, and like the Indiana Jones logo is more of a yellow to orange ombré with a really cool looking treasure map motif on top.

I think the concept is fun (despite the promo images making the car look more orange than what it seemingly is) and it's been executed fairly well, but I may need to wait to see it in daylight before properly deciding if I like it or not.

7/10

McLaren - United States GP Chrome livery

As first ran at the British GP last year, McLaren have once again brought back their chrome silver livery of the late-00s and 2010s, in partnership with one of their main sponsors Google.

And, before I go in detail, I want to show my initial reaction via the tags on a post of this livery I reblogged earlier today because I think it sums up my feelings very well.

I cannot begin to express how delighted I am that McLaren have given this livery a second attempt, because the first version they ran last year was quite a big miss.

This version feels so much more thought out in terms of where the chrome silver paint will actually go and what this livery and the original Vodafone McLaren chrome livery do well is having a really bright pop of colour against the silver so the car doesn't look too bland (unlike the team's 2014 chrome and black livery).

Honestly? This is yet another banger of a McLaren one-off livery. It's silver chrome done stunningly well. 10/10.

Williams - Mexico City GP & Sao Paulo GP altered Core livery

The delay in the latest addition to Livery Watch is partially due to life stuff, and also due to me contemplating whether or not it actually counted since it's a sponsor driven change as opposed to a "let's do this for funsies!" change. BUT we have seen sponsor driven liveries this year so I have finally decided that it counts, so onwards!

The addition of the Mercado Libre logo and yellow colour splash for the two Latin American races of the year is definitely fun (it stands out on the car from a mile away) and either intentionally or otherwise evokes the classic blue, white and yellow Williams liveries of the 80s and 90s.

Obviously there would have been a limitation on what shade of yellow they could put on the car, and I am somewhat bummed that it covers the original Frank Williams Racing logo, but a lot of what I love about the 2024 core livery remains.

Solid 6/10

Sauber - Las Vegas GP Flame livery

I want to like this. However, I don't think I do.

My favourite part of this livery is the nose cone, I think the white to neon green gradient is actually quite nice and had it been done all over the car would have looked very striking on track (especially in contrast to the exposed carbon areas of the car).

I'm just... really not a fan of the flame motif. It looks fine on the front end of the car, but on the engine cover where it's just a flat line before the rest of the flames just makes it look so harsh and for me anyway it's the first thing my eyes are drawn to because it look so slapped on and out of place.

5/10 (mainly for the nose cone)

Alpine - Las Vegas GP, Qatar GP & Abu Dhabi GP 'Al-Pink' livery

When I tell you that upon opening my instagram and saw this I literally threw my hands into the air as if I myself had just won a Grand Prix (please also refer to my all caps post from earlier as an additional first reaction that sums up my general feelings nicely).

oh BWT, I could literally kiss you on the mouth for this. I genuinely have never been happier for a sponsor requiring that a team run a specific livery for a set number of races per season. Pink Alpine they could NEVER make me hate you.

And I am so utterly thrilled and delighted to say that thanks to one of the Alpine livery/graphic designers confirming in this post, IT'S A GLOSSY PINK 😭🙌

Previous BWT-pink liveries have been a much softer pink, but I just love the brighter in your face almost Barbie pink. I think they've gone in this direction since all the races this livery will be ran at are night races, so the slightly darker and brighter pink will definitely stand out against the dark circuit under the floodlights.

Yes, there is sadly more exposed carbon than I would like. But I honestly don't care. IT'S A SHINY PINK F1 CAR!!!!!!

10/10

Racing Bulls - Las Vegas GP "Glitter" livery

Gonna keep it short and sweet, and share my initial reaction to the livery via the medium of a screenshot of Discord DMs.

We could have had it all... truly. Racing Bulls were literally stood in front of an open goal and instead kicked the ball outside the stadium. My disappointment is beyond immeasurable rn.

3.5/10 - for the cohesive colour palette at least.

[f0point5]

There is a difference between working and leaving your kid with a nanny and what kelly is doing. She is not working she wasn't even invited to any fashion shows. She literally made a whole speech about how she is sacrificing work for her kid when and made herself the victim and called herself a single parent (which she is not) because p was starting school and was anxious only than to leave her with a nanny a few days later to do a photoshoot she organised in Paris so she can pretend to have gone to paris fashion week.

She doesn't work. And made her kids' first day of school about herself. I agree that there are double standards, but kelly is a vile narcissist who, on multiple occasions, neglected her kid. I'm not even going to start with her use of Palestine to try and boost her engagement right before she has to post and ad.

Well, she was at the Louis Vuitton show. But regardless, her job is being an influencer. I don’t keep up with her posts enough to know whether they were sponsored or her going to Paris was just to promote herself. But it’s all going towards getting her brand deals. That’s what influencers do. Many smaller influencers go to Paris to attend one killian Paris party and they pay for that out of their own pocket to network. Being paid to be somewhere is not the only way that influencers work. This is common sense, I fear.

And yes, by my definition, she is a single parent. Single parent doesn’t mean you are not in a relationship. It means you are not In a relationship with your child’s other parent. It means you do not parent as part of nuclear family. It doesn’t mean your child’s other parent is absent. Now, you can debate whether living with a partner means she isn’t a single parent, some people might define it differently. But I know that I have always defined it the same way she does, and tbh at is how it was taught to me so neither she nor I are the only people in the world that would class her as a single parent.

Her sharing that Penelope was anxious about her first day of school doesn’t have anything to do with her going to Paris. Three weeks later, a child is settled in school and presumably no longer anxious about a new environment. Again, common sense, I fear.

As for making it about herself…I’m sorry I didn’t realise you were there in Penelope’s first day…or did you mean Kelly spoke about herself on her own social media to a bunch of followers who know neither her or her child and weren’t there to know how she dealt with the situation irl? Did you…did you mean that?

Honey, if you’re so concerned about this kid you didn’t birth and don’t know, or about her mother who you don’t know either…call Monaco’s version of CPS idk what else to say.

Is scrolling past her content really that hard? Can you not find the unfollow button? Why do you care? Apart from the fact that this entire ask was a mess of parasocial assumptions…Seriously why does this woman bother you?

[inchidentally]

(sorry for editing to keep things out of tags) (also preface that I ship pretty much anyone with anyone but that car lando, land oscar and char los are by far my favorites)

ok first and foremost I have to laugh so hard at them choosing Lando and Oscar?? as "pure PR" when

car|ando is quite LITERALLY used as Formula 1 PR ?? the official accounts of Ferr/ari, Mc|aren, Carlos' personal socials, Quad|rant,LN 4, F1, TV networks, Netflix and DTS,the whole of the Vegas race and every. single. sponsor. use car|ando to boost visibility. that's not a commentary on the validity of their friendship at all but it is quite literally a PR bromance that rakes in views and engagement

let's all be honest here the Mc|aren media folks are still hardcore car|ando people and can only bring themselves to remember the land|oscar ship name once in a blue moon (I have mixed feelings about that but I'm also not a fan of containment breaches so ig I'm relieved one of my ships isn't used as social media corporate currency??)

people's biggest complaint/compliment (depending on who's speaking) for Oscar is that he doesn't play up for cameras the way Carlos and Daniel do and struggles at PR !! literally he was only a little bit better at this in Prema and only because he'd known most of those boys for 5+ years already and their audience was tiny!

every single comment from a non fandom F1 fan on land|oscar content is how unusually shy Lando is around Oscar or how Oscar needs to "come out of his shell" and "not make Lando work so hard"

and Daniel "Mr. F1 PR Department" Ricc|ardo????? are they seriously saying Lando and Oscar (who are still trying to figure out how much they can even casually touch each other) are PR when Daniel and dan|do ticks every single bromance box????

like who the hell but a twitter user who ships rpf like it's a government conspiracy would pick land|oscar out of all Lando ships for a fake or publicity friendship when they literally don't do any of the pretend gay stuff or the horseplay or the memes etc. that is literally the wildest take I've heard in yeARS

anyway as usual I thought creepily deeply into this and decided to spend my time unable to sleep typing an essay weeeeeeeeee

see I was mostly lurking part time during the dando era so I wasn't sure but fr why isn't there this "competition" between dando and carlando like there is with carlando landoscar?? dando was MAJOR gay fandom service by comparison and they've consistently spent more time together outside of racing weekends and hobbies than Lando and Carlos since Carlos has always spent most of his travel and downtime during the season with Isa and now Rebecca. Daniel and Lando go on little excursions together even now and he was with Lando much longer as a teammate than Carlos.

so for people who've left reality to the point of thinking these men are in a genuine secret gay romance competition for Lando… surely Daniel/dando should be the ultimate enemy number one?? especially when evidence immediately surfaced that Carlos' thirst posts on Lando's bday were his side of the thirst posts Rebecca did the same day from their holiday right after the Brazilian GP, whereas Daniel took Lando with him in a small group of close friends to the desert after Vegas. if I were someone who thought that all F1 girlfriends are "PR escorts" - or whatever bullshit is the latest sexist woman-hating theory of choice - then I'd be so mad at Carlos for "ditching" Lando for Rebecca and then Daniel posting not one but two beautiful, moody pics of traveling with him. forget that Lando only reposted Oscar's birthday post, surely Daniel posting on the account he only made because of Lando with a camera he only bought because of Lando pictures OF LANDO is the biggest source of betrayal !!

I just. cannot imagine wanting rpf to be this exhausting and enraging when you can just ship all of them and also not create conspiracy theories about girlfriends that keep getting disproved at every turn.

but yeah as anon #2 said it's not even like carlando are super close friends outside of F1 (as Lando himself said) the way George and Alex are but I don't see anyone in rages about galex or their irl relationships or saying they can't be shipped with any other driver?? maybe I just don't see it on my feeds but it's definitely not as big a deal as the carlando exclusivity stuff that's been bubbling up everywhere.

and exactly! as sweet as it is that Lando and Carlos pair up in the few moments the drivers are all doing media duties etc together it's also what every. other. driver. is doing with their buddies. sometimes they stand in larger groups but those moments are when they get to catch up with guys outside their own team. Oscar and Logan find each other every single time and a lot of that time they spend away from the other drivers. Max and Charles, Yuki and Pierre, Esteban and Lance etc etc. much as I would love it if this implied that all of these driver friends are suckin and fuckin their bros on the DL it's tragically not the case.

I feel like maybe?? carlando as a ship developed into part of the fans going larries level of problematic is because the Lando they watched with Carlos was so young and literally formed a lot of his F1 persona around Carlos. that version of Lando is basically a handy self-insert for fans worshiping Carlos.

as we know Carlos does NOT view himself as the number 2 driver even when he in every technical sense is. so it speaks to just how much of a little uncooked chicken nugget Lando was during their season together that Carlos has never once viewed Lando as competition and even now sees him as a lil cub kind of like Max V does with Lando. they're happy Lando succeeds but he's not classed in with the guys they really get pissed off with or perceive as threatening.

Lando talked here about how he spent a lot of that first season in F1 anxious about his performance compared to Carlos and his own future in F1 and that he largely had to work to put on a smiley face for the cameras. I actually think that entire first half of the clip is a great example of how the carlando chemistry came from Carlos being someone who loves being silly and laughing a lot in his time off the track and how convenient that was for Lando to help hide how much he was going through privately. when the media decided that Lando is meant to be adorable and silly all the time, someone as easy to get along with as Carlos was perfect timing. did nothing for Lando's actual personal struggle behind the scenes but it kept up a solid boundary between Lando and the media. I can't find it now but there's that old interview of Carlos being dismayed at Lando one day being sullen and quiet even when Carlos tried to joke with him - he was half kidding but Lando looked a bit uncomfortable and said "yeah I don't know why I'm like that sometimes". then it just got joked off as Lando being a moody teenager (which Lando visibly didn't really like).

so like, this is what their relationship has always been! Carlos represents a place Lando can go to and not have his demons or his problems follow him. and for someone who has always been used to physical affection, Carlos' lack of boundaries has always been extremely welcome as an endorphins boost.

but let's be honest here that's exactly the same super physically comfortable chemistry Carlos had even with Max and now has with Charles. I know the charlos of it all is probably a whole other hornets nest but fact is that to Carlos, Charles is equally a grown man to him and they can do the whole european buddies jokey flirting thing without it being weird. not the same as with Lando…

I've got to point out that when you look at comments not from fangirls, carlando as a "ship" is seen by F1 fans as big brother and baby brother or even dad and son relationship. this video was recently posted again from the stream where Carlos very firmly shut down people asking him to kiss Lando. whereas he'll jokingly ask Charles for a kiss and call him "darling" while being pretend domestic together. it's pretty damn clear that Carlos will joke about the bromance with Lando to an extent but Lando is The Baby and a little brother. Carlos wants to take care of Lando and he does not view him as a contemporary the way he does with Charles.

and considering Lando still suffers from the same anxieties and getting stuck in his own head, I've said before how I love that hanging with Carlos can still clear those cobwebs away. they can golf or just chat about any old bullshit and Lando can escape whatever is hanging over him for a while.

I truly do not know why people find that very real relationship insufficiently sweet and amazing and think that imagining them to be secret boyfriends is so much better ?? I mean absolutely rpf it the way I do for fun! but how bad does someone's gaydar have to be to think Carlos would have a single clue what to do with a penis that's not his own lfhajhfsa. American fans need to spend some time watching European friend groups and realize the insecure nohomo thing does NOT exist outside the US.

idk how many girlfriends have to get harassed or how far the media will push it before Lando or Carlos actually get sick of the whole ship thing but I think I speak for all rational carlando fans when I say that it's well past time to throw this whole conspiracy theory away. folks need to enjoy their friendship and ship them how you want for fun but don't push this thing to the point of even more discomfort. or worse make them change their behavior to get the focus off of them.

especially when you come to the landoscar of it all and deciding that it's a battle of the rpf ships. we've all seen those delusions in other fandoms result in baffling amount of hate that cross over into real life and how ugly it gets. carlando comments are already pretty out of control on Lando content that doesn't even remotely involve Carlos and it's bleeding onto McLaren content that involves Oscar.

I guess if I really make a few leaps in lofic then I can maaaaybe kind of see ? where that insecurity is coming from with those shippers. I do not understand it but if I had to guess it's possibly that we're seeing a totally different side of Lando than usual since he's been teammates with Oscar. and that for once, Lando's growth isn't dictated or based on his teammate being a big PR personality.

professionally he has said many times he's been pushed by Oscar into his own best F1 season yet. he's also matured a huge amount when it comes to his own failures and we've never heard him be so grown up and balanced as when he talks about how happy he is for Oscar and McLaren that Oscar got the sprint win before he did. that the "hurt" he feels over it is entirely because he is angry at himself for making mistakes. him doing the season farewell video and being able to ruefully joke but be genuinely proud of Oscar is so different from little Lando slumped and barely clapping during Carlos' departing speech or Lando looking out of it and a bit annoyed when Daniel would still try to do jokes after a particularly brutal result. Lando is behaving on his own terms in his own team now. he's The Guy.

Lando's grown UP. we're seeing a very finished article in him. and it's not because he's reacting to who Oscar is it's because Oscar's just letting him be. he's seen Oscar choose not to fake it or play up for the media and realized 'oh! I can be upset or depressed if I feel like it and not dance like a puppet when people want me to be fun and silly!'. he saw Oscar's urgency to prove himself after finally getting a seat and Lando realized that Oscar was just assuming that Lando would default be the superior! he saw Oscar backing away or leaving room for Lando to be the fan favorite and Lando's natural instinct was actually to let himself be quieter and take up only as much space as he wanted to! he's spent the whole season being asked to be an F1 global representative all on his own with no bromance attached and Oscar is there back at the garage or the McLaren motor home smiling and congratulating him like always!

in short, Lando suddenly has room and space to be whatever he chooses and Oscar has been open to any and all of it. they became immediate competition for each other without needing to hastily construct a friendship or bromance to negotiate it. Oscar shrugs off his own disappointments and doesn't gloat or overdo his achievements and oh! isn't it nice that he isn't expecting anything from Lando except respect! Lando doesn't have to navigate anyone else!

that's why I refer to them as sort of I guess a plantonic crush? I did this equally huge and weird post about this here. Oscar has admired Lando for a long time and Lando has absolutely loved having a teammate who doesn't view him as a baby or a kid brother. Lando is so intrigued by how calm and solid and strong Oscar is and Oscar still cannot quite believe Lando is right there in his life and as his teammate. the little cautious dance they're doing is absolutely precious but also because it's so intensely earnest. they both have such big long term plans for themselves and they are so happy to be working on those together that they aren't doing the whole let's find a schtick or do a bromance thing. if it takes them a long time to settle what their relationship is then so what!

and I guess for people who want to think that Carlos and Lando's friendship is 'superior' to every other relationship in their lives (as if Max F will ever be dethroned in Lando's life) it's got to take the already unstable mindset and upset it even more to see Lando personally growing into someone they don't really recognize and at least in some part because of Oscar.

because the carlando shipping that I see from these more extreme people (and I fully acknowledge they're a loud minority) basically eradicates Lando's agency and identity outside of finding Carlos hilarious or hot. they misinterpret Carlos being the authoritative role into Carlos being fully in control of carlando and Lando basically dancing to his tune and reacting to him. they never post the serious, slightly darker side of Lando because it's typically not associated with Carlos. unless it's Lando missing Carlos or upset that Carlos isn't around lol.

so I can only imagine that Oscar's arrival coinciding with a more mature and focused Lando who allows himself to want to be taken seriously and no longer spends all of his on-camera time screeching with laughter or flailing around is ummm not to the taste of those people. Lando still has screeching fits sometimes but he's overall a much calmer person and it's nice to know that when he laughs with Oscar it's always genuine since Oscar has no idea how to play up for laughs. it's probably why Those Fans are now aggressively posting Lando and Carlos doing the driver's parade together (again, among all the other paired off drivers lol) with "ALWAYS TOGETHER" AND "ALWAYS COMING BACK TO EACH OTHER" as if fate is trying to stop carlando from being the only thing that matters. because I guess in their minds, Lando can't just be believed when he says that Carlos is an F1 buddy the way other guys have F1 buddies and Lando can't grow up and have a personal best year without Singapore being solely about carlando and how Carlos took care of him (fuck off???? Lando would've gotten P2 or P3 anyway bc he had an excellent race??) and Lando won't be heard when he says actually Silverstone was his favorite race not Singapore because Carlos Carlos Carlos.

of course Lando can't have found a new kind of friend and teammate in a guy like Oscar who is wholly unlike Carlos in every single way imaginable because that would mean there are parts of Lando that don't suit Carlos and carlando. it would also imply that Oscar is a better teammate for Lando than Carlos was (which is true) and that oh no if Lando is no longer pining for Carlos to be his teammate again (he isn't and he said so) then that means Lando exists outside of carlando and that means they're gonna have to pile extra hard onto proving every single instance where carlando is still one of the most important things in Lando's life (it isn't and that wouldn't be healthy). it would also imply that purely platonic friendship between Carlos and Lando is basically pointless no no they've got to be fucking and in romantic love that's what makes them special not just the fact that they love being in each other's company and have full and happy lives outside each other.

I just.

reaalllly hope it all calms down soon and they leave Oscar out of this mess.

and thank FUCK Oscar's gf Lily has been fully accepted by landoscar fans from the start because the amount of vile hate and petty exclusion Rebecca is receiving makes it honestly a little bit hard for me to be ra ra carlando even just for fun right now.

will it stop me being carlando trash in the tags? no. but my conscience is cringing a bit.

[sebstanismyspiritanimal]

Here's chapter four! This one is a little awkward, I'm not good at writing cases and idk how to solve them so i kept the case out of it as much as possible 😂 but we get a cameo from Max! In my head the CB radio is bc obviously walkie talkies are the parties main mode of communication but obviously that wouldn't work over several states but they're jaded from government spying so they don't wanna use cellphones. So Dustin and Lucas rigged up a CB that can do that! Idk if that possible but hey sci-fi.

I'll probably be adding this to ao3 soon bc I finished writing chapter five, I will continue to post over here unless people just tell me they want to link for each new chapter instead of the whole one

As always here's chapter 3 if you missed it!

Eddie Munson is acutely aware of the fact that she did not go to and graduate the FBI academy, or any academy for that matter. Honestly, she hadn't been worried about it until Hotch sent her and JJ to talk to the families of the victims and she quickly realized that she had zero idea of what she was doing.

"Mrs. Barlow, I know how difficult this is for you, but any information you can give us can help." They were seated across Lucy's sister-in-law, the one that had reported her missing and the woman was crying into a tissue at her kitchen table.

The woman took a shuddering breath and nodded, "Okay."

JJ glanced to the side in an awkward way and cleared her throat, "Was Lucy involved in drugs, in anyway?"

Tammy- the sister in law grimaced and nodded, "She had problems as a teenager but she was sober! I met her brother when she was 25 and she was already 2 years clean. Why? Do you think someone from her past did this?"

JJ leaned forward and as gently as possible broke the news that Lucy's cause of death was of a heroin overdose. Eddie flinched as the effect of the words was immediate.

"How dare you?! Lucy was sober! She wouldn't give that up after this long!" Eddie leaned forward and clapsed Tammy's hand before she could jump to her feet.

"Ma'am, I understand that this is difficult and that Lucy took great pride in her sobriety. She was probably a sponsor for other people too right?" At Tammy's nod Eddie smiled and continued, "We aren't suggesting that Lucy willingly took these drugs and I know that by you entertaining our questions it seems like you are letting Lucy down, but Tammy we need your help. There is another woman missing and the clock is ticking for us to find her before someone else gets hurt."

JJ and Eddie held their breath waiting for Tammy's response, hoping they weren't about to be kicked out.

After what felt like an eternity Tammy slumped in her chair and raised a hand to her face, "Okay, what do you need to know?"

At JJ's encouraging look, Eddie continued the questions. "Was there a recent event in Lucy's life that could make a dealer able to lure her somewhere? A breakup? Maybe a job loss?" They watched as Tammy pressed a hand to her mouth and let out another sob before nodding, "She had just broken up with her girlfriend of 8 years, Lucy had discovered she was having an affair."

JJ and Eddie quickly finished up their interview before leaving the house, not wanting to make the family's grief worse.

2 hours later they were walking into the station to update everyone on what they had found out.

"Lucy Barlow was a recovering heroin addict and had been sober for 11 years and had just recently found out her girlfriend of 8 years was having an affair." JJ smoothly took over for Eddie, "Andrea Lakes has been a sober alcoholic for the last 7 years and just recently got laid off from her law firm. They were both sponsors too."

The others were silent as they took in the new connection the girls had found out from the families.

"So the unsub might have been able to lure them away to a secondary location using the promise of drugs and alcohol?"

"After five years the chance of a relapse decreases to 15%." Reid said contradicting Morgan's theory, but making Eddie perk up.

"You're right, with all of the years of sobriety breaking it is uncommon, but not unheard of and both of them were sponsors for many other people. What if they were going to meetings? New people are coming and going to those all of the time, it wouldn't be unusual to see new faces and with both of them sponsors, approaching these new people would be expected."

They spent the next couple of hours bouncing ideas and leads around the room before Hotch called it a night, leading them back to the hotel.

Hotch talked at the front desk for close to 5 minutes before sullenly walking back to the group.

"So there is apparently a cheer competition in town and they are running low on rooms. We're going to have to pair up." The group groaned before getting into usual pairs when they realized they were uneven with Eddie on the team now.

Hotch grimaced realizing that he was going to have to put her with one of the guys, or make one of the girls share a bed.

"Are you comfortable sharing with Reid or would you rather share a bed with one of the other girls?" He questioned making Eddie shrug, obviously unconcerned.

"I've slept in worse conditions than having to listen to Spencer snore. Can't be worse than Russia in December." The snoring comment made Reid squawk in protest before everyone jumped on the Russia comment, complaining when Eddie wouldn't give up any more info on the walk to the rooms.

---------------------------------------------------

Spencer was startled awake a few hours later by a loud bang. He rolled over in bed and went to reach for the bedside lamp when he saw Eddie's silhouette at the lit up window instead of in bed.

"Eddie?" He questioned, sleep roughing up his voice.

"It was just a car backfiring, Spence, go back to sleep." She murmured back not turning away from the window. Spencer watched as she palmed something into her pocket, a silver flash of something before it disappeared.

Spencer glanced around the room, taking note of the chair pulled back from the table in the corner and an old CB radio with weird wires and a pack attached sitting on the table.

Spencer was debating if he should say something when the radio crackled to life.

"Eddie?" A whispered female voice came thru the speaker and Spencer saw Eddie glance at him as he hurriedly shut his eyes, hoping she thought he had just gone back to sleep.

"I'm here Max."

He heard her whisper and the same voice whispered something he couldn't quite make out back before he really did fall back asleep.

[undignifiedpopemobile]

my driver hotness rankings

besties and behateds of the jury, this is maybe the most unhinged thing i will ever post but it is my sistine chapel it is my mona lisa. this is to me what citizen kane was to orson welles. i will prove to you today that my driver hotness rankings are objectively correct. i have assembled the evidence i have constructed my argument. (love you ell this one's for you.)

20

nyck (i’m so sorry). look someone has to go last. i am not prejudiced against short kings but it must be acknowledged that in combination with the face he is giving gnome. also i have seen the shirtless pics, and he is more ripped than george for christ’s sake there are so many ridges on his torso. he looks, to steal a phrase from patton oswald, “painful to fuck.” and i don’t have a vibe check on him yet so there is nothing else to compel me (benoit blanc voice) also i am not yet convinced he’s fast, which would increase his standing, because, say it with me, being good at things is hot. check back in after a few races. the thing where they tied him to a wheel rack was funny but not enough.

19

pierre. he’s fooled so many people into thinking he’s attractive with his beard contour and his donald trump ass haircut covering a truly atrocious hairline but there is no force on earth that can cover being a crypto bro. i have known so many and they are, without exception, the worst and more irritating people on the planet. if you own an nft you are not hot. if you TALK about it you are less hot. he has abs or whatever but i honestly think he is too ripped, similar to nyck. and i haven’t even mentioned the fact he’s a pedophile! his narrative used to be compelling to me because he got kicked out of red bull and i love redemption but he is a mid driver and a bitch and christian was right to fire him.

18

lando. this one may be controversial but i’m right and i can prove it: he looks like he’s twelve years old. who am i, pierre? i think the fuck not. admittedly he has nice eyes but he has a very oddly-shaped head. i could snap him like a twig, which looking at my dating history is not necessarily a deal breaker, but it is if he’d whine like a little bitch the whole time. he has never known the touch of a woman and he never will. the vibes are also atrocious: he’s a spoiled brat, and his interests are twitch and golf?????? he might not say racial slurs but he definitely crosses the street if he sees a black man. says he feels “uncomfortable” being around gay men with his shit off. bitch. i must clarify that i don't actually hate him but he has committed the worst crime to me: being a little irritating.

17

checo. people say he looks like tom cruise with a double chin but i just watched top gun and no he fucking does not. he looks more grizzled than fernando but in a haggard way not in a rugged cowboy way and he’s got a dad bod but not in a hot way. and the vibes are fucking off, absolutely swagless. fucking come on he’s had two seasons of getting his ass HANDED to him by max every week. i know it’s hard to be max’s teammate or whatever but i am pointing to him and saying MID. i don’t know anything about him personally except he’s got rich sponsors, he probably cheated on his wife, and he’s a homophobe. however he will move up if he goes full rosberg in 2023 and ruins christian’s life i do not pretend to be unbiased. the thesis of this one is that it is not hot to be boring. but if he becomes interesting i will change my mind.

16

oscar. see lando. he looks like a child! i do not believe he is 21 they are LYING because he's actually 14 and it should be illegal to let him drive. i do not believe he remembers obama’s first election. he’s up higher because i believe he is considerably more attractive than lando he has a sweet honest face i would kiss his little cheeks. but is he hot? ask again in five years. the narrative is also compelling to me because he did said ��fuck the french” and that is hot that is HOT, but again, as of yet no vibe check. i see something in his eyes that indicates to me he may win the twink war but until first blood is spilled that is only hypothetical. sorry oscar nothing against you honey.

15

kmag. ok look. maybe i just don’t remember what kmag actually looks like but the picture on the f1 website is not flattering he looks like the stock photo wincing old man. i don’t think he’s unattractive really but i cannot put him above the rest of this list i fear! when he got pole that was really hot but what else is he giving? talking about balls? that wasn’t hot when dan did it and it’s not hot for kmag either. the vibe check should have enough data to produce something but it is coming up empty!!! i just do not know i’m sorry kevin. you do not have the x factor. you are not irritating, but to me, you are boring.

14

estie! you know he was below kmag but today i saw that gifset of him with long hair…. i could fix him (get him a hair stylist) he’s uncomfortably lanky. rat man may be affectionate, but rat man nevertheless. also i played myself by comparing himself to the flushed away rat because now i cannot see him without thinking about that. he’s got a really hot girlfriend which means he’s probably a feminist (will go down on a woman) and i know he doesn’t come from money. both of these things compel me tis true! but they are not enough to overcome the tragic truth that he looks like a cartoon character

13

hulkenberg. look ell i know i said he was conventionally attractive and i stand by that. he IS. but he also looks like a fucking ken doll. he has the GR wax doll disease. he went into the uncanny valley and he fucking founded a city-state there he’s building fucking governance structures and supporting a small private army to defend trade routes. his skin is so like….. tight. uncomfortable. and he is not redeemed by the vibe check. a million fucking races and no podium? and he wasn't only in shit cars! he was supposed to be a world champion coming up through the feeder series and he fell short of his potential. falling short of your potential is narratively compelling, but not in a hot way. i am pressing the big buzzer that says MID. boring.

12

lance. literally forgot about him until i got to number seven and then i was like….. wait a minute wait a fucking minute. he and nando are mirror opposites lance is here purely by virtue of his conventionally attractive little face. i can hear the ghosts of my jewish ancestors telling me to settle down with the nice billionaire jewish boy. but you know what? his voice is fucking irritating as shit and he has the least interesting variety of daddy issues. he’s got no fucking personality and he’s a nepo baby and he’s a mid ass driver and lawrence will not convince me otherwise by holding a gun to nando’s head and making him say shit about how good his stupid little failson is. 

11

NANDOOOOOOO ok i know this one is controversial but i don’t give a shit it’s my list. i know he’s fucking eighty do you think i care? no. i couldn’t give less of a shit what he looks like. all that matters to me is that he wakes up every single day and chooses to be a mischievous little bastard who foments….. something. el plan etc etc. yes he fucking blackmailed mclaren yes he has committed war crimes yes he is a misogynist. what is this twitter? i do not have to be morally correct here. and lest we forget he is in fact a fantastic fucking driver (hot). let the slow dismantling of the stroll dynasty begin. and he has the most important variable in my calculations: he is interesting.

10

guanyu. my problem here is vibe check coming up empty. he’s reasonably good looking, he’s nice, he seems to be in love with val (good taste! see the coffee video) he’s the second most stylish man in the paddock mostly by virtue of the competition being fucking pathetic. he’s a little short but i am not prejudiced against short kings! but personality wise i fear there is not much there although probably this is on me for being a dumb american and not speaking chinese. also he’s like. ungodly rich. like richer than stroll. and the CCP of it all is not beautiful. perhaps most damningly: is he a good driver? i do not know! give him another year, but the jury remains undecided. he is right in the middle but i reserve the right to move him up pending developments

9

logan. you don’t know how much it pains me to put this motherfucker in the top ten. he looks like he was recruited into the us military directly out of high school because he was failing english and knew he couldn’t get into college, but unfortunately he is also objectively very handsome. he’s not higher for obvious reasons (florida. donald trump.) but i cannot put him lower purely off the virtue of his captain america fucking face. fuck him i hope alex makes him cry real tears on track by lapping him in every single race. but he is hot. maybe he'll prove me wrong and he can stay here! but if he brings fucking..... jd vance or whatever as a guest to a gp it's straight to 20 i shit you not.

8

alex. out of all the men on this list alex is probably the one i would most like to date. he’s nice, he’s reasonably charming, he’s a feminist, he’s got the angst of losing that red bull seat without the pierre of it all, he’s got the compelling homoerotic friendship with george but you know what this is not sash’s list of dateable men it is driver hotness and we must acknowledge the fact that he is not particularly good looking! like estie he has a fucking banana nuts hot girlfriend, but facially he is not always giving. he’s cute; he’s not necessarily hot. he’s this high only because i kept bumping him up because i was like “well i can’t put him below fucking LOGAN”. also, while i believe he’s a good driver, is he REALLY good, or just good? beating the shit out of latifi does not convince me of anything! like mick beating the shit out of mazepin it’s pretty much guaranteed to happen.

7

max. ok ell hear me out. right now he is not looking too hot but it's because of the bad haircut and he’s not racing. being good at things, say it with me, is hot and the only thing, the ONLY THING in max’s life is being good at racing. he’s fucking fast. also, he seems like he’s actually kind of a fun guy. when he laughs at his own jokes that is very cute i think. the little eye crinkles. the cheeks. when he’s got his hair grown out a little and a five o’clock shadow going… he can fool me into thinking he’s actually good looking and doesn't a little bit resemble sid the sloth from the ice age movies (sorry. but it's true) and the version of him i have made up in my head and convinced myself is real is extremely fucking compelling!!!! admittedly the kelly dynamic almost knocked him down but it takes two people to make a dynamic and i guarantee you i would not be giving any maternal energy at all. i think i could fix him (introduce him to pegging)

6

yuki. that’s right fuck you. he’s funny as fuck and we could do karaoke together. i would carry him around in my tote bag and he could eat off the children’s menu at restaurants (cost of living is high you save where you can.) he’s giving face and he’s giving body he’s actually so fucking handsome and the reason people are sleeping on how beautiful he is is because of the particularities of anti-asian racism, where “western” people read traditionally east-asian features as unmasculine, and therefore they are either fetishized or dismissed as romantic/sexual partners entirely. well i’m anti-racism bitch! yuki is HOT! also i know he’s not that good at driving or whatever but do you know what’s even hotter than being good at things? not giving a SHIT!!!! yuki is the spiritual successor to kimi raikonnen on this grid i’m fucking right and i’m the only one brave enough to say it. f1 is a hobby for him and he treats the sport exactly as it should be treated (with disdain, like it’s a mild inconvenience or errand on par with vacuuming) maybe this is inconsistent with my "being good at things is hot theory" but you know what? fuck you. it's my list i do what i want. if i contradict myself than i contradict myself

5

george. yeah…… i’m quite frankly a little shocked and upset he’s this high. i know i made this list myself but i’m not keeping track very well in all honesty and i’m about four drinks in. but you know what? i’m not blaming alcohol. this is accurate for my hotness rankings. i’m a bit of a george girl at the moment. every new fact i learn about him makes him more compelling to me. he's the george bit of alex's homoerotic relationship with george! really i only need one story about him to compel me: getting himself into the merc driver program with the power of microsoft powerpoint. he’s the most “he’s just like me fr” driver on the grid for me and i’m a big enough woman to admit that. the version of him i’ve made up inside my head has a personality and you know what? unfortunately for the haters he has proved them all wrong and he’s an excellent fucking driver. i don’t think he’s better than lewis but he stood up to the pressure of that second merc seat fucking fantastically even with his biological father there judging his performance the whole time! and i know he looks a little bit like a robot but it must be admitted! he is attractive! he’s got a great body! idk i’m gaslighting myself i guess it’s my deep-seated american desire to infiltrate the upper classes of england and bring it all down from the inside. but i’m keeping him in spot number five. and fuck anyone who disagrees.

4

valtteri. i mean. other than yuki the closest to kimi we can get on the current grid. lost his merc seat and immediately said “my ass will be fully out for the rest of my life and there is nothing you can do about it” can you imagine the amount of time toto wasted just saying “no valtteri you cannot post hole on instagram”. he’s a feminist he’s an icon! he’s not an outstanding driver but he’s solid! by number of wins currently fourth best cunt on the grid i believe! the mustache! he has alex albon energy in that i would actually date him but i think he’s more attractive. he is the only blond-haired blue-eyed man on the list who does not even a little bit activate the “nazi detector” in my brain which is admittedly a little overactive in the current political climate. i don’t know love isn’t rational. but i love him. i love him, your honor. and you will not convince me otherwise with facts (he's not really objectively all that physically attractive)

3

carlos. look the ferrari boys were pretty close together and ell i know you disagree with me here but ultimately it comes down to one thing i will discuss in the charles ranking and a couple things i will discuss here. yes he’s hot. fucking obviously. it’s barely worth pointing it out he’s outrageously attractive. but as i have said many times hotness is about more than the physical! and the vibe check is mixed. he does have the most compelling flavor of daddy issues (father is loving and supportive but still an unattainable ideal. the closest thing to god on earth for carlos sainz jr is carlos sainz sr and what a terrible legacy that is to bear) but on the other hand golf! and he has a weird and not very sexy voice! and he’s probably violently catholic! and there’s stories about him being kind of a dick to fans! i did not verify either of those things but fuck you this isn't journalism. and, most damningly, i believe that when it comes to driving he is…… FUCKING MID. there i said it. he got lucky his first year with and he’s still in denial about being the second driver to charles leclerc. have you seen the fucking instagram? girl fred vasseur may say he'll let it be decided on track but charles is coming to family dinners in the vasseur household. delusion is not hot unless it’s in a funny way (see: fernando, el plan). and i swear to christ if he messes up even a single race for charles this season because he thinks he’s better i will knock him down to the bottom of his list without remorse.

2

charles. it’s my list fuck you. other than george, charles (the version of him i have made up inside my head) is the most like me on the grid. he is— pause for dramatic effect— fucking COMPELLING. (benoit blanc voice) you know i love a narrative and he’s got a fucking narrative. he plays the piano (hot) he’s got the sexiness of the french language without the lameness of being french (yes i believe monaco is a historical mistake and a geopolitical aberration and should be incorporated into france and all those cunts should pay taxes but objectively monaco is very sexy!!! walt whitman i contain multitudes) and he’s got the catholic guilt of driving for ferrari without the lameness of actual catholicism (looking at you carlos) is he the most interesting bitch in the world? no. but he can hold a conversation, he has more interests than just racing and video games, and he’s much funnier in french, and as these boring ass guys go he’s pretty funny even in english. also, again, takes two to make a dynamic and i am funny enough for any two people on the planet. also, and this must be said, he’s a fucking excellent driver. BEING GOOD AT THINGS IS HOT! AND we have not even mentioned the fact that physically speaking he is what we call a Specimen. he’s got body, he’s got face. i know you don’t think he does ell but with respect you are wrong. he’s got the cheekbones he’s got the nose he’s got the fucking ridiculous shoulder to hip ratio, he’s got the hand porn. he has literal protagonist eye syndrome (they appear to be different colors depending on the lighting) he’s fucking insanely hot.

1

Lewis. I mean it’s just quite literally the only correct answer. he’s giving face, he’s giving body. the tattoos! dan thinks he has cool tattoos but he has pete davidson disease lewis actually has really cool tattoos. but his hotness is literally the least compelling thing about him. he’s multi-talented (music??? so hot) he’s not just a racer, but like, let’s not discount the fact he is the best f1 driver of all time. like i’ve established it’s hot when people are good at things (except golf). he’s not a businessman he’s a business, man. he’s got mad fucking drip. his politics are.............. of mixed quality really but by comparison he's practically bernie sanders. of all the drivers he’s the one i think i could make a socialist if i had a twenty minute conversation with him. i could get him to read marx i could get him to read zizek. not even to mention the compelling fucking narrative of his life. the karting years the brocedes of it all the mclaren civil war he is producing CONTENT. yes he speaks like a motivational poster and the dog account is cringe but the flaws make him human. if he were too perfect he would be less hot. 

this is the judgement of the court

[kingedmundsroyalmurder]

Addendum to the chapter 1 post that I thought of later:

“Not this afternoon—haven’t got time. I must mosey up to the North End to see a man who has got a lovely throat. Nobody can find out what is the matter. He has puzzled all the doctors. He has puzzled me, but I’ll find out what is wrong with him if he’ll only live long enough.” This is Eric's best friend, a well known doctor, cosplaying as, like, 1900s Dr. House. No concern for the patient's well being, just a Mystery that must be solved. No wonder Eric has such a low opinion of doctors!

(Sidenote: those of you who Anne, what is Gilbert like as a doctor? Because TBC didn't have a great opinion of them, and this book is not shaping up to be too complimentary either. Did LMM just have a fairly poor opinion of doctors in general that colors her work?)

On to chapter two, and we meet an actually sympathetic character! Larry West seems like a lovely young man, and I hope he recovers fully and that he and Agnes Campion are blissfully happy together. Unlike either Eric or David, Larry actually seems to care about the people under his charge, i.e. his students. I already want him to be our protagonist instead.

"The former looked more like a benevolent old clergyman or philanthropist than the keen, shrewd, somewhat hard, although just and honest, man of business that he really was." Kilmeny of the Orchard, sponsored by the Better Business Bureau! There is absolutely an interesting thread to tease out across LMM's life and work that connects Eric Marshall to Barney Snaith, but I want to read more of this book before I make further commentary on that. But it does appear that Maud's opinions on rags-to-riches businessmen, uh, Evolved over the years.

Actually never mind, I'm gonna girl who's only ever read The Blue Castle this book a tiny bit more. Compare:

"And then those girls were as pretty as pinks, now weren’t they? Agnes was the finest-looking of the lot in my opinion. I hope it’s true that you’re courting her, Eric?”

and

“Prettiest girl in Montreal,” said Dr. Redfern. “Oh, she was a looker, all right. Eh? Gold hair—shiny as silk—great, big, soft, black eyes—skin like milk and roses. Don’t wonder Bernie fell for her. And brains as well. She wasn’t a bit of fluff. B. A. from McGill. A thoroughbred, too. One of the best families."

Women aren't really people, they are trophies and objects to be collected and revered. Barney grows out of this mentality through his travels. Eric... well it remains to be seen about Eric, doesn't it?

"Perhaps I am. When a man has had a mother like mine his standard of womanly sweetness is apt to be pitched pretty high." So we're getting the standards by which Eric judges a future wife and the role she will be expected to play. He wants a society hostess, a woman who can step seamlessly into his mother's shoes. He wants her to be sweet and serene and, presumably, beautiful and delicate like his mother in her portrait. David and Mr. Marshall both basically want him to marry Ethel Taverse -- beautiful, well brought up, good lineage, of the Right Sort. Eric... honestly Eric has such fantasy standards for a woman that in a different book the resolution would be that he realizes that he's gay. He's doing that doesn't-realize-they're-queer-yet thing of, "it's not that I don't like [expected other gender], it's just that I haven't found anyone yet with [vague laundry list of impossible qualities]." I know that doesn't always translate into queerness, but it's an experience that definitely rings true to my baby ace teenage years before I had the words or knowledge to accurately describe my experiences.

"In all likelihood the worst thing that will happen to you over there will be that some misguided woman will put you to sleep in a spare room bed. And if that does happen may the Lord have mercy on your soul!” Go to PEI, but don't consort with the locals! The Wrong Kind of Woman might tempt you! This book is a great primer on how classism and eugenics go hand in hand, isn't it?

So our plot has been set up for us. Eric, a young man in possession of a good fortune, is off to Prince Edward Island, where he will soon find himself in want of a woman to be his wife. She will either be a commoner, whom his family and friends think isn't good enough for him but whom he loves and will stand up for, or she will be a secret aristocrat, whom he will pluck out of her shabby surroundings and return to her birthright in high society. I want this book to go with option a, because it's more interesting, but from what I know of it it veers closer to option b instead.

(What he needs is an Anne Shirley to whack him upside the head with a slate and tell him to stop being such a jerk, but I'm not holding out hope.)

[sheizara]

Allis Ith’ren, her lawyer in Quel’thalas, sighed very deeply; Sheizara knew she wasn’t an easy client — she’d gone through three divorce lawyers prior to this point, and her current situation was certainly much more complicated than a legal separation. 

He adjusted his spectacles and tapped his finger on the folder between them on the table in the inn in Quel’danas, “Your official patents of nobility and formal claim to the Tel’vaiel titles and estate are all settled. As I have said in previous correspondence, the issue that lies between you and accepting the property and your place in court is that you’ve lived formally in Stormwind, at times, and presently, under the banner of the Alliance for the last four decades.”

“And the kingdom needs me to renounce them and swear allegiance back, yeah, I know, I did read that,” she leaned back in her chair and folded her arms across her chest, “I didn’t ever formally swear allegiance there, you know. I was sailing on a merchant vessel when the doors were shut behind me, that wasn’t my fault,” she huffed and raised her eyebrow back in challenge when Allis raised his at her tone. “What would I need to do to tour the property before I make my decision?” 

“You would need to apply for a temporary visa, which will have fees assessed. The Regent Lord has a vested interest in repatriating as many of our wayward brothers and sisters as we can in this time of peace; I am happy to begin that paperwork for you, my Lady, if that is what you wish, but know that it may take months to process unless you have a sponsor in good standing with the kingdom who is able to vouch for you throughout your stay,” he paused a moment and took his glasses off to polish with a soft cloth, “It cannot be me, before you ask.” 

Ugh. 

It was Shei’s turn to sigh deeply, “Can you file without knowing who the sponsor is or should I find a sponsor first?” 

“Sponsor first.” 

Ughhh. 

“Right, well, I’ll have to send some letters. I’ll let you know when I hear back and what route we’re going,” she took her folder of tangible proof that she WAS a Lady and DID own property off the table and tucked it under her arm, “I suppose I should keep an eye out for today’s bill, too?” 

He nodded, “Of course, my Lady.” 

***

She’d stayed in Quel’danas for almost a month and had sent multiple letters by the time her target had finally replied. 

Keranna Zerine was an extremely hard to read woman in person, let alone over post. She was from an old noble line that had dwindled down to her alone, and had been the last person to actively manage the Tel’vaiel estate. There was truly no one better to show her the property than— 

“No.” 

Shei blinked at the elder blonde, taken aback, “You came all this way to tell me no in person?” 

“Yes.” 

Audacious, to say the least. “Could I at least make an attempt at convincing you otherwise in order to make the journey worth it?” 

Keranna adjusted the paper sleeve on her cup of coffee, “You may, of course, Lady Tel’vaiel.” 

Decorum above all. Shei floundered for a moment, more intimidated than she had planned to be, “Well. I think you’ll find that I’m great company and from all accounts you ran the estate extremely well for sixty five years, plus we’re family,” technically, by marriage, that was true, “and you’ll be able to tell me if anything’s wrong with it or what problems may arise.” 

“You’re an absolutely awful negotiator, what’s in it for me, dear?” Keranna raised a silvery eyebrow to punctuate her question. 

Allis had helped her with this one, he’d passed a tip along that Miss Pyraelia Sunmote was looking to buy property in Eversong again, “Right. There’s some property between the Mel’marrin and Astal’dris estates going up for sale that was formerly held by the uh…” She winced, immediately realizing she should’ve rehearsed more or taken notes. 

“Astal’mir,” Keranna corrected, “Interesting, I’d heard Idonnis had fallen on hard times.” 

Shei smiled as brilliantly and charmingly as she could, and tried her hardest not to lose her nerve as the elder elf looked her over in the most dissecting way. 

“Fine. I’ll write to your lawyer.” 

Nailed it.

[haalfpipe]

Well-developed, well-nourished white male in no acute distress.

This is what she writes about me. Look, as your sponsor, I need you to write this down. All of it. Word for word. Don’t try to make sense of anything I say, just write. When you’re confused, keep writing. Tired, keep writing. Cravings, for God’s sake just keep writing. Because if it works for you, it might work for somebody else.

Now go back to that note.

She’s my primary care physician, the woman who's seen me since I outgrew a pediatrician. She sits there with her legs folded together in knobs and branches poking through bright blue doctor fabric, and a suspicious thickness around her belly. She's the same as any other anorexic physician who eats only something with oats she poured from a blender.

Write this down—this is how you should be eating.

If she’s your doctor, you don’t feel better after reading her notes. That's if you remember to find them in her office’s digital patient portal, where after every visit they’re posted on the other side of a forgotten login and a compromised password.

Write this down—read about yourself.

It will be midnight, lying in your bed with your phone glowing at your chest. Picture an otter on its back. Swiping through, passing content from one thumb to another like the screen is a stack of cash, except you're counting fifteen second clips of billionaire porn. Supercars. Island waterfalls. French-press coffee on private jets. Squats and deadlifts and protein powders beaming into your eyes from a girl with perfect pores and skin vacuum-sealed against her clavicle.

Every fifth swipe is an ad.

A reminder.

Refrigerated ship-to-home ingredients—remember to pack lunch.

Swipe up.

High-yield online savings—pay your credit card bill.

Swipe up.

Cable-knit sweaters on some Macedonian model—do laundry.

Swipe up.

Machine-surfaced cast iron—run the dishwasher.

Swipe up.

Anymore, this is why you read the portmanteau digitox. Pause your social media for a week, the usual prescription. Put down your phone and try to work on impulse control just to discover you haven’t eaten anything green, and you’re still in the same clothes with an overdue balance on your credit card.

Your grade school teachers tried to teach you the habit of using a spiral-bound calendar. Now all you need is phone streaming a river of social media as you fall asleep.

Swipe up.

Lying here in the dark and your life support is a lithium battery glued to a glowing rectangle.

Swipe up.

Grounding your bare feet in water without sunscreen on a hot day in the mountains—schedule your booster shot.

Swipe.

Wet coffee grounds into cute countertop compost bins—it’s Monday. The trash should be at the curb.

Swipe.

Robot vacuums for pile carpet—clean your floors. And when you see it, remember that your shitty old vacuum has a filter bag with a lifespan.

Swipe up. Swipe right.

Until you’re unconscious.

Wake up and your phone is down on the carpet, smeared with oily fingerprints in the shape of a cross.

Swipe.

This is content that wakes you up.

Swipe.

Content that keeps you alive.

Swipe.

You’ll watch the same shit again tomorrow.

Swipe.

Another night and your thumbs make streaks right and downward until you watch an ad for a metabolism diet that reminds you of poor appetite reminds you of weight loss reminds you of a balance scale and a stainless sink with a floor pedal. The gaunt doctor’s notes and your decade of symptoms are on the other side of a login somewhere behind all these crucifix-shaped smears.

Swipe.

Reading about yourself and why you aren’t going to die gets you through a few days. But you feel like the way she sits there with all her machines and her complete sentences perfectly typed into a keyboard are missing something. The way you might miss your own addiction. Like I did. I didn't know I was an addict until after my first meeting.

Write this down—find a meeting.

In recovery, you wake up to your phone but the real-life support is downstairs on the fridge: a full calendar, a dry erase board with dented corners you can grab when you're in the kitchen section of a savings store. It comes with battle scars just as much as you’d expect from colliding with errant wheels, the magnetic corners trying to grab onto every shopping cart that comes too close. Underpaid employees tire of wedging it back onto a shelf because for shoppers a blank calendar is too much commitment even at a discount, and it's too big and boring and cheap to steal. Not that anyone would care. It’s five rows, seven columns, a sequence of days that never change tattooed in cute cursive across the top.

In recovery, you see a blank calendar and it just means you haven't yet been told what to do. You put it on your fridge. Let it observe every moment of the day, every time you leave the house, or empty the trash, the dishwasher, like somehow it will learn your entire week, until you're awake the next morning and surprise, it's still blank. At midnight when you open the thick, insulated door and the cold light rips out into the dark kitchen, it's there, caught in the beam. It might as well be found in a searchlight, flattened against the side of some dumpster, hiding from its destiny: thirty-five squares of graffiti in vibrant dry-erase marker, instructions squeezed wherever they fit.

Eventually you’re just some kid who can't color inside the lines, smearing it with bright letters, thick from bent tips of markers always dropping and rolling under the refrigerator. When it’s finally numbered, you’ll need a quote-a-day paper pad showing the date in tall digits leaning off the page at you when you open the refrigerator for milk. This way every morning you have to interact with the calendar. Tear off the old sheet of digits for another and find the square it matches.

It says, twenty-two.

A new day.

A new set of instructions.

A new inspiration to forget.

Today’s italicized quotation will stick because this is Monday.

It says, chance favors the prepared mind. The corner of the date pad says Louis Pasteur. The reason you don’t get sick from the milk.

Before it was clung onto our kitchen monolith, my calendar began on my phone as a progress tracker. If you’re burdened with the twelve step curse of recovery, the meetings and your therapy will refer to this as a habit tracker. It’s how you’re supposed to visualize an accumulation of effort. How you’re supposed to feel normal when you look backward. Everyday is another responsibility you were never taught, but on Sunday at least you washed the bedding. You never see how much goes into a normal life until you’re doing none of it. Somebody has to tell you that you’re living in trash and the blanket over your laundry smells so much like air freshener it stinks.

Somebody has to tell you to get out of bed.

Buy a new toothbrush.

Open the windows.

Go to the interview.

Eat.

Put down your phone.

That today is your mother’s birthday.

Somebody has to save you. And then you owe her your life. You get married.

Swipe to thirteen years later, and recovery doesn’t matter. Try telling someone you just met that you've been clean for thirteen years. Nobody cares. Picture showing up to defend a decade-long dissertation of research to have your advisor say thanks, it no longer counts toward your grade. You can dry-clean your academic attire, like everyone else. She tosses it onto a stack of papers sunk into her carpet with its own footprint, a white pillar, the size of a trash can. Still, you want her to least read it. You want anybody to read it.

If you’re like me, what you want is somebody to start a pot of coffee after dinner and stare at you across the kitchen table while it gets hot. You want somebody to talk with all night until the sun comes back.

If you’re like me, you don’t stop talking. Somebody finally sits down and drops a nickel at your booth and they have to let the song play.

This is the jukebox full of fresh vinyl.

I didn't want to have to tell you any of this. Nobody else needs to know anything here.

This is the note accidentally left unlocked.

This is the essay that ends up shredded in the back of a mobile secure destruction truck.

This is the long form note written in couples' therapy to wrinkle up for a waste basket, never to be read.

This is the confession after the crime found scribbled in a notebook when all the neighbors say they never saw it coming. If they did, then there wouldn't be a vacant house ribboned with yellow tape and an overgrown lawn to explain to all the divorced pickleball women when they come over for cocktails.

What I'm trying to say is none of this matters anymore.

I haven’t done anything wrong. There hasn’t been a crime. I don’t have the time. There’s no space for it on my calendar. After work I’m showering and brushing my clothes with horsehair so the hard water doesn’t fade the blacks to grey on waistbands and seams. Then I’m reaching into the fridge and cooking dinner and the dry erase marker says I’m exchanging table decorations for the new season, spring. Outside in the dark I’ll use a flashlight and leaf blower to clear fallen seed pods out of potted plants. The kitchen drawer will be out of dish towels and it’ll be one in the morning before those will be ironed and folded.

Write this down—never landscape with sycamores.

If you’re like me, you’re too tired to do anything wrong.

It’s because I’ve been on step twelve for so long. That's how they pull you in, with their logos and websites and filtered headshots of mentors and their about-us sections, seining through the candidate swamp of deadbeats as wide as freeways across the city. The dozen secrets to success that can be yours if you act now, no signature required.

A fresh start. Anonymous.

You can learn all the reasons addiction is ruining your life and how much better you’ll be in recovery. By step one you’ll sleep better, they tell you. By step six you’ll be giving presentations at work, they tell you. What they don’t tell you is by step twelve you should be growing the pyramid. Sponsor the kid who bags your groceries. In recovery, his bagging will be a little sloppier. Eggs on the bottom, untrimmed carrot tops flowering like pampas grass from sacks of wrinkled paper. For eight hours of bagging, his eyes follow the backs of his hands. He never looks up. Because in recovery he feels like shit.

What they don’t tell you about recovery is a lot.

What they don't tell you is that after step twelve, there's nothing. It’s just more step twelve. More meetings. More relapses. Until you’re dead. After I turn out to be your sponsor, then after years of me and a therapist telling you what to do, one day you find yourself at the curb outside a meeting like they just signed you out of the hospital and stuck you in a wheelchair on the sidewalk.

Hospitals have to get rid of you.

It's for liability.

You're discharged, but until they get you to the curb, they're on the hook for your life. The administrators don’t care about a junkie until they need his bed for the next admission from a crowded emergency lobby. For a few days your entire world is one hundred square feet between four walls with a sealed window and a mechanical bedframe. You have your own bathroom. There’s a whiteboard showing names of physicians you never see. It’s a different sort of dry erase calendar with notes in three sections: Today. Tomorrow. Future.

In recovery, planning ahead feels like predicting the future.

To fix you, people in scrubs who aren’t nurses bring trays with pills in little cups of wax paper, made for ketchup. Every pill is constipating. That, and the immobility of lying in bed until your back aches. This is why there are wall stud-mounted steel handles around the toilet. You get microwaved meals, and hourly visits from exhausted nurses wearing too much concealer smeared over their bad skin.

You like it inside the sterile room, baseboards to ceiling in taupe, and a floor drain in the bathroom. You wish you could stay. But this is what real care feels like—being discarded, thrown back out onto the street.

Anymore, your friends are all stoned, you say this to the nice nurse that you want coming with you. To bring you little stacks of cups at home. She uses your face to unlock your phone and dials an emergency contact. She props you in a wheelchair still wrinkled in the seat from her last castaway. She starts pushing. What you don't know is that after twelve hours of babysitting a floor of invalids and texting her ex in the supply closet, she'll collapse at her apartment with shitty alcohol, neglect her kid, rub one out and fall asleep with the television. Her own pile of laundry stinks of air freshener. And after a week with that botched fantasy you'll want her pushing you out again, faster, you’ll kick your legs straight out when you see the double doors beneath the exit sign. You’re thinking all this and then the wheelchair's at the street, she sets the brakes, puts a hand on your back and bolts you upright. Right beside the trash bins.

Swipe to this blithering milksop balancing on the curb waiting for my emergency contact to show up with a fast food bag of burgers because that’s exactly how this whole thing happened.

Write this down—fast food is what started this.

I'll get to the beginning. What ended up being the beginning.

There's one thing the alcoholics, junkies, and sex addicts in recovery won't tell you in their propaganda. I hate to ruin the surprise: walk into a meeting, and this is the rest of your boring ass life that nobody will ever care about. It says it right there in the branding. Anonymous. There’s no background check. Nobody asks to see track marks, or a collapsed septum. All you have to do is show up and give a name. Every week it isn’t any different. It’s a United Methodist rec room that hosted a day camp of kids with sticky fingers making crafts before organizers got there at sunset to unfold a card table and plug in a coffee percolator, a big trophy passed between support groups. Except instead of a bright Stanley Cup this is a storm-tossed aluminum bombshell that means your quiet gathering of church sponsorship has made it. Men's groups. Yard sales. Slow-read Bible study. Blood drives. Tonight it's with a room full of enablers. Because at some point they all relapse. That's why they keep coming back. Two dozen strangers who all share the same passion means the best networking opportunity junkies can get.

Swipe to a room full of cravings triggered by one of these caffeine dispensers looking like it was pulled from the basement of some parish.

Write this down—you’ll have meetings on Tuesdays. No matter what. This is what they call them.

No matter what, you make time for it.

No matter what, you attend.

No matter what, someone from last week is missing.

For me, recovery is never more than arms' length away. Even now, on my nightstand, where instead of an orange bottle of pills with a label showing the name of a hospice patient I'll never meet, there's a wallet as thick as an Uno deck and right next to it is a small leather journal with a checklist of everything I have to do not to sink. A calendar of instructions to-go. It's the same journal I've used since step four.

At first, the steps feel good. After your first meeting you might as well be twelve years old, and wide awake the night before a vacation. You’re going somewhere new. For a few days you walk upright with great posture. See yourself in the mirror of a department store where you’re trying on new shirts and you realize you have shoulders. It's a proud moment when you can check step one off your list. The first three go pretty fast and then you get stuck on step four. The moral inventory. All the lies, betrayals, and cheating, all the people you've hurt and jobs you've lost. You have to open a note on your phone and start typing. A rap sheet of all your sins, synced with cloud storage. That way every dumbass moment of your life is right there beneath your passcode.

I'm always writing things down. Journaling. Calendaring. Staying clean means keeping busy, having something to look forward to, always wanting to see tomorrow. It's when tomorrow doesn't matter that you give in. Find your local NA schedule and poke your head through the wrong door at the community center for that room full of liars calling itself a No-Matter-What meeting and tell me if it looks like any of them care about tomorrow.

Before relapse, most of them get lost in responsibility piling up at home. Picture Sisyphus. There's no reward for your work. When you stop feeling perfect for zero effort—that's addiction—daily routines are labor. In recovery, suddenly it all matters. Nobody wants another day of it. So you offload it from your brain, suspend your decision-making ability. Turn yourself into an implement. If you don't have to remember what to do next, then while you're at the sink soaking the sweat stains out of your new shirts, you're free to daydream about eventually sleeping in again. Because there's always more.

There's the alarm clock to wake you.

There's a duvet to fold.

There's clothing to launder.

There are dishes to wash.

Carpets to vacuum.

Now go back to your thirty-five squares and start writing—

Blow the leaves.

Put gas in the car.

Pack a lunch box.

Buy groceries.

Pay the utilities.

Today it's all on the calendar and the dry erase bleeds together in a way your brain can't decipher. No square is big enough. Cram all this in between five, eight-hour minimum wage workdays crutched by black coffee and chewing gum and next time you're washing shirts you'll daydream about not waking up.

After enough of step twelve, addicts in recovery suffer an increased chance of relapse, a brief glimpse at being high and productive. The meetings will call this functional addiction, the sustained twilight before once again losing your footing, being fired, and going broke. Keep going to meetings, and therapy, and tell yourself to keep trying but eventually everyone gives up running to the sunset, the sinking reminder that you can do everything right and still fail. You need structure. Somebody has to tell you what to do. There's a blank calendar to fill.

Swipe to when you bring home the dented thing, still wearing its torn shrink-wrap. At first, you won’t unwrap it. Thinking two weeks out might as well be next year. Nobody can see that far ahead. You put these thirty-five blank squares on the fridge and walk away. You’ll start writing tomorrow. Today, grab a sheet of paper and fold a single crease, forming two pages that will tell you what to do. Make a checklist for right now. After a week, replace this with a notebook so you can flip back to yesterday’s completed list, then another one from seven pages ago, or sixty pages ago.

Like everything else, at first a list makes you feel good. You write down everything you have to do and draw a little empty square next to it where you can scratch a check mark. What the meetings and therapy won’t call this is the Dunning-Kruger effect. We won’t tell you to overestimate your own success as you check off all the to-dos for which nobody else needs reminders.

We won’t tell you, but this is what happens. With every box, give yourself a gold star.

Write this down.

Brush your teeth—check.

Make coffee—check.

Turn off the coffee pot—check.

Remember your wallet—check.

Close the garage door—check.

Finally, you're getting somewhere. Every day, it's the same list, telling you what to do. The same set of successes. Because before, you were barely able to find the door out of the house in the morning.

By the end, every box is inked and you get to see just how much filled your day. Everything in your life becomes an item on a list. A direction. Something to achieve. You get to see the set of instructions for your life.

Everything becomes a step. One step closer to the completed pages of your boring life and knowing that tomorrow you have to start at the top of the same stupid blank page with a new list. Then another the next day. Then next week. And the month after that. Until you're dead.

Like normal people.

It's been a long time since you felt normal.

Everyday you're charging upright into a rough surf of surprises heaving themselves against you. Look back at your little piece of paper. It'll tell you where to go next. Plan out every minute from the moment you make coffee in the morning until you’re home and you step into the garage after a shower to grab the electric leaf blower and surprise, it’s dead.

Write this down—plug in leaf blower.

It needs to be cabled to a heavy charger that gets hot and smells like ozone. The one-hour charge is just enough time for the clocks in your house to be suddenly louder. The carpet is more matted than it was yesterday. In the walls, all the plumbing squeaks with hard water and suddenly it’s caked inside the mesh aerators of every faucet.

Write this down—polish the hardwood.

Electric mop the high-traffic carpets.

Soak the stainless faucets in vinegar.

From the size of my list, our house looks like Xanadu.

Find another achievement. Check another box. Until one day in the middle of it all you're on a ladder in your bedroom replacing a smoke alarm with a ten-year battery and you realize you'll be up on this ladder maybe five more times before you're dead.

One day when you’re off work you get back to the calendar and pair it with the date pad of quotes. It feels smooth, the unused dry-erase surface. To make progress, you have to fill it. Thirty-five blank squares.

For monthly maintenance, pick a square.

For laundry, pick five squares.

Bedding, pick two squares.

Clean the oven.

Then the bathrooms.

Vacuum.

After a few months the neat printing is full of abbreviated instructions, and you can't see any outlines between the white blocks. Each day dissolves into the next. In the morning you see it when you get to the fridge for milk and tear open the next quotation.

Louis Pasteur’s quotation.

What I’m prepared for is running out of ink, and dry erase markers.

What I’m trying to say is—let’s hope this works. Recovery is what got me into this whole mess. Recovery, and McDonald's.

[mechacringekitty]

infodump post cause it got too long for askbox n im too lazy sleepy to split @starseeker-dragon your juice

she is now bisexual! but she's the woman you're thinking of. her toyhouse just for funsies, plus you can eye up her wife and kids. Stellar is an icewing who was raised in the fairly low ranks of her tribe, say the upper of the middle class icewings. she's been a dick her whole life, parents were just as materialistic as her and her and her mother loved to get into all the gossip. father was typically away, trying to advance them through the rankings [her mother was as well but they spent the most time together] so she didnt know him as well. bit of a spoiled brat honestly. i hc the icewings hold many galas and balls and [this idea is taken from the book dragon slippers, which is a brilliant book that i absolutely adore] one of those is held primarily for upcoming icewings - usually younger ones, but dragons of all ages are welcome - to find sponsors to start a business/otherwise patron whatever they hope to do. some even take the dragons on as employees if they so wish, and uh,, let's just say there have been a couple cases of sugar mommy icewings, but we're not getting into that right now. that gala is where stellar met daggers [daggers made of diamond], and they fell in love [stellar was eighteen and daggers eighteen and a half at the time] pretty much at first sight. daggers is a wealthy icewing with little love for her money, and stellar saw both a partner and an opportunity. they did meet in secret for a while [two or three years], and publicly, as, ahem, friends for the latter, but they ran into one issue, and that was daggers' husband murre. murre was an arranged marriage that the two of them made work, neither hated the other and both had the mutual understanding that it was just for the support of both of their families. divorce wasn't an option, both of their families and themselves would be publicly shamed - splitting up a marriage isnt looked upon kindly in icewing society, especially if said marriage is arranged [its well known that icewings will have arranged marriages to prop up their families and often have a side piece or an open relationship] but they have very complicated societal guidelines relating to marriages for love and marriages for finance separately - plus it would likely ruin their families and there was the issue of who would take white lie - their daughter - since daggers was too busy with her job [she works as right hand to the queens managing finances and the royal treasury] and murre cannot raise a child, both being busy with his job and somewhat questionable in his ability to do so.

second half is in rb, tumblr doesnt like me

[tea-with-evan-and-me]

So… some ✨ inch resting people ✨ follow Emma on Instagram. Niecy Nash for example 👀 Lily Rose Depp. The fucking ACLU. Florence Pugh. Kinda trashy. I understand the whole “networking” part of the industry but like…. she is literally bottom-of-the-barrel. Why would you want to network with some lukewarm nepo baby actress? Isn’t her DV arrest commonly known? Or did her PR team work harder than Satan? Rich White women will literally skin a baby alive and people will be like “but she didn’t mean it uwu”. I hate Chris Brown for obvious reasons but next time he wants to roast Emma I am begging him to go harder.

i feel confident saying that the vast majority of people who know of emma don't know about the DV arrest at this point. unless you were involved in fandom, or keeping up with celebrity gossip, where the story was hot news.. it fizzled out super quick. because we didn't get a mugshot, a police report, or really anything beyond the generic PR statement and photos of emma crying in evan's arms.. it's mostly lost to time. evan has never spoken about it, emma hasn't either, so the story lost it's legs past the initial interest. now there's this strange dichotomy between emma the gif queen of bitchy characters, with a bad reputation as a spoiled and chaotic nepo baby (because there were plenty of gossip site appearances earlier in her career for drug use, public intoxication and terrible behavior towards people) and the new ''regularly cast in unimpactful romcoms'' emma who is a mom with a carefully curated instagram feed and sponsored posts - very influencer-esque. as you said, these are the perks of being a rich white woman with a famous last name.

i despise chris brown (sadly after being a huuuge fan as a teenager) but if he's not going to go away forever, the least he can do is be loudly right about something, which is that there is a clear double standard and it should be spoken about. the only difference between chris and emma is that chris has gotten caught multiple times and emma was not, because she is cushioned by a society that will never let her fall the way chris brown rightfully did. and if anyone wants to argue about how chris has gone on to lean into being a violent menace and it's not comparable, all i can say is that some of us remember the public apology tour chris brown had to go on after he beat rihanna. which was the least he could do, but something emma never has or will have to do despite the fact she is guilty of the same offense. chris brown basically had to pivot from being a crossover artist with major pop radio play, who was touted as the next michael jackson by critics, to doing whatever the hell he's doing now because the white general public by large doesn't fuck with him anymore. but some of the same people who would scream at you to delete chris brown's songs from your spotify playlist would get on twitter with their tiny violin to sob about how wrong it is for people attack poor liddle emma roberts for her DV arrest when she was CLEARLY also a victim. these sad, would-be social justice warriors going to bat for her will never realize she would bloody and bite their lowly peasant asses if they didn't let her cut the starbucks line if she could get away with it lmfao

also, to people who want to say we should all mind our business because evan stayed with emma, rihanna went back to chris brown multiple times and she even made little digs at his next girlfriend, karrueche... who he would later stalk and abuse just like he did her.

[horizon-verizon]

Rhaenyra’s brief reign was marked by total incompetence, selfishness, stubbornness, and a strong sense of short-sighted vindictiveness. She proved in her tenure that she was completely unworthy of the very position which she so firmly believed belonged to her.

The moment Rhaenyra actually gets into power she spends more time taking revenge than actually ruling. Hence, mass arrests and executions and torture, and people side-eyeing her because of putting Alicent in chains and Haelena committing suicide over the death of her children, hence completely counterproductive orders to execute her own dragonriders. I’m sure we can chalk some of it up to propaganda, but some things are historical fact. Rhaenyra so alienated the people of King’s Landing that they rose up against her and killed her dragons, destroying the power of her House. That on its own discredits her as a politician.

Given the chance to turn the Greens’ allies against them by offering peace terms to the Baratheons, Lannisters, and Hightowers, Rhaenyra refused, cementing them as enemies by reaffirming there was no incentive in surrendering and instead eagerly awaited the day she could display the heads of the traitorous royals. Having taken the capital, Rhaenyra underlined her ruthlessness, sending “knights inquisitor” to hunt down Aegon II’s children and ordering daily executions. On a populace burdened by the doubly crushing war and winter, Rhaenyra not only imposed new taxes, but planned a lavish ceremony to celebrate her son’s installation as Prince of Dragonstone. That confidence in her own power blinded Rhaenyra, and would have done the same war or no war, rivals or no rivals. 

Her ordering the arrest of Addam Velaryon, a young man who not only had shown nothing but bravery and loyalty toward her and her faction, but whose “grandfather” and sponsor was her greatest ally, demonstrated that even proven loyalty would not be enough to keep anyone in Rhaenyra’s good graces, if she decided on no greater evidence than suspicion that someone was a traitor (while also denying herself the invaluable resource of a by-then experienced dragonrider and the support of Corlys Velaryon, at a point when she could afford to do neither). Her order to the Mootons to murder Nettles gravely transgressed that fundamental societal principle of guest right; the idea that a monarch would order her vassal to murder an innocent woman who had been welcomed as a guest under that vassal’s own roof shocked even the cruel and ambitious Daemon, not to mention the Mootons themselves, thereby costing Rhaenyra the support of all three parties (again, when she certainly could not afford to do so). Rhaenyra demonstrated a clear belief that anyone who denied her the throne was her foe, to be eliminated completely; worse, she saw foes even in her allies. Both of those are supremely bad qualities for a feudal monarch, whose power comes entirely from the loyalty of vassals. When the price of defiance is the same as the price of submission, what incentive is there to submit ??

You can start reading from HERE, HERE, HERE & HERE. Regarding the executions, I made an edit of this post or really added some things.

The 3rd one has a link(s) to a past post(s) about Rhaenyra's leadership and this post itself has a link to another, and so on so forth.

Once again, I never argued that Rhaenyra did not perform against her own interests towards the end nor that she herself was a perfect or ideal ruler. Good luck anyway, whether you read my posts and reflect on them or not. I don't really have time for those who treat one character as if they should be perfect and other characters as if they acted perfectly or they don't have to. I already argued against all these thoughts. ✌