#this is the dumbest thing I've ever written

[torchflies]

Bradley blinks away tears as he stares up at the Perseids, lying on a scratchy blanket from Mav’s hanger out in China Lake. They're well into the Mojave for the view, but it’s still shit and he wants to go home.

The trouble is that he wants to go to a home that doesn't exist anymore.

(Or, Bradley is lonely, ten years old and grieving. Then, outer space decides to give him a brother).

[football-in-tuxedos]

A recently discovered script for a season 9 episode of Seinfeld dealing with Jerry dating a trans woman. While the script was well received among the cast, it was pushed back in Production Order to be one of the first episodes of a potential Season 10, and Jerry Seinfeld called an end to the show before it could be produced. As such it never moved beyond the first draft.

[necrosin]

in the end, perhaps the human body simply isn’t meant to push its limits quite so far, mankind isn’t meant to live among the stars —— an error in some stage of evolution or another, surely —— and he can feel himself start to falter, a part of the melody is slipping away, too energetic to fit the cadence of the rest of the song, cacophonous noise building and building until he simply : collapses. well, more specifically, falls to his knees because, truly, he can’t be expected to run so far. A WHOLE CITY BLOCK? that’s nearly enough activity to kill him outright, never mind the hours that he spends singing and dancing on stage multiple nights per week —— that is different, and running is torture. ❝ momo, ❞ the asphalt is hot beneath his hands, and yuki wants terribly to curl up and sleep, ❝ go on without me... this is the end... ❞ or, he supposes : an energizing embrace from momo would suffice, as well. nearly as good as a nap, really.

@ruinedheart​​ —— for momo, from yuki !!

[ghost-proofbaby]

fictional boyfriends (e.m.)

summary: eddie gets jealous of your newest fictional boyfriend from a game he got you into.

warnings: kinda sweet. kinda cringe. eddie is jealous of astarion. twilight reference jumpscare. not edited. biting and vague mentions of sex at the end.

wc: 2.5k+

a/n: this is the dumbest, cringiest thing i have ever written. but on this side of town, we embrace the cringe <3 happy valentine's day, enjoy me combining my current favorite fictional men (astarion and eddie) for my own personal delight. maybe one day i'll write a serious fic regarding the biting kink

It’s not that biting had ever been off the table with Eddie, per se.

Nips between kisses, using a little more teeth when he’d kiss across your neck, a joking sinking of your teeth into his shoulder when you were vying for his attention — they were all normal occurrences between the two of you. There was just never much discussion about it. No conversation explicitly had in which the two of you said, “Why, yes. This is something I’d like to bring into the bedroom.” 

Until that damn game.

When Eddie introduced you to Baldur’s Gate 3, the last thing he expected was to watch all your free time you used to spend pestering him suddenly handed over to some fictional vampire. He thought it’d be a game you tried, grew tired of, lost interest in, and that was that. Nothing more, nothing less. He didn’t expect a sudden competition for your goddamn affections. 

“Baby, please come to bed,” he all but whines as he drapes himself over your shoulders, trying to nudge off your headphones. He could feel just how warm your ears had grown beneath them. He swears he can feel your back crack from the slightest bit of his weight on your shoulders. And, sue him — he was tired and he wanted to cuddle. 

“One more minute,” you mumble the same phrase to him that he has used a million times on you; he instantly knows it’ll be far more than just sixty more seconds if he agrees, “Let me just finish this-“

“No,” he’s still whining, but it’s more stern now as he properly removes your headset, earning a glare from your bloodshot eyes, “You’ve been playing this game all afternoon, sweetheart. I think I might die if you don’t offer me some immediate attention. Truly.”

For emphasis, he lays more of his body weight on you, your chair creaking from holding up both of you now. 

“Eddie,” you moan out, wiggling beneath his dead-weight, “I swear to God, get off of me-“

“I’ll get off of you if you come to bed.”

You pause. Your hands hover near your keyboard and mouse, but you’re no longer walking your avatar across the world of Baldur’s Gate, and he knows he has you considering it.

More weight. More groans. At this rate, he’s questioning if your chair won’t break from his outrageous method to get your attention. 

“Fine.” 

The small yes he lets out only earns him a punch to the shoulder. But it gets you off the game, and that’s still a win for him.

He doesn’t even care about appearing over eager as you follow him back to the bedroom. He’s gone as far as preparing the bed, pillows fluffed and comforted pulled back while awaiting your arrival. He’s already washed his face and brushed his teeth (something he usually fights you on as you nag him before bed), and the moment he’s got you in the room with him, he’s dragging you right onto the mattress with him.

“You’re gonna hurt us!” you yelp as he wraps his arms around you and flops down, dragging you with him, but it’s through a laugh. He knows you really couldn’t care less — he’d never deliberately injure you, irritated about your newest fictional boyfriend or not. 

“Oh, no,” he mocks, rolling so you’re laying on top of him, “What ever will you do if I injure one of your precious wrists, and you can’t use it to flirt with your new boy toy tomorrow?” 

“Astarion would be devastated,” you giggle into his chest, not moving off of him despite all your protests. It’s nice — to feel the full weight of you, to just get to bury his nose in the crown of your head as he shamelessly inhales the sweet lingering scent of your coconut shampoo, “He’s even needier than you.” 

“Yeah, ‘cause you serve as his functional juice box.”

“I do not!” you wiggle against him, and it only makes him tighten his arms, “He’s needy because he loves me.”

“Well that makes one of us.” 

Your head lifts off his chest in an instant, faux offense shadowing your features, “You tryin’ to say you don’t love me, Munson?”

He smirks, pressing his lips together tightly, making you huff in frustration. 

Of course he loves you. There wouldn’t be a ring in his sock drawer that he’s terrified of you finding if he didn’t. 

You pout, subtly and adorably so, starting to lift off of him, “If you’re going to be mean, I’m just going to go back to someone who appreciates me-“

“Mean?” he scoffs, enjoying himself far too much. He’s missed your attention, your affection. The effect it has on him is similar to a high, making him dizzy on serotonin as he rolls over and pins you between him and the mattress, “Oh, baby, that’s not me being mean. I can show you mean, if you want.” 

He’s always thought you looked prettiest like this. Under him, eyes wide as you look up at him as if he’s the only thing in this room worth looking at. Worth more than your prized bookshelf, more interesting than all the various posters the two of you have hung on the walls. You look at him as though he’s the greatest thing to exist in these four walls, and he doesn’t take it lightly when your favorite albums and candles are right there.

“You don’t have a mean bone in your body, Munson,” you whisper softly, face going soft for him. The two of you are still surely joking around, the playfulness of it all thick in the air, but there’s something genuine in your words that makes him even more enamored with you. 

He should have predicted you’d fall for Astarion when he showed you the game. You had a thing for people who put up the tough front, but who really just needed a little extra softness and patience under the surface. He was living proof of it.

Unlike your fictional vampire boyfriend. 

“Yeah?” he taunts, leaning down until the tip of his nose brushes yours. His hair works like a curtain, messy as ever as he shields the two of you from the outside world. One of your hands have crept up so that you palm rests against his cheek, and he can hardly remember that flare of jealousy that had gnawed at him when you’d spent your entire afternoon absorbed in the game instead of him, “I bet I could be meaner than Astarion. Although, I’m not sure just how mean that man has ever been to you, given all the war crimes you commit for his approval-“

He’s cut off when the thumb of the hand cradling his face trails up, pressing on his bottom lip. It only makes him grow even closer to you, pressing in, drawn by your touch.

You squint your eyes at him jokingly before cooing, “Someone sounds jealous.”

“Damn right,” he doesn’t even try to deny it, caught in the web of your trap with ease, “Does your pixelated lover even know what a catch he’s got?” 

You snort adorably at that. He pulls away to see the full force of your laughter, lifting up into his elbows to admire how your face scrunches with your smile. He bets Astarion would make some sarcastic comment about it — about the crinkles by your eyes that he aches to pepper with kisses, about the indents in your cheeks when you smile this wide, about the sound of your genuine laughter when you unrestrained and entirely comfortable like this. But there’s not a single joke forming on Eddie’s tongue. He’s all but hypnotized. 

God, he fucking loves you. So much so he’s jealous of a video game character.

“I’m not sure I’d consider this,” you lift the hand not holding him carefully still to motion at your current state of being, “A catch, my love.” 

He has to disagree. Messy hair or not, wrinkled pajamas or not.  You’re the greatest catch of this entire existence; not just Eddie’s, but the Universe’s. Nothing you could say or point out would deter him from this belief. He loves you, mess and all.

“My love?” he chooses to tease instead, all the words of affection threatening to choke him if he so much as considers letting them pour out, “I like the sound of that. If that’s the Astarion effect, maybe he isn’t so bad after all.”  

His elbows are sinking deeper into the mattress. With every passing second, his face is dropping closer to yours, and he’s not sure if it’s by instinct or choice. But when his lips finally brush yours, he decides it’s all the same — it doesn’t really matter what sort of gravity is at work here, as long as it keeps bringing him down closer to you.

“Shut up about the game and kiss me, Eddie.” 

He doesn’t have to be told twice.

The kiss is as sweet as ever. A comfortable dance that still sends shivers down his spine. If either of you looked closer at his arms bracketing your shoulders, you’d see the goosebumps raising as you eagerly returned all his affection.

You taste like the chocolates you’d been snacking on during your gaming. You taste like the greatest gift ever given, and he doesn’t care if he’s exaggerating or not. You’re divine — his favorite good morning and his only goodnight. 

And he’d say all that, but you’d probably accuse him of trying too hard to be like Astarion. Probably bring up that ridiculous line the character once said about you being made by the Gods, just to ruin him.

You were, though. Made by the Gods, specifically to ruin Eddie. Fuck the game. 

“You know,” he whispers against your lips, breaking for air as he adjusts positions. Your thighs open up and welcome him home, letting him slot right between your legs comfortably. He’s not trying to seduce you, but he can’t even be mad about it. He feels like a starved man now that your attention has been divided as of late, “If you wanted a lover who bites, all you had to do was ask, darling.” 

If you weren’t so wrapped up in the kisses he was pressing down your jaw and along your neck, you would have ripped him to shreds for the awful impersonation. 

But you’re already far gone, lost in his touches and his adorations. You let the half-assed attempt at a British accent slide, and you even bare your neck to him at the minute threat. 

Biting had never been off the table, per se, and Eddie was really fucking glad for it.

When he presses one, two, three greedy kisses to that sweet spot just below your ear, he has one intention in mind. Not his usual sucking and nipping and soothing, not leaving behind one of his ordinary love bites. No, he lets himself get caught up in the moment, and when he catches that quiver of excitement the moment he drags his teeth over your neck carefully, he’s fully committed to his decision.

He bites.

Not hard enough to draw blood, or even be terribly painful. He knows it’s nothing like the game or any of your subsequent fantasies you might have had from it. His canines are fairly dull, even as they dig carefully into the skin of your neck, holding for a moment for effect. But your legs tighten around his hips, and he almost wishes he was a damn vampire, able to actually pierce your skin in the moment. Drink your blood. Whatever the allure was with the origin companion.

You let out a soft gasp which has him keeping your skin between his teeth a few extra seconds, and then he’s letting go. Lifting his head and looking into your eyes, a silent exchange of is this okay?

If the glazed over look is anything to go off of, it’s more than okay.

He returns with reckless abandon, switching between his usual desperate kisses and the newer, sharper ones. He has one goal in mind: to mark you up as his, to the point in which you’ll be scolding him in the morning. It’s like a drug, to feel you writhe beneath him as he paints the picture. 

Love notes of freshly born bruises, the imprints of his teeth – a letter across your delicate skin that reads, he was here, and he loved you, more than anyone else in this Universe may ever be capable of. 

“If I had known how much biting would rile you up, I would’ve started doing it ages ago,” he mumbles into the crook of your neck, finally pausing his assault. 

He settles for softer presses of his lip, peppering the affection where he had been a bit more violent. 

Your hands that had taken to tangling into the curls at the nape of his neck have gone more relaxed, no longer tugging but instead just lingering. Pulling him closer. Touching him with softer hands than he’s ever felt deserving of. 

“Guess you’ve got a certain vampire to thank for that,” you tease, but he can hear just how breathless he’s left you. He had sworn he could feel the pulse of your facing heart beneath his lips, even if just for a moment. Even if he just imagined it. 

“Please. Astarion is not getting the credit for that,” he scoffs, lifting up onto his elbows again to just look at you. His lover, his favorite person. It’s nice to see your face when it’s not washed over with the cast of a computer screen. “That was all me. And even if it wasn’t, I won’t forget that you had a Twilight phase.” 

Your hand quickly drops between the two of you, only to smack at his chest. The thump holds no weight as you whine, “I told you that in confidence.” 

He dips down, capturing one last kiss, “It’s okay, baby. It’s good to know that you have a type.”

“I do not-”

He cuts you off with a more playful bite to your neck. Less about marking you, and more just to make a point. 

“Just,” another nip, “admit,” another graze of his teeth, “it.” 

You’re fighting a smile when he looks down at you again, impossible to hide behind your mask of annoyance. “I am not admitting that I have a thing for broody, pathetic vampires.” 

“Well, I’ve got broody and pathetic down-”

“Eddie,” your thighs still bracket him, one hand still clinging to the back of his neck. When you say his name, the game is over. “We can spend all night bickering over the fictional men I love, or you can give me a reason to forget their names. It’s up to you.” 

His eyebrows jump up his forehead, and he’s just about to give up the bit, but not before one last snide remark.

“Kind of hard to do that when I share a name with one of them, but as you wish, sweetheart.” 

Another bout of beautiful laughter from him. Another smack on the chest from you. It’s good – it’s everything Eddie has ever wanted, and it is good.

He does, of course, make you forget their names. And if you find it difficult to get out of bed the next moment, dramatically unable to make the walk to your gaming computer, well – he won’t try to hide his smug smile in between the soft rays of morning light.

eddie's taglist: @capricornrisingsstuff @thisisktrying @hideoutside @vol2eddie @corrcdedcoffin @ches-86 @alovesongtheywrote @its-not-rain @feralchaospixie @cheesypuffkins87 @thebook-hobbit @babez-a-licious @eddies-acousticguitar @aysheashea @kellsck @cosmorant @billyhvrgrove-main @micheledawn1975 @eddiesxangel @siriuslysmoking @witchwolflea @tlclick73 @magicalchocolatecheesecake @mizzfizz @nanaminswhore @mikiepeach @ali-r3n @hawkebuckley @alwaysbeenfamous @darkyuffie-blog @vintagehellfire @lilmisssiren @elvendria @loveryanax @stylexrepp @princessstolas @fangirling-4-ever @eddiesguitarskills @babez-a-licious @josephquinnsfreckles

join my taglist!

[mecachrome]

pre-mclaren oscar piastri primer (ft. maxf, landoscar)

0. introduction

for a few months now i've been wanting to make both an oscar primer and a timeline of pre-mclaren landoscar moments, but i couldn't figure out which one to prioritize… then after some deliberation i finally realized i could just combine the two things together! so. here is an oscar-centric timeline that is mainly about his racing background, moving to the uk, and how he became acquainted with other members of the rfm pack—aka lando, maxf, and logan. i don't know whether any of this information is useful or even vaguely interesting, but i mostly just wrote it for myself and thought i'd share what i had in case anyone else wanted to check it out. please feel free to comment or shoot me an ask if anything here is egregiously incorrect; i've checked and linked as many sources as i could but it's of course possible that some errors remain :)

1. background, rc racing, early karting days (2007-2015)

oscar piastri was born on april 6, 2001 in brighton east, a suburb of melbourne not far from albert park circuit, as the son of chris and nicole and to-be oldest brother to 3 younger sisters. a love for all things automotive ran deep in the piastri family: both of his grandfathers were mechanics and his father had also co-founded his own vehicle diagnostics software company, hp tuners, aka oscar's sponsor throughout his racing career. thanks to his father's business, oscar's family was objectively well-off and managed to contribute a fairly substantial amount of support toward his junior career, but they also weren't swimming in cash by multi-millionaire motorsport standards either.

(L-R) edie, mae, hattie, and oscar, from nicole's twitter — each sibling is ~2 years apart (source)

while most drivers on the current grid were introduced to motorsport through go-karting, usually at or before the age of 7, oscar's path to single-seaters differed slightly. he first developed an interest in racing via remote-controlled cars at the age of 6, when his father brought him a monster truck as a souvenir back from a business trip in america. oscar began racing them that same year, eventually moving to safer electric track vehicles and even winning the second class of the national titles in 2010, at the age of 9. he was so small then that he often needed to stand on a milk crate to see the cars on track, and the next-youngest competitor at the time was twice his age. (source)

oscar on the podium at age 8 (nov 16, 2009)

oscar with his father chris, who often competed alongside him in a separate class (dec 21, 2010)

by 2011, oscar and his father were seriously considering his potential of pursuing rc racing as a viable career path, but things changed when he was introduced to karting via a friend's daughter in the rc community and his aspirations slowly shifted toward racing from inside a car. oscar was an unsurprisingly sporty and competitive child growing up; he'd played some cricket and aussie rules football and knew that all he wanted to do was race professionally, full-stop, at the time thinking along the lines of australian racing categories like v8 supercars. he was still competing in remote car racing as late as 2013, but he began karting seriously within australia in 2014, placing respectably in the junior categories of several regional karting series against relatively senior and more-experienced racers, and even going to france for a one-off event where he finished on the podium of the iame international junior x30 final. this outing affirmed his potential to his father and motivated the two of them to split time between australia and europe in 2015 as they juggled his karting future; plans for two more european events that year fell through, including the cik-fia world championship at the kfj level (which logan sargeant would go on to win), but at this point they were officially looking to take his career to the next level and commit fully to european karting in 2016.

this is when ricky flynn (and the hypothetical idea of lando norris!!!) comes in. before we get into rfm and karting professionally in europe, it's important to note that the defining aspect of landoscar's junior careers is that their pathways never once intersected. in fact, they don't even seem to have met properly before oscar entered the f1 grid as alpine reserve, although they'd spoken over social media and oscar was familiar with several people around lando's life—for example, maxf, logan, guanyu, and even lando's older brother oliver, who had also raced for rfm.

in short, you could say that landoscar's biggest hindrance was their parallel excellence. oscar was good enough to catch up and even surpass everyone else at lando's level, but lando remained untouchable throughout the years. oscar is only 1.5 years younger than him, but their f1 careers are offset by 4 years (2019 vs. 2023 debut) because of exactly two things: oscar's 2022 gap year in alpine and his two attempts at formula renault eurocup. on the other hand, lando sped through all of his junior categories in blistering fashion, falling short of the championship only once: the year he placed 2nd in f2 behind george russell. this is significant because many talk about the clinical nature of oscar's rapid single-seater ascension and three b2b2b victories (still very impressive, especially given his limited karting career!), but all of that speaks equally to the illustrious nature of lando's junior success and the sheer magnitude of faith placed in him as mclaren's "golden boy" coming up the ranks. to put things into further perspective, lando was teammates with maxf and jehan daruvala at rfm until 2014, jehan competing in the same class and max one below, yet by the time oscar was racing max and jehan—in f3 in 2020 and f2 in 2021, respectively—lando was already into his 2nd and 3rd years of f1. here's a chart that hopefully makes a bit more sense:

majorly simplified timeline showing lando, guanyu, maxf, logan, and oscar's junior careers + the karting classes they primarily competed in each calendar year. maxf did not complete his 2nd f3 season and many of them contested multiple/different formula renault series, but this is just a rough overview of their feeder series experience. 

2. moving to europe, rfm, regional formulae (2016-2019)

back in australia, oscar was a member of the oakleigh go-kart racing club and being actively mentored by james sera, a multi-time australian karting champion and fa kart dealer who worked with young karting talents alongside his cousin david. in late-2015, he presumably helped oscar and his father reach out to ricky flynn, who ran ricky flynn motorsport (rfm) and whose team was at the time enjoying exorbitant success in the karting scene; lando had won the world championship at the kf level the year prior, and logan would soon clinch the kfj title in 2015, results which further drew oscar's interest toward the team. ricky flynn agreed to take oscar on and have him and his dad move out to europe, and by november 2015 oscar announced on social media that he would be joining rfm the next year. in january of 2016, he and his father moved to hertford, uk, so that oscar could begin a 100-day karting program and travel extensively around europe to attend races. this is where he met logan sargeant, who was in his final year on the team but competing a class above, now at the ok (previously kf) level. oscar himself was only competing in the okj class.

not oscar-related, but as you can see guanyu, logan, and maxf were already acquainted before oscar and logan met, since the three of them and lando had been in rfm together as of 2014 — (may 11, 2014) & (feb 6, 2015)

oscar and logan in 2016

in an interview published on june 7, 2023, oscar reflected on leaving australia and committing to his racing dream, saying:

"i think if there was a turning point, it was probably when i started finishing towards the front in australia, and i started winning a couple of races here and there and finishing in the top three of championships and stuff, and then went to europe and fully committed to going down that route. [...] there's obviously a very big commitment at that point when you move halfway across the world without family and stuff. so i knew at that point that i really wanted to become a professional because, firstly, that's what i want to do anyway, but, secondly, now i'm sacrificing seeing my family, and stuff like that to be able to do this — which was a sacrifice i was more than willing to make."

like the majority of oscar's karting career, his time with ricky flynn can primarily be summarized as decent. none of his performances were particularly stellar, and in november 2016 he placed 6th in the fia world championship final behind the likes of victor martins and théo pourchaire (he mainly competed against guys like them, dennis hauger, caio collet, etc… once again logan was a class above and lando/maxf had already graduated to single-seaters), but he showed promising racing foundations and a great capacity for improvement, especially given that he'd moved to europe the same year and was still adjusting to life and racing on the opposite hemisphere. about 6 months into his new karting venture, oscar had settled in reasonably well and his father decided he would return to australia to continue on with his life, so they made the joint decision that oscar was to begin boarding at haileybury's uk campus and continue racing in europe entirely on his own. uk and australian school years are misaligned, so my personal understanding is he moved to europe after finishing year 9 in australia, attempted online school/took a few months off (he says he did online coursework here, but mentioned here that he was out of school, so it sounds like it must have been a very half-hearted effort…), came back to australia over the uk summer to do some more karting, then began boarding in september 2016 as a year 10 student. he spent ~4 years there and eventually received his a-levels in 2020, except his final year was disrupted by covid and he never sat his exams. (blog post mentioning his a-levels + btg transcript excerpt about his exams; his website says he attended haileybury from 2016-19, but i think this mainly encapsulates his boarding period, as he was still doing remote work in april 2020.)

oscar in f4 with his gcse revision guide, 📸 sebastiaan rozendaal (may 20, 2018)

2016 is also when oscar began his well-documented super-liking of several of lando's social media profiles. i think understanding oscar's time in rfm and his extremely british single-seater origins helps better paint his history with lando and maxf; my personal understanding of pre-mclaren landoscar is that while oscar never formally met lando or maxf during his karting days, he knew of them quite well through rfm and thus followed them on instagram/twitter after moving to the uk. of course, oscar has a fairly active social media presence in general, so young oscar quietly liked instagram posts and tweets from many different people, but i do feel compelled to note that in the early days he liked lando, maxf, and logan's posts with seriously impressive frequency compared to anyone else on the grid (or anyone in general, really); after creating his twitter account in may 2016, some of the very first tweets oscar liked were from maxf, and he also liked a multitude of mundane lando tweets from 2016 until… today, while on the other hand he didn't start liking george's tweets—another similarly-aged young british talent—until late 2017. (he does have some fun george-admiring moments though, but that can wait for another time!) outside of rfm, other people oscar was familiar with during his early racing years were british f4 teammate ayrton simmons, to-be series champion jamie caroline, and old australian karting friend christian pancione, who appears to still be one of his best mates (if not his best) as of today. fun fact is that christian raced for the carrera cup as a support event to the australian gp in 2023; here's oscar allegedly checking the quali live timing at lunch during his own media day. 

so, to conclude, oscar's early lando focus basically traces back to the motorsport path he took at the behest and guidance of his early rfm connections in the uk. the thing is that despite growing up in australia and vaguely admiring several aussie drivers in f1 as a child (read: mark webber and eventually daniel ricciardo), oscar has never had a specific driver he consistently mentions when pressed for his racing "idol," likely since his personality inherently resists idolatry and he instead views successful people more as actionable benchmarks or reference points for self-improvement rather than as unattainable paragons of accomplishment. as a kid forced to grow up almost entirely on his own, the majority of his racing aspirations were molded independently in the uk—he completed his karting career in the uk, boarded at haileybury for 4 years (fun fact: other drivers to attend include jehan, callum ilott, and clément novalak; callum was a few years above oscar and finished school in 2017, but the two would later become quite talkative over social media anyway), raced in british f4, became a brdc member, contested eurocup under a british license and therefore had the british flag raised and british national anthem played during his wins, stayed in the uk even at alpine since the factory is based in enstone, etc. oscar basically moved to the uk from australia without having really met anyone significant in the racing scene (other than jack doohan, or more importantly jack's father mick, but jack is younger and did an extra year of karting) and pretty much didn't have anyone specific to "look up to" at the time. oscar's first acknowledgement of lando's online existence was in december 2015, when he liked one of lando's instagram posts prior to moving to england, so it can be assumed that lando basically functioned as his most accessible reference point in the junior ladder as a 14 year old dipping his toes into the european racing scene for the first time. that is my highly subjective analysis of the situation!

select quotes re: oscar's inconsistent responses to his motorsport "hero" (or his favorite driver / a driver he looks up to in general):

(f1fs; mar 9, 2022) "i started watching f1 in… 2009 was the first season i properly watched. so when brawn came in, obviously mark was the only aussie on the grid at that point, so i was kind of naturally going for him. then joined by daniel, so obviously going to support the aussies, but i think watching lewis has been nothing short of spectacular, and a very good role model. [...] i think when i was first watching, i supported mark, but, you know, and i hope he takes no offense to this—vettel was winning everything at that point. so i was supporting mark, but vettel was doing most of the winning. i think now that i understand more about racing though, i would say [the driver i look up to the most is] lewis, mainly. the way he goes about things on and off the track is quite exceptional."

(mcl youtube; mar 29, 2023) sporting idols mentioned: ayrton senna, alain prost, michael jordan (see also ultimate athletes list)

(p1; aug 10, 2023) "i would say i never had like one specific idol. when i was growing up watching mark webber was at red bull, and obviously being australian, red bull being very quick at the time, i kind of naturally followed him. i mean—even like some of the guys in the junior ranks above me. like lando was always kind of two, three years above me, winning… most things on his way up. so i guess kind of him in some ways?"

(eff won; dec 4, 2023) "i don’t really have like one specific [idol]. i think what lewis has been able to do in terms of getting to seven world championships was incredibly impressive. i think what max is doing now is also very impressive…" 

the first lando post oscar liked on instagram (dec 21, 2015)

the first maxf posts oscar liked; instagram (feb 26, 2016) & twitter (may 9, 2016)

anyway, back to british f4! despite his initially unconventional foray into motorsport, oscar's journey progressed in a much more orderly fashion once he stepped up to single-seaters. his actual debut was in f4 uae, which he ran 3 rounds of between 2016 and 2017 (another fun fact: this is where he briefly acquainted himself with mclaren indycar driver david malukas, who would later recall him being very intelligent and whom zak brown allegedly spoke to oscar about before appointing to their indy team). after cutting his teeth on actual car-racing for the first time, oscar decided against moving up to the ok class as he felt confident in his ability to be competitive in single-seaters. his first full season was therefore the 2017 british f4 championship, during which oscar signed with arden while logan went to reigning champions carlin (lando had won with them in 2015, then maxf in 2016). oscar made his way to the top step 6 times in the season and placed just barely above logan for 2nd in the championship, finishing behind the considerably more experienced jamie caroline. arden was also founded and is currently owned by red bull team principal christian horner, so it was during oscar's time there that christian took note of and interest in his talent; oscar reportedly did a few runs in the red bull simulator but was passed over for joining the academy, which christian later voiced regret on. (source)

maxf, logan (center), and oscar (to max's right) on a day maxf was visiting the 2017 british f4 grid (april 11, 2017)

linus lundqvist, oscar, and logan on the podium at snetterton (jul 30, 2017)

jamie and oscar, who were… er, mathematically in the main championship fight. for some reason they made them take these photos (sep 30, 2017)

after a successful f4 outing with arden, oscar returned to the team for his first season of formula renault eurocup in 2018, a renault series that ran in its specific configuration until 2020 before merging with the parallel regional series frec to become what is today known as freca. this season proved to be less competitive for oscar, as arden was relatively inexperienced in this series and oscar's three teammates were afflicted with what can colloquially be referred to as a "skill issue," making it difficult to collectively develop the car throughout the season. (blog interview) the series was thus returning driver maxf's to lose, who at the time was racing for reigning champs r-ace with teammates that included oscar's fellow rookies logan and victor martins.

despite the unideal environment, oscar managed to prove his worth by placing a respectable 8th in the series, scoring 110 points as a rookie driver and capping the season off with 3 podiums and a top-finish of 2nd place—a jarring contrast to his teammates' joint total of 12 points. this result attracted the attention of r-ace and granted him a seat with them for the 2019 season, at which point maxf and logan both graduated to f3. thankfully that wasn't too much of a concern for oscar since he'd always intended to do two seasons of eurocup, and now he finally had a chance to win the first serious championship of his racing career with an established racing outfit.

oscar, max, and yifei ye on the hockenheim r2 podium (sep 23, 2018) [full gifset]

oscar's second season of eurocup is when he truly started proving himself as a driver, or at least to the people whose names, money, and opinions mattered around the paddock. his main competition in 2019 was again victor, who was now racing for mp and had been made a member of the renault sport academy back in 2018 after a strong performance in french f4. despite a close title fight, oscar managed to hold him off for the championship in the final race of the season, kicking off what would soon become an impressive string of consecutive single-seater series titles. even sweeter was the fact that all eurocup champions were awarded a renault sport academy spot that could be left or taken as they pleased, and of course—while the finances weren't nearly as impressive as alpine would later proclaim in their baseless smear campaign—oscar's connections in the racing world were limited as an australian driver almost exclusively managed by his father, so he gladly accepted the offer for the many venues of support renault presented to him.

see also: bby oscar briefly mentioning lando after winning eurocup in 2019 (@ 1:10)

oscar being lifted by his team (r-ace) after placing 4th in the abu dhabi finale and winning the title by 7.5 points

3. renault sport academy, lockdown, f3 (2020)

many things happened in 2020. one: oscar became an official member of the renault sport academy, joining the likes of max (who'd been picked up on merit after winning british f4 in 2017), guanyu, christian lundgaard, caio collett, and fellow new recruit hadrien david (victor had been strategically demoted after oscar's win because renault is a notoriously unserious organization, but again this is not the post). two: by the time oscar was ready for f3, moving up the ladder proved to be exorbitantly expensive, and he realized he needed better funds and managerial support to sort his career out. he'd been offered a spot in prema's f3 team by team-owner rené rosin at the end of his eurocup season, who'd named him for the post-season test before the championship was over and stressed that the spot was his no matter where he finished. (source) prema is unquestionably one of the top—if not frequently the top—teams one can drive for in most junior series (though there is also somewhat of a self-selection bias; if you ask oscar he is not a significant beneficiary of prematax!), having absolutely demolished the f3 competition that same year and achieved a clean sweep of the drivers' standings with rob shwartzman, marcus armstrong, and jehan at 1-2-3 consecutively. oscar completed post-season testing with them in spain alongside to-be teammates logan and fred vesti in october (source), before confirming on jan 26, 2020 that he would be joining them for the f3 season as a renault junior.

so, where does mark webber come in here? apparently mark's trainer from red bull and wec had also been oscar's trainer since 2016 (i'm pretty sure this is australian physiologist simon sostaric), and it was through their joint connection that oscar was introduced to mark. according to mclaren's 2023 season preview, "the pair hit it off, and webber took his countryman under his wing," signing oscar to jam sports management, aka the management agency he runs with his wife ann. mark's support would become a major factor in helping oscar progress through the feeder ranks and establish himself in f1, mainly because he had actual connections and could help oscar network with sponsors and negotiate his way during future signings. of course, more on this later.

as an aside, here are a few things mark has said about oscar:

"he’s got that white line fever when he puts his helmet on and turns into a different character, which is sensational." (mar 1, 2020)

"one of oscar’s biggest strengths by a mile, compared to everyone he is competing against — and this will be a huge string to his bow when he makes it to f1 — is his composure. he has immense levels of composure. [...] if you are weak mentally you won’t make it. he was on his own from an early age. he did brilliantly with his studies. but the racing disease would not go away, he wants it very much." (sydney morning herald; dec 11, 2021)

"he’s a prost, mate. he’s such a thinker and so calm. at first i thought i needed to inject a bit of urgency in him, but actually no, he’s got his own frequency. that’s just where he is." (the race; oct 7, 2023)

estimates provided by chris piastri on the cost of oscar's junior career, stressing the million-dollar commitments of running a single season of f3 or f2 (source)

anyway, back to the chaotic events of 2020. i think something that's good to keep in mind when discussing oscar's time in the renault sport academy is that he was actually a relatively new recruit, as in he only participated in a single training camp with the other juniors in 2020 and most of them (max, christian, guanyu, the temporary ghost of victor) already knew each other before. oscar essentially met with renault's factory team in early 2020, filmed promotional material with other juniors in january before attending the season opener together in february and then heading to winter training camp later that month, after which he and max left early for f3 pre-season testing in bahrain on march 1—a blessing in disguise, seeing as caio, hadrien, and christian remained behind and would soon be stuck quaranting in a hotel in tenerife—then briefly spent a week at school before returning home for what was meant to be a quick pit stop at the australian gp, which at the time had yet to be canceled.

then, of course, lockdown happened.

simplified breakdown of renault junior stints, notably showcasing the academy's struggles to meaningfully promote any of its juniors

oscar at the 2020 renault season opener alongside then-academy director mia sharizman, then-tp cyril abiteboul, alain prost, f1 drivers esteban ocon and daniel ricciardo, and the other academy juniors: fewtrell, lundgaard, zhou, david (feb 12, 2020)

oscar and maxf behind the scenes of the same event (feb 12, 2020)

stuck in australia for three months, oscar would end up participating in two fia virtual races, one for f2 and another for f1 (jun 7, 2020). a fun landoscar tidbit is that he finished 5th in the virtual gp right behind lando, so they technically had raced each other before 2023, depending on... well, whether you count a 2020 sim race wherein george russell and alex albon lead the pack as a real race. nevertheless, this was a time when drivers were becoming much more active online, seeing as streaming was the best way to keep their images relevant and connect with fans, and despite oscar expressing little interest in streaming on twitch he would still experience a considerable uptick in his online activity and twitter reach that year.

racing resumed on july 4 at the red bull ring in austria; oscar had been granted an exemption to travel to the uk and complete a 2-week quarantine back on may 27, a reassuring indicator to the motorsport world that the f3 season would run after all. now that he no longer had to attend school, having received 2 b's and 1 c for his maths, physics, and computer science a-levels, oscar relocated from hertford to oxford in june to be near the renault facilities, which he visited nearly every day to train at, and began living independently (as in in a flat) for the first time since 2016, rooming with fellow renault junior caio collet.

as i said before, this season is when oscar's online presence and "memeability" began to really conceptualize, enabled primarily by the fact that he was a) finally living outside of a school dormitory, and b) now, of course, signed at prema, a team notorious for its social media visibility, literal family atmosphere, and frequent youtube pandering. according to this f3 article, his twitter followers jumped from 795 at the start of the season to 11.6k by the time he won the championship, an audience built significantly off the self-deprecating string of jokes he used to tweet regarding drs and general reliability issues faced throughout the season.

what i guess i want to touch on here is how oscar's online presence has always been concentrated around the bare fundamentals of his personality: dry humor, candid words, sparing emojis, a few humorous photos detailing the mundane reality of his everyday routines, and at most the occasional inopportune meme or reaction gif (#thepiastri 🤷‍♂️, f2 in baku, jetpack guy, so on). he's bantered frequently with callum on twitter and near-obsessively liked memes, videos, and other updates lando shares with his audience, but he also has seemingly little interest in building up his own "brand" the way lando so smartly has with ln4 and quadrant, and quite frankly seems viscerally incapable of wanting to engage one-to-one with fans or otherwise leveraging the popularity of his material image. basically what i like to say is that oscar enjoys being adjacent to "lad humor" and will happily enable it, but he really has no interest in being the one to initiate it himself!

"there's some things you want to share, some things you don’t. in today's age and sort of having the profile that us drivers do, we kind of just have everything shared,” piastri said. “but (social media) can be used for good, certainly within the profiles that we have. but in some ways, it can be negative, and there's always going to be people out there that don't like you for being you.” piastri tries to write as many of his posts as possible, and he checks those written by his team to be sure they sound authentically him. (the athletic; jun 29, 2023)

along these lines, oscar does enjoy the spotlight, only he seems to prefer it concentrated in a specific lens toward a specific productive end. he's endlessly capable of seeing the objective upside of a situation, joking after he was made a meme in baku following his f2 sr1 collision that he was all for it if it got him popularity. after his eurocup championship he also said: "i think everyone loves a bit of spotlight on them. i think that's just human nature, so a bit of attention's always nice." which is interesting to me!

but back to racing. this season would unexpectedly become two things: maxf's last competitive season in motorsport—especially disappointing considering that he'd gone into the championship expecting to put on a second-season title charge, instead failing to gel with the hitech team to the point that each increasingly poor weekend made him spiral mentally—as well as oscar and logan's last season racing against each other before f1, since logan would later encounter financial difficulties that left him stranded in f3 as oscar catapulted himself to f2 victory. 2020 was obviously a weird season in general because of covid and the gap from pre-season testing, so it also meant that oscar had gone into the season fairly rusty; he managed to win the first race of the season, but on top of his drs rollercoaster he did struggle with middling results in qualifying and was met step-by-step throughout the championship by logan.

maxf's last race in f3 was the barcelona sprint race on august 16, with three rounds left to the end of the season. he dnfed in an unfortunate first-lap incident mere moments after oscar charged his way up from 5th on the grid to the front of the pack, where he would eventually breeze his way to victory and pull himself near-level with logan for the championship lead. i recognize that this is an oscar post and not a maxf post, but i think their time in f3 during an extremely isolated and covid-affected period speaks to both an interesting dynamic between them (the little kid who always lagged a series behind you suddenly beating you on merit) and their respective temperaments toward racing. while at renault, max reportedly lived with jack aitken during the week but would return to his family home on weekends, so it makes sense that he struggled to adapt when covid hit and drivers were collectively forced into very regimented sporting bubbles. mark webber, who worked for channel 4 as a commentator and had access to the f1 paddock, basically couldn't see oscar in person and instead spoke to him over the phone every day on race weekends. maxf said of his decision to quit:

"normally [...] i’m able to stay calm under pressure and i don’t let many things get to me but when you have a bad qualifying result and you see guys up there that you know you’re capable of beating, it definitely takes a dig at you inside and it’s been a lot to process throughout the year." (source)

while then-academy director mia sharizman, who worked closely with the renault juniors, spoke of oscar's inherent propensity for independence and how he adapted well to the pressures of living on his own:

"if you look at oscar piastri, he has been living on his own, [away] from his family who are in melbourne for the past five to six years. because he has been living on his own in boarding school, he learns how to live on his own, and he thrives in that. we have to force him... 'have you spoken to your father?!' it's just things like that, but he thrives in that. that's why he thrived in those weekends racing. he loves being on his own without anybody. on the other hand, we had max fewtrell, for example, who can't – he couldn't survive the 11 weekends racing, because he always needed his family to be around him. so those are the things that suddenly you see and, i think that that we see now, after a few years a driver who is quick, a driver who has the talent, and then the driver who is stable." (source)

2020 is also when lando and oscar spoke to each other on twitter for the first time. yay! after lando went semi-viral for having a meltdown over a hornet on three separate social media platforms, oscar first joked with him about it on august 24 (this was incidentally also the day maxf announced his functional retirement, which oscar liked as well 😭), before referencing the incident again a few weeks later in september.

(aug 24, 2020) / (sep 10, 2020)

outside of drs tweets and trying desperately to banter with lando norris, oscar's popular tweets at the time included several food-related mishaps and home appliance tragedies. while this isn't actually a lando moment, he was also slandered by the LN4 twitter account a month later on october 17 for reasons that remain a mystery, resulting in this set of interactions:

(oct 17, 2020) / (oct 19, 2020)

bonus: maxf's tweets @ oscar (when you aren't close enough to just text him.......)

but back to f3. similarly to his second season of eurocup, oscar would go on to clinch the title in only the final race of the year, this time even more stressfully—he never got pole that season and won arguably off of consistency, benefiting from errors and unfortunate collisions involving his primary competitors. after a hectic qualifying and string of contentious grid penalties set for the before-last round in monza, he began the feature race 15th on the grid but put on an impressive performance to finish on the podium, buffing his points lead after logan was tapped by clément and put out of the points. he, logan, and fred all dnfed in race 2 (read: the novalak pendulum swung away from oscar's favor to maintain stringent cosmic equilibrium, while logan and fred threw away a points opportunity with a teammate4teammate love tap), and oscar went into mugello with only an 8-point lead over logan and a 24-point lead over pourchaire. this weekend proved equally hectic, as is frequently the case with f3 racing standards, but in short oscar and logan entered the final sprint race level on points, with théo approaching terrifyingly near in their rearview mirrors. logan was unceremoniously taken out of contention on the first lap after contact with zendeli, and oscar managed to squeak his way to 164 points in the championship by placing 7th in the race; théo finished 3rd, with 161 points, two positions away from claiming both the race and the championship title.

a succinct summary of an eventful season! (posted jun 30, 2021)

despite winning the f3 championship in far-from-dominant fashion, oscar's career was now steadily on an upward trend. on october 30 he was rewarded with a private test in the r.s.18 at bahrain alongside christian and guanyu, and a month later confirmed that he would be racing for prema again in f2 (december 1, 2020). as a rookie f3 champion there was a moderate amount of interest in him, but no one really expected him to carry home the f2 title on his first try and so one of the main favorites going into the next season was his second-year teammate and 2019 f3 champion rob shwartzman.

4. f2, alpine reserve duties, #piastrigate (2021-2022)

at the start of 2021, fernando officially took daniel's place at renault and the team rebranded itself as alpine, parting ways with team principal cyril abiteboul and functionally replacing him with new ceo laurent rossi—part of a no-tp management structure, frankly a self-evident infrastructural faux-pas from a million miles away. the renault sport academy was then also renamed to alpine academy; again i know that this is an oscar post so i won't get too into the details of Alpine Being Alpine, but understanding how the academy functioned does help better contextualize the inevitable unfurling of piastrigate.

the main issue, really, would always be laurent rossi, or at least the values laurent rossi had been hired to represent and which he willingly peddled during his controversial tenure at alpine. after rossi's appointment it was reported that "the renamed alpine academy was now being tugged in two directions between director mia sharizman's ideal as a creator of future f1 drivers and alpine's chief executive officer laurent rossi's commercially-led preferences." (source) mia directed the academy from january 2016 until may 2022, and had been the one to restructure its recruitment process by demanding better funding and robust testing programs to cyril:

"when we first restarted the team in 2016, it was, we didn't even have a two-year-old car program at that time. we had to use a 2012 program using the [lotus] e20. [...] then in 2018, i went through it, and i said to cyril abiteboul, "look, let's try and do this." we needed financial resources. i needed a head start with financial resources to kick start the program whereby you entice drivers, and you offer [a place] to the academy drivers. it was more to see how they are... it was more of an evaluation process... that was what the first idea was. then we developed the program to develop the drivers to suit their formual 2 program." (source)

(note: mia also believed that 2020 was a disappointing year for all of his juniors save for oscar's performance in f3, which is a whole other thing. but rossi's greatest shortcoming was that he had singular, insulated vision, and he resisted any external input to the detriment of reactionary business decisions, a fact that alienated alain prost and soon led to his exit from the outfit in 2022. not a good look!!! prost would later call rossi "the best example of the dunning-kruger effect, that of an incapable leader who thinks himself able to overcome his incompetence with his arrogance and lack of humanity toward his troops." 🤌)

so basically, the cracks of mind-boggling incompetence within the team's leadership structure were long evident. on a brighter note, oscar's 2021 f2 season would quickly become his strongest single-seater contest ever (f1 youtube has a good summarizing video of his season, if interested); because of covid, f2 was experimenting with a three-race format this year in which quali set the reverse grid for sr1 and sr1 results then set the reverse grid for sr2, which essentially meant high qualifiers were rewarded for simply maintaining composure in the first sprint and running cleanly in the top 10 in order to secure a favorable grid spot in sr2. oscar adapted well to this format, building off his reputation of smooth, consistent driving on top of slowly improving his qualifying results over the course of the season, finally breaking through with his first feature-race win in monza. 

oscar with mia sharizman

this is also around the time when lando mentioned oscar in official f1 media for the first time, reading off a question about him to daniel in an interview posted in october:

"this one's not even about formula one. it's about oscar piastri. oscar pias-tree! [...] he's been on it this year." — (full video) (oct 1, 2021)

of his own f2 campaign, oscar said:

"i thought that i could challenge for race wins, but i probably wasn't expecting to be so consistently at the front. consistency is something that i’ve had as a trait throughout my career, and i was expecting to be consistent in my results this year — but maybe a bit lower down!" (source)

not only did he end up being consistently at the front, he became virtually unstoppable in the second half of the season. on december 11, oscar clinched the title in abu dhabi with two races to spare, ending the season with 5 consecutive poles and 4 consecutive feature wins, 60.5 points above his previously-favored teammate in the standings. #notbadforashitqualifier!

by now oscar was a hot commodity in the paddock; the only problem was that alpine didn't really care, mainly because rossi had enthusiastically re-signed ocon to a three-year deal in 2021 and held zero intention of actually promoting any of its juniors to one of the race seats, plus the one open spot at alfa romeo had instead gone to guanyu and his considerable financial package (though oscar has always been vocally defensive of guanyu's appointment to his detractors). instead of moving to another series, such as indycar or super formula, oscar recognized that he'd proven everything he needed to prove within the feeder system and opted to remain on the grid as alpine's reserve driver, mainly so that he could embed himself in an f1 team environment and—most crucially—avoid being left "out of sight, out of mind," because once you go to america you usually don't come back.

i'll keep the rest of this post brief since i feel like everyone already knows What Went Down, but a quick highlight for fellow landoscar enjoyers was the 2022 australian gp on april 10, during which oscar accompanied rosanna tennant for the post-race show and awkwardly participated in a chaotic lando & alex interview. as far as i know, this was landoscar's first time interacting on-camera!

o: "i haven't raced either of them, no." l: "not yet!" o: "not yet. hopefully soon." — (full video) (apr 10, 2022)

then silly season started, and everything was thrown into disarray when sebastian vettel announced his imminent retirement and fernando subsequently took his place at aston martin; alpine scrambled to recover from this blindsided move and prematurely promoted oscar to an f1 seat, to which oscar eventually posted The Tweet—claiming he'd never signed a contract with alpine and would not be racing for them in 2023, thus kicking off #piastrigate. or the piasco, or whatever you prefer to call it.

here's a good article that properly summarizes the crb ruling, but tl;dr: mclaren and alpine had come to an agreement back in march to loan oscar to mclaren's stable of reserve drivers after daniel contracted covid; mark webber, who was close to andreas seidl from their time at porsche in wec, quietly negotiated a contract with mclaren for 2023 that oscar would then sign on july 4, which was reportedly initially a reserve deal with an upgrade clause to a full-time drive given a dr buyout; alpine's legal team turned out to be essentially one overworked legal director who mishandled the situation thanks to a lack of organizational support, while a concrete williams deal never actually existed no matter what people continuously allege, and any proprietary right to oscar's services that alpine purported to have for the 2023 season would soon be voided by crb rule on september 2. in other words, they dun goofed.

because tumblr dies when i try to include it in this post, here's a link to a condensed chronological timeline version of this post.

that's it for now. i'm sure you know how the rest goes!!!

[sematarygirls]

꒰ telling sonny you don't like parmesan cheese on your pasta ꒱ 𝅄

  ／ sonny had invited you over for dinner at his place. he wanted to cook you a nice, homemade meal and woo you with his boyish charms—though, you had to admit you were already head over heels for him anyway.

you were so incredibly grateful for his thoughtful gesture that when he brought out a plate of pasta with grated parmasan cheese on top, you couldn't bring yourself to admit that you hated parmesan on your pasta.

you were a little odd and full of contradictions. You loved alfredo sauce, which was mostly parmesan cheese, and other foods that incorporated it into their dishes, but something about eating the cheese in it's pure, non-melted form made your stomach churn.

however, the people pleaser part of you that hated being an inconvenience kept you from just voicing this slightly weird fact about yourself. rationally, you knew it would be easy for him to just get you another plate, but you would feel so guilty for it—despite knowing that it really wasn't a big deal at all.

"and so I told him-" he paused, suddenly zeroing in on the fact that you hadn't touched your food. you were just sort of pushing it around your plate. "is something wrong?" he asked, brows furrowing as his gaze darted from your meal to your face.

"huh?" you asked, your own brows pinching in confusion as you followed his stare. "oh, no, everything is fine," you smiled as it dawned on you what he meant.

"why aren't you eating then?" he asked, concern written all over his face. "are you feeling okay? do you want me to make you something else?" he was quick to try and produce solutions for whatever unknown problem you were facing.

"no, no," you insisted, his attentiveness and care making your heart flutter with affection. "it's... silly. don't worry about it."

"well, if you don't tell me, i'm obviously going to worry about it," he said stubbornly. "c'mon, doll, tell me what's wrong."

"oh, god, i feel so stupid," you groaned, burying your head in your hands. he was so concerned and worried about you, and the only problem was that you had an odd food preference. "i just don't like parmesan on my pasta, and i didn't want to say anything because it sounds silly and is honestly not even that big of a deal and-" you stopped your rant when you looked up and saw the shocked expression on his face.

"you don't like parme- never mind, not important." he shook his head, clearly trying to brush away the italian part of him that was deeply disturbed by this information. "you should have just said something. i would have made you another plate without it," he said incredulously, bewildered that you would just sit there and not eat rather than tell him you didn't like it.

"i know," you said sheepishly. "i just didn't want to bother you after you went through all the trouble to invite me over and make me dinner." it sounded completely insane now that you said it out loud, but nothing about you ever seemed to be sane or rational.

he said your name firmly, rising from his seat to make his way to your side and take your hand. "it's no trouble at all, okay? next time, just tell me. i would never be mad or annoyed at you for telling me how you feel."

"okay, thank you," you smiled at him, nodding. he had a comforting presence and a way with words that always seemed to make you feel at ease.

"and don't thank me for it either," he smiled back brightly at you, giving your hand a gentle squeeze as he leaned down to kiss your forehead. "but, i honestly can't believe you don't like parmesan," he shook his head in disbelief as he grabbed your plate and headed to the kitchen to make you another one.

[wolfofcelestia]

MDNI

Zayne, Dawnbreaker, Foreseer x MC

Breeding

NoStoryOnlyIdea.jpg

Disclaimer: The only exposure to Foreseer I’ve had is from secret times so he is VERY OOC!! Ignore all background plot regarding him!! This isn't about canon accuracy, this is about fucking around with three Zaynes!!

>>> Do not take any of this seriously lmao

Zayne used his surgical knots on MC to tie her wrists to the bed posts at her request

Z: “I knew you were insatiable but I wasn’t expecting a request like this. Are you sure you want to go through with this?”

MC: “I love you and want to feel more of you. Now I can.”

FS: “Meaning you weren’t enough for her, Doctor. Once I’m done with her, I’m afraid you’ll never be enough for her.”

Zayne shot MC a look that told her exactly how he felt about Foreseer but he kept his mouth shut. He was doing this for her and once she was satisfied, they would disappear from their lives

MC flashed Zayne a smile that was half apologetic, half appreciative of what he was willing to put up with

DB: “Do you really want to bear my child?”

Dawnbreaker sounded almost lost, completely unaware of MC’s lust, Foreseer’s rivalry, and the Doctor’s exasperation of his wife’s whims

Z: “Considering what she wants and considering we share the same DNA, the child’s father would be all three of us.”

Zayne sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose. He still couldn't believe this was happening. This whole situation was completely absurd

FS: “DNA may tell you one thing, but would you be happy raising a child knowing your wife begged for me to impregnate her?”

Foreseer was the very embodiment of Zayne’s smugness and seeing it in front of him made him look away, again shooting a look at MC

Dawnbreaker didn't say anything, but a black ice shard began growing in his hand, seemingly to appear when his emotions were triggered by Foreseer's words

MC caught sight of this and called out his name, fearing this night of indulgent pleasure would end in death

MC: “Zayne!”

All three of them immediately turned their attentions to her, like trained dogs obeying their master. Despite being tied to the bed, she was unquestionably the one in charge of the bickering trio

The ice shard quickly disappeared from Dawnbreaker's hand and he shifted his body away from her, adjusting his tie awkwardly as he dealt with the guilt of upsetting MC, even just a little bit

Z: "Let's just get this over with so we can get rid of them."

There was a clear sense of unease in Zayne's voice as he spoke to MC. It was kind of hard to know how to act when you had two other versions of yourself right in front of you. And your wife wanted all three of you to fill her up until her body had no choice but to accept one of their seeds to conceive

FS: "I agree. Enough talk. This night will be very long and I intend for you to never forget the feeling of me making you cry out again and again tonight."

Z: "Did you think I was going to just let you monopolize her? Once you're spent, I'll show you how to satisfy her."

FS: "Look, she's already so pliant under my touch. You've been waiting for me, haven't you?"

As Zayne and Foreseer competed for control and positions with MC, Dawnbreaker stood back, a whirlwind of shock, hurt, and disbelief swirling in his mind

It was only when MC looked past Zayne and Foreseer to lock eyes with Dawnbreaker that he finally, slowly, hesitantly... approached the bed

[justiceforplutoo]

a/n: I realized half-way through that this is less of an interpretation of canon, but more of an interpretation of an interpretation of canon. so, like, take this with a grain of salt? also this has slight nsfw (the characters connect sexual intercourse with gun violence and I wanted to examine that)

I'm sure that someone's said this before, but for me, the "his wife has filled the house with chintz" quote from Tumblr and the "of course I love you. I tried to shoot you" quote from Goncharov (1973) have the same energy.

His wife has filled the house with chintz. To keep it real, I fuck him on the floor.

In this reblog of "his wife", @headspace-hotel points out the contrast between the connotation here of chintz as something fake and flimsy and the idea of "fuck[ing] on the floor" as carnal and real.

The illicit encounter in the poem takes place within a house filled with facade, the flimsy construction of the wife’s marriage and domestic sphere, but the encounter itself is a taste of something “real.”

KATYA: Of course we're in love. That's why I tried to shoot you. GONCHAROV: If we were really in love, you wouldn’t have missed.

I really like this interpretation of Katya's death scene, written by @frstcorinthians. The way I read it, it feels like she says, "Of course we're in love," almost sarcastically, or even mockingly.

I'd like to point out that Katya only shoots at Goncharov because he shot at her first. "Katya is a good shot. Almost perfect, even. But now, the bullet goes wide; she sees it skim past Goncharov’s temple. They're one for one." In this violence/love metaphor I'm using here... Katya can love. She loves brilliantly. But for Goncharov, she misses (can't reciprocate). It's clearly different for Goncharov. He explicitly says (in canon!), "If we were really in love, you wouldn't have missed," before shooting her in the neck. A perfect shot.

I think that Katya engages in relationship with Goncharov because she wants to prove that they are equals. One for one - you shoot me, I shoot you - you love me, I love you. But Goncharov really does love Katya; likewise, he really does shoot her.

I feel like Katya is taking Goncharov's love (house) and turning it into a game (filling it with chintz).

I also want to bring this quote (from the fic) to focus:

She doesn’t feel the bullet go into her, not really. All she feels is a vague sense of warmth in the juncture of her neck and shoulder and the exchange of the bullet’s motion pushed into her body. Not so different from sex, then. Here, as there, she goes with the force Goncharov enters into her, relaxed.

So, with the idea that the bullet is some sort of metaphor for penetration, and then we know that Katya doesn't really feel the energy of that bullet versus...

He feels Andrey’s hands around his shoulder as he eases him down to the ground. In his final moments, he thinks he feels Andrey’s thumb stroke gently across his shoulder. Maybe it’s his dying mind’s attempts to self-preserve, a flashback to the night before Goncharov’s wedding, when Andrey’s thumb made the same motion in their post-coital bliss.

... this connection of the intimacy between Andrey and Goncharov? Katya doesn't seem to feel this intimacy, but Goncharov seems to feel it about Andrey. When Katya compares the bullet to penetration, it's because she thinks that both are insignificant.

Goncharov doesn't compare the act of killing to intercourse, instead he compares the intimacy of betrayal and intercourse. Andrey's betrayal feels intimate to Goncharov. It feels real.

So if Katya is filling the house with chintz by not reciprocating Goncharov's love/bullet, Andrey is keeping it real by fucking him (stabbing him) on the floor (the bridge).

[bridgertonbabe]

Bridgerton Group Chat AU - The Darkest Timeline

As a thank you to both @silverhallow and @holybatgirlz for writing hilarious pieces inspired by the Group Chat AU, I have written this entirely ludicrous and outlandishly batshit drabble for the series. This is an extremely over the top and completely far-reaching out of the realm of reality insight into what might happen in the darkest of timelines of this AU if the Bridgertons were to ever truly take a game night way way way too far.

Entirely based and inspired by this clip from Community following the events of study group's own chaotic game night:

"To Phil." Simon slurred as he raised his half-drunken bottle of vodka. "May he rest in Phil."

There was a pause as he processed what he had just said before he snorted and cackled, and then proceeded to pour out some of his vodka onto the floor by his chair.

"Simon, don't you think you've have enough?" Kate remarked with a wrinkled brow of concern as she watched her inebriated brother-in-law across from her.

"Of you." Simon instantly threw back.

Kate gasped from the offence made against her as Simon knocked back another mouthful from his bottle, all the while maintaining a pointed resentment-filled glare at her as he drank.

"Guys, I've been thinking about that night over and over." Penelope piped up. "One thing has become clear; this is the darkest most terrible timeline."

"Enough with the timeline crap, Pen!" Kate exclaimed.

Though she had endured the most amount of years faithfully attending Bridgerton game nights and knowing full well all the horrors that were bound to unravel and occur, ever since that night Penelope had well and truly cracked. She hadn't cried nor grieved nor shown any ounce of emotion since that fateful night, instead her brain had rewired itself (as a form of coping mechanism) to narrow in on the semantics of that evening as she obsessively tried to think up every alternate timeline that might have occurred had she interfered at numerous points of that night. Every time the rest of the spouses had seen her since all she had been capable of speaking of were alternative trajectories stemming from that night as well as fervently mentioning the odds and probabilities of the events playing out the way in which they infamously had.

"Phil had a heart attack and dropped down dead!" Kate hysterically reminded Penelope. "Simon's a drunk, Lucy's locked in a mental ward because her guilt drove her insane, Michael lost an arm in the fire," - she gestured to Michael sat beside her, who in turn emotionlessly (his merry persona now long gone) gestured with his only arm to where his other arm should have been - "Gareth lost his larynx because for some dumb reason he tried to destroy a flaming troll doll by eating it-"

"Clearly you don't understand anything about defeating trolls." Gareth's electrolarynx-powered voice interjected.

"Our spouses are all either dead or in prison, our children all got taken away by social services, and now the doctors have pronounced Sophie's practically brain-dead and that it's up to us whether to pull the plug on her!"

The last five remaining spouses all looked to the bed they were sitting around where Sophie lay comatose amongst a sea of tubes and wires keeping her alive, the beeping of her heart rate monitor and the machine pumping oxygen into her filling the momentary silence in the room.

"Life has gone to hell, Penelope! This is real!" Kate cried with the despairing hope of trying to get her sister-in-law to touch back in with reality. "Look at us! Look at me!"

"Kate." Michael uttered in a low voice, unable to look at her. "You put one wash-away blue streak in your hair - and I lost an arm." he stated in as tempered and controlled a voice as he could muster, as he finally turned to look her in the eye.

"Exactly." Kate nodded back at him. "Life got dark."

"And all because Michael rolled a one." Penelope said.

"Oh I love how this is all my fault somehow." Michael replied, his voice inflected with growing exasperation.

"It's mine." Penelope shook her head dismissively. "I've run through that night over and over in my head and I keep coming back to one thought; I should have caught the die and not let you roll it. That's the exact moment I've pinpointed all of the chain of events from that night stemming from. I failed to do that and we all suffered for it. But I'm going to make it all up to you."

Penelope then put down the pair of scissors she had been using and picked up the black pieces of felt she had been fixatedly working on since they had convened in Sophie's hospital room. She then distributed each of the pieces to her remaining fellow spouses, each of them receiving them with curious expressions.

"What is this?" Michael deadpanned after examining the cut out black felt piece he had just been handed.

"Of all the timelines this is clearly the darkest which is why I propose we commit to being evil." Penelope explained matter-of-factly. "I've made us all black goatees out of felt, I suggest you put them on until you're able to grow your own." she advised in all seriousness.

While Michael turned the fake goatee over in his hand, his eyes narrowing in on it with every passing second, Simon simply slipped the goatee onto the neck of his bottle before swigging from it once more.

"From now on, I am Evil Penelope." Penelope declared after putting on her fake goatee. "We are the Evil League of Bridgerton Spouses and we have but one evil goal; return somehow to the prime timeline - the one that I stopped you from rolling that die - then we destroy the good versions of ourselves and we claim our proper lives."

Kate and Michael looked at Penelope blankly before their attention was drawn to Simon whimpering across from them as he looked to Sophie's lifeless figure.

"It should have been me." Simon wept. "I should have been the one who got hit simultaneously by the firetruck and ambulance from both sides... I'm so jealous!" he cried out and waved his bottle about, spilling some of the contents over Sophie's bedding.

"Simon, don't say that!" Kate spluttered. "Everything about that night was godawful and should never have happened in the first place-"

"The darkest timeline." Penelope breathed under her breath in reiteration.

"-and there was nothing we could have done to save poor Sophie!"

"Evil Pen; as Evil Michael am I allowed to pull fewer punches with everyone?" Michael addressed his obsessive sister-in-law in a low voice brimming with a deep resentment that none of the other in-laws picked up on.

"Certainly." Penelope nodded.

"I hate you!" Michael exploded. "I hate you all! I hate the stupid fucking family we all married into! I hate your stupid sci-fi crap!" he barked at Penelope. "I hate you for standing back and letting the rest of us foolishly marry in one by one so you weren't alone being married into that wretched family of monsters!" he shot at Simon, who shrugged uncaringly and carried on necking back his vodka. "I hate your stupid fucking electrolarynx!"

"Rude." Gareth's robotic voice retorted.

"But I hate you most of fucking all!" Michael turned on Kate, much to her incredulous chagrin. "You who enabled, encouraged, and exacerbated the Bridgertons in their heinously insane competitive ways! You who were just as bad, if not even worse than some of them when it came to those stupid fucking games! You who Sophie was chasing to try and save from going back into the raging inferno when she got hit by the emergency vehicles because you were crazed enough to insist that if you counted up all your cards you could prove you had won!"

"But I did! I did win!" Kate retaliated, her maddening competitive glint returning to her sharpening gaze in spite of everything that had befallen them all.

"Sophie is on her deathbed because of you!" Michael yelled, his voice breaking with long-amounted incandescent rage.

"Well maybe if she wasn't so desperate to prevent me from proving just how badly she had lost-"

"That's it!" Michael screamed and jumped to his feet. "I can't take this anymore! I'm filing a restraining order against each and every one of you! I want nothing more to do with any of you! With any of this!"

With that Michael stormed out, flinging the door open with his one remaining arm and slamming it emphatically after him.

"Hey!" Kate leapt up, tearing the door open, and followed after him. "It's a group decision to pull the plug on Sophie - you don't get out of it that easily!" she called out as she marched after Michael's retreating footsteps.

A crash within the room then brought Penelope and Gareth's attention to where Simon had just passed out from all the alcohol he had consumed, having fallen out of his chair and into some of the machines keeping Sophie alive, his bottle crashing on impact and sending glass shards across the floor.

Gareth then turned to share a look with Penelope - and that's when she noticed that he too was wearing one of her black felt goatees. There was a shared nod of agreement as they both mutually decided on the path they were about to embark on

"Evil Pen and Evil Gareth!" they both chanted; and thus began the new Evil Chapter of their lives.

[itchose]

❝  no hard feelings, right? ❞ he asks, raising his brows as he looks up to the top of his head, rightly decorated with the homecoming crown he always knew he'd win. with his girlfriend, of course, but he's not totally oblivious - he knows the vote for homecoming queen was closer than jackie would want to admit. ❝  i mean, i used to think it might be me and you someday, anyway, ❞ he laughs it off, like it's an obvious joke, like the moment he and @manslaught had when they were teenagers for all of three seconds was something special ( it was to him, so he only assumes it was to her, too. )

[pens-are-frenz]

I hate one of my fictional characters so much right now. Like, he's being such a dick right now I want to destroy him with my FUCKING EYEBALLS.

I did this to myself, but I still want this fucker GONE. Does the plot work like that??? No! Do I care? A- little bit b/c I'm really proud of my outline and don't wanna ruin it:(

Y'know what is canon? One of my other characters roughing hi up a bit (and by this I mean beat the ever-loving day lights outta him).

I am going to enjoy writing this scene immensely!!

[mermaidsirennikita]

always wild to see people freak out over dark romance novels when you know they're also like... Spuffy shippers? or something along those lines?

I mean, I have no issue with that lmao, I've had ships that are on the same level, but I don't know, it's just like... are you romanticizing the thing you're shipping to the point that you don't recognize its own darkness, or are you fully aware of that and just knowingly hypocritical?

[confusedpandabear]

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Final Fantasy XVI Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Clive Rosfield/Jill Warrick, Gav & Clive Rosfield, Clive Rosfield & Joshua Rosfield, Dion Lesage & Clive Rosfield Characters: Clive Rosfield, Jill Warrick, Gav (Final Fantasy XVI), Joshua Rosfield, Dion Lesage, Byron Rosfield, Charon (Final Fantasy XVI), Midadol Telamon, Tarja (Final Fantasy XVI) Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Dormitory AU, Romantic Comedy, i guess?, Boys Being Boys, Clive is a shy boi, Joshua is a shameless romantic, Clive just wants to study, cheesy af, Why Did I Write This?, who knows Summary: Modern/Dormitory AU that no one asked for. Clive is a shy boi who has a crush on his pretty new neighbour. Joshua, Gav and Dion are the wingmen he never asked for.

[kbb306]

The Sexyman, a ridiculous sequel to The Lorax by kbb306. No illustrations because I can’t draw.

A new dawn in Thneedville, with birds and with bees. The Onceler and friends were all planting more trees. The fish were all humming, the hills were alive!

And this perfect moment was when I arrived.

I took down the Onceler as fast as a streak (10+ years in a lerkim will make you quite weak). But no sooner had I cuffed and tackled the clown, then the Lorax appeared, shouting “Put that man down!”

“Now see here!” The wizened old guardian spoke. “I don’t much like this guy, but he fixed what he broke! The trees are all growing, the air is all clear!”

“Mr. Lorax,” I cut in, “that’s not why I’m here.”

“This man’s been indicted on twenty three counts 

of unnatural attractiveness, style and flounce! “

“He tore a whole website apart at the seams! The fanart, the shipping!” I shuddered, “the memes!”

“I’m sorry,” I told him. “This isn’t your fault, but you’ve got to be locked in the Sexyman Vault! It’s for your protection as much as for mine, the fangirls will find you in almost no time!”

One swipe of their phones, and the townsfolk agreed: the Onceler’s danger was not in his Thneeds. “The law is the law,” I explained to young Ted. “And far too many people want that man in bed!”

[aercnaut-archived]

no one:

literally no one:

not even l.mm himself:

will's world au lee fucking giggling upon hearing someone say 69: nICE

[billsfangearring]

your love's got me trippin' on you

All's fair in love and baseball.

—

A ficlet for the fourth Jess/Lupe Truthers server’s Valentine’s sprint prompt: soulmates.

(250 words, rated T)

Read on AO3.