#yikes on bikes this was a lot

[dear-ao3]

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boy was it fucking ever. welcome back everyone to monaco. The Race on the calendar. today is june 2, 2024 and lets fucking go shall we

(yeah i know its a week late, what did you expect?)

first, before we can get into monaco, a few last updates from imola:

valtteri was actually at williams to get coffee and not have a meeting with james vowels because his coffee machine shorted a circuit that was also hooked up to max's sim racing rig for the weekend and he talked about it in a stream

max and valtteris senna shirts were aparently stolen, hence why they weren't wearing them in the photo

aparently i linked the wrong video in the imola update of max running with the pizza, i found that clip again and it is here. i still have a lot of questions about it and no answers.

and now your regularly scheduled programming. we started the week out strong, with an adoption.

as you might know, oscar has been playing mr worldwide, mr 305 in terms of finding reasons to make every race his home race. and well, this exchange happened on twitter at the beginning of the week:

i do not think that leo ever actually popped to mclaren actually, sadly.

oscars mom of course had a few questions:

but reguardless, he was seemingly adopted into the leclerc family and set about exploring his new homeland on instagram:

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his next post was him enjoying the view with the caption "Finding my Monégasque roots"

(as an aside, people also started changing charles's wikipedia page to reflect his new son, but the page was locked soon after, with lorenzo no longer being listed as his brother now. he was a casualty in the war.)

but this whole interaction was very funny for two reasons

it continues to provide evidence to the rumored fact that carlos and charles actually do not get along

it bring up once again the discussion of the Monaco Curse

its been long speculated that carlos and charles dont actually like eachother very much and the relationship they have on camera is for pr only (i think this was captained by one of their moms liking tweets about how the teammate was bad or something?? i dont remember, and lets not forget nico rosberg comparing them to 2016 nico rosberg and lewis hamilton and commenting on their "driving feud" in china, if anyone knows a teammate feud its him).

anyway. charles publicly "adopting" oscar, just a few days after he had his second battle of the season with carlos and ultimately cost carlos points and places in not one but two races was kind of a very hilarious fuck you to carlos by charles. like a "hey man i know you hate this guy but im about to do the funniest fucking thing"

and then we have the Curse.

the monaco curse.

which applies to pretty much charles only.

essentially, charles has never once ever had a good race in monaco. ever. at all. take a look at his stats:

2017: f2 race, DNF 2018: f1 race, DNF 2019: f1 race, DNF 2020: no monaco race due to covid 2021: f1 race, DNS (notably, he had qualified on pole position this year and monaco is a hard track to overtake on so qualifying is very important but he had a crash in qualifying after he set his pole lap and the car had to get fixed, but there were problems with it that they didnt realize because the gear box blew out on the formation lap of the race) 2022: monaco historic race, crash 2022: f1 race, p4 (from pole) 2023: f1 race, p6

and if charles has adopted oscar, does that mean that oscar is going to get the curse? whos to say.

what we Do know though is that the ferrari has upgrades that seem to work (at least by imola standards) and they are bringing a new rear wing to monaco that will get them a bit more downforce (make car go faster) which is Very Exciting for charles, this could be the year he finally defeats the curse!!

(though carlos did say that the new upgrade package that ferrari is running is "not optimized for monaco" because of the track layout. helmut marko though (one of the red bull higher ups in case you forgot, we havent mentioned him in a whole hot minute but hes making a valiant reappearance on this post) said about monaco "it will be one of the most difficult races for us, due to the bumps and the curbs. i expect a lot from ferrari, and especially from leclerc")

but before we get into the nitty gritty of monaco, the rest of the media day sillies. because believe it or not, charles is still not off the hook here.

so george russell. i dont think we've talked about him an abundant amount as of recently, aside from him being utterly unbothered about the whole Whos Getting A Mercedes Seat situation, but he is a total and absolute menace. legitimately.

first, i think ive said this before, george had a tumblr back in the day. its unclear if he still ever goes on it but he did definitely have one which is hilarious. also hes a power point king. aparently part of the reason he got signed to mercedes (?) (i think it was mercedes) was because he made a power point presentation for toto wolff explaining why he would be a good fit for the team. legitimately. he also made a powerpoint for alex and lando back in 2019 explaining why he should be rookie of the year (he didnt win rookie of the year, lando did, probably because lando was in a slightly better car). anyway. hes a menace. and like all good menaces, he has receipts.

at the press conference on thursday charles was talking about his favorite movies and was talking about harry potter and how well he knew the movies as a small child. george very politely waited his turn to say that one of the first videos he has on his phone is a video from 2012 when they were all still in karting where charles is pretending to be a wizard on a broomstick.

max (and the interviewer) expressed their desire to see the video and that george should post it. charles said "keep that video to yourself."

george did pull out the video and we got a little sneak peek of baby charles on a broom stick

yes, this is a very serious sport, why do you ask?

zhou posted ai photos of his cat sweet corn in the paddock with him. i cant find them right now, trust me that it happened.

mclaren were the only team running a special livery and no, it was not a historic one like their monaco merch would have suggested, but a teen and yellow one for ayrton senna, who dominated at monaco. the car itself was fine:

the suits looked like sprite cans

both lando and oscar ran special senna themed helmets and oscar ended up auctioning off one of his for the senna foundation.

and of course, we had our weekly game of Can You Guess What The Weather Is Based On What Lando And Oscar Wear To The Track? the answer was again, of course, like always, no!

also on the outfit game of course, as always was sir lewis hamilton. and he was back on his tit agenda. the general reaction was this:

tho he did have one outfit that was giving Oh No My Husband Just Died Of Mysterious Circumstances!

and, williams decided to put the duracell bunny on their car:

but now for the real news. what everyone wants. silly season.

i know i said last week silly season was properly sillying but now were seemingly in the full swing. no one is safe. so lets just run down the whole line and get a general refresher of what the hell is happening.

lando: signed with mclaren, through at least 2027

oscar: signed with mclaren, through 2026

charles: signed with ferrari through 2029

lewis: signed with ferrari through probably 2026

fernando: signed with aston for some period of time

nico: signed with stake (audi) through 2026 at least

lance: hasn't been officially announced but hes likely staying at aston cause his dad owns the team

alex: signed an extension with williams through 2026

george: signed with mercedes through 2025

and then shit really hits the fan

there are 11 remaining seats, no one has officially announced retirement and there is speculation that several rookies or ex drivers could be making a reappearance in 2025, meaning some people are going to end up without a seat. and its an absolute mess, but i will do my damn best to straighten it out

starting with max verstappen, who seems to be the person that everyone is waiting on. technically yes max has a red bull contract until 2028 but there has been speculation that he might leave following the whole Jos and Christian Fiasco post the Harassment Allegations. max has sort of kind of said he doesnt want to leave, but that hasn't stopped the rumors and also hasn't stopped red bull from keeping their options open should max decide that he wants to leave. lets also remember that adrian newey left the team and max won the imola race by .7 seconds. and im decently sure that if the red bull isn't a championship contending car, max can leave the team. where would he go? probably mercedes at least according to the rumors of toto wolff wanting to sign him and give him an insane amount of money, but none of that hasn't been confirmed and right now there mercedes is more shit than the red bull by an absolute long shot.

also in contention for the mercedes seat is kimi antonelli, current f2 driver. hes in his rookie f2 season but is generally regarded as the next max verstappen, as we know toto missed out on signing max several years ago to horner and isn't keen on repeating that mistake again. lewis hamilton also has said that he supports toto signing kimi and kimi seems to be the favored choice for the second mercedes seat, even over carlos sainz. arlos could also reported even go back rb and wait for a seat to open up at red bull, though again this seems unlikely.

reportedly toto and mercedes have lost interest in carlos and so has red bull, leaving his only option as stake/audi, which he doesnt seem to be too pleased about. aparently they also want an answer from carlos this weekend. there are some rumors though that carlos has been talking to williams as well, though james vowels kind of denied this during practice 1 this weekend when he was asked about it and said "carlos who?" logan sargeant is definitely at risk at williams and likely wont get re signed there.

and if carlos doesnt sign with stake/audi then they have to look for someone else, yuki tsunoda being one of the options.

and red bull are no longer interested in carlos because it seems like they are going to re sign checo perez as their second driver because he has been consistent all season so far (but usually checo is good at the beginning and then falls off) and reportedly they have offered him a one year contract, which he has also reportedly countered for a 2 year contract (interesting if this is true cause remember alex albon signed an extension with williams and red bull at one point wanted first refusal of him for 2026 so if they were only ever going to sign a one year with checo then why did alex extend at williams?? all questions we will not get answers to). aparently according to helmut marko, yuki tsunoda could be an option for red bull as well, given how well he has been doing at rb. daniel ricciardo seems an unlikely option for red bull, tho later in the week it was said that yuki was no longer an option but daniel was, though there are rumors that his contract says he is set to stay at rb or red bull, but given his recent performance he is unlikely to move up to red bull.

yuki tsunoda on the other hand has some options outside of rb, such as aston and haas. though for yuki to sign at aston would mean that lance stroll would be leaving the team which seems unlikely while his dad owns it. and lets not forget liam lawson who was also all but gaurenteed an rb seat for 2025 by helmut marko and remember that he did manage to knock max out of qualifying in singapore last year when he was subbing in for daniel.

haas though has several options for drivers. they have one confirmed open seat because nico went to stake/audi which is likely going to get filled by ollie bearman, currently in f2 (kimi's teammate) and the haas/ferrari reserve driver. he has 6 practice sessions with haas this year and has so far done one of them, hes also driven in an f1 race for carlos in saudi arabia and finished in the points. kevin magnussen does not seem like he is going to get re signed because of all the penalty points that he has accumulated so far this season (10) and if he doesnt get re signed at haas several drivers have reportedly been talking to haas, like zhou guanyu, esteban ocon, logan sargeant, yuki tsunoda, and valtteri bottas. it is unlikely that haas will sign two rookies as they have done this before and it hasn't worked out for them.

valtteri bottas has also reportedly had negotiations with williams (but most of this seems to stem from last weekend when he was in fact going to the williams hospitality to get coffee), and he could also be in talks with alpine. but alpine seem to be looking at mick schumacher as a potential driver for 2025 (mick was previously a hass driver from 2021-22 and is the mercedes reserve driver currently but has done a bunch of endurance testing at alpine, also mercedes had him do testing to compare his performance directly to kimis recently, or maybe its coming up??)

and of the two current alpine drivers, pierre gasly seems less likey to resign with the team because lets remember that when he signed with them two years ago they were fighting for fourth in the championship and now they are pretty much the slowest car on the grid. as for esteban ocon he seems to still view himself as a mercedes junior driver who could still be in contention for the second merc seat, its unclear if he will stay at alpine though it seems like he is getting favored over pierre there. or at least he was until the race this weekend...more on that later.

make sense? clear as mud? perfect!

certainly we are in the thick of everything here. and were heading into monaco, one of the techiest tracks on the calendar. could be a great opportunity to prove yourself.

what makes monaco so challenging? well it is a street circuit through the streets of monte carlo. its i think the oldest track on the calendar and i also think has been used pretty much every year of f1. all the greats have won in monaco.

since its a tight street circuit, passing is very hard. theres elevation changes, theres a tunnel, theres tight turns, theres the slowest turn on the calendar at this track. its a slow speed track, meaning that they are not pushing their cars to the limits. the top speed here is only about 192MPH (significantly slower than other tracks) and all bets are off if its raining. pierre once said in an episode of drive to survive that monaco in the rain is the level on the video game that everyone crashes during, and they get to do it in real life.

charles, as we already know has had absolutely shit ass luck here and after 2021 after his DNS he tweeted this:

checo has also had weird luck in monaco. he won monaco in 2022 (after crashing in q3 of qualifying and ending the session early, mainly meaning that he was going to be starting 5th and ahead of max who could not complete another qualifying lap in order to get pole, there was speculation that he did this on purpose). after he won he was given a contract extension at red bull (which is taking him through the end of this year) but! it has been heavily speculated that he also cheated on his wife after he won in monaco, because there was footage that circulated of him partying and dancing with several women very closely. he claimed that that was not true, but again that has never been distinctly proven to have been true in the first place. in 2023 he qualified 20th and ended 16th. would the bad luck for him continue? idk i guess we will find out!

one person who has managed to defeat their monaco curse though was daniel ricciardo back in 2018. this was when he was still racing for red bull. in 2016 he had been set to win but got fucked on his pit stop because they didn't have the tires ready for him and he came out of the pits too late. in 2018, which was during the peak red bull v rennault engine woes, his engine went and could pretty much only operate in 2 gears (not ideal for an f1 car) (and especially when the monaco track requires a good 40+ gear changes PER LAP) but he didnt retire the car because he was leading the race and managed to hold off sebastian vettel (in a ferrari!) and win. this is where we got the infamous pool dive pics:

and yes, i probably have told this story before, but i am telling it again because its my post and its a good story. of course after this he signed with renault and everything went downhill from there.

but enough about the past. lets get into the present. starting with. practice.

i only watched practice 1 because i was on a train and the internet connection was bad At Best, but i feel like i got all I really needed to know from that.

we had three people in the box: anthony davidson, natalie pinkham and eventually they were joined by jenson button. this was a good and actually very informative practice session because anthony and jenson were both formula drivers who had driven around monaco in the car before.

(as an aside, nico rosberg was in the paddock for the monaco race, on account of the fact that he lives there, but he was not in the box, he was there with his company (?) rosberg ventures, his wife, and his commitment to looking like he has just stepped off of a boat at all times:)

(people also claimed that nico and lewis spoke to eachother in the background of a sky sports germany streaming clip, but no one could find the footage)

now, the interesting thing about monaco, according to anthony and jenson, is that the drivers cant do a track walk before the race because its a street circuit and monaco is pretty much the race track, some casinos, and very little else. so they only close the street for the race. so practice is very very important.

monaco is also an outlier track on the calendar because of how slow and techy it is. so every team brought a Monaco Specific High Downforce Rear Wing (to make car go faster) but no matter how good your rear wing is, if you get stuck in traffic on your qualifying lap then youre royally fucked.

(well, nearly everyone had a monaco specific rear wing, it was much later revealed that logan was using a 2023 rear wing because williams is still short on parts. whos suprised? literally no one)

according to jenson button, one thing is key in monaco and that is bravery. there are not many options to overtake, and if you get the opportunity you do. you also have to nearly clip the walls to make sure you are going as fast as you can and getting the best line. but at the same time, "one tiny slip up can cost you 2 or 3 places." so it is very important that you are on the top of your game.

so. monaco is about qualifying. often, whoever gets pole usually wins the race. with some exceptions, but this is true for the most part. so again, practice is important. and its important that you get as much practice in as possible, something that pierre gasley could not do because his car had a power unit issue and spent most of the session taken apart in pieces in the garage. ferrari were clear favorites heading into the weekend with their most recent batch of upgrades, as were mclaren (who were taking all of the curbs well, as in they could handle driving over them whereas some of the other cars couldnt). red bull were not. max even said "the car is on a knifes edge mate." but lets remember that max often complains to hell and back during parctice and then manages to qualify on pole. so dont get your hopes up (yet)

by far, the most interesting part of practice 1 was when they talked to mr james vowels, who was on pit wall call duty this weekend. mr vowels as we know is the williams team principal. and he was very "cautiously optimistic" about the weekend because the car was "well suited here."

they asked him if he was in talks with carlos, and he had the audacity to say "carlos who?" which is an interesting tactic. especially when its kinda down to either stake or williams for carlos cause he rejected everywhere else. he also continued his icon behavior while talking about vcarb, saying "dont ask me what they're called. alpha tauri, visa cash app, buy one get one free." and weirdly, he was not the only person to shit on a team name this weekend because ted managed to call alpine renault. alpine has not been renault since 2020.

charles's monaco curse made a brief appearance in the form of running over a bit of zhou's front wing and damaging his car, redflagging the session for everyone. they used this time to have a very very long pan to mark webber.

and. most interestingly. jos verstappen was back. for the first time since bahrain. this is interesting cause hes usually in the paddock a bit more than this, but he and horner were feuding for awhile, so maybe this means that everything has settled? whos to say, it is formula 1 after all. anything is possible!

and the f1 official account took that literally, as this was how they displayed oscar's name on the official practice 1 time boards:

even oscar was shocked:

oscars mom was so shocked that she adopted yuki

i dont think that yuki ever actually responded to this, but it was still nevertheless hilarious.

charles, meanwhile, who ended the session with damage on his car from the debris incident was less pleased with the results but still played along with the bit:

charles then got his revenge by coming in first in practice 2 and 3. mercedes also, weirdly was near the top. perhaps they were done being shit. perhaps it was too early to tell. any way you spin it, it was time for qualifying.

and this boat was so excited about qualifying that it beached itself like a whale.

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but anyway. qualifying.

and as christian horner said. "this race will be won in qualifying." because its hard to pass.

there was much at stake. such as if max verstappen were to get pole it would be his 9th consecutive pole position, which im pretty sure was either going to create a new record or tie with someone else's.

but first they had to get through q1. which was very hard to do, mostly because of traffic.

as we know. f1 cars want to go fast. monaco is tight, it is twisty, its relatively low speed and its a shorter track. and if everyone is trying to go as fast as humanly possible, it can be a bit tricky. the best they can get is a 3.6 second gap between each car, and that is if everyone was driving exactly equidistantly.

ted, down in the pit lane, came on the radio and said that when the broadcast was playing the intro (which he sang), everyone started pulling out of their garages and into the pit lane, then turned off their engines and sat in a "super market traffic jam queue" to reserve their spot to exit onto the track, so that they had as much time as possible.

and a short while later, our first batch of drivers were out: alonso, sargeant, perez, bottas, and zhou.

yes that is right, bit fernando alonso and checo perez were out in q1.

checo's radio about the ordeal was... interesting. "what a joke, fuck....ha." and personally i dont think that the red bull pit wall found any of it particularly hilarious, especially considering logan sargeant was able to go faster than him with LAST YEARS REAR WING.

they all lined up again for q2.

max and charles, notably, were on the same set of tires that they had been in in q1, so that they would have an extra set for q3, as the two of them would be battling it out for pole position.

aside from them, both of the alpines were in q2 as were both of the haas.

but all of that turned out be fruitless, except for pierre, who made it through to q3 and he was Thrilled. also through for the first time this season was alex albon, who was also Thrilled..

ocon, hulkenberg, ricciardo, stroll and magnussen were all out.

into q3.

max and charles were duking it out for pole position, but chasing them was none other than oscar piastri, also desperately trying to get his first career pole. and max was was still having problems. and red bull couldnt fix it. heading into the very last minute, the last lap, charles was in provisional pole, with oscar second, carlos third and lando fourth. max was on his last lap, flying around the track until his radio crackled to life with "ive hit the wall. man this car is slippery."

and so with max tapping the wall, he aborted his lap, putting him down in sixth spot. which meant we had a double lecerlc front row!!! a father son lockout !!!!

arthur and oscar continued the bit

they even shit on the joke in the press conference:

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oscar and carlos also seemingly ignored eachother in the immediate post interviews that they do on the track, but i cant find the clip so you'll just have to trust me

meanwhile, max was asked about his qualifying session and he said: "i would happily invite everyone in this paddock to drive that car and try to go faster than me"

and, when asked what he could do from p6, he said: "not much, we'll see. but I don't really care, haha!"

two people who Did care about qualifying were nico hulkenberg and kevin magnussen. who got disqualified from qualifying because their rear wings were slightly too wide.

surprisingly, the disgraced ex has team principal, gunther steiner, had something to say abut the incident:

so nico and kevin were both starting in the pit lane.

everyone else lined up for the race:

p1: charles p2: oscar p3: carlos p4: lando p5: george p6: max p7: lewis p8: yuki p9: alex p10: pierre p11: esteban p12: daniel p13: lance p14: fernando p15: logan p16: checo p17: valtteri p18: zhou

thankfully, everyone was able to survive the formation lap with no gearbox blowouts. lap one though, was a very different story.

first, carlos got a puncture. he and oscar had contact during the beginning of the lap and carlos fell back in the order, which is absolutely disastrous for monaco.

but then! a red flag was called! and it wasnt for carlos, it was for an incident between checo, kevin and nico. essentially, kevin tried to pass checo, but there was not enough space, so he ended up ramming into him, nico tried to get past them and instead got involved in the scuffle.

later, checo was adamant that he had not seen kevin, saying that: "if you saw my onboard, at no point do you see kevins car. not even close to being alongside me...there was just simply no room for both cars"

meanwhile kevin said: "he clears wasnt leaving space, i thought he would...my whole front wheel was ahead of his rear wheel...he just squeezed me into the wall."

nico, who was just collateral in the whole thing only said "ah damnit, that was unnecessary."

so it was a disappointing monaco race for both haas drivers, who found themselves out after also being DSQd from qualifying. and it seemed that checo was continuing his shitty monaco streak. perhaps this was the universe getting back at him for probably cheating on his wife.

anyway, everyone was wondering what the stewards were going to say about the ordeal because, as we know, kevin magnussen is only 2 penalty points away from missing a race. but the stewards elected to not pursue the incident further and no one received any penalties for the accident.

the marshals though decided to pose with checo's wrecked red bull:

the wrecked red bull in question:

but there was still one more lap one incident! and that was esteban ocon playing bumper cars with pierre gasley:

(that is esteban's alpine in the air)

pierre was rightfully pissed off, especially considering that he had gotten his highest start of the whole season, saying over the radio: "what did he do! what did he do! why did he try to attack me? oh my gosh! the whole car is damaged now"

later, pierre told the press:

“I’m just disappointed, you know. I’m just disappointed with Esteban, and it should not happen. And for the team, we’ve got 1200 people working for us. And we can’t afford to have this sort of behaviour. We had clear instructions before the race, and this hasn’t been respected. You should never take that much risk, take both cars out with your teammate. I’m sure it will be discussed, and we can’t afford to have a similar situation in the future.”

fortunately for pierre, they were able to fix his car during the red flag. unfortunately for esteban, they were not able to fix his and he had to retire from the race.

Esteban totally owned up to this as his own mistake on twitter, saying "today's incident was my fault, the gap was too small in the end and i apologize to the team on this one"

alpine team principal bruno famin was later quoted as saying the following about the incident (and i am pretty decently sure that this was a translation from french)":

“it’s exactly what we didn’t want to see. Esteban’s attack was totally out of circumstances. We will draw the consequences, we will decide straight away. If we were fighting for a podium finish at the end of the race, why not, and still… But there, on the first lap, at Le Portier, frankly, it wasn’t the place to make an attack, leaving zero room for his teammate.”

everyone took this to mean that esteban could be benched for Canada, the next race. there was mass speculation whether or not it was going to be mick schumacher or jack doohan subbing in for him at the Canadian gp, and aparently people got really mean to esteban about it because later in the week he came out with this statement. and because we live in a world where i cant update this post on time to save my life, i will include it here:

"much has been said in the aftermath of the monaco gp. while i have received many messages of support, i have been deeply saddened by the amount of abuse and negativity that i have received online regarding my character, my driving, and my career. thanks to the bard work, support and sacrifices of many people, ive raced in over 140 gps so far since my debut in 2016. i have always been a tough competitor, and, like most drivers, ive had my share of incidents. i have been lucy to race alongside talented and experienced teammates, including race winners daniel, checo and pierre and a double champion in fernando. as teammates, we would often start races very close to eachother which in some cases meant some tough battles on track, and sometimes contact. of course, i have made honest mistakes. we are not robots; we are athletes pushing ourselves to the limit every day to achieve our dreams of winning races. f1 is a sport where emotions run high, and passions run deep. i see and feel this every weekend at the track and on social media... the good and the bad. but the misinformed statements and gross distortions that i have seen online in recent days about my ability to work with a team have been inaccurate, hurtful and damaging. since my first laps in motorsport, i have approached this sport with humility, professionalism, and respect. these values were instilled in me from a very young age. while each driver chases individual glory, this will always be a team sport first and foremost. i have always followed to instructions i have been given and raced to achieve the maximum for and with my team. i took responsibility for the incident on lap 1 last Sunday an, despite my DNF, i am glad the team added a point to the tally in what has been a difficult start to the season for all of us. I respect pierre as a teammate and as a competitor. we have always worked collaboratively and professionally inside the team, and this will continue to be the case. there is no reward without risk in formula one - and race starts are intense, even more so in monaco where the opening lap can dictate your finishing result. in the end, we are all competitors and hard, fair racing throughout the field is what makes our sport so great and the main reason why i love this sport so much. im looking froward to committing in Montreal, in front of the fantastic canadian fans, and to the exciting opportunity the future holds."

esteban got a 10 second penalty for causing an incident, which he didnt serve because he didnt continue the race. and he has a 5 place grid penalty for canada.

but anyway! back to the red flag!

aston martin were once again serving during a red flag, as they had done last time:

people even compared fernando alonso to the woman with the pearl earring picture.

aside from that, the hot topic of discussion was Tire Strategy

without getting too far into the weeds here, everyone has to run at least two different tires each race, the options are soft medium and hard. which tire works best depends on the track, the temperature, and a million other factors. softer the tire the faster it will go, but it will also wear out faster. softs and generally used for qualifying and mediums and hards are the race tires.

now Technically, everyone had already run one kind of tire in the first start of the race. so they could change to a different tire, as long as it was a different compound tire, and not have to stop again for the entire race. only problem was that that was 70 long laps. and the tires might not last that long. but you lose 30 seconds on a pit stop and if not everyone is going to pit AND its monaco so its very hard to pass, would you be shooting yourself in the foot? probably.

so most people made the decision to run a different tire compound for the restart and see if they could make it to the end of the race without pitting. notably, the front half of the grid did this.

and finally, race control announced the restart order. this was going to make or break many people's races because some people had managed to pass a few cars on the original opening lap, but not everyone had gone through a time detention point when the red flag was called, so they were back at the original start order. meaning carlos sainz was back starting in third, despite his puncture that had caused him to drop back down the order.

take two! they all lined up:

p1: charles p2: oscar p3: carlos p4: lando p5: george p6: max p7: lewis p8: yuki p9: alex p10: pierre p11: daniel p12: lance p13: fernando p14: logan p15: valtteri p16: zhou

and away they went. everyone survived the first lap this time. everyone survived the next several laps, actually. no one passed anyone, though george did get pretty close to lando for a bit before he was told to back off to preserve his tires. he started to create a large gap to lando. max shit on him on his radio for being slow.

charles, oscar and carlos all traded fastest lap back and forth for awhile, but no one made eforts to pass eachother. oscar had lost a bit of downforce in the damage he had taken from his contact with carlos, but was otherwise fine.

many people started creating gaps to the cars in front of them, especially those in the points. george, yuki and fernando. the reason for this was to preserve their position on track and help keep their tires alive. so by f1 standards, it was a very slow race.

ted was not pleased with this. "hes trapped in a mercedes jail cell right now," he said about max. he wanted him to "have a bit of fun!"

max did not have any fun.

but, there was speculation among the top 4 that someone would pit and that someone might be lando. there was a 16 second gap to george behind him so he could pit and retain his position and have a shot at overtaking carlos who was on pretty dead hard tires for a podium spot. charles was even told to "drive even slower" to stop the gap between george and lando from increasing so that lando couldnt pit. charles thought this was utterly pointless cause his tires were already getting cold. and meanwhile oscar thought that charles had an issue because of how fast he was going.

"first lap was interesting. next 38 have not been as interesting" crofty said.

the only real interesting things were the team radios:

george: "i recommend about 3 seconds in the pocket here. just pootling around at the moment"

max: "fuck me this is boring. i should have brought my pillow."

charles, upon being told that his team want to hear about his tire margin because they didnt want that information to be known to other teams" "that's rude."

ultimately none of the top 4 ended up pitting. lance stroll pitted though, on lap 43, and he was able to retain his 11th position because fernando had slowed to create a gap for lance.

not even a whole lap later, lance managed to get a puncture and had to box again and got shoved back to the back of the grid, completely destroying all of the work that fernando had done for him. the tire ended up flying off of his car, but it landed right outside the pit lane and didnt cause a safety car, much to the general upsettment of lando who would have gotten a free stop.

still, a few other people pitted, including hamilton and verstappen, who retained their positions due to the gaps they had made.

hamilton got mad that he was not told to "hammer time" (go as fast as possible) when max was pitting, but despite this he was still able to take fastest lap.

still, mad max was back, jammed in the middle of the mercedes sandwich, and he was gaining on george, 2 seconds per lap. but no one had been watching max's battery, which was very low on power. so he had to back off a bit. still, by lap 62 he was able to get within 1.2 seconds of george. and george, somehow, had been able to save just enough juice in his tires to fend off max for the last 15 laps.

meanwhile, charles was still leading. 8 seconds ahead of oscar.

"i'll just bring it home" he told his engineer. and he did.

and now i'll toss it to alex jaques, who was announcing the race for the sky sports broadcast, to take us through the last lap:

"in 2017, charles leclerc lost his father. in his final days, he told his father a white lie. that he'd made it to formula one, that he'd signed the contract. it wasn't true, but his driving has made it true now. and look what he's done with the opportunity. the grandstands he saw built as a kid growing up now rise for him. and for the first time in 93 years, this fabled race is won by one of their own. charles leclerc wins the monaco grand prix, to achieve his dream!"

HE DID IT! HE DEFEATED THE CURSE!! HE HAD WON!!!!

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and pretty much everyone was happy for him. jenson was doing the post race interviews and charles made pretty much everyone emotional with what he said:

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the podium was filled with relief and joy and lots and lots of champagne. someone even gave the prince of monaco champagne. and fred vasseur, ferrari team principal, sprayed the prince of monaco with champage. hopefully he wouldn't get arrested for that!

everyone was so busy celebrating charles that they made him late to the post race press conference, so when it opened carlos and oscar were just sprawled out on the couches, chilling:

which was Astounding to everyone because these two seemingly hate eachother

oscar was so unbothered he even started stretching

carlos even addressed the situation between him and oscar, saying that:

"for some reason, oscar and i, we seem to have a magnet recently between each other for some reason that I don't understand, because we get on well and everything is okay, but we seem to always find each other on track"

charles did eventually show up, and most of the questions ended up getting geared towards him, naturally. he told everyone that he ate pizza for dinner the night before and that there was a period of the race near the end where he couldnt actually see because he had started tearing up, realizing that he was probably going to win.

and then, of course, like anyone would, charles went for a little dive in the harbor, after shoving fred in

aside from that. we had alex albon get points, yuki tsunoda get points AND pierre gasley get points. now the only team without points is stake. and lewis hamilton got the fastest lap, he now holds the record for most fastest laps with a single team, which is 54.

also, Kevin magnussens daughter told him to sign a fans book

it was also max's first non podium finish of the season. he found the race boring. not charles win boring, just the race. "no workout whatsoever, its just really really boring." and he and george said they were going to go for a run afterwards to get some exercise, because they didnt get any during the race.

he did congratulate charles on his win though! as did pretty much everyone else! and the italians were all beside themselves as well:

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as for oscar, he proudly proclaimed on social media that he should make every race his home race.

charles rode his bicycle home, and then got ready for an absolutely insane night out. which pretty much just consisted of him hiding under a monegasque flag (ghost moding) and clinging to his girlfriends hand for the whole night, looking positively lost in the sauce, along with everyone else who went (literally i think the whole country was partying)

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so! we have now had four different race winners in the first 8 races of the season. and tbh, as i have said. we could very well have a title fight on our hands here. lets take a look at the points:

max: 169 charles: 138 lando: 113 carlos: 108 checo: 107 oscar: 71 george: 54 lewis: 43 fernando: 33 yuki: 19 lance: 11 ollie: 6 nico: 6 daniel: 5 alex: 2 esteban: 1 kevin: 1 pierre: 1 zhou: 0 valtteri: 0 logan: 0

as charles said on that stream back in quarantine, "lando, we could be world champion i said"

(also. people were also quick to point out that max has not won at the three races that charles wrote songs about: monaco, miami and australia - mon, mia and aus)

everyone thinks that oscar could win canada. i say bring it on. see you next week!

Sorry i tried to scroll past but, i know nothing about f1 other than max verstappen is fast, my dad doesnt like lewis hamilton, fast car goes in a loop and sometimes expodes. Could you give me a crash course in f1 drama? Im very intrigued. Whats the tea as it were?

a terribly loaded question, but i will do my best. i’ve talked about some of the drama before like the red bull second seat and the chronicles of haas but allow me to briefly try my hand at explaining the nightmare that is the upcoming silly season

under the cut we go

silly season is when the drivers go through contract renewals, extensions and switches. usually it’s confined to the first half of the season (march-july) but it has been known to extend all the way to the last race of the season and they like to switch people around at random sometimes. driver contracts are complex, there’s a lot of money involved and basically You Are The Face Of The Team so if you have a shit season then you make the team look bad. but at the same time you could have a shit season because you have a shit car. it’s sticky stuff.

so. there are only twenty seats in formula 1. 10 teams. each team gets two drivers. (there’s also reserve drivers but we’re not going to get into that). who ends up with a contract is largely up to the teams, they can pull the contract out from under people they can also cut you mid season. they’ve done it before.

of the 20 drivers on the grid, 14 of them have contracts expiring at the end of the year. yes. 14. you see how this could get complicated.

so let’s meet the teams.

red bull racing. they came first this year (and last year) in the championship. like aggressively first. like they won the championship by over 350 points. they are definitely the team to beat. but if you end up with a seat at red bull, you do have to deal with max verstappen being your teammate and he won all but three of the races last year. he’s the golden boy. red bull are also notoriously silly when it comes to contracts and famously swap people mid season who aren’t performing.

mercedes. merc is home to 7 time world champion lewis hamilton and they have won the championship a great many times, though not since 2021. they are kind of in their flop arc and their car the last 2 years has been pretty garbage, but they have still made it work because they were able to come in second last year.

ferrari. god help the poor little meow meows with a ferrari contract. ferrari is a notoriously great team and they’re trying to get back to the top again but their strategy every single time has fallen short. to the point where their drivers are the ones doing the strategy in their cars while driving. they came in third last year and have been decently consistent at getting first in qualifying and then getting beat by max verstappen on race day.

mclaren. they’ve definitely worked their way up over recent years. they ended fourth last year and have had some championship wins before but not nearly as many as say merc and ferrari. their team ceo (owner? director?) is a little interesting and their car started out a pile of flaming hot garbage at the beginning of the year but they did manage to get their shit together.

aston martin. they are owned by canadian billionaire lawrence stroll, father of lance stroll (one of the drivers for the team). they’ve undergone several name changes over the recent years (force india, racing point, etc). they positively slayed at the start of the season and then one day they sucked. they finished fifth in the championship.

alpine. the frenchest french team. they’re (i think?) still partially owned by the french government. both of their drivers are french. (their drivers also hate eachother but we’ll get to that. just know they’re in the middle of a modern french civil war). they had the opportunity to have a good rookie driver (oscar piastri) this past year but in a thrilling twitter battle, he publically flamed the shit out of them and went to mclaren instead (and slayed). they're usually solidly middle of the pack. they ended sixth in the championship.

williams. williams has been one of the back of the grid teams for the last many years but they have finally started to get their shit together and don’t quite suck as much as they used to. all of the points this year were scored by only one driver though (except one but we’ll get there). they came in seventh.

alpha tauri. they are the sister team of red bull. so technically redbull owns both teams (meaning they can swap drivers between teams. they like doing this.) they’ve just kind of been There for awhile but they did slay towards the end of the season when one of their drivers led the race for several laps. basically tho, this team is the gateway to redbull. they came in eighth.

alpha romeo. recently renamed to stake f1 team (but sometimes they are going to be called kick sauber. this is a whole other drama post and i’m not getting into it). they’re also just kind of there. generally unproblematic. seems that really great drivers who get ixed out of a contract for a younger driver end up here or young drivers who are in their early years are here before they go to a better team. they ended ninth this year.

haas. oh haas. goofy team. they suck. point blank they suck. they keep loosing sponsors because they suck, they don’t win ever (one time they came first in qualifying last year). they cursed themselves in australia in 2018 by not tightening their tires and its been downhill ever since. they came 10th. their team principle got let go (fired?) who’s to say today.

so those are the teams. it is important to note that:

-there is a cost cap. each team is allowed to spend no more than 135m per year.

-not all cars are equal. some things are standard. they all undergo the same testing. but the cars are all very different. so you can be a good driver but stuck in a shitty car. which makes it impressive if you are doing well in a shitty car.

let’s meet our drivers!!!

starting with the guys who’s contract is not ending in 2024:

max verstappen. 3 time world champion. 26 years old. general beast on the track. he dominated the whole season. he’s currently racing for red bull and has a contract with them through 2028.

lewis hamilton. 7 time world champion. 39 years old. he drives for mercedes. he will not leave mercedes until he retires. he really really wants to win an 8th world championship and is willing to stick it out a few more years as long as merc still believes in him. his contract expires in 2025.

george russell. the other merc driver. 26 years old. hes aggressively british and says thinks like blimey unironically. walking meme. got his merc seat in 2022 right when they entered their flop arc by getting his tractor of a williams to finish second in qualifying in the middle of a rainstorm. his contract expires in 2025.

lando norris. mclaren driver. 24 years old. he has notably never won a race in his five years of formula one (mostly because right when his car finally was good enough max verstappen was 20 seconds ahead of anyone) but he is regarded as Very Good. he has only ever driven for mclaren. and even though there is another year left on his contract there is mass speculation that he will not renew his contract with mclaren after it expires and he may move up to one of the top teams (red bull, merc, ferrari) (tho i think he doesnt hate himself quite enough to go to ferrari). his contract expires in 2025.

oscar piastri. the other mclaren driver. 22 years old. this was his rookie season and he positively slayed. like people compared his rookie season to lewis hamiltons rookie season. he also had the positively funniest start to his rookie year because alpine announced that he would be driving for them (he had been their reserve driver and in the alpine academy) and he posted a tweet that basically said yeah thats false i never singed anything with you and im going to race with mclaren instead (he dodged a bullet) and then alpine tried and failed to sue him for $4m USD. he signed a contract extension with mclaren this year and his contract expires in 2026.

lance stroll. aston martin driver and son of the aston martin owner. hes doing ok, tho there was conspiracy that he wanted to quit and have a tennis career awhile ago. but basically since his dad owns the team it seems that hes guaranteed a seat for as long as he wants one.

so now. moving onto the good shit. the people who have contracts expiring in 2024. hold onto your hats people.

charles leclerc. (everyones favorite slutty little soup can). 26 years old. he is currently at ferrari and he has been since 2019. notably, he was given the longest contract in the history of ferrari after a stellar rookie season at sauber (renamed to alpha romeo, renamed to stake f1) where he got the tractor of a car consistently into the points. having the longest contract in the history of ferrari was a flex at the time, but now its likely how he will introduce himself at therapy sessions. ferrari have fucked this man left right and center up the ass with a plastic lunchroom spork. hes talented, he can drive, and he can drive well. but the strategy that ferrari has absolutely sucks. either something is wrong with the car (see him blowing out his gear box on the formation lap in monaco, his car completely crapping out and spinning into the barrier in brazil before the race even started) or they fuck up his pit stops or put him on the wrong tires and honestly its just frustrating. but will he leave??? likely not. you'd have to pry ferrari out of his cold dead hands and at this rate that might be where this is headed though there has been some minor speculation of him going to another team like merc or red bull, but merc doesnt have any open seats and red bull is a whole other dumpster fire of drama. ferrari are going to have to pay him a boatload of money to make him stay.

carlos sainz. the smooth operator. 29 years old. ferrari driver. previously carlos was at toro rosso (renamed to alpha tauri), renault (renamed to alpine), and mclaren before signing with ferrari. he has been at ferrari since 2021 and has voiced that he would like to stay with them for however long he can. there is speculation that lando might replace him at ferrari (but landos contract is not up until 2025) and there is also some speculation that alex albon might replace him. while charles is clearly the golden boy at ferrari, carlos is slightly slower but also definitely consistent. he was THE ONLY non red bull driver to win a race this past year, in Singapore after max verstappedn was knocked out of qualifying by alpha tauri reserve driver liam lawson (more on him later) and because he basically came up with his own strategy in the car while he was driving.

sergio perez. aka checo. red bull driver. 33 years old. and oh boy here's where we open the can of worms. checo was previously at racing point (renamed aston martin) and it was very near the end of the 2020 (?) season and he was out of a contract. he had a bonkers race where he was knocked to the back of the grid and then overtook everyone and somehow ended up winning (there is more to that story but just trust me) and christian horner, red bull team principle, mr ginger spice and definite disney villain called him and said congrats sir you have a seat at red bull! well. fast forward. hes been causing problems. problems as in crashing a lot, generally not doing great and pissing the crap out of red bull. it is basically guaranteed at this point that he will not be getting a contract extension. there was actually talk this year of him losing his seat mid season to one of the alpha tauri drivers, because remember, red bull owns both teams and they can switch them whenever they want to (and they have!) but ultimately this did not happen. even though checo has a seat at red bull until the end of 2024, its mass speculated that he is going to get switched with an alpha tauri driver, probably daniel ricciardo (more on him shortly) mid season because there is a speculated clause in daniels contract that says that if checo isn't performing well in the first few races daniel is getting his seat.

daniel ricciardo. 34 years old. alpha tauri driver. man oh man what a guy. outside of being the prankster of the paddock, he has one of the most batshit careers of anyone currently on the grid. he started out at red bull and was showing real talent and skill and was on track to win things (and was!) and was there until the end of 2018 when max verstappen (his teammate) started getting preferential treatment and also red bull started having a lot of problems with their engines (which were being outsourced from Renault (now alpine) and another team on the grid) and well very very long story short he made the surprise move of the century and decided to sign with Renault (which makes no sense they're the one with the engine problems) and was there for 2 years before moving again to mclaren where he was reportedly not treated very well and had a hard time driving the car so they mutually ended his contract with them early and he basically retired at the end of the 2022 season and became a red bull reserve driver. then halfway through the 2023 season alpha tauri ixed one of their drivers, nyck de vries, because he wasnt doing well and promoted daniel back up to a full time driver at alpha tauri (which we know is only a step down from red bull) but then he broke his hand in a crash in zanvort (?) and then he was replaced for a few races by formula 2 driver liam lawson (who we will also talk about) and then he came back to finish out the season in alpha tauri after he was cleared. daniel has admitted openly that he never should have left red bull and he was given bad advice to do so. hes towards the end of his career at this point and its well known that he Really Really wants to finish out his career at red bull again. he and max have already been teammates before and they do work well together and daniel is great driver (see his comeback in texas (or maybe it was brazil?) this year). so. Pretty Sure that daniels going to get either an extension at alpha tauri or go up to red bull. thats what we all want. get this man in a red bull we need him there biblically.

liam lawson. now technically liam is not actually a formula 1 driver. hes a formula 2 driver, but he was daniels replacement for five races and there has been some speculation and some confirmed news about him so hes getting included. when he was racing for f1 he was at alpha tauri. hes 21 and looks like he belongs in the movie grease. no one was expecting him to slay in formula 1 and he positively knocked everyones socks off. the scene: Singapore. which, if you'll recall, is the one race that a not red bull driver won. this was largely because liam lawson slayed the absolute game in qualifying. the qualifying part of racing determines what order the cars start in on the grid for the race and theres three parts, the first two parts the bottom 5 drivers each time get knocked out and then the top 10 complete for the last 10 spots. liam lawson knocked BOTH max verstappen and checo perez out of qualifying in the second round by going very slightly faster than them, effectively fucking up red bulls race and allowing carlos to win. and he also scored points in that race, which no one was expecting. now thats all fine and dandy, but here's the speculation: hemlut marko (im pretty sure) (who is somehow decently involved in the decision making at red bull though i couldn't tell you how) said that he thinks that liam lawson will be in an f1 seat no later than 2025. meaning that he will probably get offered a contract this year. and hes already raced for alpha tauri. red bull have sunk a good amount of money into him. they clearly want him. so if he gets offered an alpha tauri seat in 2025, that means theres a good chance danny rics is going to red bull. do you SEE how the plot here is THICKENED

yuki tsunoda. age 23. currently at alpha tauri. and fun fact, the only alpha tauri driver to race there the whole year. he had three separate team mates. he is slaying and hes often slept on. he has a bit of a temper and likes to shout on the radio and also hates working out (they had to force him to move to italy or something to work out, long story) but hes been kinda killing it. he led several laps in the abu dhabi race this year and hes decently consistent. people think theres possibility that he could get moved up to red bull on account of the fact that he is younger than daniel and clearly has more years in him,, but there is also possibility that he might not because red bull like to make stupid decisions. and if he doesnt get moved up to rebel, will he stay with alpha tauri? we don't know.

alex albon. age 27. currently a williams driver. alex albon is another one with a batshit career. he started out his rookie year in 2019 at alpha tauri then got moved up to red bull halfway through the year when red bull decided that pierre gasley wasnt doing a good enough job (more on him later) and stayed with red bull for a solid year and a half until he lost his seat in 2021 to checo. he has been with williams for the last two years and is basically carrying the team. like. williams as a team scored 28 points this year. and alex albon scored 27 of those 28 points. and as we know, williams is still kind of in their shit arc (though they are doing much better. they didnt score any points for a solid 2 (?) years. so this is an improvement.) and if you can get a shit car to perform you catch the eye of bigger teams. now, alex has already been a red bull driver. and he was on the cusp of podiuming two separate times when lewis hamilton ran into him. this (among a few other things) basically killed his chances at getting resigned at red bull because he wasnt ""performing"" and red bull are bitches who love to win. but some people think that red bull should give him another shot. like daniel, hes already been max's teammate and he can definitely drive. but theres also talk he might go to ferrari because ferrari think that he might compliment charles's driving style (or something). but going to ferrari at this point is kind of suicide. so.

logan sergeant. age 23. the only american on the grid. the other williams driver. he just finished his rookie year. he scored a grand total of one single point this season, in texas, and it was because charles leclerc and lewis hamilton both got disqualified because the floor of their car had more wear (by literally less than millimeters) than it was allowed to, bumping him up from 12th to 10th. he has never done better than alex albon. he was also the very last driver to get a contract for 2024, with williams waiting until i think december of 2023 to announce his contract extension. clearly, hes on thin ice. but people have also said that he needs time to get used to formula 1 (other people have pointed out that oscar piastri slayed his rookie season this year and this statement about needing time is largely false). where logan ends up next year though will largely depend on how well the 2024 season goes for him.

fernando alonso. 42 years old. many people like to point out that oscar piastri is actually younger than fernando's racing career. he won tiktok creator of the year (somehow) and is also a 2 time world champion. he retired a few years ago, just to show back up again and slay. during the first half of the season when aston martin had a zoom zoom car he killed it, and then they had problems on top of problems and he didnt do well. except for that one race in brazil where he came in third, beating checo by literally .05 seconds. he hasn't really made any hints about retiring a second time and he is kind of carrying aston Martin right now (he scored 205 points this season, coming in 4th and tying in points with charles leclerc, lance stroll only scored 74 points this year.) and they did have their best year yet this year. (though they are relatively new).

pierre gasley. 27 years old. french. drives for alpine. the french team. previously he raced with toro rosso (now alpha tauri), then got promoted to a red bull driver in 2019, then halfway through the season they decided he wasnt doing a good enough job and he got demoted back down to alpha tauri. then he won a race with alpha tauri just to stick it to red bull. after the great oscar piastri contract twitter war, he was signed as alpines second driver, with Esteban ocon being the other driver (more on him soon). estie bestie and pierre (both french) were childhood friends and now hate each other for unknown reasons and basically feuded on the track for most of the season. french civil war at alpine. he scored 62 points in 2023 and came in 11th. not really sure where he will end up, it is possible that he will stick it out at alpine.

esteban ocon. 27 years old. also french. currently driving for alpine. another one with a silly bonkers career. he started out at force india and had a baller few seasons there but his teammate at the time was checo, and checo didnt really cooperate with him too much and caused some drama that cost estie bestie some places and some points. max verstappen also beat him up in the garage once. thats not really relevant but it did happen. anyway, after the owner of force india was arrested for .... i don't remember what maybe it was embezzlement or bankruptcy or something money related, the team was backed by lawrence stroll and became racing point. but all of that happened mid season and lawrence was basically like look ill back you guys for now but next year my son gets a seat (lance) so one of you two (checo and estie bestie) have to go. and ultimately they let estie bestie go even though he was more consistent because checo had more sponsors and they needed money. so he was out of formula 1 for a few years (but was a merc reserve driver) and then went to Renault, which then became alpine. he did come in 12th though overall this season, just behind pierre. so. will alpine keep both him and pierre and keep the civil war going? whos to say.

nico hulkenberg. 36 years old. haas driver. in his 200+ f1 races he has never been on the podium and he really really wants to be on the podium. unfortunately this will never happen in a haas because haas fucking sucks. and everyone knows it. he is getting towards the end of his career though. though! stake f1 will become the mario Andretti and audi team in 2026 (don't question it) and they have supposedly voiced interest in nico. so we will see if he hangs on that long to end up at audi. for now tough, hes definitely hating it at haas. though, haas are going to have a different team principle next year so maybe that will change things. i have a sneaky feeling through that haas will probably end up with another 2 rookie drivers because everyone else is smart enough to not race for them.

kevin magnussen. 31 years old. haas driver. hes another deeply interesting character. he has had one podium. in his rookie season. in his first race. and none since. kevin started at haas in 2017 and then left at then end of 2020 when he basically got kicked off because the team needed money and they wanted to bring in drivers with more sponsorships. these drivers were mick schumacher and nikita mazepin. so kevin basically was forced to retire after the 2020 season. this went decently well for haas. until russia invaded ukraine right before the start of the 2022 season and, well, nikita was Russian and it was never distinctly proven that his dads company (who was sponsoring the team) wasnt also funding the invasion. so nikita got fired and they were literally like 2 weeks out from the start of the season, down a driver. who are you gonna call? kevin magnussen! and hes been back ever since. but hes clearly getting annoyed with haas. there was one great clip from this year where his car caught on fire and he kind of just stared into to, clearly hoping it would burn for a long time. so the likelihood of him extending his contract is looking slim.

valtteri bottas. 34 years old. currently a driver for stake f1 (alpha romeo, kick sauber, whatever you wanna call it). previously, he was a mercedes driver and notoriously helped lewis hamilton win a great many championships, until he lost his seat to george russell in 2022. there was a rather awkward part of the 2021 season where valtteri knew that he was out of a merc seat the following year and kind of just chose violence. he slayed. then he went to alpha romeo, grew a mullet and made a calendar of his ass. quite the glow up if you ask me. hes also very interested in cycling. honestly though, i have my own personal speculation that hes going to retire at the end of this year.

zhou guanyu. 24 years old. driver for stake f1 (alpha romeo/kick sauber, etc etc). hes doing alright. he just finished his second season, in his first season he was majorly out qualified by valtteri but this past season he managed to out qualify him a good 6 times. which is decently good for the tractor of a car hes driving. its possible that he could get a contract extension, but like logan, its probably going to depend on how the 2024 season goes for him.

and thats all the drivers. theres also a few others i didnt talk about, like some other f2 drivers who want seats and mick schumacher, who is currently a merc reserve driver, all of which could be contenders for f1 seats. but one things for sure. this is going to be the silliest fucking silly season.

feel free to add on and peer review me

[chloelouygo]

I think my parents are having a joint midlife crisis; they are buying a motorbike to ride together-

[hopecomesbacktolife]

oof, a bit of a personal rant here

so as is tradition, I just finished A Media TM and had to go to the tumblr tag to find pretty gif sets, posts, etc, general love for the Media TM as one does! a delight, 10/10. but, oh my god, and this was a sageuk (historical kdrama) and like. I didn’t know this needed to be said in the year of our lord 2023, but.

please don’t make posts in a tag for a historical/period drama complete with historically accurate culture, costuming, etiquette, social norms etc… and call it “weird,” “unnecessary rules,” “wild/strange costumes,” etc. like. y’all. this is based on Actual Real Life Historical Culture of an Entire Country, so, maybe, like, don’t?

like, yeesh, I was just really taken aback to see multiple posts to that effect in the tags. *cue Gina Linetti singing racism racism racism*

[bethanydelleman]

I saw a post you reblogged at some point about Fanny being stuck in a time loop and it got me thinking: if the main men (both protagonists and antagonists) of the different Austen novels time travelled back to the day they first met their love interest/the start of the novel - whichever is latest so wentworth, knightley, and Edmund Bertram would travel to the day the main events of their novels start - who do you think would end up changing the least of the events and the most (intentionally or not)?

Because I feel like Knightley would change the least and Henry Tilney and the three S&S gents would come next. But like Wentworth would immediately throw the entire novel off track and like Darcy and Henry Crawford would come in close second trying to change their truly awful first impressions

(Also I just want to add that I really love your Austen takes and discussions 😊)

Thank you!

This is a fascinating idea. Here are my thoughts:

Wentworth just marches into Uppercross Cottage and proposes again. Doesn't even wait to be properly introduced to the family. He's getting Anne back NOW. (She says yes, of course)

I can imagine Darcy having a tiny little crisis as he decides if he really wants to be married to Elizabeth, maybe he could just not accompany Bingley to Netherfield and his life could go the way he planned... nah, he can't resist. Off to Netherfield he goes and he lets Bingley introduce him to Elizabeth at the assembly ball. Things progress unimpeded and by Christmas there is a double wedding and Wickham's character is known throughout Hertfordshire. He skips town and Lydia is packed off to Pemberley to benefit from some better society. (Side note: Mrs. Bennet would push Mr. Collins on Mary if she had any inclination that Darcy liked Elizabeth).

If Bingley knew everything, he'd never leave Jane. He'd return from London and marry her, no matter what Darcy or his sisters said. (I wrote that once actually)

Does Wickham count as a main? Because I don't want him having the ability to predict the future. Yikes on bikes!

Henry Crawford is very interesting, because does he actually understand where he went wrong? I'm not sure he does. Can he resist a flirtation with two very pretty sisters? That would be a fun fan fiction to write. Because if he went for Fanny right off the bat and she knew nothing else about him... he'd probably succeed with her, secret Edmund love or not. And she certainly wouldn't have a leg to stand on in refusing his proposal.

Does Edmund come back in the same timeline as Henry? That would be so agnsty! If not, he'd probably be doing whatever he could to keep Maria and Henry apart, but he's shockingly ineffective in canon, so would he even be able to change anything?

Henry Tilney would probably just try to prevent Catherine being sent home alone. He could easily come back early.

Mr. Knightley's best move would be to tell Robert Martin to propose in person. I doubt Harriet could have resisted. Then he could just sit back and watch everything else play out.

Honestly, I don't know if Frank Churchill would change a thing, other than making sure his final letter was posted to Jane. He enjoyed the subterfuge.

Poor Edward Ferrars has to travel back while engaged to Lucy? I feel like he wouldn't even want to relive the novel, there is nothing he can do anyway.

Colonel Brandon would probably change a lot. He could immediately save Eliza and challenge Willoughby. He might even spare Marianne from a lot of pain.

Reginald de Courcy (Lady Susan) would likely act as well and save Frederica earlier than in the novel.

[late-draft]

Some more details for the sci-fi AU, this time specifically for Zuko before I manage to draw more:

He fires lightning in this AU. However it's not very strong, and he has to wear a specifically made suit that allows him to fire it without damaging his body. Electricity is gathered then channeled along the outside of his arms. Visually it's purposefully similar to Aang's tattoos, except only localized to his back and arms. Azula, of course, doesn't need any assistive technology for her lightning bending!

While in canon it's important that Zuko's s1 hairstyle is a shameful one that signifies that he lost an Agni Kai in a terrible way (and I believe this hasn't been touched upon enough in canon), in this AU I'm reversing it. This hairstyle is worn by all the best firebenders-racers. It's supposed to be a point of pride and the gaang (mostly Sokka and Aang) make fun of it.

Zuko's lapels on his suit are pure white, they lack any stripes that signify status in the Fire Nation. Ozai's are (of course) completely covered in a bazillion stripes.

Zuko's entourage of older racers that accompany him oftentimes do NOT want to attempt very dangerous moves while chasing an airbender who makes it look easy. Zuko just hits the gas and survives by jumping and passing through pretty narrow openings or closing garbage press or what have you... yikes. He also tries to race Katara, but once she's on the highway, he's left in the dust. This is why Katara often jumps in with her bike to pick up Aang once he's done with his search.

Firing lightning and fire blasts at fleeing Aang who snickers at him results in a lot of explosions and collateral damage on buildings.

Zuko often gets in trouble by racing on highways and pathways that are held by Zhao, who's in charge of Fire Nation's transport lines. These are not your standard 200 km/h highways, these things have unmanned vehicles going 400 km/h. Again, Yikes.

Music? Yes

Me & You - Dirtyphonix Remix

[melikedraw]

Any headcannons on Agito?? I have real bad brain rot with him rn😭

Dating Kanoh Agito headcanons

Kanoh x gn! Reader

Fluffy

~~~~~

Yikes ok I do NOT have a good grasp on his character forgive me if it's ooc

He's kinda fun though

~~~~~

- kanoh is dense, like REALLY dense

- I'd go so far as to compare him with a block of lead

- drop him in a lake and he's sinking straight to the bottom

- every single part of dating him is a struggle

- not saying you shouldn't get w him, no no no he deserves all the love and I believe you can give him that

- BUT

- you've been warned

- before the two of you even get into a relationship, romance would be the last thing on Kanohs mind, if it's even there at all (it isn't, you're gonna have to drill it in there yourself)

- you can try to subtly hint at wanting to be in a relationship with him, sure, but ask yourself honestly, do you think he would pick it up? No, not at all

- shits flying right over his head

- even worse if he falls for YOU first because he does not understand his emotions at all, bro does NOT know what he's doing

- kanoh would probably attempt to distance himself from you, thinking that you're a distraction to his job and that he can't be splitting his attention this way and that old man metsudos safety comes out on top

- he's awful at this, though

- he may not be physically close to you, but his eyes are glued to you 24/7, you could literally feel his stare boring holes in your back

- also, kanoh will NOT ask you out first. Ever.

- you are gonna have to spell it out clearly and bluntly that you want him as your partner bc his ass does not know how to interact with people normally, and knows even less about pursuing people romantically

- he'd probably ask katahara metsudo for advice (that old man's probably giggling at the amount of hints he's been missing)

- however, getting advice from that old man leads to a lot of traditional Japanese gifts from kanoh

- he'd probably get you an expensive tea set or jade bracelets because he's just going with whatever suggestions old man metsudo gives him

- kanoh is pretty observant, though, so soon enough he'll be getting gifts that actually fit your style

- Kanoh will definitely ask for your opinion on anything and be very straightforward with it too

- he just wants to make sure he's doing things right, it's probably his first time

- dates with him are probably very classic/ stereotypical, like the first few results when you google "date ideas"

- they're nice, of course, but it's very expectable with candle lit dinners, movies, not much pizzazz to it, but still enjoyable

- keep in mind this is all kengan ashura kanoh headcanons, while he's still focused mainly on being the fang of mestudo

- after he quit and starts actually living life for real, it gets easier

- he'd probably want you to move in with him

- kanoh would bring you out on long bike rides

- make sure you have your hands firmly grasped on his shoulders/ waist/ whatever part of his body your holding because that man goes WAAAAY over the speed limit

- I have no reason to believe this but I just do, okay

- maybe he does it on purpose so that you have no choice but to hold him, who knows (I know, because I wrote his, I can confirm it's true trust me🙏🙏🙏)

~~~~~

Ok my brain has been rung dry like a rag I'm done

[penny-anna]

It's Saturday & the new shelves are in time for... The big sort

Yikes...

Ok putting stuff back in. This is the least accessible part of the big wardrobe bcos I store my exercise bike in front of it so in go all the boxes of sentimental stuff I want to store away. Fully tetrised :)

Further misc items for long term storage

Christmas stuff haha

Old owner left behind all these spare bathroom tiles which I can't easily get rid of bcos they're SO heavy so they're just gonna live in my hall till Tuesday when hopefully some guys are gonna come take them away

Please ignore the state of my recycling. I do actually need some of the spare tiles for a repair job I need to arrange next week. Using the rest of this shelf for overflow from my bathroom

Kitchen appliances I don't have room for in the kitchen + my iron

Misc homewares I need easy access to + top shelf for house plant supplies

Phew that actually went a lot quicker than I expected!! Only thing left to do is uhh tackle this pile

[full-of-terrors]

The Arctic Grail by Pierre Benton seems to have answered my longstanding question- seriously what was the golden age explorers’ decades long beef with dogsleds?

Victorian pigheadedness never ceases to amaze me: a study in man-hauling.

Was it just the racism? Short answer: yes. Because the concept of dray animals should not have been mind blowing to them and they apparently tried reindeer and ponies and whatever other stupid ideas they had that didn’t work. But apparently the idea of being pulled by dogs was beneath them while man-hauling was a heroic endeavor. It was a fear of “going native”.

Anyone who adopted indigenous practices from anywhere for any reason was always looked at as having stepped outside of society and treated like a misfit. It was a struggle just to stop using Naval issue leather boots.

Ironically, having dogs pull their gear was considered more “animalistic” than acting as their own dray animals. And anything being too easy made it “cheating”.

Yikes on bikes.

It finally took the Norwegian explorers and a lot of the later explorers to shift the consensus to dogs but my lord. This is one point that I really struggle to understand the contemporary mindset of those guys because man-hauling sounds goddamn terrible.

[nekropsii]

on the topic of Hussie's racism translating into the comic itself: the origin of lil Cal's name came from a racist comic Hussie made in his TeamSpecialOlympics line It's titled "Rollin with lil Cal" and depicts a black character adopted by a white dad that just goes "Shit! I be 29 years old mutha-fucka!" he either re-used this character itself throughout these comics or was just lazy, but what appears to be the same og lil Cal was in his comic "Underground Funk Railroad", which ended with "Slaves Recaptured: funky swagger to blame" as well as mocking systematic racism and segregation with the racial slur negro (which, historically by white people in that time frame, was pronounced similar to the well-known n word [re-stating out of habit to keep clarification of why it's bad/an actual slur])

From my research, "Lil' Cal" as a name actually seems to extend a little farther back than that. Looks like the origin of Lil' Cal as a character- or at least as a name belonging to a Black character- dates back to around 2005-2006, with the creator being Andrew Hussie's brother, Byron Hussie, also known as Byrobot. You'll see that username a lot when poking around archives of Team Special Olympics comics. I give the estimate of 2005 or so, because Byrobot's Lil' Cal strips predate Hussie's, and not only was Hussie's edition of "Rollin' Wit Lil' Cal" posted in (late-ish) 2006, but Byrobot closed his website in around early 2006, which is where that strip was originally hosted. Plus, I've seen a couple anecdotes that it was around 2005 when that first started being a thing... Either way, though.

Unsurprisingly, Lil' Cal wasn't exactly illustrated with much... Class. Here's Byrobot's first Lil' Cal strip. This is the first iteration of Lil' Cal ever posted online.

Yikes. Yikes on bikes.

To fortify your points, though, I'll post the strips you're talking about here.

Here's Hussie's "Rollin' Wit Lil' Cal", which depicts exactly what you said. This was posted on 08/01/06, as a part of the "Scribblettes" series on the Team Special Olympics website.

And here's Hussie's "Underground Funk Railroad", once again depicting exactly what you said. This was posted on 11/02/06, but is the same story otherwise.

I understand the anxious urge to do it, but I don't think most people really need an explanation as to why any variant of the N-Word is bad. Though, since you brought it up...

Have this. 12/20/06. I needed to curse someone else with it. Same story again, this is still a part of the Scribblettes series.

Regarding the speculation on whether the reusage of Lil' Cal was an act of laziness or not: TSO's Scribblettes have many recurring characters and recurring bits, Lil' Cal just happens to be one of them. Now, applying that same train of thought to Lil Cal's appearance in Homestuck... Homestuck is chock full of references, both to random things/media, and to Hussie's older works- like Problem Sleuth, Humanimals, And It Don't Stop, et cetera. Lil Cal, the puppet, was named the way he was as another throwback for longtime fans. Lil' Cal, the TSO character, was reused during the runtime of Scribblettes just for fun.

I have nothing profound to say about any of this. This guy sucks, lol.

[fraeuleintaka]

Miscellaneous Thoughts on the new Reboot Trailer

The animation looks great! Not perfect and 2D is still better but there are some really nice shots.

They removed the nipple piercing from the hunting troll, the cowards! Just kidding, I assume this is supposed to be Knut? Not entirely sure. He looks a lot more intimidating than his original counterpart but also more like a generic ogre and less unique. I'm fine with it, I just hope they keep his personality (and him needing glasses with this look would be even funnier.)

I love the way Bloom's flames look around her body! The fire in her eyes is a great touch as well. If all of their powers look as amazing as this, there's definitely something to look forward to! (Please fix her "scream" in this scene though, it sounds pathetic.)

What is Flora doing here? Judging from what the trailer shows they seem to follow the original plot so far but Flora is there with Stella when taking Bloom to Alfea? Why? And why do they make it sound as if they were looking for Bloom specifically? I really like the chance-encounter-turning-into-a-lifetime-friendship aspect of Bloom meeting Stella for the first time so definitely sad that seems to be changed. On the other hand, being optimistic, it could point to a general change to include the other Winx in more scenes in general which would definitely be nice. We'll have to see. (Stella's face looks so weird in this shot.)

And I'm sorry but Stella's voice is awful. Way too squeaky and high! Icy's is also eh and too high again. The rest are okay at least, I guess? Maybe they'll sound better in the actual series. Hopefully the German voices are better like the originals were.

Alfea looks gorgeous!

There seem to be some characters who look more like witches walking around at Alfea? I heard some theories about witches being taught there as well. Really not a fan of that. It doesn't fit at all and they'd have to change the lore significantly to have that make sense.

Still not a fan of the overall colour choices for the outfits, especially Stella's (way too yellow with her everything)... None of the colours really stand out, they're too muted and pastel. I like the design on Bloom's jeans though!

I wonder what's up with the portals that show up several times in the trailer. Who creates them? The room Bloom lands in here looks just like any generic gym, there's even some basketballs in the background. Let's hope this is not Alfea... I'd hate that.

The outdoor/jungle wear is back to being sensible and still stylish and unique for everyone again, love it! They even have backpacks now, that's neat. And I like the idea of the girls with longer hair tying it up so it doesn't get in the way, that's even more practical and looks good as well. (Wtf is wrong with Stella's hair though. And give her more colours than just yellow everything for god's sake. I like that Bloom is back to having a lot of blue in her outfits, that's great to see. But give Musa a strong red and stronger colours in general, I beg you!)

The first thing the Trix do on screen is laugh, 10/10 best reboot.

They're also very similar to their original design, awesome! And Icy's attack looks great, just like Bloom's flames.

I sincerely hope that this is not the final form of Stella's sceptre because... yikes, that looks like a children's toy. But maybe it grows? Maybe she can't use it properly yet and it's only full-size and as badass as her original sceptre when she can? That'd be a cool arc for her!

Faragonda looks good as well.

The Specialists are back, yay! And they look like proper men again, yay! (It is utterly impossible to get a shot of them that isn't blurred, I tried.) I don't care about Sky but from those we see they all seem to have their original hair styles. Brandon has his original side bangs and Riven seems to have his iconic pointy hair. I'm gonna riot if he doesn't!

They have hoverboards now instead of bikes? Okay. The bikes were cooler honestly but maybe they have those as well. And wtf kinda stunt was Brandon doing there? Isn't that something Riven would rather do? But he's just flying in a "boring" straight line. Huh...

Their uniforms look... okay? I love the original fantasy knight-like design they had with the cape and everything while still looking somewhat futuristic so I'm not the biggest fan of them looking more like generic futuristic sci-fi armour here. They're also colour-coded in their original colours but not to the point that their entire armour is that colour, I like that. I wonder what their weapons are gonna be...

You know, on the risk that I incur everyone's wrath for this, I wouldn't be mad at all if Kiko really is just a book and doesn't otherwise appear. He never added anything to the plot and was just there to be cute but even as a child I just found him annoying. We don't need to waste any screentime on him or any of the other random cutesy critters that appear in later seasons.

I think it's clear that it's very very unlikely that the reboot is ever gonna top the original, it's just too iconic in so many ways. Some stuff is obviously worse already but there's a lot to like regardless so I'm optimistic that it's gonna be enjoyable and worth watching! (After which I'll probably immediately rewatch the original because duh and that's just how I am.)

[who-is-page]

Me, getting to be the Little Guy that edits the Otherkin Fandom Wiki page on A Field Guide to Otherkin to inform everyone that Lupa sucks, actually: ✨🐺✨

For those unaware, Lupa lied about why she took the Field Guide out of print: she originally claimed it was because she felt the book was outdated and because she was no longer a therian. She confessed later in an interview with Dr. Devin Proctor that it was actually because she disapproved that "people [were] trying to literally prove that Otherkin exist in a literal manner in the same way that for example transgender people exist," and because she didn't believe even before writing the Field Guide in otherkin as a form of legitimate nonhuman identification. She took it out of print with the goal of making it inaccessible, and making it harder for otherkin to legitimize themselves and for scholars to engage in research into the otherkin communities. She's done active, intentional harm to otherkin and the otherkin community, and she's openly admitted that that was the point.

(Locking this because it's getting a lot of reblogs and it was meant to be more of a vent post than anything; for full context of these quotes, see Dr. Proctor's dissertation On Being Non-Human: Otherkin Identification and Virtual Space on pg. 117-118!)

(Edit #2: Apparently some folks from a will-be-politely-unnamed-so-as-not-to-invite-shit-upon-them Discord want me to apologize and retract my statements, because they have been told by Lupa that Lupa was specifically referring to transspecies folks and not otherkin in the context of this interview. To that I say: What??? What??? That makes things even worse! That not only begs the question as to why she would use the term "otherkin" if she meant "transspecies," especially in an interview explicitly about otherkin for a dissertation explicitly about otherkin, but also one of my systemmates has been transspecies for literal years. I know greymuzzles who are transspecies. I have transspecies friends! Fucking hell, my partner system even did a lecture and a survey on the term transspecies in the alterhuman community. Wow. Fucking wow. I never delete posts where I make a mistake; I own up to them and apologize. But with this added information, I feel like I'm going to need to sit and digest that for a minute before I do anything else, because there's obviously WAY MORE TO UNPACK HERE IN THIS SILLY LITTLE VENT POST THAN I INITIALLY REALIZED. If she did this interview and gave answers that do not reflect her beliefs (or if she worded something so poorly that they do not accurately reflect her belief to the average reader), then she has altered the accuracy of Proctor's doctoral dissertation... if he did a dissertation and did not accurately explain her beliefs, then that calls into question the validity of the other interviews and sources he used as well, which is... well. You can imagine the terrifying individual academic consequences of that. Either way, given the initial reading of the interview in the paper made a lot of people, greymuzzles and folks who have been around longer than me included, come to the same conclusion I did, this is one hell of a bombshell to drop. Especially given how much more significant of a transhumanist and gender lean the transspecies community had at the time this interview was conducted; radqueer TransID stuff hadn't yet hit the scene (transspecies as a term predates it by quite a lot if I remember correctly), so this is full-fledged "anti-species dysphoria" and "anti-body modification" type attitudes we're likely talking about here (possibly with "anti-neopronouns" depending on the flavor of perspective). Oof. Goddamn. Alright. I'm gonna get with my transspecies friends and talk to them on this one, especially the people who were in the community at that time. Yikes on fucking bikes.)

[bravesung]

oooh   !!   tag  me  in,  coach,  because  I  am  definitely  catching  what  @rockstarfighter is  throwing. 

listen,  female  canon  muses  already  get  the  short  end  of  the  stick  ,   but  don’t  get  me  started  on  female  ORIGINAL  CHARACTERS.  lord  have  mercy. 

within  my  time  on  tumblrmania  5000  ,  I  have  noticed  that  female  muses  get  shat  on  like  it’s  pavement  ,  and  muns  of  female  muses  and  female  ocs  have  to  work  a  little  (  lot  )  harder  to  gain  interactions.  there  have  been  so  much  discourse  and  disdain  towards  female  ocs  and  YIKES  ON  A  BIKE  ,  we  just  trying  to  write  ,  folks  ! 

I  have  been  there  ,  and  I  have  seen  it.  I  have  seen  muns  get  bullied  off  of  tumblr  or  forced  to  stick  to  canon  muses  or  close  themselves  off  because  of  mean  ,  nasty  anons.  me  personally  ,  I  just  can’t  write  male  muses  ––  it  makes  me  severely  uncomfortable  because  uhhh  .  .  .  I  can’t  think  like  a  man  so  writing  a  male  muse  ––  I  wouldn’t  be  able  to  do  him  justice  and  I  damned  sure  wouldn’t  be  confident. 

I  say  all  of  that  to  say  this  :  love  the  hell  out  of  your  female  muses  ,  oc  or  canon  .  give  them  that  glow-up  ,  make  them  as  badass  or  as  demure  or  as  loud  or  as  quiet  or  a  combination  as  much  as  you  please  .  pour  into  your  muse  :  if  people  see  you  are  passionate  about  them  ,  they’ll  gravitate  to  it  and  if  not  ,  you’ll  damned  sure  find  someone  who  will  !   don’t  water  down  your  muse  for  anybody  ,  and  keep  that  damned  crown  on  her  head  ! 

I  LOVE  THE  HELL  OUT  OF  EVERY  FEMALE  MUSE  Y’ALL  GOT.  WE  STRONG  ON  THESE  STREETS.    

[blackjackkent]

House of Grief Boss Battle Report!

Initial state of play: THERE ARE SO MANY OF THEM OH MY GOD

Yikes on bikes.

As pictured, Viconia immediately starts out by turning several of her followers into wolves, which is really pretty mean because Shadowheart has a crippling fear of them due to the memory that was implanted in her head.

Intriguingly, the source of this is a series of connected abilities she has:

Wild. I'm assuming that if we came down here without Shadowheart and Hector had gone through the Mapping of the Heart himself, this attack would be keyed to him and to something he said during the conversation.

Shadowheart is NOT HAVING ANY OF THIS BULLSHIT:

Atta girl.

>:(

Looking at Viconia's other features:

That's going to make Shadowheart's abilities as a damage dealer pretty much moot unfortunately.

Holy tankiness batman.

I'm not entirely sure if she's meant to be a paladin or a cleric here.

She has 124 hit points, which compared to some of the bosses we've fought is really not much; this is very much a mob battle rather than a single target battle. The various other Sharrans around the room range from 30 at the low end to 150 at the max. Including her, we're looking at 20 enemies.

Hector and Karlach are such battering rams that I'm not overly worried about this, but let's see how it goes.

Round 1:

Given the debuff Shadowheart has against Viconia, getting the two of them apart as soon as possible seems like it should be a top priority. With this in mind, Hector comes in with Flurry of Blows for two pushes in a row.

Given the massive number of enemies on the field, I think Jaheira's conjuring abilities are (tragically) more relevant for this fight than her owlbear form is. Conjure Woodland Being puts a dryad on the field who can themselves summon a wood woad which puts two new ally combatants on our side for the price of one. I don't expect them to last very long but they are not intended to. XD

Of course, once again, despite the two extra fighters we just brought on the field and all the other more threatening members of our party, everyone goes STRAIGHT FOR JAHEIRA and starts beating up on her.

STOP BEATING UP ON THAT OLD WOMAN, DAMN IT.

Shadowheart lands a clutch Hold Person to take one of the Justiciars out of the fight temporarily and gets her spiritual weapon on the field for another ally.

It's really disheartening watching the like ten enemies in a row go in the middle of the initiative order.

And of course Jaheira goes down again before I can do literally anything about it. Maybe I should have owlbeared her after all. (Legitimately I don't know why this keeps happening. Normally I would blame my bad combat skills but I hadn't even done anything yet.)

Speaking of bad combat skills, I decide to send the wood woad over to try and draw enemies away from her, and forget it's next to a bunch of enemies already, which all AOO and obliterate it immediately.

This is not off to a good start. None of these enemies are strong in and of themselves but they're making a lot of progress through sheer numbers. Top priority instantly becomes getting the squishy enemies out of the fight immediately.

Round 2:

Hector puts this new plan into action immediately by one-shotting two of the squishies because he is a fucking wrecking ball of a man now.

Jaheira has biffed two death saving throws in a row.

Karlach wrecks one of the wolves; turns out it's a polymorph variant and reveals the person underneath when the wolf form runs out of health. Karlach wrecks that too. XD

Shadowheart is also in VERY rough shape due to Viconia focus firing her and auto-critting everything. I have her disengage and back away from combat and then cast Mass Healing Word. Tragically, everyone is bone chilled and apparently that persists through downstate, so literally nothing happens. Fuck.

This is actually going quite badly. The Sharrans spend their turns casting Darkness on a large portion of the battlefield (which they are immune to) and surrounding Hector in a big deathball. Between Bone Chill, Darkness, and the fact that our party is almost completely optimized for single target damage (except for Jaheira, who is unconscious), things are really not looking good.

Round 3:

Jaheira dies. Shadowheart gets downed on another crit from Viconia. I reload and reconsider the situation.

Attempt 2. I have Jaheira drop all her healing spells for now since we have Shadowheart. Instead, I have her load up everything she can do that does AOE damage or CC, and cast Stoneskin on herself before the fight.

It's called fashion, look it up.

This time we're going to do our best to keep her and Shadowheart to the BACK line and just topping up Hector and Karlach as much as possible and casting AOEs. I've also loaded her up with Daylight again in the hope that it might counteract the Darkness spells.

Let's see if this goes better.

Round 1:

We kick off with Jaheira dropping an ice storm on half the field and then running back towards the door. Only one of the bad guys eats shit on the ice, but it does considerable opening damage to a number of the squishies at once.

I also have her drop a grasping vine in the very center of the arena where hopefully it can mess up Viconia's day. It's a real Dr. Seuss ass lookin' thing.

Hector one-shots one of the squishies on the opposite side of the map and makes a good start on a second.

Viconia spends her whole action obliterating the grasping vine in one go, which is much better than her obliterating Jaheira so I'll take it.

Shadowheart flamestrikes two more enemies almost off the field entirely.

While Hector runs around the arena, this time we keep Karlach on squishy defense duty for now, beating up the Justiciar who is trying to get at Jaheira and Shadowheart.

The long string of enemy turns is still disheartening but not quite as disheartening as it was last time, so that's promising. Darkness on the field again. Two of the enemies eat shit in the ice field at last. Several of them get distracted by how shiny Shadowheart's spiritual weapon is.

Round 2:

Bone chill is really quite a problem but we made it through the first round without anyone taking a dreadful amount of damage.

Jaheira casts Daylight and it does indeed remove the darkness effect!

Hector kills THREE separate people on his turn.

Viconia goes after Shadowheart again at once but this unfortunately moves her into Karlaching range.

At this point I realize two critical things: Shadowheart's Spirit Guardians can do necrotic as well as radiant damage, and (to my surprise) the Sharrans aren't resistant to necrotic damage.

Let's fucking go.

During the enemy turns Jaheira's health starts getting dire again. We also discover that Daylight only removes EXISTING darkness and doens't prevent new ones from being cast, which is annoying.

Round 3:

Hector kills Viconia and one of the Justiciars. The quest completes, but the additional bad guys definitely did not get the memo.

I had a brilliant idea about sending Shadowheart to grab Jaheira and teleport them both out of danger with Dimension Door. This fails for several reasons - Jaheira is in the midst of darkness and thus Shadowheart can't target her for the spell, and Jaheira raised a wall of Entangling Vines which do damage to Shadowheart on the way in. So they're both kind of just standing in the midst of a lot of enemies while very injured and Jaheira is bonechilled. Rawr. Shadowheart just sighs and casts Cure Wounds on herself instead. Her spirit guardians still do mega work though.

We're starting to gain the upper hand, though. Karlach manages to knock several more enemies out on her turn. This has not been a clean or professional fight but we're getting it done. XD

In a moment of unusual generosity, the enemies decide not to go after Shadowheart and Karlach, both of whom they could easily kill, and instead take potshots at Hector and Karlach who are almost full health.

LOL jk [sigh]

Shadowheart mysteriously obtains a second bonus action from somewhere and I'm legitimately not sure where.

????

Oh, it's from her helmet - she gets an extra bonus action when below 50% health. Nice!

Down to three enemies remaining, which is feeling rather more manageable, even if Jaheira dies. (*spongebob arms outstretched meme* TEMPORARILY)

VICTORY! And we didn't quite lose Jaheira. XD

I'm so good at this.

[littlemisskookie]

True Story - Need Your Thoughts

——-

Ahem. I have a story that pertains to my fan fictions and real life that I think you all might like to hear. It’s kind of a funny story that I need advice on by like July.

So my family has a time share that has been going on for generations, where every year we spend two weeks around the Fourth of July in some island. We’ve had it since my grandparents. Because we’re always there the same time every year, we see the same people, in this case a family that grew up alongside my own.

I grew up alongside a boy my age (two weeks younger, yikes I’m a cougar) and his younger sister. I’m going to call him Voldemort because fuck him but also fuuuuuck him. I would usually hang out with his younger sister as he and I didn’t not get along that well and I was a girl’s girl from the very start. I did in fact push him into a TV when we were kids, because we were debating over who was better. He did a handstand, something I could never do, and I pushed him. The TV was one of those cheap ones from the early 2000’s, don’t worry. It could handle a lot more of a beating than the TVs today. Needless to say we didn’t get along that well.

Eventually I started bringing friends of my own on vacation with my family and I, as did he and his sister. I think I first became attracted to him when we were still in our teen years. In fact, in my search for inspiration for my fan fictions, often inspired by real life crushes or smutty daydreams I wanted to come true, I wrote a one shot inspired by that. Yes I vented my horny frustrations out into my fanfiction, sue me I’m like the worst female protagonist I know whatever.

It was only the next year though that I actually hung out with him. Due to family circumstances my parents and I (+friend) would spend one week on the Island, and then my aunt and uncle would spend the other week. Usually we’d spend two weeks there, but this year i was supposed to bring a friend. She was unable to make it on the trip last minute, and so we went alone. Not wanting to spend the week alone with my parents and feeling embarrassed to be alone eat my big age, I decided to hang out with you know who. Voldemort, obviously.

His younger sister had brought her own friend that year, but Voldemort had not. So we decided to hang out that week, riding our bikes around the island and being caught in the rain. The first time I ever smoked weed was with him, and I had to scold him for leaving water bottles in the woods from the previous times he smoked there. He was shocked by my low tolerance. The second time we smoked we climbed up a hotel being under construction, climbing up to an empty second floor balcony.

It’s been a while. I don’t remember how, but I think somehow we had confirmed we liked each other. I think he thought I was attractive, and I know myself well enough to know I’m absolutely obvious when I’m experiencing attraction to someone. The details are hazy. There was a time when we were caught in a rain storm when on our bikes, trying to make it back to our hotels. We took shelter under a bridge and he would ring out his shirt and I’d see his abs because of fucking course he was a jock. The only light would be from the street lights, the rain illuminated under the orange glow in stark contrast with the night sky. I remembered he even commented it was like a romance movie.

We eventually made it to a gazebo near the entrance. We were already super close and yet we didn’t want to go inside yet, even though we were soaking wet and there was lightning outside. At some point an older gentleman also took shelter under the gazebo, and for some reason we talked about weed with him. He was very chill about it.

The last time I saw Voldemort was the night before I was supposed to leave for the year. We made it to the elevator and I stepped out, calling him an idiot. It was because he didn’t make a move, he didn’t kiss me, and I’m the type of person who is too prideful to give in first. He was confused, and I stepped out. That was the last time I saw him face to face.

At the time I was posting him a bit, of us hanging out over the week, on my Snapchat. Some girls had slid up and said he was cute, with yes he was, that’s why I posted him. He ended up asking me for those girls snapchats, which caused a big fight. I was angry with him and was all like are you serious, and then he started blaming his depression, to which I was like bitch me too. We argued over who had been on antidepressants longer. In the end I blocked him.

My parents were under the impression I hated him. Which I did.

I’m not sure if I still do though?

Last summer was the first summer back. The reason I hadn’t returned the summer after the fight was because of the pandemic. Go figure. Saved my ass, though. The following year after that I went to Mexico. This brings us to 2022.

Again, I had no one able to come with me on this vacation so I was all alone. Most of the time that week it ended up raining, so my family and I weren’t out that often. We didn’t see his family out on the rare occasion we were out. That is, until we first ran into his grandfather. He ran into me and my mother, and seemed all to keen on talking about Voldemort. In fact, he kept calling us lovers. (Please keep in mind we did not even kiss or hold hands.) He said that Voldemort had been looking everywhere for me, and his grandpa had insisted we probably weren’t here because he hadn’t seen us. And so, Voldemort started hanging out with some other chick. His grandpa told him that it wasn’t good for him to have two lovers, and the entire time I’m basically completely red. He also told me that Voldemort was no longer scared of girls (something I teased him that his grandfather told me when we were 15). My mother on the other hand thinks he’s teasing and doesn’t know what he’s talking about, essentially ignoring that part and talking about other things.

Another time I run into his grandmother, and then his mother and father. All of them talk about Voldemort to me, going on about his accomplishments or why he wasn’t there (he was napping) and yada yada. Please keep in mind I had spent most of my childhood with his younger sister and had only spent one week with him when we were teenagers. I did not ask for the additional information. They did not talk about his sister, barely speaking of her despite the fact she was only a year or two younger than us. So wtf.

They also go on and on about how much I’ve matured with my look or something. Like I was a flower that bloomed, which I would hope so since I’m in my early 20s. So at least that’s some confirmation I’m hot. Apparently he had truly “bloomed” too. I’ll admit, my curiosity had peaked.

But alas, we were already at the end of our vacation, as he was leaving that following day to go back to work. I had spent all of the previous days staying inside and purposefully avoiding him. I am not as confrontational as I was in my younger years, and now usually try to avoid conflict. I dread nothing more than an awkward conversation. The last time I saw him my parents were already leaving the parking lot to head out for dinner, and I saw his silhouette, now much taller than I remember. I was in a bad mood for the rest of the day much to my parents’ annoyance. I wanted to see what he looked like now, at least. Or maybe even have him see what I looked like, as my ego was somewhat inflated after the compliments from his family.

I had texted him that I was annoyed he didn’t see me. He sent his apologies, and we haven’t texted since.

Which brings us to this year.

I’m supposed to go again, and I have a friend this time who can (hopefully) go. I do not know what to do. I want to see him, yes. Most of all I want attention. It’s been a while since I’ve gotten that.

Please give me your thoughts and comments.

[delta-queerdrant]

how do you solve a problem like Chakotay? (Tattoo, s2 e9)

I have been away from this space for a number of boring reasons (including, to be transparent, cheating on Janeway with my space cop boyfriend Odo. Why do the good girls go for the lawful neutral boys?)

But also, Tattoo! Yikes on bikes! When I first realized I’d be reviewing this episode, I felt a powerful impulse to back away slowly, as if from wasps. My aversion came from a place of contempt for this episode, probably the low point of the imaginative failure that is Chakotay. At the same time, I was not sure what to do with my anger. It’s easy for white people to become a little too enamored with our own hot takes; I am ill-equipped to speak to the impact of a narrative that’s racist, anti-Indigenous storytelling all the way down.

I imagined I’d compile a reading list by Indigenous writers who could talk with authority about “Tattoo.” The reading list has become a comfortable rhetorical move for white cultural critics, a stay in our lane impulse. A reading list attempts to re-center marginalized voices, though it’s rarely a call to action (unless that action is read books). In this case, the reading list was elusive. I couldn’t find much non-paywalled content discussing this episode at length, with the exception of this illuminating review by comics artist Rob Schmidt. 

What does it mean to do low stakes cultural criticism on Tumblr dot com? If this is a quiet space for playful self-reflection about my Television Feelings, then I think we can agree that nobody particularly needs my thoughts on the impact of “Tattoo,” or the Kazon, or any of the other ill-conceived ways that Star Trek has handled race. I will continue to get mad about these artistic choices, but my anger is not load-bearing. You can’t build anything with it.

The best I can probably do here, and throughout these reviews, is to excavate the contours of my own relationship with science fiction. I think white people have quite a lot we need to say about whiteness, and our penchant for racist science fiction, and how we could perhaps redirect our creative impulses elsewhere. 

To summarize the episode - Chakotay visits a Delta Quadrant moon and recognizes a symbol that reminds him of a childhood visit to his people’s ancestral home on Earth. As a young man, nonconformist Chakotay wasn’t much interested in his ancestors’ traditional lifeways, and even now, he’s agnostic about some of their religious beliefs. Nearby, a planet has flora and fauna similar to the Earth rainforest Chakotay remembers visiting. When he’s separated from the away team, he encounters aliens who can “control the elements of nature” and seem to share his tribe’s culture.

In a block of decidedly clunky exposition, we learn that these aliens visited hunter-gatherers on Earth millennia ago. The early humans are described as having “no spoken language, no culture, except the use of fire and stone weapons.” Okay then! The aliens gave them “an inheritance, a genetic bonding so they might thrive and protect your world.” The genes motivated the hunter gatherers to travel to the Americas, where they passed down memories of the aliens, who became key figures in Chakotay’s people’s religion. Chakotay now understands himself, his father, and the aliens as people called to “honor the land” and defend it.

(Meanwhile, the Doctor programs himself to experience a respiratory illness and proceeds to have what I believe is known in the vernacular as a “man-flu.” It’s very silly.)

If “Tattoo” was well received, I think it was because of the emotional heft of this episode, which figures Chakotay as the diaspora kid who rediscovers his roots and connects with his father’s memory. I would have liked an episode that fully explored what it means to be Indigenous and diasporic, and how Chakotay’s identity informed his decision to join the Maquis.

This is not really the episode we got. Instead “Tattoo,” in the vein of white supremacist conspiracy theory tome Chariot of the Gods, imagines that Indigenous people are magical space boys whose religion and culture are gifts from aliens. Now, Captain Planet-like, they have been tasked to protect their homelands, conveniently letting the rest of us off the hook. 

“Tattoo” erases the truth and specificity of Indigenous cultures and origins—of people who were and are energized by their own intelligence and agency, and who have actively maintained specific and rooted ways of being in the world despite 500 years of material and cultural genocide. It doesn’t help that the prehistory depicted in the episode is utterly confused. The ancestors described in this episode are apparently early humans, long before the migration into the Americas, but the timeline is so muddled that the episode resolves into a narrative of “Indigenous people require alien intervention in order to have a culture.”

I think “Tattoo” is really a white fantasy, because white people would like nothing better than to be magical racialized space boys. To be chosen, to be connected at once to a homeland and a cosmic other, satisfies a hunger born of our collective imaginations. White people don’t really care who built our sacred sites, if our culture heroes are exploded in favor of New Age nonsense, because our legitimacy as people with a history and a destiny is nevertheless secure. (Though there are probably limits to our popular embrace of the New Age - I can’t imagine a Star Trek where Jesus is the one receiving genetic messages from aliens.)

To complicate my analysis, I'll note that a white Jewish author wrote the teleplay for “Tattoo,” and in the episode’s Wikipedia page, Robert Beltran says “Tattoo” resonated with his experience of feeling disconnected from his Latino heritage. There is a story about diaspora here, however clumsily executed. As a person of Jewish ancestry, I’m not surprised that creators from diaspora communities turn to speculative fiction to recreate lost pasts for marginalized characters. It’s easy to lose your history, and this loss is compounded in a world where whiteness swallows difference.

Star Trek has always had a race problem. In my twenties, I began to learn about the antecedents of the science fiction and fantasy genres - adventure fiction and Westerns, genres steeped in ideologies of Rule Britannia and manifest destiny. If Star Trek was originally pitched as “Wagon Train to the Stars,” then perhaps the aliens have always been “Indians.” But Star Trek also has a progressive streak that has lent itself to diverse casting. What does it mean when the same universe contains allegories for minorities and real-world minorities?

I have to admit I'm a sucker for a good science fiction allegory. As a kid from a mixed-faith background, I loved watching Worf negotiate his Klingon ancestry and human upbringing. (I only realized as an adult that the Rozhenkos are Jewish coded!) I'm not saying that Worf is great or perfect representation of multicultural identity, but there is something about allegory that can powerfully voice our lived experiences. (The trans allegory in the recent Nimona film adaptation is an exceptional example of this.)

As best as I can tell, the trick to writing fictional "races" and real racialized characters is one and the same - handling the cultures you're depicting with care, eschewing biased stereotypes in favor of nuanced, complex, informed worldbuilding. The showrunners of Voyager did not exercise care.

I want a Star Trek in which the characters feel rooted in real cultures, whether they’re alien or human. I want Harry Kim to have a cultural identity, and I want Chakotay to belong to a real-world Indigenous community. If science fiction is about curiosity, then I want white writers and showrunners who are genuinely curious about the stories they don’t have the expertise to tell—and who are willing to give space to those who do.

1/5 prize Vulcan orchids.

[thefringespod]

Its another #AudioDramaSunday and I have once again survived work solely because of excellent shows

Starting off this week once again is @tellnotalespod which I got caught up on this week and felt every imaginable human emotion. TNT is SO good!!!! If you're not listening you should!!!!!!

Also this week was some HEARTBREAKING @re-dracula episodes. Alasdair Stuart has crushed my heart with his performance as the captain of the Demeter. Just an excellent EXCELLENT performance in an excellent excellent show

@doyoucopypod released episode 4 this week and yikes on bikes there is a LOT happening!! The Dead Zone continues to be baffling and terrifying and the fear in Addison and Liam's voices broke me. I'm so excited to see what comes next!

There was new Technomancy Project this week and I'm still NOT OKAY FROM IT. I thought it'd be a fun zombie episode but noooo I end up crying at my desk because I love Jason so much. My theory doc has been revisited and new info has been updated. I fucking love the Technomancy Project!!!!!!!!!!!

Public release for @malevolentcast episode 34 was last Monday and it's one of the best episodes of Malevolent yet. It was stressful and terrifying and so well executed that it will be spinning in my brain forever

@ethicstownpod episode 6 has me gnawing on wood like an anxious beaver and creating a digital red string board. Idk what's going on with January but I DONT TRUST IT!!!!!!!! Ethics Town continues to astound in every aspect but also I am gazing upon it distrustfully because it WILL hurt me <3

ONGOING CROWDFUNDERS: we've got 25 days left for Shelterwood https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/shelterwood-a-suburban-gothic#/

24 days left for @levianpod https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/levian-podcast#/

And 11 days left for @innbetween https://crowdfundr.com/InnBetween5?ref=ab_6CcjDb_ab_Ao4acauxDnoAo4acauxDno

And as another reminder @chainofbeing begins crowdfunding on the 13th! You can follow their page now to be notified when it goes live

Here on the Fringes we're working on recording season 2 as well as some bonus content that will be released in the lead up to the second season! My phenomenal cast continues to be phenomenal and I can't WAIT for yall to hear what they've been working on <3

Week ahead is promising my return to @hellofromthehallowoods which I'm very very excited for Still early days for me there (only 15 eps in so far) and I'm very in love with the story

That's all for this week!