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cars 3 || lightning mcqueen

like or reblog if save please

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@ adults who grew up in the age of “don’t even give out your first name online” what was ur fake name growing up online

I went by Snowfall on neopets for six years.

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Allow me to dissect this photo, which is quite possibly my favorite in all of Cars 3.

We have three very good shiny boys being slightly confused

A happy banana child that’s eager to share the win with her mentor

Proud grandpa Smokey with a conniving glint in his eyes

One SUV who’s dreamily staring at McQueen’s rear

Another SUV that looks eager to go all Nemo on him and touch the butt

A scared silver boi realizing he probably should not have eaten that gas station sushi (or maybe that his master plan fell through, take your pick)

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The Power of Nathan Fillion my friend

Whenever I go to tag something ‘Lightning McQueen’ these days I hear it in Sterling’s voice in my head. I’m not sure when this started and I don’t know what it means.

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This is Berk. It snows nine months of the year, and hails the other three. Any food that grows here is tough and tasteless. The people that grow here are even more so. The only upsides are the pets. While other places have ponies or parrots… we have… dragons.

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Lightning + Rally HCs

Unusual for a Piston Cup racer but not unheard of, Lightning’s tried his tires at all kinds of racing over the course of his career. He spent an entire summer with Raoul ÇaRoule once, learning how to rally race. It was the summer of many hemispheres and more timezones than Lightning can count. (And he’d thought the WGP was, well. Worldly.)

During that time, Lightning’s almost non-existent French did not improve, and Raoul never spoke in English. (Whether he can or not remains a mystery.) But they made it work.

Because of his love for dirt racing, Lightning feels like he should be better at rally than he is, and he refuses to believe they’re all that different. (They’re completely different, says Sally, in a cutaway, deadpanning straight into the camera.)

The idea of tackling the elements in such an extreme way appeals to him–you can’t live in Ornament Valley without finding dirt, and mud, and ice, etc. a little appealing. Plus the idea that the roads do exist makes it seem more feasible to him than straight-up offroading. He’ll even accept the rain.

He doesn’t like the stop and go of it, though, and finds the fact that you have to drive the speed limit in between the flat-out stages borderline unnerving. (Though Raoul points about that he feels the exact same way about taking laps under caution, whenever he’s tried oval racing.)

Lightning also has a hard time with the idea that you’re not going toe-to-toe with the other racers, and your runs are all spaced out from each other. He’s the kind of racer who functions best when he can pick his rivals, and they’re all running right there beside him. (“I need to practice with real racers!”) It’s hard to keep focused when you’re out on the course alone like that.

He doesn’t want to be That Racecar, who endlessly compares a thing to his more familiar (read: superior) thing–especially now that he’s building a reputation for being versatile!–but he is definitely That Racecar. He’s just smart enough to be quiet about it, and stubborn enough to not give up.

Being bad at rally but still wanting to do it made Lightning feel like he’d personally grown as a car. (Not bad at it, Raoul corrects, ever-encouraging. But he’s also realistic. He says, Just not expert. Not professional.) Maybe it was just that Lighting knew he was still expert-professional at other things, though.

He thinks about that strange, long Summer of Raoul a lot on Fireball Beach doing time trials; at Thunder Hollow, in the mud; in Thomasville, swerving through the woods and taking those giant jumps. He thinks about it a lot.

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Wishin everyone a happy day with the happiest car

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when youre sick for like a week but it's all good cause lightning got your nose's back 👍👍👍

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The Big Question: Why the fUCK do I like Cars?

I don’t know, buddy, I don’t know. I wish I fuckin knew.

I saw one (1) dang trailer when I was 8 and I’ve literally been Like This ever since, with no explanation.

None whatsoever, not a clue. It just Happened, and is still Happening. That’s it.

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happy new year! hope everyone had a fun and safe new year celebration! (and to the new friends who showed up during this bout of inactivity, welcome to the shindig!)

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Fanfic Ask Meme

No one actually asked me any questions from that meme I posted, lolll, but I’m going to answer some anyway because I still want to!

A fic you didn’t expect to write.

All of them?? I wrote the first one (“Flat Out,” which is Sally’s POV after Lightning’s cash) because I was going to lose my mind if I didn’t. Then I started writing The Curve because I wanted to write Sally backstory and the history of Los Angeles’ freeways—which, ironically, is a part of the story I haven’t even gotten to writing yet. XD Then it snowballed from there, because I joined Tumblr fandom and had the opportunity to play with Asks and write so many different characters I’d never imagined writing for. <3

Favorite writing song/artist/album of this year.

While I was writing Gone Fishin’ (that long Storm & Lightning fic I posted earlier this week) I listened to “Flares” by The Script 300 times on repeat. For the true reading experience of that fic, please do the same. :P

Something you learned this year.

So many things! I learned a LOT about NASCAR, Willys Jeeps, aerodynamics. Some of it I learned so I could write about it, and other stuff I wrote about because I’d learned it. I also learned that oil pans come in a lot of different shapes. Which, obviously. But I read a really cool article that went into the engineering of oil pans and how a race oil pan differs from a street one. I also learned more than most people need to know about transmission fluid just so I could approximate how doctoring it could reap roughly the same effects as alcohol for humans, ahahaha.

Number of comments you haven’t read.

OH I GET IT, MR. SO POPULAR YOU DON’T EVEN HAVE TIME TO READ ALL YOUR COMMENTS. Seriously, what life would you be living that this question would have any bearing on it at all? Goodness!

A fic you read this year you would recommend everyone read

Helplessness Blues by @naimeria/@hotrodstock, because I feel like not a lot of fandom has seen it yet and that’s a right shame, because it’s absolutely gorgeous. Stellar prose, crisp imagery, and so very many poignant, understated Smokey feels. 

Doc’s letters, Doc’s passing, and Lightning’s crash from Smokey’s POV. <3

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I had to work my birthday, but my day managed to still be lovely.

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happy thanksgiving to those that celebrate it!

my birthday is in 3 days and my dad is coming to town tonight. it's a good week!

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Cars 3 Commentary fun facts:

-The majority of the film takes place in the last two weeks of February.

-Bonnie Hunt improvised “Stinky” 

-Lightning IGNORES what the arrival of next gens imply until Cal retires

-When Chick’s trophy rises from the floor in his show, the mechanism operates incorrectly to show how “nothing ever goes right near Chick”

-Mater’s sneeze gag was improvised by an animator

-In LA when Lightning is the last analog racer left, none of the next-gens pay him any physical mind and almost run into him as they go about their business in the paddock. He has to wait to them to pass.

-The character designers really wanted Jackson Storm to be so low to the ground you could only “slip a credit card beneath him” but animating car characters does not allow this.

-EACH shot of the Los Angeles race is progressively darker to represent the shroud of doom that has fallen over Lighting’s racing career. The sun has set on his days.

-The sound design for Lightning’s wreck was purposely designed to send an eerie shock through your spine.

-The story picks up 4 months later because McQueen was in recovery for that whole time.

-McQueen’s coat of primer can be viewed as two things: “pajamas”, or a cast

-Tire track clouds appear in the sky during “King’s Highway”

-The Rusteze Racing Center is in North Carolina (near Charlotte), Thunder Hollow is in Georgia, and the town of Thomasville is also in North Carolina.

-McQueen’s remark of how he “never thought he couldn’t” race is based exactly off of what John Lasseter replied when asked “how did you know you could make Toy Story?”

-Cristela Alonzo’s mother did actually tell her “dream small or not at all.”

-Owen Wilson DID NOT want to sing. But when he did, he wound up dancing a little (much like McQueen) as he recorded the lines. (apparently it was an “air-lasso” type thing)

-Lightning DOES get faster from Smokey’s training! But… Cruz gets faster too.

-Lightning knows his career is over when Cruz beats him the final time at Thomasville

-At the start of the Florida 500, Lightning has no choice to race, but according to the director, “he would probably rather go home and throw up.”

-Lightning doesn’t want “what happened to Doc to happen to him”, but that is exactly what happens to him, and it’s the best thing for him.

-Lightning is described as “stunning” at least once in the commentary, and is complimented many other times. Thankfully, the absence of John Lasseter in the commentary means the word “curvaceous” was not used this time! (It is used in the Cars 3 artbook though. Multiple times.)

-The filmmakers have no concrete explanation for how anyone was able to call Cruz’s Hamilton assistant at the end of the film ://

-They also have no explanation for why the 80′s payphone near Flo’s has a video screen

-Lightning is so focused on helping Cruz in the race that he literally does not notice how he must look on the crew chief stand, wearing a headset.

-Lightning has supposedly only paused his racing career to train Cruz

-There was supposedly more graphic design work in Cars 3 than Cars 1

-Jackson Storm’s engine sound was designed from scratch (like the rest of him) by Skywalker Sound

-The demolition derby racers were based partially off of hockey players

-Miss Fritter’s old school district is where her voice actor (Lea Delaria) went to school as a child.

-There are TWO Coco easter eggs in the film: the first on Gabirel’s treadmill screen, and the second is in the FIRST shot of miss Fritter’s bar, NOT the second shot. So look carefully!

-Randy Newman repeated sections of the Cars 1 score on purpose 

-Ray Magliozzi did NOT do his late brother Tom’s lines (as rumored earlier this year), Pixar instead used audio of Tom from their radio show “Car Talk”

-Humpy Wheeler (voice of Tex Dinoco) insisted so much to Pixar that there must be a water truck in the derby scene that he actually drew them a picture of a water truck.

-Retired NASCAR superstar Jeff Gordon (much like McQueen) cannot race on a simulator.

-The Mud in the derby scene took the effects department the entire length of film production time to complete.

-The sky scenes outside Sterling’s office are a couple different matte paintings.

-Lightning was more happy watching Cruz win than he would have been if he had won himself. (And this is the same way Doc felt about Lightning back in the day.)

-Lightning’s relationship with Doc is described by the director as “mentor & mentee” but also as “father and son.” Later, Lighting’s relationship with Cruz is described the same way (but with diff. words lol).

-As Cruz flips though the air, sparks can still be seen raining off her damaged flank, and the producers named it the most beautiful shot in the entire film.

-Jackson Storm is indeed terrified of Cruz Ramirez. He keeps track of her field position the entire race regardless of his crew chief’s warnings.

(There’s not much else in the commentary that we don’t know from earlier articles and interviews tbh but there were some new things.)

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UGH my dream job

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Wishin everyone a happy day with the happiest car

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“Yeah… heck of a win.”