#as Charles likes to remind us

[slythereen]

Honestly though, Charles saying the same thing as Max on the radio might actually be something RB cares about.

The main issue RB has had with their other drivers next to Max is that they are too different and therefore it's hard to have a cohesive team. The second driver either doesn't like the same type of car Max does, or has different feedback, or many other things we may not be aware of, which makes it hard to develop the car in the same direction, or develop race strategy and make strategy calls on the fly in a race.

RB knows by now that Charles likes a similar car to Max, and by constantly listening to his radio they've probably also concluded that Charles reads races and strategy calls in a similar way that Max does. And I just went back to listen to GP's comment, he sounded almost like he had a surprised laugh, like "haha what a coincidence, you won't believe it but Charles just said the exact same thing!"

I actually think this is very valuable to a team. You see how many other teams have to reason with one driver or another regarding strategy because they disagree. Or one driver is more comfortable on one tyre vs the other and it's hard to use both sets of feedback or data. If RB had a second driver like Charles who could handle Max's car and reads a race the exact same way, literally down to radioing it in the exact same second, this makes it way easier to manage the team and a race.

And we all know RB are ruthless in their pursuit for perfection in all areas. They are hunting for the closest they can get to a Max clone at this point, and Charles is pretty much it.

Oh, the timing of Charles’ radio being right before Max’s radio is super interesting! And it really does cement exactly this point. Charles is insanely fast, RBR is aware of it and has praised it publicly and often, so he’s a good driver to study for that — but he’s an especially good driver to study because he’s insanely fast and likes the same type of car. Your reasoning aligns with my thinking about why Charles may be the only driver on the grid right now who could take the RBR seat and have it work out really well.

It reminds me somewhat of that one radio of Charles’ where he was asking to have Max’s onboard ready to see before the audio cut out. I can’t think of what race it was now, but I want to say it was between a Q2 and Q3 or when he was coming in between sessions. I remember him saying something about how he couldn’t quite figure out a certain corner/sector.

So we know Charles watches Max’s onboards when he needs to, too. Because he knows they have a similar style; because they’ve been learning from one another their whole careers practically. I don’t think you could get a better aligned pairing on the grid, honestly.

[valyrfia]

I just want to point out the two seconds in the video where you see karting Charles give an interview. An interview that we are all familiar with, because it's the one where Max is sitting right next to him.

I'm sure the video is heavily edited and Charles maybe wasn't actually standing in front of the screen watching all of those clips - but the fact is he chose to put this specific clip in his video. And there's a possibility he stood there in front of that giant screen and actually watched it.

Of all the clips to put in a video about his love for F1 and Ferrari - he had to include one with Max (even if Max is off frame). I'm not sure what to make of this, but it felt important to point out.

Thank you for pointing that out anon! I think it's just a fun little manifestation/Easter egg for both Charles and us. Ultimately, if Ferrari manage to create a championship-worthy car, it will be Max who Charles is fighting for the title, just like it was all those years ago, and in a lot of ways, Charles has re-signed with a Ferrari not only to win a championship, but to beat the current world champion, Max. Shipping goggles aside, Max and Charles have always been pretty insistent on labelling the other as their career rival (from 2018 Max telling anyone who would listen how him and this Sauber rookie are the next Seb and Lewis, to Charles's "I want to beat him as much as he wants to beat me, and that's the way it has always been") and this just feels like quite a natural continuation of regularly scheduled Lestappen shenanigans.

I lied it's actually a nod to how Lestappen Gate was instrumental in securing Charles's contract.

[genericaces]

more rambling about a s5 au: lindsey comes back for a redemption arc to act as legal counsel for angel's team. this ostensibly gives gunn a reason to opt out of the lawyer operation, but he does it anyway because he doesn't trust lindsey not to fuck them over.

lindsey acts as a moral foil to gunn, who comes to believe his necessary contribution to the team (since he's no longer their only lawyer) is being the defender of the group's principles while working at w&h. they frequently butt heads while working on a case, but eventually develop a begrudging respect of each other's respective strengths.

this hostile-to-friendly-rivalry arc is tested when it comes out that w&h was responsible for some demon problem that's been plaguing gunn's home community. gunn has, unbeknownst to himself, been somehow contributing to it while working at w&h; lindsey knowingly contributed to it when he was last working there as a lawyer. lindsey is forced to confront who he was, while gunn is forced to confront who he’s becoming.

since he was involved in the project, lindsey uses his insider knowledge to help come up with a plan to fix the problem. they execute it, something goes wrong, and lindsey risks his life to ensure the plan goes off successfully. he expects congratulations and a pat on the back from gunn, but gunn isn't interested in absolving lindsey's sins (or his own), and their warming relationship freezes over.

at some point, gunn lets himself get taken by the senior partners in an effort to deal with his guilt over various lapses in judgment/perceived moral failures. during their rescue mission to the holding dimension, lindsey stays behind in gunn's place so he can escape, assuring gunn that he's the lawyer the team needs right now. their mutual arcs culminate in lindsey rejecting the idea that redemption is done for recognition, and gunn rejecting the idea that guilt/self-punishment is inherently redemptive.

eventually after being busted out by illyria, lindsey is there to empathize with gunn about losing parts of yourself (body, mind, and/or soul) to w&h, relationships to power when you've grown up without it, and what it means to live with the consequences of your actions. both of them reflect on the nature of redemption/forgiveness/intent as they grapple with how to own up to an appropriate share of the blame.

[idlesuperstar]

current sexual orientation: tweedy, warm, intelligent, wry, ping-pong playing, whisky-drinking, poetry-quoting, motorbike-racing, gloriously red-headed here-on-earth-I-am-your-defending-counsel Doctor Frank Reeves [Roger Livesey: A Matter of Life And Death, Powell & Pressburger, 1946]

[revanchistsuperstar]

Speaking of GNC AF grandpas, I’d like everyone to meet mine.

The most bisexual sitter of all time, OG Gay Liberation activist and Unitarian Universalist Minister, Rev Randall Lee Gibson III.

Found this photo today while looking for a good one to put on a sign for our local Pride March this weekend.

Shout out to everyone else out there with bisexual and cunty grandpas.

And RIP Randy, you were a true original.

[leclercsbf]

love when a man refuses to hire a stylist and a personal chef despite having enough money to hire at least five of each.

[juliet-ohara]

im lowkey so annoyed charles said he’d want to have a conversation w elon musk on that podcast. like i’m obvi not looking to charles as my main political source lol and i do believe he meant it in a completely unaware surface level ~tech billionaire entrepreneur~ kind of way bc he’s interested in those types of figures/that’s how he explained it on the pod but still sucks to hear. i don’t think this one-off hypothetical automatically means charles has bad politics i think he just prob lives in his celebrity bubble and doesn’t see all the shit musk stands for beyond his like business creds ig but still … he could’ve literally said anyone else

[flyingcakeee]

With this traffic issue I'm not convinced Kmag is going to get a pen and race ban. Only issue is, once the car goes out the pits for qualifing, not only is the car locked into parc fermé, the driver as well. And unlike the car where if you change it you get a pitlane start, you cannot change your driver. So, essentially, if Kevin got a penalty in qualifying for impeding, Kevin will risk getting 2 penalty points (hard to accomplish pen points but Kevin is 10/12 after starting on 0/12 this season) which will give him a race ban and Haas will only have one car in the race.

[laniidae-passerine]

no bc I am actually going to go rabid over Elena/Ryan/Charles. if this show gets renewed I really want to see a functioning, happy triad fr

[revvywevvy]

If you can find a good model for Pyrrha you HAVE to make her do the Luka Luka Night Fever dance

OH MY GOD YOU'RE RIGHT HOW DID I NOT THINK OF THAT SOONER??!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Forget the fortnite dancing and memes if I get one I'm popping that shit into mmd and making a Luka Luka ☆ Night Fever dance cover

[reflectionsofgalaxies]

fuck I ran out of space in the tags so now I’m writing up here.

anyway. poem about the feeling of loss that comes with not being able to reminisce about a person, place, or relationship because no one left in your life shares those memories, and sharing it with someone new just isn’t the same.

putting ‘ personal ’ up here in hopes i can find this post again since it won’t fit in the tags

[slythereen]

the fact that max dgaf about media. he would not let the media team make participate in smth useless like a sticker war w/ ferrari. if that ever happened we’d know that max did it on his own free will (and 99% sure he would stick it onto charles because max is the #1 chirlie)

i have faith in max’s obsession w charles being strong enough to overcome his hatred of media. someone get that boy a sticker pack immediately

[modpoppy]

gonna make my self insert a proper oc probably i gotta come up with a wacky name hmm hmm

[anti-terf-posts]

I'm currently watching a YouTube video (link) by Matt Bernstein, a gay man. In the video, they have a guest speaker named Devon Price. The video goes over how "annoying" queers (TikTok enbies, James Charles dupes, autistic queers, neopronouns users, kinksters, etc) are not the reason why queer people don't have the same rights as non-queer people.

at around 4:40, Devon mentions a type of queer protest I've *never* heard of until now. It was called "The Annual Reminder", and it was run by cis white gay men. Essentially it was a reminder to non-queers that gay (gay not queer) men looked like everyone else. they would dress in formal suits and hold signs that reminded the non-queers that they look just like everyone else. and the outcome of these protests? nothing. these protests did NOTHING to help queer rights. It wasn't until stonewall and pride that people started waking up, and I am in shock. Literally how have I never heard about this until now. I feel like it's such an important part of queer history that just gets swept under the rug, and I have a feeling I know why.

The gays that try to erase the loud, flamboyant queers, are the same ones who want to hide the fact that conforming to what the non-queers want us to act like doesn't actually do anything. They want you to believe that hiding your queerness is the way to get our rights, and that THEY'RE the ones we have to thank for what rights we have, when that's just not true. Black trans women, "annoying" twinks, sex workers, people who use controversial labels, QUEERS are the reason why we aren't treated as badly as we were 50 years ago. Instead of bowing down to Blaire White or Arielle Scarcella, thank Sock who listens to My Chemical Romance and uses star/starself pronouns for being openly freaky and queer, because stars the one who is *really* doing good for the community.

[heritageposts]

What does life in North Korea look like outside of Pyongyang? 🇰🇵

Hey, I'm back again with a very scary "tankie" post that asks you to think of North Koreans as people, and to consider their country not as a cartoonish dystopia, but as a nation that, like any other place on earth, has culture, traditions, and history.

Below is a collection of pictures from various cities and places in North Korea, along with a brief dive into some of the historical events that informs life in the so-called "hermit kingdom."

Warning: very long post

Kaesong, the historic city

Beginning this post with Kaesong, one of the oldest cities in Korea. It's also one of the few major cities in the DPRK (i.e. "North Korea") that was not completely destroyed during the Korean war.

Every single city you'll see from this point on were victims of intense aerial bombardments from the U.S. and its allies, and had to be either partially or completely rebuilt after the war.

From 1951 to 1953, during what has now become known as the "forgotten war" in the West, the U.S. dropped 635,000 tons of bombs over Korea — most of it in the North, and on civilian population centers. An additional 32,000 tons of napalm was also deployed, engulfing whole cities in fire and inflicting people with horrific burns:

For such a simple thing to make, napalm had horrific human consequences. A bit of liquid fire, a sort of jellied gasoline, napalm clung to human skin on contact and melted off the flesh. Witnesses to napalm's impact described eyelids so burned they could not be shut and flesh that looked like "swollen, raw meat." - PBS

Ever wondered why North Koreans seem to hate the U.S so much? Well...

Keep in mind that only a few years prior to this, the U.S. had, as the first and only country in the world, used the atomic bomb as a weapon of war. Consider, too, the proximity between Japan and Korea — both geographically and as an "Other" in the Western imagination.

As the war dragged on, and it became clear the U.S. and its allies would not "win" in any conventional sense, the fear that the U.S. would resort to nuclear weapons again loomed large, adding another frightening dimension to the war that can probably go a long way in explaining the DPRK's later obsession with acquiring their own nuclear bomb.

But even without the use of nuclear weapons, the indiscriminate attack on civilians, particularly from U.S. saturation bombings, was still horrific:

"The number of Korean dead, injured or missing by war’s end approached three million, ten percent of the overall population. The majority of those killed were in the North, which had half of the population of the South; although the DPRK does not have official figures, possibly twelve to fifteen percent of the population was killed in the war, a figure close to or surpassing the proportion of Soviet citizens killed in World War II" - Charles K. Armstrong

On top of the loss of life, there's also the material damage. By the end of the war, the U.S. Air Force had, by its own estimations, destroyed somewhere around 85% of all buildings in the DPRK, leaving most cities in complete ruin. There are even stories of U.S. bombers dropping their loads into the ocean because they couldn't find any visible targets to bomb.

What you'll see below of Kaesong, then, provides both a rare glimpse of what life in North Korea looked like before the war, and a reminder of what was destroyed.

Kaesong's main street, pictured below.

Due the stifling sanctions imposed on the DPRK—which has, in various forms and intensities, been in effect since the 1950s—car ownership is still low throughout the country, with most people getting around either by walking or biking, or by bus or train for longer distances.

Kaesong, which is regarded as an educational center, is also notable for its many Koryŏ-era monuments. A group of twelve such sites were granted UNESCO world heritage status in 2013.

Included is the Hyonjongnung Royal Tomb, a 14th-century mausoleum located just outside the city of Kaesong.

One of the statues guarding the tomb.

Before moving on the other cities, I also wanted to showcase one more of the DPRK's historical sites: Pohyonsa, a thousand-year-old Buddhist temple complex located in the Myohyang Mountains.

Like many of DPRK's historic sites, the temple complex suffered extensive damage during the Korean war, with the U.S. led bombings destroying over half of its 24 pre-war buildings.

The complex has since been restored and is in use today both as a residence for Buddhist monks, and as a historic site open to visitors.

Hamhung, the second largest city in the DPRK.

A coastal city located in the South Hamgyŏng Province. It has long served as a major industrial hub in the DPRK, and has one of the largest and busiest ports in the country.

Hamhung, like most of the coastal cities in the DPRK, was hit particularly hard during the war. Through relentless aerial bombardments, the US and its allies destroyed somewhere around 80-90% percent of all buildings, roads, and other infrastructure in the city.

Now, more than seventy years later, unexploded bombs, mortars and pieces of live ammunition are still being unearthed by the thousands in the area. As recently as 2016, one of North Korea's bomb squads—there's one in every province, faced with the same cleanup task—retrieved 370 unexploded mortar rounds... from an elementary school playground.

Experts in the DPRK estimate it will probably take over a hundred years to clean up all the unexploded ordnance—and that's just in and around Hamhung.

Hamhung's fertilizer plant, the biggest in North Korea.

When the war broke out, Hamhung was home to the largest nitrogen fertilizer plant in Asia. Since its product could be used in the creation of explosives, the existence of the plant is considered to have made Hamhung a target for U.S. aggression (though it's worth repeating that the U.S. carried out saturation bombings of most population centers in the country, irrespective of any so-called 'military value').

The plant was immediately rebuilt after the war, and—beyond its practical use—serves now as a monument of resistance to U.S. imperialism, and as a functional and symbolic site of self-reliance.

Chongjin, the third largest city in the DPRK.

Another coastal city and industrial hub. It underwent a massive development prior to the Korean war, housing around 300,000 people by the time the war broke out.

By 1953, the U.S. had destroyed most of Chongjin's industry, bombed its harbors, and killed one third of the population.

Wonsan, a rebuilt seaside city.

The city of Wonsan is a vital link between the DPRK's east and west coasts, and acts today as both a popular holiday destination for North Koreans, and as a central location for the country's growing tourism industry.

Considered a strategically important location during the war, Wonsan is notable for having endured one of the longest naval blockades in modern history, lasting a total of 861 days.

By the end of the war, the U.S. estimated that they had destroyed around 80% of the city.

Masikryong Ski Resort, located close to Wonsan. It opened to the public in 2014 and is the first, I believe, that was built with foreign tourists in mind.

Sariwon, another rebuilt city

One of the worst hit cities during the Korean War, with an estimated destruction level of 95%.

I've written about its Wikipedia page here before, which used to mockingly describe its 'folk customs street'—a project built to preserve old Korean traditions and customs—as an "inaccurate romanticized recreation of an ancient Korean street."

No mention, of course, of the destruction caused by the US-led aerial bombings, or any historical context at all that could possibly even hint at why the preservation of old traditions might be particularly important for the city.

Life outside of the towns and cities

In the rural parts of the DPRK, life primarily revolves around agriculture. As the sanctions they're under make it difficult to acquire fuel, farming in the DPRK relies heavily on manual labour, which again, to avoid food shortages, requires that a large portion of the labour force resides in the countryside.

Unlike what many may think, the reliance on manual labour in farming is a relatively "new" development. Up until the crisis of the 1990s, the DPRK was a highly industrialized nation, with a modernized agricultural system and a high urbanization rate. But, as the access to cheap fuel from the USSR and China disappeared, and the sanctions placed upon them by Western nations heavily restricted their ability to import fuel from other sources, having a fuel-dependent agricultural industry became a recipe for disaster, and required an immediate and brutal restructuring.

For a more detailed breakdown of what lead to the crisis in the 90s, and how it reshaped the DPRKs approach to agriculture, check out this article by Zhun Xu.

Some typical newly built rural housing, surrounded by farmland.

Tumblr only allows 20 pictures per post, but if you want to see more pictures of life outside Pyongyang, check out this imgur album.

[crafteeauthor]

I know "you are the brawn?" Is just because Charles is a twink but it would be infinitely funnier if Emma clocked Edwin's hell-tempered nature immediately. If that was a thing ghosts could do, or even that only some ghosts could do, then how many of them are under the impression Charles is in over his head- or at the very least more of a Watson than a second Holmes?

Like. Imagine going in to see two detectives but only one of them actually has a chair at the desk? Severe Edwardian dude with sulfur clinging to his aura. He does the talking and seems to make the decisions. His partner occasionally has to remind him to be nice and/or a bit more empathetic.

The other one is perched all pretty ON the desk? And he's visibly slimmer and notably a regular ghost but still claims he's the brawn? Gorgeous 80s guy, turns to his partner for approval almost every time he talks? Big glittery eyes? His scary companion can't quite seem to say no to him?

Emma's a Victorian ghost too so she's probably used to homosexual relationships having barely-there coverups it'd be so fucking funny if she was like "sure yeah the brawn, is that what they're calling it now?"