#i genuinely hope the ppl using that blog as a way to be pissy are just like too young to understand how being a hater is not fulfilling

[silencingspellsongs]

begging people to adopt the idgaf mindset i think if we all just developed a lil idgaf energy it would lead us to nirvana

[russilton]

Genuine question! people on here get so pissy at anyone asking what their thoughts on the drivers sexualities are but you’ve blatantly put the pride flag on a George post so would that not be the same thing?? Like I’m genuinely not trying to be a douche but I just don’t understand the double standards (I’m also not singling you out as I’ve seen other users get pissy at ppl asking but your post just happens to come up aha)

That’s fair anon and it’s good of you to ask this as a genuine question to find out rather than just get frustrated and assume it’s all hypocrisy. You wouldn’t be the first, so thanks for asking instead.

Here comes a read more because I’ve done my best to explain it, and if you wanted a shorter version you shouldn’t have asked me

Tl;dr: Because one is a joke based on a known fiction presented to an audience in on the joke, and the other either isn’t a joke and thus an invasion of privacy, or steps too close to the line for people to feel comfortable engaging in

It all comes down to engaging in the joke vs genuine, harmful speculation. Putting a rainbow flag on a post of a guy hanging out with his girlfriend, who I genuinely do like, is what I HOPE is a clear joke.

What makes it a joke is that I do not believe with any conviction that George and Lewis are actually fucking. I would LOVE it, but they aren’t.

The core tenant of acceptable rpf is being able to separate fiction from the real life that feeds it. We are playing make believe with characters who happen to be based on real people. That’s why most of us will tell you to keep this stuff entirely on tumblr/ao3, so there is a barrier of separation between drivers and fic, and why I do my best to clearly differentiate between when I’m talking about serious topics, and when I’m engaging in very dumb ship talk.

I will also point at the name of my blog, my tag line and my blog title all make it clear I’m not a serious place, I’m here talk about an rpf ship, and occasionally give my fan opinion of motorsport. People shouldn’t be coming to me for unbiased news. I have never been unbiased in my life.

In my posts here I’m leaning into the bit of the entirely fictional ship I enjoy. Of course George isn’t indicating he’s gay by driving a purple Mercedes in LA. That’s a joke I’d hope all of my followers are in on. It’s also a play on how celebrity couples are debated and how real queer people are treated by the world at large.

For example when I came out, both times, the reaction I got most from friends and family was “we already guessed you were”— now while they may think that’s a good way to respond… no they didn’t. They made assumptions based on stereotypes about queer people and applied it to me at an age where I didn’t even know what I was or liked. We’ve all seen the tweets from genuine idiots going “I don’t trust men ordering dessert, that’s for women” or “I think men who wear scarves are a bit gay”, but those are just an extremely concentrated form of stereotypes we’ve seen for decades. If a man enjoys crochet or a woman loves woodworking, you bet your ass Instagram comments will be saying they’re clearly gay.

We also see it all the time around celebrities— people harmfully assuming based on a hair style, a pet, or an attitude that a driver is gay and that they’ve “figured it out”, or even just because you saw two people hanging out a few times they MUST be together. Look at the Lewis and Shakira incident— they never once confirmed a relationship but some people will treat that as absolute fact. We have all seen both Lewis and George separately receiving hate under the assumption they are gay men by homophobic fans- Lewis for his piercings and fashion, and George for having long eye lashes and a slightly effeminate build. Shit, Nelson Piquet, ex f1 champion, has made on broadcast homophobic comments about Lewis that the Brazilian government fined him over. That is how common this idea is to most people.

The only way to know someone is lgbtq+ is if they tell you they are, and the only way to know what relationships they’re in, is if they tell you. It doesn’t matter how much you want to know or what evidence you’ve found, that’s a privacy everyone should be allowed, even celebrities. You do not know until they confirm it. I don’t care if someone came up to me and said they’ve seen George blow a guy, unless he says he’s queer, I don’t know shit.

But it’s still incredibly common, and most queer people experience this, and have opted to reclaim the joke. I will point at George sitting funny and cuffing his jeans and go “see! He’s just like us, the bisexuals”, because that’s a way queer people will joke you identify bi people. And when you read that back, it’s very clearly a joke. You can’t discover someone’s sexuality based on their sitting style. I do the same thing as an autistic person, because we are ALSO heavily scrutinised based on other ideas of what autism is. You don’t know how many fuckin people decide it’s appropriate to tell me “but you don’t seem autistic to me” because I don’t fit their standards. If someone tells me my eye contact means I’m not autistic, I can say George lining up his trains as a kid is a point for autism.

It’s also a joke derived from a genuine lack of representation. Humans like to see themselves represented. There’s no publically gay people on the grid, or autistic folk, so it’s pretty fair for us to decide that fuck it, until there is, I’m grabbing the guy who acts like I do and pretending he’s my rep. That’s how gay slash as a concept really began, honestly. If you don’t give people ample access to something, they’ll make their own, and sometimes even if they have it, they’ll do it anyway because it’s creatively enjoyable.

People get “pissy” (be careful using that word, it’s a lot more patronising than I think you intended it to be) about GENUINE speculation, because its not the acceptable joke we’ve all agreed to. Now you can argue about where the line for the joke should be, or if there should be one at all, but most of us have settled in a similar spot and talk with people who agree with that line. If that makes you uncomfortable, it is okay to leave or block someone. I have been blocked by more than a few het George fans. That is their right.

I think personally that pinning a sexuality to drivers is always going to be seen as genuine speculation unless it’s within the context of a fic where you set the boundaries, or a joke. Personally, if I wrote an entire list out and genuinely put thought into the sexuality of drivers on the grid, that is speculation, and there’s no way around that because I’d be making those assumptions based on stereotypes. Any of the drivers could be queer, none of them could be. We do not and likely will never know because we don’t live in a society where there are 0 ramifications for sharing your sexuality.

All the drivers could be bi but are in straight passing relationships and are happy that way for all we know. We literally have no way to tell unless they chose to share, which is unlikely given that 10/24 of this years races occur in countries where gay marriage is not recognised, and it is explicitly illegal to practice homosexuality in several of those. Even in the remaining countries, Florida, Texas and England have all introduced increasingly hostile anti LGBT legislation — F1 as a sport may try to say otherwise, but you cannot say that it is a queer friendly sport while also travelling to places where if a government decided to act on their laws, many fans could be put in serious danger.

Would you want to come out in that? Especially turning over something so personal and often painful to a public mob who will debate it?

While we all engage in our games here, it can be taken out of this space very quickly, and if someone made a post speculating on driver sexuality, it could spread, get ripped and posted on twitter, and grow into something far uglier very fast. Would you want to see a joke driver sexuality post spread like that? We all saw how the Fernando and Taylor swift joke went so far, so fast, until the fuckin aston admin had Fernando on a tiktok with Taylor swift audio. I’m not gonna make a post I already think is based on a flawed idea, about drivers I don’t care about, with that at risk.

You could argue again that our jokes could spread like that, but in the same way every post can be considered in bad faith when twisted the wrong way, it’s the gamble we make posting here. Trust me— I’m the guy who had his art posted in an Instagram hate collage by max fans— nothing is safe from the wrong eyes here.

I have also seen first hand the awful examples of people actually making those lists to coddle their faves. I have seen the posts where people genuinely think max is bisexual and autistic. They are infuriating.

Because I hate that, I frequently remind myself sometimes to be clearer when I’m being a rpf fan boy making a joke, and when I’m critiquing my drivers genuinely.

I can’t stop other people blurring or forgetting the line between joke and reality, but I can refuse to do it myself. I am only responsible for myself, and for making sure my jokes are clear enough most people will get them.

So that’s why yeah, I’ll make limp wrist joke about George, becuase I’ve been the target of them, but I’m not going to speculate on sexuality. I hope that helps.

[irregulardiaryposts]

16:35 01/03/2021

so. its now march!!!!! march is an okay month. but it also means its been a year since corona really kicked off and thats proper weird to think about. it feels like absolutely fuck all has actually changed but yet im a very different person yk. i played minecraft for 10 hrs last week. im addicted to it. this time last year i was kinda sick and we thought i had corona but since testing wasnt really available i just had to stay home ages. it was horrible but to think that was a whole YEAR ago is absolutely fucking wild. 

anyway back to minecraft. i absolutely love it. its such a simple game and you can truly play however you want to. like. if u dont want to bother beating the enderdragon or doing any serious grind stuff, you can literally just fuck about doing whatever you wanna do... u wanna build a little cottage in the woods? yes. u wanna pick lowers and decorate and build cute farms? yes. u wanna explore a vast and expansive world filled with literally endless possibilities and find pets and loot and different biomes and blocks? yes. you wanna mess around with ur friends? yes. u wanna do pvp or multiplayer games? yes. u wanna meet new people? yes. u wanna play by yourself and become exceedingly rich? yes. u wanna do all this and comforted by the melodic tunes and beautiful landscapes? yesssssssss. it literally has something for everyone but people get so pissy about how others play its soooo annoying. like so what if someone wants to go into creative and cheat or they wanna play on peaceful or they have keep inventory on? they are playing the game in the way they enjoy the most, the way that makes them happiest, makes them comforted, allows then to enjoy playing it. coz i bet if everyone was made to play the exact same way and there was no way to customise your experience, it would not be nearly as popular as it is. it probs wouldve died out if people werent enjoying it because they got frustrated by it, or too scared to lose their things to progress in the game, or too anxious to play because its scary and they dont know how to beat things. or if people play solely in creative and they enjoy that the most and wanna try survival, they dont deserve to get made fun of coz they want to ease their way into harder things. or if someone just wants to build or just explore or just tame a million dogs, as long as they are happy they are already enjoying the game to the max, they dont deserve people being like “ if u play without X youll enjoy it more coz thats the way we play it” like fuck off it would be like if a hardcore players was like “play in hardcore or ur stupid” ppl would get mad because thats not the way they want to play it and they wouldnt enjoy it as much or at all as the hardcore player does. and dont even get me started on this whole bedrock vs java bs. this its such a waste of time like??? who benefit from this argument? because its silly java players think they are automatically better than every bedrock player because they have java. 

like obviouslyyyyyy java is better and im sure a lot of bedrock players would rather java, but u cant lie and say that a lot of og players didnt start on bedrock and then upgrade to java, because as kids u cant really afford a proper pc but everyone has an xbox or an ipad lol. like they literally forget that they probably started playing on bedrock too. and its so stupid because yes while bedrock is a little shit in comparison to java, ITS STILL THE SAME FUCKING GAME just be glad were not fucking fortnite players jesus its pathetic. yes this is essentially a minecraft post and what fucking about it. i told u im obsessed with it. 

i should talk about something else. perhaps my crippling procrastination? its absolutely abysmal how shit at school i am now. i get two unconditional offers and suddenly i think i dont need to do a single bit of work (its kinda true tho) i only have three classes and in doing 1 and 1/2 of them. im not even bothering studying for prelims/exams whatever the fuck because im hopeless. theres no point because even if i do end up doing the exam and i fail theres absolutely no consequences because i have 0 shame. ill walk out of an exam i failed with my head held high because i know uni will be so much better - ill only have one subject, one i actually enjoy and want to do work for (only somewhat tho, my procrastination problems still carry through, im actually doing this instead of a 15 min thing for class but whatever) ill have a reduced working day, i can focus on just one subject, ill have other things to work on too like a part time (scary) and car (exciting) and ill get to meet new people that also want to learn spanish and are interested in it too, and i want to make more friends and i want to be more independent (moving out??? hopefully but also scary) 

i cant believe im actually at a point in my life where im actually interested in the future and want to live to see it (lol yeah) like i wonder what 13 yo me would think. even 15 yo me. i wonder how 20 yo me will look back on this. hi me if ur reading. do u have a s/o?? or new friends? how many new experiences have u had? are u comfortable in ur life? struggling ? happy? i hope ur happy coz u deserve to be. i deserve to be. i hope u have a good time reading these. i dont know if ill ever forget about this blog or not. what was i talking about tho. procrastination. its horrible, I hope u get that fixed pls tell me u do. also please tell me u get better at typing.  this has accidently turned into a speaking to ur future self thing. ill stop now. 

im a very good procrastinator. and my ability to actually focus on stuff has been getting comical. idk if its the pandemics fault or mine or schools but is a bloody issue and it needs to get better. i guess its coz i just have absolutely 0 energy do do what i need to or it just absolutely does not interest me to do it and i know theres absolutely no consequences to it looool. 

every now and then theres a day where i feel very unproductive and lazy and it feels like how it used to. a sort of growing annoyance at myself and feeling like a slug. idk some days i feel teleported back to like almost 4 years ago and idk what to do about it. i used to have a coping mechanism (?) where if i felt bad about stuff id just shower, wash my hair and put on new pjs and do something i wanted to do. it kinda put me in a clearer headspace and allowed be to get out of a slump for like 20 mins. u could call it self care or whatever but it genuinely was like washing the bad thoughts away and starting anew (is that the word) like i was able to think more rationally and get back into the semi real world but i was also doing it because i never used to have a proper shower routine, i used to go days without showering or getting out of bed for much and it kinda feels good to have this little reboot thing where i just shower to get me away from straying back there. 

idk. am i articulating well enough. ive written a lot i think. is there any more updates? nothing really apart from my growing disinterest in all things school lmao. anyway until next time i suppose (will probs be either never or like june lol)