#probably last 2022 team quote

[incorrect-prema]

Ralf: A mouse!

Jehan, pulling out a knife: Go back to where you came from or I'll stab you.

Dennis, pulling out a frying pan: It'll make a nice meal!

Arthur, giving the mouse cheese: You deserve a treat, little guy.

Ollie, gasping: It's Ratatouille!

Jak: His name is Remi, dummy.

Ralf: ...I was going to say to just trap it and throw it out the window... what is wrong with you people.

[ef-1]

insane rant under the cut 🫶

Daniel is obviously going through a #moment right now so I can't really speak for the other reputation era cullings (unfollowing people) but the only one I have 0 doubts about is Zak. like imagine having the kind of temperament & patience that would put saints to shame, playing the: no, it's fine. I'm unscathed, it's all business, I get it, the entirety of my career is just collateral damage and I’ll take that in stride and its fine!!!!!! part so! Well! Like!!!! Down to a T and your wretched, fugly fucking nightmare of an ex-boss won't shut up about you, wont stop making sly, unnecessary comments unprompted- when discussing his own drivers, when discussing other teams, when discussing other fucking racing series. And you've been gone for 9 months and it's fine. You're determined to make it fine even when it's not. You're fine because it's a cut-throat sport. You're fine because you HAVE to be fine, there was never an alternative. Fine is survival. You're fine because you've been through this before (except you haven't) when you left Red Bull and Christian, jilted, said [and these are direct quotes despite how insane they seem]

“I have to admit it’s kind of been like trying to convince a girl to go out with you that’s been pretty reticent. It’s felt like that." <insane btw

“In the end we gave Daniel everything he wanted and asked for and it still wasn’t enough.”

“We’ve bent over backwards to make it happen"

And Christian said all of that while you still had 4 more months with Red Bull left. And Christian was legitimately scorned (and, terribly, he may even had the right to be because he asked you to drive him on his wedding day and he bought your nephew the same car he bought his son and he still calls your wins his favourite races), he told people as much, probably let on more than he intended to when he told the media that you told him you’re leaving A DAY before renault anounced your contract, and the proposition was so preposterous he thought you were provoking him. And he said you're running from a fight and he snidely said he still doesn't understand why you left in 2018 and 2019 and 2020 and 2021 and 2022 (<no this is not a joke) but Christian also congratulated you when you ended Renault’s 10 year podium drought, said the podium is where you belong. He congratulated you on your second podium even though that race ended in a dnf for Max and Alex finished last.

You’re fine because you’ve been through this before (except you haven’t) when you left Renault. Cyril doesn’t speak to you for weeks after the announcement is made and when he does speak TO you and ABOUT you it’s acrimonious. But his vitriol is laced with praise, he tells the media you’ll regret leaving a team which has been made more competitive by your own labours and when you’re out of his team and he’s out of the sport he meets up with you to deliver on a drunken bet made in 2019.

And you're media trained, and chillingly diplomatic for someone with such a carefree brand and you wear the horrors so fucking well, you wear it elegantly, with grace. And you shake hands and you smile when you’re supposed to and everything is made fine by the sheer force of will. Until you’re injured. Actually injured, less than 24 hours after you told the media that you didn’t need the break, that you were sick with this ubiquitous eagerness to be back all throughout summer. And you’re out again. And all your fugly fucking rat of an ex boss had to do was not use the injury that will put you out for at least 3 weeks as a vicious one liner to undermine someone else. I have no doubt that’s what did it for him :))))))

[thistledropkick]

Last year, Kasai Jun was interviewed as part of the interview project DEATH, which interviews various people about death in order to find a better understanding of how to live and appreciate life.

I thought it was a fascinating interview, so I decided to translate it.

Please go visit the original interview - the photography accompanying it is absolutely gorgeous.

Also, please don't repost this whole translation elsewhere. If you want to quote an excerpt of my translation for something, please make sure to also credit the original team behind this interview and link back to the original interview.

Deathmatch Fighter Kasai Jun - 4/27/2022

“It’s not a deathmatch until you return home alive” The reason this 47 year old Charisma Wrestler continues to shed blood in the ring

Within pro wrestling, there is a genre called “deathmatch.”

An extreme set of rules that allows deadly weapons and has no disqualifications. Brawls with fluorescent light tubes, and dives onto barbed wire boards. Without hesitation, wrestlers stab their opponents in the head with fistfuls of bamboo skewers. When wound-covered bodies violently collide, shards of glass and sprays of blood shower the ringside seats.

Upon first seeing it, surely everyone thinks “Why are these people hurting each other like this?” “What the hell am I looking at?”

This is the world of the man known as “Charisma,” professional Wrestler Kasai Jun of the independent promotion Pro Wrestling Freedoms.

In November of 2009, he had a “razorblade board plus alpha deathmatch” against Ito Ryuji in Tokyo’s Korakuen Hall. Kasai, 35 years old at the time, dove from the second floor balcony, a fall of 6 meters, onto a table, aiming for his opponent Ito.

Afterwards they continued to fight with various weapons, in a match that concluded 15 seconds before the 30 minute time limit. That year, this match was awarded the Best Bout award. And Kasai, the winner of that match, became a living legend overnight.

12 years have passed since then. Kasai is now 47 years old, and he continues to rule over the world of deathmatch wrestling. Under the weight of many literal life-or-death battles, Kasai’s body no longer moves the way it did when he was young. Even so, why does he continue to set foot in such a dangerous place?

We asked “Charisma of Deathmatch” - a man who makes the crowd go mad in the space between life and death - about his views on death and on life.

Desiring to truly feel alive

- Normally, people try to avoid pain and suffering. Kasai, why do you continue to shed blood in the ring?

Hahaha. From an outside perspective, you must really wonder “Why do you keep doing something so painful” huh? That’s a normal way to feel. But from the wrestler’s perspective, it’s completely different.

In your normal daily life, do you ever feel like “Ahh, it’s so glorious to be alive”? You’d almost never unconsciously blurt out something like that.

But in a life or death battle in a deathmatch ring, after you step down from that ring, that’s exactly what you feel. “Ahh, I’m alive. I’m so grateful to be alive.” Because of that, I can’t quit.

Mountain climbers and stuntmen probably feel like this too, don’t they. Stepping into a situation where their life could end, and returning home safely. I wonder if they’re searching for that feeling of being “truly alive.”

This feeling is passed on to the audience too. Fans often tell me “Watching Kasai Jun’s deathmatch gives me the strength to continue forward.”

They say things like, “I’m being bullied at school so I wasn’t going to go any more, but now I feel like I can keep going.” Or, “It’s exhausting to keep going to work, but after seeing Kasai persevere while shedding blood in the ring, I can persevere and keep going to work.”

Recently I can’t do this much because of covid, but in the past when I’d sell merch, fans would often say things like this to me.

Because of this, it seems to me that deathmatch wrestling is simultaneously a way for wrestlers to feel truly alive, and a way for those who watch it to feel more positively about living.

- Because of the sensational way “death” is shown in the ring?

Probably, yeah. Because it looks like we’re doing something really painful.

But don’t get me wrong. We aren’t in a particular hurry to die. And we aren’t wasting our lives either. What I always say is, “It’s not a deathmatch until you return alive.”

[Note from me - this phrase (生きて帰るまでがデスマッチ) is a play on a well-known Japanese phrase 家に帰るまでが遠足 “The field trip isn’t over until we return home.” This started as something a teacher would say to students in their care, and Kasai has altered it into his motto towards both himself and other deathmatch wrestlers.]

- It’s not a deathmatch until you return alive.

If you get in a ring where you might die or get seriously injured, and you do die, or you do get seriously injured, you’re no different than a rank amateur, right? But a guy who dives into a deadly dangerous situation and returns from that ring unharmed, he’s the absolute greatest and the absolute coolest.

Like a stuntman, right? If he returns home alive, people say “amazing,” but if he dies, he’s no longer a pro.

At 35 years old, his view on life did a complete 180 during a match

But, when I was young, I thought about it completely differently. I never thought “I’m grateful to be alive.” In the ring, I did dangerous stuff and defeated my opponents. I just thought of it as my job.

The more dangerous stuff I did, the more people said “Kasai is amazing!” That felt really great. Every time I stepped into the right I thought, if something goes wrong and I die I guess that’s how it goes. I thought “Deathmatches should be a memento mori.”

- What caused such a big change in your values?

That match against Ito Ryuji in Korakuen, in 2009. It changed my mental state by 180 degrees.

The truth is, I went into that match thinking “This is my last match before I retire.” Because it was my last match, I would do everything I wanted to do. Win or lose, I went into the ring thinking “I’ll retire.”

But during the match, my feelings completely changed. I thought “If I quit like this, I’ll be half-dead.” There’s nothing else I want to do, and I’ve never felt joy like this anywhere else. It was just too much fun.

So, after the match ended with 15 seconds remaining, I announced my decision to continue wrestling. “I was thinking of retiring but, I’m gonna keep going.” That’s what changed.

- Since your values have changed so significantly from when you thought it’d be good to die in the ring, what’s your “ideal death” now?

Spending the day with my family as I always do, watching tv with an after-dinner drink as I always do, getting comfy in my futon as I always do, and passing away. That’s the best death, isn’t it.

I’ve said it before but, people who say “It’s my ambition to die in the ring” are just trying to look cool. For a pro, it all comes down to returning home alive. And so, I believe that when the life of Kasai Jun the human being comes to an end, Kasai Jun the wrestler will die as well. I want to be a pro wrestler until I die. That’s how I feel now.

When I was young, I thought the best time for a wrestler to retire was when he could still move, when people would say “It’s a shame, because there’s still more he can do.” But if that’s true, I’ve already missed my best time to retire.

Since I’ve come this far, maybe it’s better to keep doing this until my death. Since around the time I turned 40, I started thinking this way.

Gaining years = leveling up. I’ll reach my peak just before death.

- Since you’ve been doing this for so long, it’s inevitable that your body has become weaker. Kasai, how have you dealt with aging?

The word “elderly” is a concept created by human beings, isn’t it? Since that’s the case, I believe it’s something we can absolutely overcome. I don’t think increasing in age is the same as becoming elderly.

Look, it’s true that my physical stamina has decreased and my muscles have gotten weaker than they were when I was younger. But my will and my spirit have continued to grow. Instead of just breaking even, I think I’ve leveled up. 47 years old is level 47. I now see growing older as a positive, like leveling up every year.

Because of that, my peak has yet to come. I’ll reach my peak just before I die. I’ll be at my strongest just before my death. That’s the ideal I envision for myself.

There was a time when I felt insecure about my age. When I hit my mid 30s, I hated that my body was becoming weaker.

But then, while drinking at home and watching a documentary on TV about (rock musician) Yazawa Eikichi, I realized something. “If you think about it, uncool young people are uncool, and cool guys are cool even if they’re old.” Since then, my way of thinking changed. I started calling getting older “leveling up” at around that time.

[Note from me: Suzuki Minoru also refers to getting one year older as “leveling up” in the exact same way. They are friends, so I assume Suzuki got it from Kasai.]

- I'm surprised that a pro athlete who uses his body as a weapon would think of aging in that way.

Pro wrestling and deathmatch are unique among sports. Unlike say, track and field, or swimming, it isn’t a competition where every second counts. I can’t move the way I could when I was young any more, but through my facial expressions, pauses during matches, and so on, I have many ways to express myself.

A guy can be handsome, macho, with great muscles, and completely suck as a wrestler. In contrast, a guy like me who’s ugly, short, and middle-aged, can get support from the fans. It’s a completely different genre, and that’s what makes pro wrestling so interesting.

- What about your emotional struggles? In your documentary film you said you were having some difficulty maintaining your motivation, which you described as “Deathmatch Erectile Dysfunction”

Yeah, well, that can definitely be a problem. When you’re young, you’ve just got piles of hopes and dreams and things you want to do. But as the years go on, and as you accomplish those things, you can kind of get lost.

What’s helped me increase my motivation has been the existence of people who make me think “I absolutely don’t wanna lose to this guy” or “I don’t want this guy to take all the best stuff for himself” In my case, for example, that’s been (fellow PW Freedoms deathmatch wrestler) Takeda Masashi. Or, although he’s from another organization, New Japan Pro Wrestling’s El Desperado.

That’s why for the past 3 or 4 years, I’ve been asking people to “stimulate me.” I want intimidating people to keep approaching me. Well, on the other hand, if they take the most delicious part for themselves, that’s a problem.

A fear of death led to a “selfish life”

- Incidentally, perhaps it’s too late at this point, but do you worry about being injured or dying?

I said it already but, “It’s not a deathmatch until you return alive.” Since I’m a pro, I have the skills required to do this without death or injury. 

But, it’d be a lie to say “I’m not afraid.” Even now, for several days before a match I get so stressed that I can’t sleep. Despite how I look, I get plenty scared. Much of my life has been driven by a strong fear of death.

- How do you mean?

It sounds silly, but when I was in grade school I believed in “The Prophecies of Nostradamus.” Have you ever heard of it? “In the year 1999, all of humanity will be destroyed.” Every night I shook with fear in my futon, thinking that my life would end at the age of 24.

Propelled by that fear, I concluded, “If the earth is gonna get destroyed anyway, I should quit studying. Instead I should use the rest of my remaining lifetime to do stuff that I like.” I completely quit studying, and instead spent all my time watching pro wrestling, which I loved.

Conversely, my fear of death also led me to become a pro wrestler. After graduating high school, I got a job in Tokyo as a security guard, but I gave into temptation and visited brothels daily. One day I happened to be reading a magazine with an HIV checklist inside, and almost every item applied to me.

At that time, I still thought “AIDS = death” so I thought “Oh, this is AIDS.” “Oh, this is how I’ll die.”

Luckily, when I got tested the result was negative, but after preparing myself for death, I thought “I really should do what I want” and knocked on the door of Big Japan Pro Wrestling. My life has always been influenced in this way.

- I get the impression that many wrestlers die at an early age. Since then, your fear must have increased.

Nah, that’s not really true. I’m surprisingly practical about the deaths of others. I just accept it, like “That’s the kind of life you lived.” I suspect my fear of death isn’t a fear of death itself, but a fear of becoming nothing.

- A fear of becoming nothing.

I’m no (actor and spiritualist) Tanba Tetsuro, but if after you die, you go to the spirit world, and cross the Sanzu river, that’s not all that scary is it? I wouldn’t go so far as to say “it’s fine if I die” but there’s some kind of hope or meaning. But if “After death, you become complete nothingness” “After death you feel no joy or sadness” I think that’s really scary.

But these days, I don’t experience that fear of death as much as I used to. If after this interview a dump truck hits me and I die, I wouldn’t have any regrets. I could say I did what I wanted to do.

Pro wrestling is a business where you depend on your popularity with an audience, but I’ve never tried to flatter the audience to get sales or support, or thought about how to increase my popularity. Ultimately, Kasai Jun puts himself first. I’m my own number one.

To die without regrets is to win at life

- But, if someone wanted to imitate your way of life, I think most people would be profoundly afraid of not getting by financially, or of being rejected by society. Why do you think you remain stoic in the face of such fears?

What’s there worth imitating about me? If you’re selfish like me and you can change it, you should want to!

But, this is probably related to that “fear of becoming nothing” I mentioned earlier. Ever since I was little, I’ve thought stuff like “This whole world isn’t real” and “Maybe all of this is just a dream.”

Nothing in this world is certain. Since that’s the case, all you have are your own body and your own feelings. In short, I don’t believe in anything but myself, so I put myself first.

- So in order to “feel truly alive” you throw yourself into the painful world of deathmatch wrestling, which leads us back to where we started.

That’s right. I guess you could say that pain is the only thing I believe.

But when I was young, I did understand the fear of not making enough money to survive. When I was around 30 and my son had just been born, I was seized by that fear.

Really, I was broke, and I couldn’t even pay into the National Pension Fund like I was supposed to, so I went to the ward office and said “I do intend to pay, so please wait a little.” I thought to myself, “Living is so expensive and so difficult.”

- A deathmatch fighter scary enough to quiet a crying child, with such an everyday problem.

Three years after my debut, when I was around 27, I was badly injured. I quit Big Japan, and after a year’s absence, I transferred to a different group called Zero-One.

Zero-One was founded by ex-New Japan Pro Wrestler Hashimoto Shinya, and the pay was good compared to Big Japan, and they held a lot of shows, so I could wrestle frequently. The environment there was very pleasant.

But, due to the policy of the organization, I couldn’t do the deathmatches that I love. During that time as a “salaryman wrestler,” I survived, but I think deathmatch fighter Kasai Jun, pro wrestler Kasai Jun, was completely dead.

“I really should do the pro wrestling I want to do,” I thought, and I quit Zero-One, and persisted with the pro wrestling that I love. Maybe that’s why I feel like I can now “die without regrets.”

Ultimately, if you live your own life as you wish, and think “I have no regrets” when you die, you win. Maybe people today have lost sight of the essence of what it means to live. It’s fine to work hard at your job, but if you’re spending every day miserably, is that kind of life really okay with you?

I’d rather live for 20 years and laugh every day than live for 100 years and never smile. If you’ve lived for 100 years and never laughed, that’s the same as being dead, isn’t it?

~

写真：本永創太 ~ Photographer: Motonaga Souta

執筆：鈴木陸夫 ~ Author: Suzuki Atsuo

編集：日向コイケ（Huuuu）~ Editor: Hinata Koike (Huuuu)

[russilton]

i know you've probably answered this a thousand times but what is it that makes gewis what it is to you? other than obviously the respect and a tad of idolisation sometimes i feel like they have the teammate dynamic that most is what it seems like from first glance. but i want to get it, because i want to savour their current dynamic before it's changed forever.

Alrighty firstly anon I apologise for making you wait like a week for this answer, it wasn’t one I wanted to rush so I sat on it for a second. (Edit: whoops I rambled for an hour straight, sorry dude, that’s Friday night stream of consciousness for you)

This is just my personal interpretation of Gewis as a dynamic and pairing, other people might not agree, but it’s why I’ve been here for just over two years now, and what I always end up coming back to with every interview, video or quote—

It’s about Respect

You can say a lot about George now, he’s really filled out as a person as he settled into the top end of the grid— he’s found his rhythm, he’s started to experiment with personal independence and brand — but from day one at Williams let alone day one at Mercedes, George has always respected and admired Lewis. He has never been quiet about that fact. In fact he goes above and beyond to be loud about it, not just as a regular expected teammate commitment, but as a true fan.

No one else with a foot on the grid has said the words “greatest of all time” about Lewis as much as George has. It’s not even close, and it came long before George was Lewis’ teammate- the posts of George whooping away in the Singapore 2018 pit lane with the team, or even sitting on Lewis’ side of the garage in 2016 in Abu Dhabi stand as a testament to that.

But beyond that George has also expanded on why he finds Lewis so important to the sport, George has talked about both lewis’ driving skill, his role in shaping British young drivers, and the part Lewis plays in supporting minorities and charities. George was there in 2020 kneeling with Lewis without a blink, he stood up and was one of the first of the drivers to call out the abuse Lewis was receiving from piquet as unacceptable, and what first endeared George to me— he was the only driver at the time to loudly and purposefully call AD21 utterly unacceptable from the second it happened, without waiting for what media would tell him was okay to say.

Then he got into the Mercedes car, and it never faltered. In early 2022 there were constant snips from interviewers asking George how he felt about going against Lewis, if he reveled in scoring more than him, and every time George shot them down, sometimes with a barely concealed eye roll, and proceeded to speak about how Lewis was never going to stay this way, because he’s Lewis Hamilton.

George is no saint, he and Lewis both had their faltering moments, where their races didn’t line up or one of them got the better of the other- but it never lasted. They’d shove each other on track and the next week we’d find out they’d been to dinner in a pub together to talk it out. Strategy would go terribly and the post race interviews would be icy, and then two weeks later they’re talking about sitting in each others laps to sky dive, or going free diving together as a bonding activity. Even when it was horrible like Qatar 2023 you had Lewis diving in front of a camera to apologise for the incident and George falling into his arms looking like he’d been through hell and back without a second of hesitation. They are both so deeply human about each other.

And that leads me to Lewis. We often focus on George because frankly he’s got his heart on his sleeve. It’s easy to know how George feels and thinks and loves. It’s not easy with Lewis- especially if you aren’t looking. But as someone who dedicated far too much of his free time to reading what Lewis says, and archiving the things Lewis says about George, Lewis has said a lot more than people think.

He was reserved at first, for someone who makes his mark with Change, Lewis also doesn’t love it, and it also took him a WHILE to really befriend Valtteri as fully as we now appreciate. That will always be special to Lewis because Val was the stitches on an open wound. George is the physio. He is the next stage of recovery where you push yourself. It’s no surprise to anyone that Lewis wanted to stick with Val a little longer at first. But then he got George—

And it’s not appreciated just how much Lewis evidently threw himself into making George feel at home and listened to. He took George on trips that they’ve both mentioned but kept private. He sat him down to dinner with the team. They shared data and worked hand in hand to try their best to improve some dog shit cars. Lewis has even spoken about sharing set up data with George and working together where he wouldn’t have with other teammates. At the end of 2021 Lewis mused that he’s been trying hard to become a better person, a better teammate, a process he started with Val and put into full force with George. He ignored old impulses and sat hip to hip with this new guy who he watched develop from an awkward gp3 rookie to his teammate. He spoke often about how George wasn’t really new, he was always part of the team, just learning to lead, and Lewis was there to make that as smooth as he could

He saw George as a future for the team, and as much as I avoid thinking about it Lewis has spoke about that, even when he decided to move, he called George a perfect fit for the future of a team he will always adore as his family. There’s no shortage of evidence that despite his best effort to seem detached and private from the grid, Lewis has cared about and supported George’s growth. From dorky Instagram stories of George after his first pole and win, congratulatory comments and hugs, telling anyone who asked that he wanted to be part of George’s growth and future wherever that took him. From big things like dragging George onto the pit fence after their first podium together in France 22 to present him to a crowd, to little things like crossing his fingers over his heart and ignoring an interviewer to chant “go on buddy” watching George qualify in vegas last year. Lewis has been there for it all.

From Sakhir to Singapore Lewis has stood George up after his most painful moments and pushed him to keep going. When all eyes were on George for crashing in Singapore, Lewis was speaking to anyone who would listen about how anyone could have done that including himself, and that he extended support to George without acting as if George wasn’t strong enough to handle it alone. Lewis has always approached George with Respect foremost, and support if he wanted it.

Lewis and George are such and intertwined concept that it’s like a Pandora’s box.

When you stare at the face value idea, they couldn’t seem more different. Cool, older, fashionable athlete with a record so long it would take years to break down, and an awkward younger team shirt wearing driver in his early prime who is only just starting to make a name for himself.

But you pry that lid up and you have an ever expanding web of similarities and dedication. Both of them from what the racing world would label as not well off families who faced and absolute mountain to get into f1, yes Lewis SIGNIFICANTLY more than George ever would, but George himself has marked Lewis as the example he could look to of a British driver like him who still made himself champion without a family connection or money to grease the wheels. I would put money down it was Lewis’ tales of how Ron Dennis supported him, that lead George to approach Toto for the same support when he was facing the end of his career. Lewis went to Mercedes, so that’s where George set his dreams on, because if it was good enough for Lewis and Michael it was what he wanted. You have George in Sakhir cramming bruised and bleeding feet into Lewis’ shoes to try and to fill them for even a second and cementing his future with Lewis’ blessing on his back.

It may seem harder to equalise the depth of George’s hero worship in Lewis— it’s why a lot of people don’t love the ship and I get that— but for me when you look at all Lewis went through in terms of teammates and the hellish experience of Alonso and Nico to the good but temperamental experiences of Jenson and Valtteri— Lewis’ time with George represents growth into something better, something he always said he wanted to be, the driver who supports others. George didn’t ever roll over and give Lewis what he wanted to please him, he pushed Lewis to the limit of his skills and by Lewis’ own admission, sparked a fire in him to keep going harder and higher. To Lewis, George is a jolt on a fire that had been cruelly starved of oxygen, a glimpse of a flame to follow, so different to himself but not different at all.

They are parralells as much as much as they are opposites. Lewis is the teammate George always prayed for, the one he wanted, and the only one he wanted, and for every second he had him George soaked that influence up like sponge. He changed his fashion to try to stick out a little more, he started picking charities he wanted to support because that’s what Lewis did, he decided to make his mark by joining Seb in the GPDA because it’s where he felt he could make the biggest change. George made Lewis his benchmark not as something to beat, but as a target to aspire to. If he was competing with Lewis, then he knew he’d worked hard enough and got it right.

In comparison George wasn’t necessarily what Lewis wanted, but he was what Lewis Needed. In the wake of the worst disrespect the sport could fathom, Lewis got a teammate that would support him at every turn off the grid, but fight him clean and fair on the grid. He got someone who respected him beyond anything, while also helping to put the energy back in him to race and fight and grab victory with his teeth. He got a test in the principals he wanted to become, a test that rewarded him with adoration.

George and Lewis are dawn and dusk, different, but ultimately bridges to each other. They love so fiercely, intensely, and with joy, that it just feels impossible to me not to look at them and fall into an endless fall of what ifs. They stand alone without need for each other- but they also make each other better

[anonduck07]

QUALI RECAP: Chinese GP 2024

Ft. Nico Rosberg quotes because he's commentating again (scroll to the bottom bit)

Out in Q1

P20: Logan Sargeant, who spun out and caused a yellow flag

P19: Yuki Tsunoda, whose DRS wasn't working until the last 6 minutes of Q1

"I mean, there's definitely something going on, I can't be fucking 19. Honestly, the lap was pretty good." - Yuki Tsunoda, Team radio

P18: Lewis Hamilton goes too aggressively in his final lap and exits Q1 for the first time since Jeddah 2022

"When I was making the set-up changes I was like, it can't get any worse surely- and it did." - Lewis Hamilton

P17: Kevin Magnussen

P16: Zhou Guanyu, who placed an impressive P9 for the sprint, gets knocked down and out by Charles Leclerc, to the frustration of his home city

Out in Q2

P15: Pierre Gasly, who makes it into Q2 for the first time this year

P14: Alex Albon, who has exited Q2 in every race this season

P13: Esteban Ocon

P12: Daniel Ricciardo made it into Q2, out-qualifying Tsunoda for the first time this year. He had a minor setback when he reported smoke coming from his breaks in Q1, and wasn't able to advance to Q3

P11: Lance Stroll

Q3 results

P10: Valterri Bottas, who is on an absolute roll with his pace in China, qualifying P9 during the sprint

P9: Nico Hulkenberg, also managing to pull the HAAS to decent results

P8: George Russell

P7: Carlos Sainz, who crashed in Q2 (red flag) but came back on track in time to place third fastest, apparently struggling in Q3

P6: Charles Leclerc, who struggled a bit as well during Q3

P5: Oscar Piastri

P4: Lando Norris, who got pole for the sprint only to finish an unfortunate P6

P3: Fernando Alonso, oversteering a little in his final lap and just getting knocked down by Perez

P2: Checo Perez, making yet another front row lock-out for Red Bull

P1: Max Verstappen, taking Red Bull's 100th pole position, his first pole in China, and becoming the first driver to qualify P1 in all 5 starting races of the calender since Mika Hakkinen.

Bonus Nico Rosberg Commentary

"It's a super difficult one isn't it, for Mercedes. Lewis has put them into quite the difficult position there." (About what Mercedes will do after Lewis leaves)

"Lewis, you know, the 7 time world champion. That's a mistake probably that should be avoidable."

"Lewis tends to say we have so different set-ups and such a big car difference and that's kind of his excuse this year…and he's gone again for that"

"I'm happy to appear on a statistic. I don't appear much very often anymore 'cause it's so long ago." (The statistic being previous poles in Shanghai)

"I know that because he [Fernando Alonso]'s my rival in those statistics. That's why I know his numbers."

[rickybaby]

I read his interview and am glad he has the passion to be at a top team. But for retirement, I want him to be very proud of himself because the success he has has is valuable and not inferior to anyone else. f he doesn't finish his career at redbull then I want him to know that he did a really great job and is a truly admirable athlete. I don't know what he was feeling after Checo's contract was announced. But I just want him to know that no matter what team he's with, his fans are still very proud of him. Even if others don't appreciate and look down on him, his evidence and success in this sport are clear. I love him very much and will probably stop watching f1 because I watch this sport because of him.

Okay, I know there’s apparently some quote from Daniel that everybody is losing their minds over, but I haven’t really had time to read it properly and all I’m going to say is that Daniel has been saying the same thing for weeks now - that he knows he needs to improve his performance, that he is aware that nothing is guaranteed for his future in F1 and that he’s not concentrating on 2025 for the moment.

Nothing has changed for him with checo’s renewal. He was probably aware of all the details well before the rest of us and it’s Daniel, he would have dealt with whatever disappointment he possibly could have regarding that privately and quietly. Him being realistic doesn’t mean he’s lost hope or given up or anything - he’s the guy who didn’t even give up till his last race in 2022 when he wasn’t even sure he was ever going to come back

And yes, his career deserves to be celebrated whether he’s staying or leaving and we’ll always be loud and proud fans ❤️

[richkidcityfriends]

your opinion on 2022 winter Olympics

okay so im assuming this is only about figure skating and i mean oml there was so much going on. below the cut bc i think this is gonna be long.

okay so FIRST OF ALL the kamila valieva situation. where to begin. (as a note: none of this is a statement on her except in relation to the 2022 olys)

the positive test being from rusnats and only being found out in february is weird. idk if we ever found out exactly why that happened? but i can only assume it was meddling from the russian end.

i think the media response was cruel, and i think part of that was a lot of people were trying to talk about it without knowing the full situation, but the amount of vicious hate and blame kamila received was unjustified. she was fifteen years old and in an abusive situation, to what extent she knew about the doping is irrelevant in my mind, the blame falls on the adults in power (mainly her coaches). eteri tutberidze is notoriously controlling and abusive, and there is no way any of that was happening without her being responsible. she controls the amount of WATER her skaters can drink. skating at that level, especially in russia, your coach is practically your primary guardian; if eteri told her to dope then there was pretty much nothing she could do. only eteri girls were ever going to go to the olympics, if she switched coaches that would have ended her life's goal (and the way they train is so all-consuming that to not get to the olympics at all would have felt life shattering).

should she have been been allowed to skate? i dont think so. at least partially bc it essentially proves to coaches that you can "get away with" doping as long as the people you are drugging are children. obviously having an athlete who has taken performance enhancing drugs is unfair to everyone else, but that goes without saying. HOWEVER i do understand the worry that the test could have been wrong or she might not have known, either way it would have been unfair to her. (the "irreparable harm" quote is always taken out of context - they meant that if she skated and was found guilty they could strip her of the medal, but if she was banned and found innocent there was no fixing it). ultimately though i think letting her skate was the wrong decision (especially since the case STILL hasnt been settled).

i dont think eteri told her to throw the free to make sure the others got their medals, because she looked so traumatised afterwards and eteri reacted so badly (ive never understood this theory tbh)

that was the first scandal from the olys but oml it was definitely not the last. there was so much going on. olympics from hell. lets talk about the womens podium.

(but first a note on ultra c elements: do i think the sport is suffering because of the increased value placed on jumps? yes. do i think artistry is important? absolutely. do i think there is a conversation to be had about the morals of training young children (especially girls) to do dangerous jumps that cause permanent damage to their bodies? one hundred fucking percent. things need to change in this sport. however. i will make repeated references to whether or not someone is jumping ultra c when discussing the podium, because that is how its scored atm, and i do think that they aren’t irrelevant (it is a sport, athletic feats are also important) just please please know that i am also taking artistry into account its just harder to objectively phrase in a short paragraph and this is already long enough). okay caveat over. please no one attack me. lets go.

look i KNOW the most pressing question is do i think anna deserved gold HOWEVER. have you considered. did anna deserve to be sent to the olympics at all. and this makes me insane because like?? skating like she did at the olys?? yeah she probably deserved to be there!! so it kinda seems mean to talk about this but ALSO i feel like we definitely have to not forget it so. the russian olympic team was pretty much based off of the podium for rusnats, which that year was kamila, sasha, anna. but anna in third place was veryyy controversial bc like. she had no ultra c elements at all (and her tech is DODGY so without them it gets even harder to justify her high scores) but elizaveta had a triple axel (and better tech) so a LOT of people thought that she should have come third, but rusfed just wanted to send anna to the olys instead (which i pretty much agree with).

but okay whether you like it or not she DID make the olympic team so. womens olympic podium. a grenade of a question. everyone is allowed their own opinions on it im not saying anyone is wrong if they think differently!!!!! also im only going to talk about the top five bc this is already wayyy too long.

i know on tiktok a while back the popular opinion was that wakaba should’ve been gold, which i don’t really agree with, however she absolutely should not have been fifth. no doubt in my mind she should have been at LEAST fourth, if not third. kamila should have been behind her i don’t care how many quads she was attempting, she fell like five times. she got through on reputation and the eteri bonus alone. kaori did skate cleanly, but with no triple c, and her tech isn’t great on some of her jumps, so wakaba (who fell on a jump, but had a triple axel, and generally better tech and artistry imo) could have come third and i would have been happy. anna i go back and forth on, because her artistry is alright, and technically she does jump quads, but her tech skills are SO questionable (her quad lutz is neither a quad nor a lutz). the tech bar for quads is lower than for triples, and i do kinda think that makes sense, but her quad tech is worse than most of the other quad jumping girls so it’s a fair comparison. i don’t think she deserved gold, but im never fully sure about silver either. honestly her, wakaba, and kaori can fight it out for second/third/fourth. in terms of actual skaters i like wakaba best, in terms of who performed best on the day i think you could make a compelling argument for any order.

that of course leaves sasha in first place. i know she fell on her triple axel in the short, but the only people who didn’t fall at all were anna (i’ll talk about her last) and kaori, and while triple c elements aren’t the only important thing, the skater who fell on one and landed five kind of has to be above the skater who attempted none at all, imo, so that puts kaori out of the running. wakaba fell once as well, and she definitely has the edge on artistry, but i don’t think sashas artistry was as bad as a lot of people say, especially in her short, so i don’t think thats quite enough to put wakaba ahead of sasha overall. sasha’s tech skills were so much higher than the rest of the skaters that i think it would be almost impossible to bridge that gap with artistry alone. lastly theres anna, who ofc actually won the ogm. two clean skates, slightly better artistry, much worse tech (i know sasha’s tech isn’t perfect either, but she’s definitely better – id say thanks to plushenko). annas tech should have been called, if not her edges then at least for prerotation. sasha fell on a triple axel and anna landed a double in the short, sasha landed five quads and anna landed two in the free. taking into account how poor her quad tech is, i don’t think that her artisty is enough to pass sasha.

however!!!! again i want to reiterate!!!!! everyone is allowed their own opinions on this!!! i do not give a damn if you think that anastasiia shabotova should have come first!!!! go you!!! to each their own <3

now for something that i do think you can wrong about. the reaction to sashas reaction to the scores was appalling. she was seventeen years old (a CHILD) in an extremely high stress situation and had been told by her (abusive, manipulative) coaches that if she landed all five quads she would win, and when this turned out to be untrue she got upset and had what was clearly a panic attack, asked not to be filmed and was ignored by every cameraman in the area, had to immediately go in front of millions of people while still being a mess, and was then attacked from all angles for being “ungrateful” and “showing bad sportsmanship.” show some empathy. (especially ppl who are still giving out about it now “on behalf of anna” when they seemed to be at least friendly again as soon as the very next day)

OKAY WE’RE ALMOST DONE i mostly only follow women’s so the rest of this is going to be brief

sui/han deserved ogm, my sister and i were rooting for miura/kihara to do well but we knew there was no chance for a medal. loving seeing them do so well rn.

nathan chen’s costume was ridiculous. last time i said my nathan chen take i got eaten alive on tiktok so im not gonna say much about him. he did deserve gold tho.

scoring felt harsh on yuzuru. wish he’d gotten another ogm but it wasn’t meant to be. im glad he got to attempt the quadruple axel at the olympics at least.

papadakis/cizeron ogm deserved.

oh MY god i forgot about the team event. pls someone save me. im so sorry i know no one wants this much. this isn’t even the worst i can do. i have talked at my friends for hours straight before about figure skating. i cant help it i have no control. we are going to ignore the team event okay. Just give them their medals. pls. i beg. they still don’t have their medals. i know it sucks for the rest of the russian team if they lose the gold bc kamila was stripped but you have to give the rest of them their medals.

anyway if you made it until the end here is a gold star ⭐ i don’t know how you did it.

[slythereen]

Hi! Sorry I wasn’t more clear.

Being a Charles fan I actually have nothing nice to say about the clown team. I just meant it more like Newey is not going to Ferrari because of Hamilton?

Speculation has always been since he’s joining then maybe there would be new talent in engineering or something, which I don’t think it’s happening. Two of the reasons why Ferrari has trouble in attracting new talent (from my very superficial point of view) is they are based in Italy, compared to a lot of teams based in the UK, and is really more of a state-owned institute than a race team in terms of change and efficiency. And even though there’s Fernando, but this move with the huge salary and financial backing promised for his over projects looks much more like it’s not going to be longer than 3(2+1) years. Why would engineers move all the way just to work with him for 2-3 years. And I remember reading about anti-poaching in his current contract too, so when people were excited for Mercedes talent, it’s probably not happening.

But did Newey once say he wants to work with Hamilton? Right now google only has how they are going to be at Ferrari next year(maybe). If there was then I shall concede Newey is amongst those that have always dreamed to work for Ferrari and Hamilton.

Sorry I ranted way too long. <333333

these are good points! and frankly you probably know the situation better than me, as i’m still catching up on the historical stuff and some of the… intra-team dynamics? historical dynamics?

i totally agree that ferrari is lewis’s retirement plan btw. i mean, that contract really is perfectly packaged to set him up to fulfill a dream (driving for ferrari) and then to swan off into ambassadorship with class and a good bow out. which is actually a VERY GOOD POINT regarding newey, as i hadn’t considered that! my best guess would be that newey is looking to retire soon (or now) too (and all of his recent interviews lean that way, so one last short term project with LH helping get ferrari back to excellence would be a nice send off for newey.

that being said, i frequently forget how delayed f1 development is. like, some of the poached talent ferrari is bringing in is garden leaved until 2026. newey would be working on the 2026 car — not even 2025! LH himself is out of reach until next season. it’s kind of wild to me how one bad year (cough, 2022) can set you back SO badly, because these problems can’t be fixed in a season or with any speed whatsoever (and then you get 2023…). so. it’s very possible the short term project couldn’t be very short term at all to be meaningful, which means not much of a quick little ferrari chapter before retiring peacefully.

also: yes, regarding the quote! newey said something along the lines of how he has three main regrets looking at his career, one being to work with lewis hamilton and the other to work for ferrari. (i forget what the third was because frankly it wasn’t as relevant to me 💀) it is somewhat recent i think? two months? it was circulating around during the LH to ferrari rumors because ppl were saying he could get 2/3. or maybe right after the LH to ferrari confirmation.

let me look (i think it’s around here somewhere) & will toss into the replies if i find it b/c mobile is evil and will eat this draft if i tab out to find it

[anniekoh]

elsewhere on the internet: AI and advertising

Bubble Trouble (about AIs trained on AI output and the impending model collapse) (Ed Zitron, Mar 2024)

A Wall Street Journal piece from this week has sounded the alarm that some believe AI models will run out of "high-quality text-based data" within the next two years in what an AI researcher called "a frontier research problem."  Modern AI models are trained by feeding them "publicly-available" text from the internet, scraped from billions of websites (everything from Wikipedia to Tumblr, to Reddit), which the model then uses to discern patterns and, in turn, answer questions based on the probability of an answer being correct. Theoretically, the more training data that these models receive, the more accurate their responses will be, or at least that's what the major AI companies would have you believe. Yet AI researcher Pablo Villalobos told the Journal that he believes that GPT-5 (OpenAI's next model) will require at least five times the training data of GPT-4. In layman's terms, these machines require tons of information to discern what the "right" answer to a prompt is, and "rightness" can only be derived from seeing lots of examples of what "right" looks like. ... One (very) funny idea posed by the Journal's piece is that AI companies are creating their own "synthetic" data to train their models, a "computer-science version of inbreeding" that Jathan Sadowski calls Habsburg AI.  This is, of course, a terrible idea. A research paper from last year found that feeding model-generated data to models creates "model collapse" — a "degenerative learning process where models start forgetting improbable events over time as the model becomes poisoned with its own projection of reality."

...

The AI boom has driven global stock markets to their best first quarter in 5 years, yet I fear that said boom is driven by a terrifyingly specious and unstable hype cycle. The companies benefitting from AI aren't the ones integrating it or even selling it, but those powering the means to use it — and while "demand" is allegedly up for cloud-based AI services, every major cloud provider is building out massive data center efforts to capture further demand for a technology yet to prove its necessity, all while saying that AI isn't actually contributing much revenue at all. Amazon is spending nearly $150 billion in the next 15 years on data centers to, and I quote Bloomberg, "handle an expected explosion in demand for artificial intelligence applications" as it tells its salespeople to temper their expectations of what AI can actually do.  I feel like a crazy person every time I read glossy pieces about AI "shaking up" industries only for the substance of the story to be "we use a coding copilot and our HR team uses it to generate emails." I feel like I'm going insane when I read about the billions of dollars being sunk into data centers, or another headline about how AI will change everything that is mostly made up of the reporter guessing what it could do.

They're Looting the Internet (Ed Zitron, Apr 2024)

An investigation from late last year found that a third of advertisements on Facebook Marketplace in the UK were scams, and earlier in the year UK financial services authorities said it had banned more than 10,000 illegal investment ads across Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and TikTok in 2022 — a 1,500% increase over the previous year. Last week, Meta revealed that Instagram made an astonishing $32.4 billion in advertising revenue in 2021. That figure becomes even more shocking when you consider Google's YouTube made $28.8 billion in the same period . Even the giants haven’t resisted the temptation to screw their users. CNN, one of the most influential news publications in the world, hosts both its own journalism and spammy content from "chum box" companies that make hundreds of millions of dollars driving clicks to everything from scams to outright disinformation. And you'll find them on CNN, NBC and other major news outlets, which by proxy endorse stories like "2 Steps To Tell When A Slot Is Close To Hitting The Jackpot."  These “chum box” companies are ubiquitous because they pay well, making them an attractive proposition for cash-strapped media entities that have seen their fortunes decline as print revenues evaporated. But they’re just so incredibly awful. In 2018, the (late, great) podcast Reply All had an episode that centered around a widower whose wife’s death had been hijacked by one of these chum box advertisers to push content that, using stolen family photos, heavily implied she had been unfaithful to him. The title of the episode — An Ad for the Worst Day of your Life — was fitting, and it was only until a massively popular podcast intervened did these networks ban the advert.  These networks are harmful to the user experience, and they’re arguably harmful to the news brands that host them. If I was working for a major news company, I’d be humiliated to see my work juxtaposed with specious celebrity bilge, diet scams, and get-rich-quick schemes.

...

While OpenAI, Google and Meta would like to claim that these are "publicly-available" works that they are "training on," the actual word for what they're doing is "stealing." These models are not "learning" or, let's be honest, "training" on this data, because that's not how they work — they're using mathematics to plagiarize it based on the likelihood that somebody else's answer is the correct one. If we did this as a human being — authoritatively quoting somebody else's figures without quoting them — this would be considered plagiarism, especially if we represented the information as our own. Generative AI allows you to generate lots of stuff from a prompt, allowing you to pretend to do the research much like LLMs pretend to know stuff. It's good for cheating at papers, or generating lots of mediocre stuff LLMs also tend to hallucinate, a virtually-unsolvable problem where they authoritatively make incorrect statements that creates horrifying results in generative art and renders them too unreliable for any kind of mission critical work. Like I’ve said previously, this is a feature, not a bug. These models don’t know anything — they’re guessing, based on mathematical calculations, as to the right answer. And that means they’ll present something that feels right, even though it has no basis in reality. LLMs are the poster child for Stephen Colbert’s concept of truthiness.

[leqclerc]

Is there any "number 1" driver at any other team that's as disrespected as charles is by his own team??

I know the answer is no, because they won't even admit he's the number one despite him being miles clear of his teammate.

Like imagine any of the other teams posting about a race that their driver called the worst race ever for them and then changing the story to make it seem like it was the drivers fault for not being smart like their teammate and think of "the risky gamble" themselves and not the teams fault for fucking up.

Imagine any other team refusing to acknowledge any of their drivers great driving or overtaking at a race that the win was LITERALLY TAKEN AWAY FROM HIM and to this day have not mentioned it. If one of the merc drivers or mclaren or any other team managed that copse overtake that charles did, you'd best believe they'd have posted it multiple times. But nope, according to scuderia Ferrari, Charles leclerc did not partake in Silverstone 2022.

Imagine any other driver achieving one of the most prestigious accolades in f1, a grand slam, the first for your team in 12 years. The driver thats from your academy, one of your own, and you can't even acknowledge that with a measly post. Any other team would've rolled out the red carpet to post about an achievement like that.

It pisses me off so much that charles fans are called sensitive when we count social media posts, but how can we not be when we see the way he's constantly left out to dry on track, and disregarded off track (except of course when it comes to ice bath content) Like they could post carlos' Monaco p2 despite it being such a controversial outcome for the team, but they couldn't make a post about charles australia win. I won't even get into all the interviews by binnoto and Mekies last year when they couldn't even defend their driver after they fucked up. Poor boy really is taken for granted

Ferrari social media admin when it's time to post about Charles's achievements: I sleep

Ferrari social media admin when it's time to post Charles ice bath content: Real shit

Not sure what the social media "strategy" is and at this point I'm too afraid to ask 💀 By wanting to be as vague and uncontroversial and fair as possible, they actually create more discord between fan groups... If they decided that posting throwbacks to achievements from previous seasons is going to be a thing they do, they should execute it better. Because so far what they post vs what they don't has been incredibly arbitrary (not to mention polarizing). A grand slam weekend probably carries more significance and "value" than a P2 finish, but you get a post about the latter and not a word about the former. That was certainly a choice 🤔And then of course the quote Tweets which are just............. Lord give me strength 😭🙄

Idk, honestly, I'm so tired of their "How do you do, fellow kids?" memetastic #relatable Swiftie approach to social media that I mostly just elect to ignore them and not engage with most of the posts in that vein. 🤷🏻‍♀️ It's giving Ryanair Twt account energy where instead of addressing very real complaints they choose to ratio their own passengers in the most obnoxious way possible...

[chussyracing]

Hi, I was wondering, and honestly this is for any cholar (Charles scholar) that wants to take a spin at dissecting this, but why is the Monaco Grand Prix an emotional experience for everyone (chirlies). I get that it is Charles’ home race and with his string of bad luck, incompetent cars and strategies, it has taken longer than expected for him to win his home race. But the same could be said for Pierre, Yuki, Lando, Zhou, Esteban, and George. They haven’t won their home races but no one seems to wax poetry about it. The only suitable parallel that comes to mind is when Senna, if I’m not mistaken, won his home Grand Prix after five years of bad luck and he was so tired that he couldn’t lift the trophy. Did that create an allure around winning on home soil or is it something more. I’m still trying to learn my F1 history, so I might have missed important details, facts or people. I’m sorry for that🫶

Thank you

Nah, don't apologise. It never occured to me but now that you said it like that, it's a relevant question anyone could be asking.

In short: 1. he is special 2. monaco is special 3. he was freaking close many times before. All details below the cut to avoid cluttering people's dash!

So first of all, there's a reason they call him il predestinato. You probably heard the story that it was given to him by Carlo Vanzini after pr training session where his teenage self bravely claimed that he doesn't need to train some situations and phrases, because there's no way any teammate of his could be better in equal machinery. It only really stuck around his win in Monza (because of the legendary commentary of his race win), but everyone suspected he was destined for bigger things much earlier than this. He was dominant in every sense of the word in F2, then he literally destroyed Marcus in Sauber despite being a rookie and had arguably the best rookie season since the time Lewis debuted. It's not a coincidence that he got offered the Ferrari seat so early on, so young and for such a long time (and the speculations about him getting it were here much sooner than that too). He got a seat of last Ferrari champion who was outperforming his teammate at that time too and (people used to be so mad at Charles for this) technically although not literally pushed out both Kimi and Seb with his performance, because Ferrari count on him long term.

Monaco is special. (I'm incredibly biased and on the contrary to many Charles fans who hate the circuit and want to drop it from the calendar from the future, I love it.) Every driver wants to win there, maybe even more than a home race. Don't hold me accountable on this but I think there's a real quote from a former champion that literally goes like "one win at monaco is worth two or three somewhere else". It's not a coincidence that the greatest drivers of history were the best in Monaco (Senna, Schumi, out of the drivers on the grid of course Lewis). Due to it's difficulty, it's a part of so called triple crown: monaco win, indy 500 win and 24 hours of le mans win. Everything has to be precise, the drivers are literally kissing the walls and being a centimeter off the line can have the worst consequences. It also has many exceptions in terms of how long the circuit is, how many laps are raced, how much they pay in hosting fees. It's been there since the first ever season of f1 with only slight changes. And of course, what people are often most concerned about are the celebrities, the glamour... and the famous celebrations. Idk if you watched and followed last season but I suggest looking up "2022 monaco sergio perez orgy rumours" or "Seb Lewis Charlene Monaco threesome" for funsies

He was SO SO close many times before. In F2 in the main race he started on pole (as usual) fell down - due to some bad team decisions with crashes during the race and safety cars - to p2 and then dnfed cca in the middle of the race due to technical problems. In the sprint, he got to p16/17 before dnfing again due to more technical issues. In Sauber he qualified p14 and dnfed due to a brake failure (also took Torro Rosso driver with him and got 5s penalty for speeding in the pit lane, not a great race). In 2019 there were high hopes but Ferrari fucked up his quali when they decided not to send him out to save tyres and he was out in Q1 - kinda poetic that he ended up p16. In the race (that was really something) he got up to p12, then spun, touched someone else and got a puncture. The damage was so bad that he was lapped before he came out again. Then he pitted again and after a lap Ferrari decide to retire the car, because it was too damaged (I think he was ironically the only one to retire the race despite some others crashing/spinning). The next year it was cancelled, because of the Covid pandemic. In 2021 he put it on the pole again (despite crashing at the last few minutes and red flagging the session). Then famously, Ferrari declared the gearbox is okay and Charles will start on pole. But he didn't, because they discovered an issue before the race they wouldn't be able to fix before the start. To be fair the issue was on the other side than where he crashed, but even in that case, it was a huge let down. And then last year he put it on the pole AGAIN and according to what the data showed, he would put it on the pole even if Perez didn't crash and red flag the session. In the race... I can give you my full written recap if you are wondering but it was a strategy disasterclass and Charles was a sitting duck falling to p4 and not even getting to the podium after yet another home race pole. It's an impressive record, because Monaco especially in modern era is known for little to no overtakes. I think the numbers says something like 8/9 out of 10 last gps were won from pole. If you get the pole the victory should be basically guaranteed. Some people started calling it a Charles curse, a Monaco race curse, home race curse, whatever. To be fair, I hate the narrative, because all it does every single year is him getting mocked and ridiculed all of Monaco race week. People left and right are joking about him dnfing or crashing and what not.

It's sad i'm not the "what if" kind of person, because if I was I'd count how many wins and/or podiums he would have at home by now. Because it's not just a normal circuit like Silverstone is for Lewis or Australia is for Daniel - it's literally his home, because he walked those streets, got his driving licence there, drives around his friends' and family's homes and his own too. The stress is more on home and less on race in his case of "home race". That's why this would mean more than a home race victory and why everyone wants to see it so bad. If F1 was raced on how much people deserve it, nobody would deserve to win Monaco more than Charles.

Sorry this got so long, I hope it helped understand you a bit more about why it's different than a normal race. (If we were discussing a home race for Charles, we can just as well consider it Monza. Monaco is just something more than just that).

[petit-papillion]

Hi,

I’m sorry if this comes of as rude but as a Max fan (and a Charles fan too btw) the narrative that the car is built around him - often implying this is the only reason for his success - is irritating to me because it’s been debunked so many times. So, I’d like to add my knowledge and opinion to the mix.

First of, I agree that Ferrari developed the car away from the way Charles likes it - which is oversteery (same as Max btw) - and this definitely didn’t help him. He did an incredible job last year with a team that messed up so many times and were too stupid to prioritize their championship contender. On that we can agree.

Second, I will agree that Max has the role of first driver at RedBull now - which in my opinion makes sense because he’s their world champion and the better and faster driver. But, I will disagree on the notion that Max has always been the first driver. He came into RedBull at 18 with a prime Daniel Ricciardo as his teammate. For at least the first two years - one could debate 2018 - RedBull did their best to treat them equally. So, while he may not have been told he’d be second driver like Charles was, he also didn’t just get handed the role of first driver.

Which brings me to my next point - the car being made for Max and this being the only reason for his wins and championships.

Let’s look at some racing first: Max won on debut for RedBull at 18 years old in a car he hadn’t driven before. I seriously doubt the car was made for him then, he’s just adaptable.

Which actually correlates with something RedBull’s technical director said in 2020. “Max’s talent was a contributory cause to the problem we had.” Max was and still is able to handle an unstable car to the point where even his teammates (like Alex) who generally like unstable cars can’t.

Now, let’s just remind us that an oversteery & unstable car is (generally speaking) simply quicker. It is quicker which is of course why you’d develop it that way.

In 2020 Max was able to extract so much performance from the car that it blinded RedBull from some of the problems of the car and its full potential.

(https://www.motorsportmagazine.com/articles/single-seaters/f1/when-a-talent-like-max-verstappen-sends-f1-car-design-in-the-wrong-direction-mph/)

And let’s not forget that at the beginning of the 2022 season the RB18 suited Checo more than Max - by Checo’s own admission. Yet, Max beat Checo in all races he finished till Monaco (which I won’t get into) and was ahead of Checo both times he DNF’ed.

In a car that suited him less than his teammate, he was still beating said teammate!

Now onto your quote from Alex. I’d like to add the quote he added onto that clarifying what he meant:

"People misinterpreted my words, they think what I'm trying to say is the car is built around him. No, it's the fact that he can deal with it and he drives it in a certain way.

I think people get very confused with designing a car around a driver and a driver who's very very quick and wants a car a certain way. Of course, you're going to listen to the driver who's getting the performance in and getting a good job because the potential is more."

I’d also like to add to this an interview/talk with a former RedBull performance engineer.

He worked on the 2015-2021 RedBull cars and he said that they never developed the car for a certain driver. In fact they were actually working a lot with the drivers like Pierre/Alex to help them feel more comfortable in the car and extract more performance.

(https://twitter.com/skysportsf1/status/1653420772226891779?s=46&t=eXeNjJDjWfdNRq6Dlm4P6g)

Look, a team will always try to make their car faster (unless they’re Ferrari maybe). It is a fact that an oversteery car is simply faster - which is probably why Max and Charles both like oversteery cars.

Now, these very oversteery cars tend to be more unstable and harder to drive. It’s very likely why a lot of Max’s teammates struggled. He is able to handle an unstable car to the extent that most others simply can’t.

But this is also the reason why he’s so quick. So why would RedBull develop the car to maybe be easier to handle but also slower?

In conclusion, I believe that Max is an amazing driver who has a great and competent team around him that give him a competitive car and trust in him, just like he trusts in them.

(I hope Charles will get the same with Ferrari one day because he is a great driver as well and I’d like to see him fight for and win a championship.)

But I have to disagree with the notion that the car is built around him - especially when it tries to take away from his achievements!

Hello Anon! You're not rude at all and I appreciate the time you took to write this out. I know this is in response to this post which in itself was a follow-up to this post, in case someone is lost on what brought this on.

You are not the only one who has responded, so let me set the record straight on a couple of things, even if you did not bring up all of these yourself:

The original post was about how Max had more experience than Charles. Not at any point did I indicate that Max is not a talented driver. However, there is no doubt he was exposed to a lot of hours of karting with serious coaching from Jos at a very early age. Note how Frits van Amersfoort, who worked with both Max and Charles, talks about the differences between them, particularly after 0:07:30 in this video. And as pointed out in the post, Max has been in F1 three years longer than Charles. Not taking away from either's achievements, just a fact.

About Max being first driver at Red Bull: no one said Max didn't deserve this position at RB. It's more a matter of why is Ferrari not treating Charles the same way? And yes, Max did not start out as a first driver, but certainly has enjoyed that privilege for several years now, which in turn also builds confidence in a driver. As opposed to Charles regularly getting the short end of the team strategy stick, having led to him missing out on podiums and race wins.

Finally, the car. First off, I want to clarify I did not say the car was built around Max. I said, "developed for his driving style." Nothing was said about the car being the only reason for his success. The point I was trying to make is that RB appears to listen to Max's feedback more and allows him to have this oversteery car that you need to go faster, while at Ferrari the car seems to be developed away from that to accommodate Carlos.

Thank you for including that clarifying quote from Alex - I had not heard this before. And I watched the former RB racing engineer Blake Hinsey talk about working on different car setups for Albon and Gasly. Just wanted to point out that a racing engineer is involved with setups at the track, not the design of the car, updates, or any other development work done at the factory. And there's only so much you can change with setups on a car.

Which brings me to the reason we're having this discussion. In case it's not clear from the 100s of posts about Charles and handful of posts about Max, I'm not here to bash Max, but to defend Charles as an accomplished driver. Who with a few more years of F1 experience, full support from his team and an oversteery car the way he likes it, could truly blossom the same way Max has.

[ingek73]

Among the Meghan-hating media fraternity, Jeremy Clarkson isn’t even king

Catherine Bennett

The invective of the former Top Gear presenter barely rose above the standard of an average incel

Sat 31 Dec 2022 18.00 GMT

Follow Catherine Bennett

Commiserations to Jeremy Clarkson: now his Sun column has been taken down, the celebrity must forfeit his chance to win the UK media’s most demented attack on Meghan award, 2022.

Fairness requires his article to be available for comparison with work from names including, in no particular order, Dan Wootton, Piers Morgan, Nigel Farage, Tom Bower, Brendan O’Neill of spiked and the Spectator’s Freddy Gray, not forgetting Richard Tice, Toby Young and Rod Liddle. Energised, perhaps, by the abundant material issuing from Montecito, more and more commentators are realising that a media career really can be based on, or refreshed by, repeating that the Duchess of Sussex is any or all of a talentless (yet cunning) mansion-dwelling liar, narcissist, bully, gold-digger, hypocrite and republic facilitator who stole “our” prince (Morgan: “dragged him out of the country off to your California mansion to fleece your royal titles”) whom she will dump – thanks to the demagogue-psychic Farage for this insight – when the time is right. To which the popular psychologist Dr Jordan Peterson tweeted: “This seems highly probable to me.”

Having said that, the trade is harder than it might look; the successful Markle-detractor must not only sustain Morgan-rivalling levels of abuse but produce some signature excuse for his feelings. An honourable mention, then, to Peterson who, new to the specialism, brought a scholarly perspective to bear on a Markle “archetype” podcast in which he’d been quoted (saying “I don’t think that men can control crazy women”). While compliant with Goldwater constraints on psychological speculation, Peterson added to his academic defence of “crazy women” the objection that Markle’s voice “just grates on me”. Elsewhere, the recently arrested career misogynist Andrew Tate seems to be the first of this men’s group to call her a bitch and worse. Why the anger? Unclear, but, invited on Morgan’s show, Tate recently regretted that “a lot of age-old traditions are being destroyed in real time”.

The above list should not, incidentally, be interpreted as some innate female inferiority in reviling Meghan. Credit is due, in fact, to the Daily Telegraph’s female team. The judges of this award are not, however, so “woke” as to favour less obsessive and comparatively pallid contributions to Meghan-hating by women, simply for the sake of diversity.

One challenge for specialist Markle-baiters is to balance, as Clarkson did not, the disturbed with the publishable

If it is any consolation to Clarkson, last year’s anti-Meghan content included work so outstandingly malignant that even after his article provoked international condemnation and record-breaking complaints, he may not have triumphed. True, the description of Meghan as worse than the serial killer Rose West is memorable, likewise his dream of the day that Meghan – since the writer hates her “on a cellular level” – “is made to parade naked through the streets of every town in Britain while the crowds chant, ‘Shame!’ and throw lumps of excrement at her”. But original? Our judges noted that this sort of sexualised, unashamedly pathological fantasy about a determined and attractive woman would probably be considered fairly basic in online groups favoured by resentful incels.

Moreover, one of the challenges for specialist Markle-baiters is to balance, as Clarkson did not, the disturbed with the publishable. As familiar as it is for some men to be triggered by female success into the sort of behaviours academics have summarised as “masculine over-compensation”, the Meghan-averse, like Greta Thunberg’s haters (as Clarkson shows, there is significant overlap), must keep in mind the need not to come across as worryingly invested or, to borrow Peterson’s jargon, crazy.

Tom Bower, a strong contender for this year’s award, could probably have pulled off his Nazi analogy, “Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s propagandist, would look with real awe at what the Sussexes and Netflix have achieved”, and even his conspiratorial “Doria plays a really sinister role in this whole story”. It helped that he was speaking on a channel where Meghan hysteria is pretty much normalised. But people noticed when he told viewers of Good Morning Britain: “It’s Meghan I’m after.”

That the would-be shit-pelter Clarkson is to keep his TV shows and newspaper columns should not, as much as it has thrilled his fans, be taken to mean less eminent contributors would survive. Careful misogynists might be better advised to study the way his rivals will, for instance, elevate otherwise standard exercises in vituperation with a dash of compassion, a mention of the cost of living crisis, learned regret for Meghan’s limitations. “In a strangely lobotomised way,” Gray says of his muse, “Meghan seems to have been influenced by the theories of Carl Jung.”

Alternatively, notice how seasoned Meghan antagonists offer deep constitutional feeling as a justification for their insults and disgusted faces: “Princess Pinocchio”, “your narcissistic delusionist (sic) wife”, “the ginge”, “poisonous rats”. The guild’s settled understanding, after the Netflix series, that the Sussexes represent, in Morgan’s words, “an existential threat to the British monarchy”, allowed for some peerless abuse from lead members of the fraternity, notably in the popular Meghan-hating double acts. The aim of this collaborative format being for participants to goad one another into ever more extravagant denunciations of the Sussexes. In particular the Wootton-Bower combo reliably appals, the host nodding while the writer insists, for example (confident that Wootton won’t mention Andrew Morton), that Diana was never, like her son, “duplicitous”. Wootton (confident that Bower won’t mention Panorama), agrees that Diana never did anything so vile as criticise the institution.

To pick a winner from this wealth of invective has occasionally felt like an impossible task. But the most precious is, surely, a piece by the distinguished Marxist turned Markleist, Brendan O’Neill. Not for pyrotechnics but for so brilliantly encapsulating Meghan’s often fascinating effect on the male mind. “Go away,” he begs the belle dame of Montecito, “Leave me alone.” He made the same request in 2020.

Catherine Bennett is an Observer columnist

[lightwood-carstairs]

I posted 1,191 times in 2022

53 posts created (4%)

1,138 posts reblogged (96%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@khaleesiofalicante

@lxdyblackthorn

@delightfullyterrible

@literallytypogod

@tessherongraystairs

I tagged 136 of my posts in 2022

#the shadowhunter chronicles - 41 posts

#tsc - 41 posts

#secrets of blackthorn hall - 21 posts

#sobh - 21 posts

#jem carstairs - 14 posts

#will herondale - 12 posts

#the infernal devices - 11 posts

#tid - 11 posts

#tessa gray - 11 posts

#the last hours - 10 posts

Longest Tag: 139 characters

#alastair being a brown boy at an academy full of white elitist holier-than-thou shits and having elias as his father was far more difficult

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

Edited and fixed.

Family <3

120 notes - Posted March 14, 2022

#4

ONCE AGAIN INCORRECT QUOTES BUT THIS TIME WITH THE MT

James: As someone who has a long history of not understanding anything, I feel confident in my ability to continue not knowing what is going on.

——————————————————

Matthew: WHY DID YOU KILL HIM?! HE COULD HAVE HAD HOPES AND DREAMS, HE COULD HAVE HAD A FAMILY!!!

James: Matthew-

James: It- it was just an ant-

——————————————————

Thomas: What is wrong with you?

James: Loaded question. Elaborate.

——————————————————

Matthew: Now, the recipe calls for 2 shots of vodka.

Matthew: *upends the bottle*

——————————————————

Christopher: Sometimes I drink milk straight from the container.

Matthew: The cow??

Christopher: What?

James: Matthew, W H Y?

——————————————————

James: Someone care to explain why we have 6 dogs in our apartment?

Matthew: They're golden retrievers, dude. They retrieve gold. I did this for us.

——————————————————

Thomas: Do you take constructive criticism?

Matthew: No, only cash or credit.

——————————————————

Christopher: Why is everyone so obsessed with top or bottom? Honestly, I’d just be excited to have a bunk bed.

James:

James: I'm gonna tell them.

Thomas: Don't you dare.

——————————————————

See the full post

132 notes - Posted February 11, 2022

#3

Everyone,,,

I present to you : my interpretation of some of the unidentified snippets

#1 : probably Alec in QOAAD while his proposal but not included in the final draft

#2 : probably someone in TMI but still has a chance of showing up in TLH

#3 : TEC. Totally TEC. Probably in TBVOTD, before their wedding

See the full post

132 notes - Posted February 21, 2022

#2

Time for incorrect quotes my beloved!

Will: That's ridiculous, Jem doesn't have a crush on me.

Tessa: Yes he does.

Magnus: Yes he does.

Jem: Yes I do.

——————————————————

Magnus: Will, you'll be working with Jem and Tessa.

Will: Alright! My fantasy threesome!

Everyone else: *blank stares*

Will: ...Of people on a team.

——————————————————

Will: Why is Tessa crying on the floor?

Magnus: They're drunk.

Will: And?

Magnus: They saw a picture of Jem's spouse.

Will: But they're Jem's spouse.

Magnus: I know.

——————————————————

Magnus: Truth or dare?

Tessa: Dare.

Magnus: I dare you to kiss the hottest person in the room.

Tessa: Hey Will?

Will, blushing: Yeah?

Tessa: Can you move? I'm trying to get to Jem.

——————————————————

Tessa: What’s the announcement, Magnus?

Magnus: It’s a lecture. Jem’s gonna tell us everything he knows about sex.

Will, blissfully unaware: It should be an enjoyable 60 seconds.

——————————————————

See the full post

253 notes - Posted February 11, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

Alec really saw Magnus flirting with him and said "k I found my soulmate" and proceeded to kiss him in public in front of his very first ancestors and relatives and his whole homophobic ass community, stalked his ex (😭wtf was that), stayed with him when he was sick, fucking proposed on a beach AFTER A BIG DIMENSIONAL WAR WITH EVERY KIND OF SUPERNATURAL CREATURE INVOLVED EVEN ANGELS(😭) AND MARRIED HIM HALF AN HOUR LATER

Not to mention GOING TO LITERAL HELL TO FIND HIM

Meanwhile also adopted two kids and built a home with him

317 notes - Posted August 28, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[starrybouquet]

I posted 3,100 times in 2022

129 posts created (4%)

2,971 posts reblogged (96%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@captaincarriekathryncoffee

@sunnysideeggers

@sententiousandbellicose

@mylittleredgirl

@i-am-a-stupid-robot

I tagged 2,384 of my posts in 2022

Only 23% of my posts had no tags

#trek - 547 posts

#stargate - 465 posts

#sg1 - 450 posts

#sam x jack - 174 posts

#bridgerton - 141 posts

#voy - 141 posts

#tos - 108 posts

#tng - 108 posts

#fanbinding - 90 posts

#snw - 82 posts

Longest Tag: 125 characters

#anyway someone once said that chris judge makes the rest of the cast just look...small...when all the guys are taller than 6'

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

Tag 9 people you want to get to know better

Tagged by the amazing @i-am-a-stupid-robot - thank you!!

Favorite Color: Blue! Any shade but baby blue, really.

Currently Reading: Uhh I think now is the time to announce to the fandom world that I've fallen into a horrible, full-on Regency romance novel obsession. I swear I've read probably 10 of them in the past week. And then I went and read fanfic. It's INSANE. But somehow I find it hilarious and I can skim parts so I don't need to pay attention all the time, and it's giving me fic ideas, so no complaints I guess? Just hoping it doesn't last too long?

Last Song: Right Hand Man, Something Rotten

Last Series: NCIS (2003)

Last Movie: Honestly not sure. I don't watch too many movies somehow

Sweet, Savory, or Spicy: Sweet, but you can win me over with potato chips too

Currently Working On: An NCIS AU fic that makes me giggle constantly, and the Sam/Jack SG1 WIPs that are always ongoing.

Tagging @sententiousandbellicose @sunnysideeggers @captaincarriekathryncoffee @spacey-iris @agentkalgibbs @carothepoet @mylittleredgirl (no pressure, ofc) and anyone else who wants to play!

57 notes - Posted January 15, 2022

#4

Happy 25th anniversary to Stargate SG-1

I have nothing to offer in the vein of fanfic or gifs today. I can only say, well, thank you. For your hope, your humor, your humanity. For catalyzing such a wonderful fandom. And thank you especially, especially, especially for creating my team: Jack, Sam, Teal'c, Daniel. I'll always love you for that. No matter what. 💙💙💙

60 notes - Posted July 27, 2022

#3

Are there bredlik poems out there for Stargate?

I can’t believe I’ve never thought of this before.

I need to have them

98 notes - Posted May 30, 2022

#2

#an otp that can do both for @mysg1spacemonkey ft. Sam/Jack

215 notes - Posted February 7, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

best stargate quotes

“Is there any chance you can get the Russians to give us their DHD?”

“Not without giving back Alaska.”

224 notes - Posted January 25, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[alex-just-vibing]

I posted 958 times in 2022

That's 939 more posts than 2021!

174 posts created (18%)

784 posts reblogged (82%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@milly-the-devil

@insaneillusionist

@autismdino

@stargazing-bee

@astralix13

I tagged 659 of my posts in 2022

Only 31% of my posts had no tags

#reblog - 446 posts

#my stuff - 113 posts

#important - 31 posts

#cookie run - 31 posts

#crk - 30 posts

#save - 29 posts

#cookie run kingdom - 20 posts

#cookie odyssey plot tag - 18 posts

#toh - 13 posts

#the owl house - 11 posts

Longest Tag: 139 characters

#so it depends on if you're asking one of my close friends or people who only know me on here or if you're asking my classmates or my family

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

Cookies of Darkness Incorrect Quotes Because No One Can Stop Me

Licorice: Though I admit I don’t know much about you, I am feeling pretty confident in my assessment that you are probably some sort of sick deadly fuck. Red Velvet: Who told you my secret?

Dark Choco: What happened to Licorice? Red Velvet: He died. Dark Choco: They what? Red Velvet: They died, but he's okay. Dark Choco: …Can you please clarify? Licorice: Clarification is for the weak.

Dark Choco, texting group chat: What flavour of ice cream do you guys want? I’m at the store so be quick! Licorice: Moose Tracks is good! Strawberry Crepe: What the fuck is that!? Licorice: *Gasp* How dare you insult moo- Strawberry Crepe: No. No no not that. What the hell. Why do you spell flavor like flavour. It’s like you have flavor but then this guy shows up and is like “Oui Oui Would you like chocolate flaVOUR or vanilla flaVOUR. Dark Choco and Licorice: what? Strawberry Crepe: I don’t get it why add the EXTRA u when it’s PERFECTLY FINE AS IT IS!? Dark Choco: You done now? Strawberry Crepe: Yeah ok. Dark Choco and Licorice: ... Strawberry Crepe: ...Can I have the Mint Chocolate chip flavour?

Pomegranate, talking to Dark Choco: If looking good was a crime, you’d be a law abiding citizen.

Licorice, washing the dishes: Who the fuck used this pan?? Licorice: Wait. I the fuck used this pan… Red Velvet: It was you the fuck. Licorice: It was I the fuck… Strawberry Crepe: Who cooks rice in a pan? Red Velvet: They the fuck.

Poison Mushroom: Do dragons fart fire? Licorice: I don't know. Poison Mushroom: I thought you went to college.

Licorice: The risk I took was calculated but, man, am I bad at math.

70 notes - Posted October 14, 2022

#4

Hunter: What’s the straightest thing you’ve ever done? Darius: *sighs* Darius: I killed a man.

91 notes - Posted May 27, 2022

#3

Fuck you I'm gonna make sdr2 survivor incorrect quotes and none of you can stop me (spoiler warning for who survives)

Hajime: Don’t stay up all night, Akane. Last time you got this sleep-deprived, you tried to eat your own shirt.

Akane: When you work at lush and a customer comes in and bites the soap because they think it’s cheese... this happens way more frequently than you think. Kazuichi: If you stopped literally presenting soap as deli food this wouldn't happen. Akane: Who goes into a bath store and thinks something covered in glitter is cheese? Hajime: Who goes to the store and just takes a bite from the cheese?

Hajime: I just want someone to take me out. Kazuichi: On a date? Sonia: With a sniper gun? Fuyuhiko: Both if you're not a coward.

Fuyuhiko, holding a rock: Kazuichi just gave this to me and said "I feel like you deserve the moon but all I can give you is a rock". Hajime: If you don't marry them, I will.

Hajime: What do you do when someone offers you drugs? Kazuichi: Take them! Akane: Punch them in the neck! Sonia: Say thank you! Fuyuhiko: Offer them more drugs to assert dominance! Hajime: … Hajime: No.

Hajime: I’m telling you, my team is competent. Sonia, rushing in: Hajime! Kazuichi tried to make pasta in the coffee pot and now it's broken!

Akane: As someone who has a long history of not understanding anything, I feel confident in my ability to continue not knowing what is going on.

Akane: If you spell skeletons backwards, it still spells skeletons. Hajime, deadpan: Wow, I can't wait for Halloween to see some snoteleks.

Kazuichi: If I run and leap at Hajime, he will most certainly catch me in his arms. Kazuichi, running towards Hajime: Coming in! Hajime: No! I’m holding coffee! Hajime: *Drops coffee and catches Kazuichi*

Fuyuhiko, at the slightest provocation: I came into this earth screaming and covered in someone else's blood and and I'm not afraid to leave the same way.

Akane: If you put a milkshake in one yard and crack open a cold one in another yard, which yard would the boys go to? Kazuichi: Schrödinger's boys. Hajime: FUCK! Sonia: What about cracking open a cold milkshake? Fuyuhiko: As we all know, the milkshake brings the boys to the yard. The presence of the boys is a prerequisite for the cracking open of a cold one, but cold ones do not have any inherent boy-attracting abilities. Milkshakes, however, do. Fuyuhiko: All else being equal, the boys would proceed to the milkshake yard. While it is possible to announce the presence of cold ones in the hope of attracting some boys, the pull of the milkshake is much more powerful by comparison. Akane: ... Kazuichi: ... Hajime: ... Sonia: ... Fuyuhiko: Mind you, all of this nonsense hinges on whether or not the boys are back in town.

Kazuichi: BWWAAAAAAAAAA! Oh, you hear that? That's the wrong opinion alarm. Fuyuhiko: That is not something you actually have installed. Kazuichi: Sorry, say again? I couldn't hear you over my alarm that YOU SET OFF with your WRONG-ASS OPINION

Hajime: Two brooooos! Kazuichi: Chillin' in a hot tub! Hajime: Five feet apart 'cause we're not gay! Kazuichi: Hajime: Kazuichi: *tearing up* Hajime: Babe, c'mon... Kazuichi: AND HERE YOU REALLY HAD ME THINKING WE HAD SOMETHING. Hajime: Babe...

Kazuichi, Entering Fuyuhiko's room: Akane did it again. Fuyuhiko: Peace disturbance? Kazuichi: What no- Fuyuhiko: Arson..? Kazuichi: NO, JESUS CHRIST, HOW MANY- Fuyuhiko: uh....Attempted murder? Kazuichi: NO, SHE ATE ALL THE FOOD IN THE FRIDGE, BUT WHAT THE FU-

Kazuichi: Hey random, what are your favorite flowers? Hajime: Peonies, why? Kazuichi: Hajime: Were you going to get me flowers? Kazuichi: Hajime: Kazuichi: ᶦᵗ’ˢ ᵃ ᵖᵒˢˢᶦᵇᶦˡᶦᵗʸ

Hajime: Bottling up negative emotions is bad for your health, so you shouldn't do it. Fuyuhiko: I know, that's why I bottle up all my emotions, both positive and negative, so it cancels out. Hajime: Th-that's not how that works-

Akane, setting down a card: Ace of spades. Fuyuhiko, pulling out an Uno card: +4. Hajime, pulling out a Pokémon card: Jolteon, I choose you! Kazuichi, trembling: What are we playing?!

Akane: Would you like something to drink? *She opens the fridge* We have water, milk, juice, spiders, Dr. Pepper- Kazuichi: Spiders? Akane: Spiders it is then. Kazuichi: No, that wasn’t- *But she were already pouring them a brimming glass of spiders…*

Hajime: I swear to god I'm the only one here with a braincell. Sonia, Kazuichi, Fuyuhiko, and Akane: ALL HAIL the keeper of the sacred braincell!

Akane, knocking on the door: Kazuichi, open up! Kazuichi: It all started when I was a kid. Akane: That’s not what I- Fuyuhiko: Let him finish!

Sonia: Fuyuhiko doesn’t look very happy. Hajime: That's his happy. He's just a bitch.

Hajime: BEHOLD, the field in which I grow my fucks! Lay thine eyes upon it, and thou shalt see that it is barren!

Akane: How is the most beautiful person in the world? Sonia: *blushing* I— Hajime, butting into the conversation: Kaz is perfect, thanks for asking.

Fuyuhiko, grinning: I have a knife! Sonia: Put it down, Fuyuhiko. Fuyuhiko: Make me! *sprints away*

Kazuichi: Are you an F5 key? Because that ass is refreashing. Hajime: Are you a software update? because not right now.

Kazuichi: It's pretty cold outside.. wanna hold hands? We should stay close. Hajime, blushing: Okay. Fuyuhiko: It's fucking summer.

Akane: *sees Kazuichi and Fuyuhiko together* Akane: They're cute. I would put them on a boat. Hajime: You mean... you ship them?

Hajime: *speaking Spanish* Kazuichi: I know, I know. Fuyuhiko: You speak Spanish? Kazuichi: No. I just know the phrase, 'this is all your fault' in every language Hajime speaks.

Kazuichi: Look, I know you think my judgement's clouded because I like Hajime a little bit. Fuyuhiko, holding Kazuichi's notepad: You doodled your wedding invitation. Kazuichi: No, that's our joint tombstone. Fuyuhiko: My mistake.

See the full post

123 notes - Posted May 10, 2022

#2

Reblog if you wanna throw Belos into a fire.

307 notes - Posted April 24, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

Emperor's Coven Incorrect Quotes

Eberwolf: Get in, loser, we’re committing vehicular manslaughter!

Hunter, texting Raine: *Sends a voice message* Raine, texting back: I’m a little busy, is it urgent? Hunter: No, don’t worry, just listen later. *Later* Raine: *Presses play* Hunter's voice message: THERE’S A FIRE-

Kikimora: What's wrong with you? Hunter: Off the top of my head, I'd say low self-esteem, a lack of paternal affection, and a genetic predisposition for anxiety and depression.

Kikimora: The Titan has let me live another day and I'm going to make it everyone's problem.

Hunter: Was the moon landing fake? Eberwolf, joking: You believe in the moon? Darius: The moon is made of cheese! Raine: I will catapult you three into the sun.

Eberwolf, grinning: I have a knife! Darius: Put it down, Eberwolf. Eberwolf: Make me! *Sprints away*

Eberwolf: Can you be quiet?! I'm trying to think. Raine: Don't worry. Doing anything for the first time is difficult.

Hunter: What’s your favorite color? Darius: Stop asking stupid questions. Ask me something logical and mature. Hunter: How many moles of sodium bicarbonate are needed to neutralize 0.8ml of sulfuric acid at STP? Darius: My favorite color is purple.

Raine, entering Darius's room: Hunter did it again. Darius: Peace disturbance? Raine: What no- Darius: Arson..? Raine: NO, JESUS CHRIST, HOW MANY- Darius: uh....Attempted murder? Raine: NO, THEY ATE ALL THE FOOD IN THE FRIDGE. WHAT THE FU-

Eberwolf: I know we don't always see eye to eye on things- Darius: That's because you're too short.

Darius: Real life should have a fucking search function, or something. Darius: I need my socks.

Raine: Please, I'm begging you, go to a healer. Hunter: I'm sorry is this OUR stab wound? Stay out of it.

Hunter: Dracula had it right, sleep all day, live alone in a castle, and explode into bats to get out of all social situations

Raine: Stop setting things on fire because you're curious about what will happen. What will happen is fire. Eberwolf: But what if something else happens just this one time?

Hunter: *On the phone* Hey Raine, do you know my blood type? Raine: Of course, it's B-. Hunter: Oh, I guessed wrong. Excuse me, healer-!

Eberwolf: WHY?! Why did you give Hunter a KNIFE?! Darius: I’m sorry. They said they felt unsafe. Eberwolf: Now I feel unsafe! Darius: I’m sorry. Darius: …Would you like a knife?

Raine: Can you melt mercury? Hunter: Well- Darius: The planet, or the element? Hunter: Hunter: WHY THE HECK WOULD THEY WANT TO MELT THE PLANET?

Raine: "Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge" - Charles Darwin Eberwolf: What the fuck? Begets isn't a word. Quit trying to make up words, fuckface.

Eberwolf: Christmas is cancelled. Darius: You can't cancel a holiday. Hunter: Keep it up, Darius, and you'll lose New Year's too. Darius: What does that mean? Eberwolf: Raine, take New Year's away from Darius.

Hunter: ARE YOU- Eberwolf: Fucking Hunter: KIDDING ME THIS IS- Eberwolf: Bullshit. Darius: What’s going on? Eberwolf: Raine took away Hunter’s swearing privileges so I’m helping them out.

Hunter, setting down a card: Ace of spades. Darius, pulling out an Uno card: +4. Eberwolf, pulling out a Pokémon card: Jolteon, I choose you. Raine, trembling: What are we playing?

Raine: I am going to need you to swear- Eberwolf: Fuck. Raine: Raine: ...swear as in promise.

354 notes - Posted April 6, 2022

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