Beyond The Boundary

you know...in 2014, there was this rookie on the grid who took a podium in his first race. and I immediately fell in love with him as a driver.

not because he took the podium, as amazing as that was. but because before the race, one he was starting in P4, he looked calmer than a typical rookie starting in P18. he was there to race, something he had done his entire life and there was no hint of nerves even if he was in F1 now.

after ten years, I think about that rookie a lot. In another universe he wasn't stabbed in the back by people who were supposed to look out for him and he had a brilliant career, winning races and fighting for championships, driving the fastest cars.

in this universe? he still had a brilliant career. he might not have fought for wins or podiums but y'know what, he fought for P9 as if it was a win. he fought tooth and nail for every point and he kept himself in the sport for 9 seasons, coming back twice from not having a seat. with no major backing, doing it all on his own. and god, if I'm not endlessly proud of him.

this is not the end of kev's career. he'll go on to do so many more brilliant things and I'll continue to be endlessly proud of him every step of the way.

there's something to be said about the pipeline of blonde, extroverted, german f1 drivers falling in love with even more blonde, introverted, nordic f1 drivers.

I mean michael and mika? seb and kimi? nico and kevin? this needs to be studied.

I GOT A FUCKING RAISE THE POTATO WORKED WTF

This potato works. Every. Fucking. Time.

Then bring me luck

the day after I posted this last time I was notified that I was selected for a really cool mentorship gig and got an unrelated glowing review at work

This is for all the unsung fic writers; the ones who don’t make the must-read lists, the ones who don’t get recced, the ones who don’t get hundreds of kudos, the rarepair writers out on the peripheries of fandom, the ones who toil away quietly for the handful of people who read and love them. You matter - you’re a writer too, and don’t you ever forget it. :)

📷: @iambrandon747

Piarles Winter Fic Exchange: Interest Check

Hello fellow Piarlies ❤️ Some friends and I recently had the revelation that we've only got three races left after today, and then it's winter break... AKA, whole actual months without F1. What are we going to do without our F1 fix?!

We decided that the obvious answer would be: arrange a Piarles-themed fic exchange to run over the winter break so that we can soothe the lack of F1 with a flood of content for our favourite boys. So now we want to hear: who else feels this way?

We're calling on all Piarles writers: would you be interested in taking part in a Pierre/Charles fic exchange over the winter break? If so, please tell us here!

(Please note that no actual details for the exchange have been arranged yet. For now, we're only doing a vibe check to see if anyone would actually be interested in doing this. If we get enough responses, we will get right back to you with proper arrangements and details ❤️

Big shoutout to the lovely @redyellowstupid for the banner/edit! ❄)

Alpine in 2023…⁇

TSU : Tell me your address Pierre!!

GAS : Come on!! It's you again!?

OCO : What the hell is going on with security?

Jules' dad said in an interview "They are telling Pierre that he was going to fast, it's funny, that's what they said about Jules too. (...) What shocks me the most today it's that in a tragedy like we lived, the only positive thing to take is the progress gained from it. (...) But where is the respect for Jules, for our family, his fans and the other drivers ? (...) If jules is gone, it should at least serve that purpose. (...) Someone told me one day: your son knew the risks of his job. Indeed. But he also told me that he trusted the organizers."

The FIA were essentially asking Pierre to risk killing himself with this investigation, we need to be 100% clear on that, like Jenson pointed out, he would have lost that car under sudden breaking to conform to the fia’s red flags, no one could have held it, and they showed him the red flag less than a second before he arrived at the scene of the recovery vehicle

Had Pierre done what the FIA are claiming he should have and suddenly slowed down to conform to the speed, he would have crashed, and he would almost certainly have crashed directly into that recovery vehicle, you know, the type of accident that cost Jules his life

They are trying to blame him for their mistake and their explanation to what he supposedly did wrong essentially amounts to ‘you didn’t cause a serious accident’

CHARLES LECLERC

2022 C² Challenge | The Pasta Challenge

really curious on what they're talking about here. bc George immediately blocked the camera with his body.

altho, lewis did the same even though it seems he's just talking about track stuff with perez. so maybe just merc drivers thing.

Will we ever learn?

We've been here before...

.... well that's something i didnt know i needed

it's even WORSE in video form I LOVE THIS

I don’t know who needs to hear this but be nice to fanfic authors. Reblog their stuff. Tell them you liked it. How you felt when reading. What school assignment you didn’t finish because of how captivating their story was. Don’t just scream to your friends about it. But tell them.

So many wonderfully talented people out there don’t get the praise they need. If their work brought you joy, make their day better by telling them it did.

Long ago I wrote a fic. Posted it under a different name without telling anyone in the fandom group I was active in. Watched how the online fandom group loved the fic and had a conversation of it in a positive spirit with each other - what did they like it, theories of this and that, how nice it was to get a new fic into this small fandom etc. - but did they leave feedback to the fic? No. I think it was only one person who commented the fic from the group.

I know the fan group liked the fic because I saw the outside comments. But, if I hadn’t seen them - like readers don’t - then I’d think the fic was not worth of my time and no one read it, or read it but didn’t care about it as it clearly was not worth of any comment.

We’re not telepathics. We don’t know. Tell the creators. They want it and appreciate the feedback. If we didn’t want you to interact with the stuff we create, like comment it/share it/reblog it/etc. we wouldn’t post the stuff online for you to see.

It occurs to me upon reading this that we don't have conversations like this in the comments to the author's fic---so much of fandom is interacting with each other about media we love, but in the fanfic comments section the conversation is almost just commenters talking directly to the author, and maybe the author talking back.

Nobody launches a metacommentary thesis for other readers to debate about in the AO3 comments, or has long comment threads gushing to each other about their favorite character's interactions; it's like the tendency to give the author space while we go play with their creations, a relic of our past when we weren't supposed to exist, has extended to fic authors who are themselves playing in the same mud we are.

We act like it's bad manners to love a fic in front of an author, in the ways the fandom that writes fanfic loves a fic.

And that shouldn't be the case.

They're one of us too.

I have had one or two fics where readers engaged with one another in the comments and I can say with 100% surety that it was REALLY COOL to see!!! Even if they weren’t talking to ME, they were talking about the thing I made where I could see it and that made me feel GREAT. Absolutely loved it.

I write fanfiction and let me tell you: comments about the fic and what you like about it make the hours of work all worthwhile. Literally there is nothing else going for me right now. I get up, go to work, come home, go to bed. To get a (1) in my inbox instantly makes me happy and I'd be nothing without it.

I wish it was more common in fandom culture to do this! Alas, squeeing with your fandom friends through Ao3 comments just isn't quite the same as over something like Discord it seems 🥲

Nevertheless, I want to encourage readers to consider copy + pasting screenshots or the text of their discussions into the comments! I know it's extra work, but I've done this before and the author absolutely loved it 💕

Also, bumping the LLF Comment Project template which is a tone neutral way for authors to invite their readers to comment and let them know it's ok to have reader-reader interaction in the comments.