#it's happening i have lost interest in social media

[purpurussy]

what is all of this like for post-hiatus phannies?

I've been trying to figure out how to phrase this for a minute. The most obvious comparison would be that it's like starting a TV show 10 seasons in, but that doesn't come remotely close to the amount of required reading necessary to understand even 5% of the references. This has not been a problem for me, as I love nothing more than a good all-consuming hyperfixation rabbit hole, but something I'm realizing is that you really just had to be there to fully Understand.

I got into d&p properly in December of 2023, when gamingmas appealed to my emotionally curious nature and then gave me some kind of irreversible brain damage which I'm still trying to process. Since then I've been consuming their back catalogue as though it's laced with cocaine, and obsessively lurking on phannie tumblr until I finally made this blog a few weeks ago.

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I actually watched Dan's videos for a little while back in roughly 2013/2014, but something about his content back then just wasn't working for me like it does now (I have such a clear memory of watching Reasons Why Dan’s A Fail and thinking "aw man why does this cute little twink hate himself so much 😔" and then going back to watching Jenna Marbles lmao. Funnily enough it did make me change my negative self-talk a little bit). I was very much a brief casual viewer who went off them pretty much after watching a few videos, and after that I was sort of vaguely aware of them as the cultural icons of the 2010s that they were, but I wasn't keeping up with them at all. 

I don't even remember BIG coming out, which is insane because I've always been extremely chronically online and it definitely broke containment as a cultural moment (although I think I was trying to minimize my social media use at that point in my life, so maybe that's why it went over my head). I feel like I must have heard something about it at the time, though, because I knew they were gay when I started watching them last year. What's really strange is that a lot of this stuff is kinda timeless to me. I don't remember it happening 5, 10 or 15 years ago - I just witnessed it very recently. For a lot of you guys, BIG happened 5 years ago, but I just watched it for the first time a few months ago. At the same time, in my mind they've just always been gay, since I wasn't in the trenches of the unhinged online culture surrounding them in the early/mid 2010s. It's so confusing to balance my weird temporal perception of these events with the impressions that I get from you guys. Oftentimes I have to judge roughly when something would have happened based on their appearances - it's not actually a *memory* for me, like it is for you. I absolutely love the dynamic and branding they have now, and the deep dives into their past are more of a curious exploration of how they got here, rather than actually nostalgic (or, I suppose, mildly traumatic) for me. It’s still very interesting and compelling to me, but because I love the current iteration of Dan and Phil, not because I’m emotionally invested in who they used to be. 

Sometimes I’ll be aware that an event happened, but I won’t realize how monumental it was until I see people talking about it (I hate to say it but I genuinely don't fully understand why the BONCAs thing was so earth-shattering, but like I said, I've always lived in a post-BIG universe, and I think you just had to be there). There are also plenty of references to stuff that's just been lost to time, which I have to piece together with context clues, as well as the more unhinged demonic stuff that I just don't have any interest in exploring whatsoever (I think I might have watched the v-day video if I'd been there when it leaked and I was a stupid teenager, but at this point, I don't even feel any kind of morbid curiosity for it. I just feel really bad for them that it got leaked. Plus, unfortunately, I think I've learned all I need to know about it through internet osmosis here). I feel like a lot of these events have a real emotional meaning for you guys, when to me, they're just interesting/funny/insane anecdotes which give some context to everything. Some of the shit that you guys lived through back then is absolutely wild, and I love and appreciate all of you for meticulously archiving and documenting everything and for being so willing to answer the same questions over and over again! Otherwise I feel like I wouldn't be able to really be part of this community, and posting my silly little memes on this blog is so fucking fun. So thank you all for that.

It seems like this is one of the most ride-or-die fanbases I've ever seen. The fact that they could invent the concept of YouTubers doing world tours, successfully execute that multiple times, branch out into several other ventures, come out as gay not fully knowing how that would affect their careers, disappear for several years and then come back knowing that there would be a solid audience waiting for them even after their virality had died down, drop merch every 3 seconds - I don't know who else can really get away with that, for almost 15 years, in the extremely "live fast die young" culture of internet fame. And I think it's in no small part because you all have chronic "unconditionally supporting dan and phil" disease. (While we’re on the topic, I feel very lucky to have missed the hiatus era. There's kind of a compression in the timeline for me between the gaming channel going dark and Dan starting his WAD tour, where it's like that time just doesn't exist in the Dan and Phil cinematic universe for me. It took me a while to realize how insane it must have been when they came back in full force, I can't even imagine how that must have felt.)

Of course, there's a caveat in that I'm saying this only really knowing about the tip of the demon iceberg. I’m aware of people engaging in behaviours such as doxxing them, outing them and stalking their families, which is horrifying in and of itself, but I don’t know how long it went on for or how many people were involved. I think people are generally pretty well-behaved at this point, and most of the drama seems to be between different schools of thought within the fanbase itself. I assume a big part of the reason for that is people's varying degrees of involvement in (and remaining notion of guilt for) the boundary-crossing behaviour from the old days. Living with the spectre of this insanity is kind of strange - it makes me feel nervous sometimes that I’m gonna accidentally say something that hits a nerve, or cross a line I didn’t know existed, because there’s all this history that I don’t fully understand, beyond just the normal unwritten rules for interacting with fan spaces online. 

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The topic that got me writing this in the first place was the orange heart incident, and everyone’s subsequent meltdown. For me, the excitement in them soft/hard/semi launching is more about me just getting excited about any open, proud expression of queer joy - it heals something inside me every time I hear a man referring to his husband or a woman referring to her wife (excuse the gendered terms, ykwim. gay shit). It's just that sentiment, combined with the fact that I'm parasocially invested in them: I'd love to see that energy from my fave little guys who live inside my computer. I am basically rooting for them to become more comfortable with just talking about gay stuff more openly and candidly, and I guess that would require a bit of a hard launch, although I can understand that they don't want to potentially open the door to excessive questioning regarding their relationship. I feel like it ✨hits different✨ for people who watched them for years before they came out. Like, you guys are rooting for people who you watched in real time struggling with their identities and internalized homophobia for years and years, while to me, they’re just some guys who I’m a fan of. Sometimes I get caught up in the emotional frenzy of their hard-launch breadcrumbs even though I don’t feel quite as insane about it as you guys (I said in some tags a few days ago that it’s like the base instinct to turn around and start running if you see a crowd of people running towards you and screaming in terror, even if you have no idea what’s going on). Anyway, I would love to see them being more gooey with each other, and I am gobbling up the breadcrumbs they're feeding us atm, because I love seeing gay people expressing gay love with no shame 🧡 

I think my perception of them as a couple, or of their sexualities independently, is just kind of an extension of everything Dan said in BIG. I really have no doubt that they're a couple, and I don't feel any kind of weird Catholic guilt in saying that, since I neither witnessed nor participated in the insanity back then. I interpreted (I'm paraphrasing) "obviously we were more than friends, but it was more than just romantic, we're like, actual soulmates" followed by "as for the situation now? we're private people and we'd like to keep that part of our lives private" as him essentially saying that obviously they're a couple, but that their relationship is not part of the Dan And Phil™ Brand. The brand is 2 guys who have great chemistry doing comedy together (5 feet apart even though clearly they are gay and in love). And I think that's a completely healthy decision to make, even irrespective of their history. I think a hard launch would be subtle, and it wouldn’t realistically change the nature of their content that much. 

With that being said, to me, it seems slightly wild for people to adamantly insist they're not a couple, or that it’s “invasive” to assume that they are one (not that that really applies to anyone here, but elsewhere on the internet). If they were a straight man and a straight woman, and there wasn't a huge chunk of people on the internet struggling with this oddly conditioned aversion to seeing them as a couple, then nobody on earth would be insisting that it's weird to assume they're together. Dan confirmed that they became romantically involved around the time they met, and building a forever home with your ex is crazy, that's all there is to it.

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This is kind of a messy stream of thoughts (it ended up sort of becoming 2 essays for the price of 1) and I don't really know where I was going with it. In conclusion I think that day 1 phannies are braver than any US marine and you have all suffered more than Jesus on the cross, and I'm extremely thankful that I get to reap the rewards of your labour now without having lived through the dark ages myself. I also think some of you are holding onto a bit of unnecessary guilt for dumb shit you said on the internet when you were a kid. And Dan and Phil are gay and I love them and I reeeeaaaallllyyy want them to do a podcast so bad because this is all conjecture and I would parasocially love to hear their actual thoughts on it

#phan #dan and phil #mine #long post #i fucking love the sound of my own voice apparently. like why the fuck is this 2000 words #i originally included even more waffling about my thoughts on wedding hill and why dan didnt come out earlier #but this is already wayyy too long as it is so i'll save that for another time #also. watch them immediately say/do something which changes my mind on all of this dsfgjkll #ALSO also i need to stop overusing parentheses. the thing about having adhd is that every thought comes with several extra bonus thoughts #posted this by accident from my drafts but fuck it. self indulgent essay be upon ye

[2neaky]

I DON'T KNOW HOW TO GET TO YOU୨ৎ

— ೀ𝚂𝙾𝙲𝙸𝙰𝙻 𝙼𝙴𝙳𝙸𝙰 𝙵𝙸𝙲 | 𝙼𝚞𝚕𝚝𝚒 𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚙𝚝𝚎𝚛 𝙵𝚒𝚌ੈ P2

| 𝘼𝙧𝙩𝙞𝙨𝙩 𝙉𝙖𝙣𝙖𝙢𝙞/𝙄𝙣𝙛𝙡𝙪𝙚𝙣𝙘𝙚𝙧 𝘽𝙡𝙖𝙘𝙠 𝙧𝙚𝙖𝙙𝙚𝙧! | -> Part 1 here

today wasn't an easy day. they lost a patient on the table.

his team tried their best, nanami has no doubts about that. but the patient had multiple complications even prior to the surgery. he knew it would be a huge risk, one the family was willing to take. he hoped the odds would be in their favor.

however, they were outweighed severely.

this isn't the first time a patient has passed. but it never gets easier. in his residency days, when a patient death occurred, after work, he found himself turning to an unlikely source for distraction—instagram.

he can remember yu teasing him about it when he found out. it didn't last long, much to nanami's relief.

at first, he solely used the account for watching art videos. they bought him entertainment and kept his mind off of the sadness for a little while. but as he continued using the app, over the years, nanami found himself becoming more interested in art altogether.

during his break at work, he would do quick, "sloppy" sketches. and at home, he'd redraw them to perfection. it wasn't until four years of him just being a lurking account that nanami made his first post: a detailed sketch of the garden at the hospital he served his residency at. yu was his first commentor:

he posted another drawing a week later. yu was always the first to comment. nanami never got many likes and hardly any comments (besides yu's). but he didn't mind. he wasn't posting for likes.

he just wanted to share his art with whoever would see it. besides, his account was faceless and he had no intention of ever showing his face. this was purely for his own enjoyment—an archive of his work.

but as that archive grew, so did the likes, the comments, and the followers. seven years as a faceless art account, nanami had organically amassed 1.2m followers. and all his followers have to go off of are his hands, which were starting to get him into trouble as of late.

in the spare room of his apartment is where he does his art. recently, he started doing time-lapsed shots of him making sketches or doing drawing challenges circulating the internet.

one of his reels went viral, the comment section filled with viewers thirsting over the veins in his arms, exposed by his rolled up sleeves. since that video, he can’t escape that kind of attention. and, honestly, it’s starting to get annoying.

but never mind that. this not-so-secret hobby of his is starting to feel like a second job. his large following comes with sponsorships. and those came in handy whenever he was inbetween jobs or as just money to put away for future savings.

but those sponsorships also came with deadlines and contracts. for the last year, with work and just the overall dissatisfaction with his art, nanami has been posting significantly less.

his followers have noticed, too, begging him to post more content. for all they know, he’s just some guy who only does art. he has yet to share any part of his personal life with them. but even outside of social media, he wasn’t drawing as much.

he just can’t bring himself to do it. even in this funk nanami’s feeling, he can’t even do a small sketch. even reading requires too much mental labor.

really, he just wants to turn his brain off. the statement rings as true now as it did all those years ago: technology is a distraction.

‘the perfect one,’ he thinks as he mindlessly scrolls through instagram.

double-tap and scroll.

double-tap and scroll.

double-tap and scroll.

it’s a good thing tomorrow is one of his off-days. but even with the threat of being on-call, he can’t fight the temptation to stay awake doom-scrolling.

he’s been lost track of time. hell, he wasn’t even liking any art posts at this point, having scrolled far outside of his typical niche.

just trouble waiting to happen..

and that’s how he stumbles upon her:

she snaps him out of his mindless scrolling by her sheer beauty. the little demon on his shoulder tells him to take a look at her account, just for a couple of minutes. it’s not too serious to let his eyes stray for only a moment.

this night, user @ Kento_ART’s following list grew one user bigger.

#black reader #black y/n #it girl #pink aesthetic #nanami x y/n #jujutsu kaisen nanami #nanami x you #jujutsu nanami #nanami x reader #nanami kento #jjk nanami #kento x you #jujutsu kento #kento x y/n #kento x reader #jjk kento #social media #influencer

[latin-dr-robotnik]

I'm at this point in my 20s I just log into Tumblr to reblog cool fanart or vent a bit, usually both at the same time.

#latin dr robotnik stuff #it's happening i have lost interest in social media #maybe it's because i spend my time writing about games #or because i went back to uni this year #also real talk starting a new career and having to make new friends all over again is quite the task #I'm pretty sociable and even I'm having a rough time gathering consistent groups for all clases #and it's kinda depressing going into classes alone and not really getting to talk to anyone #anyway back to regular schedule

[whoatemyshoe]

"just google it" "do your own homework" "google is free" "find it yourself the information is out there"

but they are. they are asking people who have that information, for the information. they are doing their homework by reaching out and asking people questions. just because it's not typed on a search bar, doesn't mean it's any less of putting an effort to finding things out.

like i'm sorry people in the past refused/ridiculed you when you asked them for help. doesn't mean you have to be like them tho. why is learning through human interaction rejected in favour of isolated learning?

#my posts #rants #im part of the organising team for the women's march in my city #and someone interested to join the march was asking public transport directions to the march #the immediately response from the social media team in our group chat was to berate that person for being lazy/not doing their homework #like sure the transit map is available on the website #but anyone who takes public transport in my city KNOWS that the trains and maps are unreliable in so many ways #i was exploring a different line yesterday and got on the wrong train despite being on the correct platform #and i take public transport regularly and have a good sense of direction but the public transport here isnt designed to be user friendly #if they had to ask which line they should interchange at you KNOW they are clueless and probably terrified of the public transportation her #and yet as organisers they refuse to make it easier for people to participate at a march no one owes us to attend #they just gave them a link and asked them to figure it out themselves #i am very familiar with that route and i just KNOW the interchange is confusing and large enough that beginner commuters will get lost #and you know what could happen if someone struggles to navigate public transport? they probably would just go home instead #they blame the education system for producing youngsters who are spoon fed #girl the older generation said the exact same thing about your generation pls #your misdirected anger is being projected at the victim of this system instead of at the actual problem #which is what i've been observing from career activists around me and more #you claim to fight for the people #but the very people you're fighting for are asking you for help #yet you refuse to help them unless it's through significant policies or drastic systemic changes #your fight is conditional and only convenient for you but you refuse to admit it and then pretend the opposite #the moment they decided that they would 'teach them a lesson' indirectly by forcing them to figure out their own routes #they've already fallen into that activist trap of thinking they are above everyone else and that they are here to teach people how to #be a better person according to their standards because they know better by being more involved in activism and are better educated #instead of putting themselves in the girl's shoes and not assuming the worst of people as the default #maybe that girl is new in town and is unfamiliar with public transport here #maybe they had a bad experience getting lost before and wanted someone experienced to share some commuting tips to avoid getting lost #maybe she would rather pull her teeth out than try to figure out the route with unreliable mountains of information online #maybe she has executive dysfunction that makes filtering through tons of information to find that ONE route very daunting

[fuckyeahgoodomens]

The Radio Times magazine from the 29 July-04 August 2023 :)

THE SECOND COMING

How did Terry Pratchett and Neil gaiman overcome the small matter of Pratchett's death to make another series of their acclaimed divine comedy?

For all the dead authors in the world,” legendary comedy producer John Lloyd once said, “Terry Pratchett is the most alive.” And he’s right. Sir Terry is having an extremely busy 2023… for someone who died in 2015.

This week sees the release of Good Omens 2, the second series of Amazon’s fantasy comedy drama based on the cult novel Pratchett co-wrote with Neil Gaiman in the late 1980s. This will be followed in the autumn by a new spin-off book from Pratchett’s Discworld series, Tiffany Aching’s Guide to Being a Witch, co-written by Pratchett’s daughter Rhianna and children’s author Gabrielle Kent. The same month, we’ll also get A Stroke of the Pen, a collection of “lost” short stories written by Sir Terry for local newspapers in the 70s and 80s and recently rediscovered. Clearly, while there are no more books coming from Pratchett – a hard drive containing all drafts and unpublished work was crushed by a vintage steamroller shortly after the author’s death, as per his specific wishes – people still want to visit his vivid and addictive worlds in new ways.

Good Omens 2 will be the first test of how this can work. The original book started life as a 5,000-word short story by Gaiman, titled William the Antichrist and envisioned as a bit of a mashup of Richmal Crompton’s Just William books and the 70s horror classic The Omen. What would happen, Gaiman had mused, if the spawn of Satan had been raised, not by a powerful American diplomat, but by an extremely normal couple in an idyllic English village, far from the influence of hellish forces? He’d sent the first draft to bestselling fantasy author Pratchett, a friend of many years, and then forgotten about it as he busied himself with continuing to write his massively popular comic books, including Violent Cases, Black Orchid and The Sandman, which became a Netflix series last year.

Pratchett loved the idea, offering to either buy the concept from Gaiman or co-write it. It was, as Gaiman later said, “like Michelangelo phoning and asking if you want to paint a ceiling” The pair worked on the book together from that point on, rewriting each other as they went and communicating via long phone calls and mailed floppy discs. “The actual mechanics worked like this: I would do a bit, then Neil would take it away and do a bit more and give it back to me,” Pratchett told Locus magazine in 1991. “We’d mess about with each other’s bits and pieces.”

Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch – to give it its full title –was published in 1990 to huge acclaim. It was one of, astonishingly, five Terry Pratchett novels to be published that year (he averaged two a year, including 41 Discworld novels and many other standalone works and collaborations).

It was also, clearly, extremely filmable, and studios came knocking — though getting it made took a while. rnvo decades on from its writing, four years after Pratchett's death from Alzheimer's disease aged 66, and after several doomed attempts to get a movie version off the ground, Good Omens finally made it to TV screens in 2019, scripted and show-run by Gaiman himself. "Terry was egging me on to make it into television. He knew he was dying, and he knew that I wouldn't start it without him," Gaiman revealed in a 2019 Radio Times interview. Amazon and the BBC co-produced with Pratchett's company Narrativia and Gaiman's Blank Corporation production studios, with Michael Sheen and David Tennant cast in the central roles of Aziraphale the angel and Crowley the demon. The show was a hit, not just with fans of its two creators, but with a whole new young audience, many of whom had no interest in Discworld or Sandman. Social media networks like Tumblr and TikTok were soon awash with cosplay, artwork and fan fiction. The original novel became, for the first time, a New York Times bestseller.

A follow up was, on one level, a no-brainer. The world Pratchett and Gaiman had created was vivid, funny and accessible, and Tennant and Sheen had found an intriguing romantic spark in their chemistry not present in the novel.

There was, however, a huge problem. There wasn't a second Good Omens book to base it on. But there was the ghost of an idea.

In 1989, after the book had been sold but before it had come out, the two authors had laid on fivin beds in a hotel room at a convention in Seattle and, jet-lagged and unable to sleep, plotted out, in some detail, what would happen in a sequel, provisionally titled 668, The II Neighbour of the Beast.

"It was a good one, too" Gaiman wrote in a 2021 blog. "We fully intended to write it, whenever we next had three or four months free. Only I went to live in America and Terry stayed in the UK, and after Good Omens was published, Sandman became SANDMAN and Discworld became DISCWORLD(TM) and there wasn't a good time."

Back in 1991, Pratchett elaborated, "We even know some of the main characters in it. But there's a huge difference between sitting there chatting away, saying, 'Hey, we could do this, we could do that,' and actually physically getting down and doing it all again." In 2019, Gaiman pillaged some of those ideas for Good Omens series one (for example, its final episode wasn't in the book at all), and had left enough threads dangling to give him an opening for a sequel. This is the well he's returned to for Good Omens 2, co-writing with comic John Finnemore - drafted in, presumably, to plug the gap left Pratchett's unparalleled comedic mind. No small task.

Projects like Good Omens 2 are an important proving ground for Pratchett's legacy: can the universes he conjured endure without their creator? And can they stay true to his spirit? Sir Terry was famously protective of his creations, and there have been remarkably few adaptations of his work considering how prolific he was. "What would be in it for me?" he asked in 2003. "Money? I've got money."

He wanted his work treated reverently and not butchered for the screen. It's why Good Omens and projects like Tiffany Aching's Guide to Being a Witch are made with trusted members of the inner circle like Neil Gaiman and Rhianna Pratchett at the helm. It's also why the author's estate, run by Pratchett's former assistant and business manager Rob Wilkins, keeps a tight rein on any licensed Pratchett material — it's a multi-million dollar media empire still run like a cottage industry.

And that's heartening. Anyone who saw BBC America's panned 2021 Pratchett adaptation The Watch will know how badly these things can go when a studio is allowed to run amok with the material without oversight. These stories deserve to be told, and these worlds deserve to be explored — properly. And there are, apparently, many plans afoot for more Pratchett on the screen. You can only hope that, somewhere, he'll be proud of the results.

After all, as he wrote himself, "No one is finally dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away, until the clock wound up winds down, until the wine she made has finished its ferment, until the crop they planted is harvested. The span of someone's life is only the core of their actual existence."

While those ripples continue to spread, Sir Terry Pratchett remains very much alive. MARC BURROWS

DIVINE DUO

An angel and a demon walk into a pub... Michael Sheen and David Tennant on family, friendship and Morecambe & Wise

Outside it's cold winter's day and we're in a Scottish studio, somewhere between Edinburgh and Glasgow. But inside it's lunchtime in The Dirty Donkey pub in the heart of London, with both Michael Sheen and David Tennant surveying the scene appreciatively. "This is a great pub," says Sheen eagerly, while Tennant calls it "the best Soho there can be. A slightly heightened, immaculate, perfect, dreamy Soho."

Here, a painting of the absent landlord — the late Terry Pratchett, co-creator, with Neil Gaiman, of the series' source novel — looms over punters. Around the corner is AZ Fell and Co Antiquarian and Unusual Books. It's the bookshop owned by Sheen's character, the angel Aziraphale, and the place to where Tennant's demon Crowley is inevitably drawn.

It's day 74 of an 80-day shoot for a series that no one, least of all the leading actors, ever thought would happen, due to the fact that Pratchett and Gaiman hadn't ever published any sequel to their 1990 fantasy satire. Tennant explains, "What we didn't know was that Neil and Terry had had plots and plans..."

Still, lots of good things are in Good Omens 2, which expands on the millennia-spanning multiverse of the first series. These include a surprisingly naked side of John Hamm, and roles for both Tennant's father-in-law (Peter Davison) and 21-year-old son Ty. At its heart, though, remains the brilliant banter between the two leading men — as Sheen puts it, "very Eric and Ernie !" — whose chemistry on the first series led to one of the more surprising saviours of lockdown telly.

Good Omens is back — but you've worked together a lot in the meantime. Was there a connective tissue between series one of Good Omens and Staged, your lockdown sitcom?

David: Only in as much as the first series went out, then a few months later, we were all locked in our houses. And because of the work we'd done on Good Omens, it occurred that we might do something else. I mean, Neil Gaiman takes full responsibility for Staged. Which, to some extent, he's probably right to do!

Michael: We've got to know each other through doing this. Our lives have gotten more entwined in all kinds of ways — we have children who've now become friends, and our families know each other.

There have been hints of a romantic storyline between the two characters. How much of an undercurrent is that in this series.

David: Nothing's explicit.

Michael: I felt from the very beginning that part of what would be interesting to explore is that Aziraphale is a character, a being, who just loves. How does that manifest itself in a very specific relationship with another being? Inevitably, as there is with everything in this story, there's a grey area. The fact that people see potentially a "romantic relationship", I thought that was interesting and something to explore.

There was a petition to have the first series banned because of its irreverent take on Christian tropes. Series two digs even more deeply into the Bible with the story of Job. How much of a badge of honour is it that the show riles the people who like to ban things?

David: It's not an irreligious show at all. It's actually very respectful of the structure of that sort of religious belief. The idea that it promotes Satanism [is nonsense]. None of the characters from hell are to be aspired to at all! They're a dreadful bunch of non-entities. People are very keen to be offended, aren't they? They're often looking for something to glom on to without possibly really examining what they think they're complaining about.

Michael, you're known as an activist, and you're in the middle of Making BBC drama The Way, which "taps into the social and political chaos of today's world". Is it important for you to use your plaform to discuss causes you believe in?

Michael: The Way is not a political tract, it's just set in the area that I come from. But it has to matter to you, doesn't it? More and more as I get older, [I find] it can be a real slog doing this stuff. You've got to enjoy it. And if it doesn't matter to you, then it's just going to be depressing.

David, Michael has declared himself a "not-for-profit" actor. Has he tried to persuade you to give up all your money too?

David: What an extraordinary question! One is always aware that one has a certain responsibility if one is fortunate and gets to do a job that often doesn't feel like a job. You want to do your bit whenever you can. But at the same time, I'm an actor. I'm not about to give that up to go into politics or anything. But I'll do what I can from where I live.

Well, your son and your father-in-law are also starring in this series. How about that, jobs for the boys!

David: I know! It was a delight to get to be on set with them. And certainly an unexpected one for me. Neil, on two occasions, got to bowl up to me and say, "Guess who we've cast?!"

How do you feel about your US peers going on strike?

David: It's happening because there are issues that need to be addressed. Nobody's doing this lightly. These are important issues, and they've got to be sorted out for the future of our industry. There's this idea that writers and actors are all living high on the hog. For huge swathes of our industry, that's just not the case. These people have got to be protected.

Michael: We have to be really careful that things don't slide back to the way they were pre the 1950s, when the stories that we told were all coming from one point of view and the stories of certain people, or communities within our society, weren't represented. There's a sense that now that's changed for ever and it'll never go back. But you worry when people can't afford to have the opportunities that other people have. We don't want the story that we tell about ourselves to be myopic. You want it to be as inclusive as possible

Staged series 3 recently broadcast. It felt like the show's last hurrah — or is there more mileage? Sheen and Tennant go on holiday?

David: That's the Christmas special! One Foot in the Algarve! On the Buses Go to Spain!

Michael: I don't think we were thinking beyond three, were we?

So is it time for a conscious uncoupling for you two — Eric and Ernie say goodbye?

David: Oh, never say never, will we?

Michael: And it's more Hinge and Bracket.

David: Maybe that's what we do next — The Hinge and Bracket Story. CRAIG McLEAN

#good omens #gos2 #season 2 #radio times #radio times 2023 #interview #magazines #neil gaiman #terry pratchett #david tennant #michael sheen #david interview #michael interview #neil interview #terry interview #bts #fun fact #staged #the way #s2 interview #transcripts

[somerandomdere]

Yandere! actor x crew member! g/n reader

tags: fluff, slight? yandere themes (duh), you can tell I don't know much about how hollywood scandal works, it's my first fic pls feedback

Fame was everything to Gabriel, it's been his whole life. He was a nepo baby, he has seen the cameras the moment he was born. Blessed with a good face, filthy rich parents, and a flirtatious personality, he was everything ladies wanted in a man.

Until everything came crashing down.

He got into a huge scandal he wasn't even aware of. He was accused of sexually harassing a fellow co actress, when in fact he never laid a finger on her. Sure, he was a well known celebrity and has a history of sleeping around, but that doesn't mean he will force himself on someone without consent!

The scandal got so big he was defamed everywhere. His sponsors withdrew, his parents and friends wanted to cut ties with him, and his girlfriend cussed him out before leaving.

It wasn't him! But at this point, no one believed in him. He started being depressed, having suicidal thoughts, and contemplating on quitting his dream career.

Enter you. Beautiful, radiant you.

After a long day of carrying heavy sets and helping out around the set. You were exhausted, so you went out to breathe some fresh air and smoke. As you lit up your cigarette, the main actor of your current show, Gabriel, seemed to be crying. You wanted to smoke, but you couldn't just leave a crying man alone! and you did want some privacy while taking a puff

"Hey... you alright?" You genuinely asked.

You didn't know much about Gabriel's scandal, since you weren't very interested in the affairs of celebrities and thought that fans should just mind their own business.

And you were just here to make extra money, what's the worst that could happen? You'll be gone in no time anyways. He'll just quickly forget you.

"Hey um..." You started awkwardly, and cleared your throat. "I may not be the best person that can comfort, but you can talk to me. I'll listen."

You thought he would be suspicious of you, because of his celebrity status, but he ranted to you and cried. How he was misunderstood. How the people closest to him never believed in him. How he felt so hopeless after he lost everything.

You reached out to touch his hand. You let him know you understood. How painful this period of life will be and how it will all be fine after.

You told him to take a look around him. Look through a different scope, see the people who actually cares for him. You told him how your uncle never believed any of those rumors and took advantage of this to hire him.

He teared up, not from self pity this time, but from realisation. Maybe he should abandon those people who never saw his true self anyways. For the first time, he looked into your eyes. The sunlight danced over your eyes, it reminded him of the warmth his parents used to give him, before they got too busy.

Maybe that's when he fell for you. He couldn't really point out when he fell head over heels, but he can kinda figure he feelings sprouted here.

He came back, stronger than ever. His acting caused your uncle's movie grossing to skyrocket. It hit the box office, everyone was talking about his movie through social media, how he so accurately acted his role, to the point they shivered. He decided to take this opportunity to clear his name. Due to the how overwhelmingly successful his new movie was, people decided to believe him.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Y/N! My name was cleared!" He squealed into the phone. You sincerely felt happy for him and offered to celebrate with him.

He wouldn't let this opportunity go without a waste! He immediately said yes. He wanted to see your beautiful face again, and finally ask you out.

He will finally be yours, and you will finally be his.

@hana-no-seiiki

@lovverletters

@moyazaika

@yxami

@mightypossibly

@suiana

My inspos on how to write fics (and my fav fic writers!) PLS PLS PLS PLS GIVE ME FEEDBACKKK

#male yandere #male yandere cafe #yandere actor #gn reader #yandere celebrity x gn reader #first post #idk what else to tag #i'm actually shaking

[writingstoraes]

wrong wolff 🗯

pairing: charles leclerc/fem!wolff!reader

type: instagram imagine, social media au

notes: i am once again in a slump! i keep starting works and not finishing them midway lol hope you guys like this! let me know what u think 🤍

about: amidst the talks of charles' contract renewal at ferrari, rumors associating him with Mercedes arises as he is apparently offered a seat by their very own team principal. turns out, the Mercedes boss' daughter also grew close with the driver in the middle of all negotiations.

ynwolff

liked by susiewolff, danielricciardo, pierregasly, and 1,223,991 others

ynwolff finally back at the paddock to not only watch races, but annoy my dad while i'm at it 🏎️

tagged: mercedesamgf1

mercedesamgf1 The princess of the paddock is finally back!

susiewolff Dad has already sent 4 texts messages about how he lost sight of you 🤣

ynwolff don't worry, i was just looking around :)

brocedes23 So beautiful in person! Able to ask for a picture on her way to the Ferrari garage! ❤️

charlosluv WOAHH she watched the race there? pierresgirl Toto Wolff's daughter watching a race at the Ferrari garage now that's interesting... hold on

ynwolff

liked by charles_leclerc, carlossainz55, mercedesamgf1, and 906,445 others

ynwolff met with some nice people today :) hey, scuderiaferrari, your drivers are actually not all bad (one is surprisingly funny) 🤯

mercedesamgf1 Ferrari, please bring our boss' daughter back in one piece!

scuderiaferrari You have our word 👌

gaslys10 ok so she was actually at the ferrari garage this is so amazing of her lol

lecs1655 it's nice to see her getting along with other drivers, not a lot of this seen in the paddock ❤️

lovermidnights I think she's good friends with some drivers, recently Charles, she's with Toto usually when they go out, along with Lewis

charles_leclerc Thanks, funny is my best trait :D

ynwolff sure, i was talking about you 😁 charles_leclerc Pretty snappy response from someone who can't stop laughing at my basketball joke ynwolff i was laughing at you, not because of you, there is a difference charles_leclerc Sure, whatever you say 🤷‍♀️

ferrariscud NOT Y/N AND CHARLES FLIRTING AT THE COMMENTS?? IN FRONT OF MY SALAD???

ynwolff

liked by susiewolff, charles_leclerc, mercedesamgf1, and 1,451,556 others

ynwolff photoshoots and whatnot 📸 had to include this helmet i looove so much (glad the photographer loved it, too)

mercedesamgf1 Wolff serving as always!

susiewolff My gorgeous daughter 💓

charles_leclerc I hope next time you play badminton as good as you look

ynwolff did you just call me pretty carlossainz55 LOL charles_leclerc No? I said you suck at badminton ferrarigirlie charles is so me when flirting

charles_leclerc recently added to his instagram story!

charles_leclerc

liked by ynwolff, susiewolff, mercedesamgf1, and 1,442,985 others

charles_leclerc I, in fact, signed a contract today: to take her out for as many ice cream dates as she wishes and watch a dozen of her favorite movies in one day.

tagged: ynwolff

ynwolff pleasure doing business with you, chuckles

charles_leclerc So you admit, I was the funny one

mercedesamgf1 Business-minded just like her dad 🫡

loveswolff THIS IS SO CUTE

ricciardochamp she is both a wag and the boss' daughter, unmatched

ynwolff

liked by carlossainz55, charles_leclerc, susiewolff, and 1,238,990 others

ynwolff loving him is definitely red ❤️

tagged: charles_leclerc

carlossainz55 Finally! Charles won't stop whining asking me when I think you're going to post him 🙄

charles_leclerc Whatever happened to teammate confidentiality carlossainz55 I like her more than you, she's nicer so

susiewolff Dad would like to clear some things: he did not just say all the nice things about Charles just because you're his girlfriend, in fact, in his own words, he knew him first

ynwolff my own father competing with me? charles_leclerc 😅😅😅

----------

tagging: @slytherheign

notes: this was quite lengthy i got carried away sorry lol anyway lmk what u guys think! currently working on wip's and requests hehehe also thinking of doing a permanent taglist, would anyone be interested in joining hehehehe

#writtenbyrae #charles leclerc #charles leclerc imagine #charles leclerc fluff #charles leclerc fanfic #charles leclerc x y/n #charles leclerc x reader #charles leclerc x female reader #charles leclerc x you #charles leclerc ig imagine #charles leclerc social media au #charles leclerc instagram imagine #formula 1 #f1 #f1 imagine #f1 fanfic #formula 1 insta au #charles leclerc insta au #formula 1 social media au #f1 social media au #f1 instagram imagine #formula 1 instagram imagine #f1 x y/n #f1 x female reader #f1 x you #f1 x reader #formula 1 fanfic

[a-dinosaur-a-day]

I know it's such a highly popular dinosaur but are they any interesting facts about the Tyrannosaurus Rex that isn't well known? I still love the Rexes wishing more dinosaur media treated it in the same way nature documentaries treat modern carnivores as animals just trying to surive and not just ripping up every living thing they encounter.

T. rex is actually one of the best studied (non-neornithine) dinosaurs ever, period. In fact, writing all the interesting facts we know about it is... more work than I particularly want to do right now, lol.

some things off the top of my head:

it wasn't built for moving fast in terms of miles per hour or whatever, but they were built for extreme cursoriality in other ways. Essentially, T. rex and its relatives were built for turning, quickly, on a dime. And they moved faster than the herbivores they were chasing. So these were animals built for short, surprise attacks on their prey. And ballet dancing

T. rex had the best sense of smell... ever. Like, ever ever. And its eyesight and hearing were good too. It had a fairly large brain for where it is in the dinosaur family tree, as well. Essentially, this was a dinosaur built to take in as much sensory info as possible, to pinpoint prey as quickly as possible.

T. rex aged kind of like people! IE, the process of going from infant -> sexually and skeletally mature adult takes about the same amount of time, with similar stages happening at similar times. So, T. rex had an awkward teenage phase! They were tall, but very skinny and lanky, and many researchers think that different ages of Tyrannosaurus filled different niches, with bigger rexes eating larger prey and the teens eating smaller faster dinosaurs.

That said, there's lots of evidence for familial groups and social life in Tyrannosaurs, based on fossilization patterns and footprint records. So it's very likely they took care of their young, and hunted in groups.

did they have feathers? no idea. they're big enough to have lost them for thermoregulation like many other dinosaurs did. they are in a group that have some big feathered animals, though, like Yutyrannus. Maybe babies had feathers and adults lost them. Maybe adults kept them some places and not others. We do know that there are parts of the Tyrannosaurus adult body that had scales. Beyond that - whether feathers were present too, or not - we don't know.

it was not skeletally sexually dimorphic. however, we do know that some tyrannosaurs were female because the fossilized when they were in the process of making eggs. during this process, dinosaurs - including living birds - deposit extra tissue in their bones called medullary bone. This tissue stores calcium to make eggshells from later. It's only present in actively ovulating female dinosaurs. So, we know some of our fossils were making eggs when they died!

the arms were small, yeah, but they were VERY strong. these weren't vestigial organs, yet, though their shortness was mainly due to the strengthening of the neck muscles. T. rex interacted with the world primarily with its head and jaws. The arms would have been helpful with holding on during mating, or possibly for display.

it wasn't a scavenger. it was an opportunist. No predators today avoid easy meals - life is all about minimizing energy spent to get more energy. But obligate scavengers tend to be flying organisms, ones that can cover huge distances, in order to find enough carrion. T. rex was definitely a predator, and had to hunt occasionally, but wouldn't turn up its nose at an easy meal.

T. rex lived all over western north america, right at the end of the age of dinosaurs. It was one of the most successful nonavian dinosaurs, ever, and would probably not have gone extinct so quickly if there hadn't been an asteroid.

#tyrannosaurus #dinosaurs #t. rex #palaeoblr #paleontologist ama

[skamenglishsubs]

Subtext and Culture, Young Royals, Season 3, Episode 3

Episode 3 picks up the day after the camping trip, and Wilhelm calls his mom to check on her. She dumps a massive guilt trip on him, maybe unintentionally, and Wilhelm is feeling a little bit down.

Culture: These are Swedish studentmössor. They originated in the 1800's among Nordic university students and they wore them as a common marker. Later, they were adopted as graduation caps for high school students, signifying that they were now allowed to begin studying at a university.

Culture: Valborg, April 30th, is a traditional Swedish holiday where you celebrate the coming of spring with bonfires. It is also the start of graduation season for high school students, and graduates are allowed to start wearing their caps.

Cinematography: This season they started writing most on-screen social media commentary in English, despite those users being pretty obviously Swedish. I suspect it's because it saves them having to subtitle all of them, it makes it a bit easier for all the viewers to follow along.

Subtext: No, keeping up appearances is more important than mental health for the royal family, which is why this is new behaviour that Wilhelm has never seen before.

Subtext: As a reminder of the increased interest, here's a paparazzi intruding on school grounds. Also, where the hell is Malin? Isn't it her job to shoo away photographers?

Culture: Vintern Rasat is a classic Swedish song celebrating spring that's often performed by student singers at Valborg.

Subtext: Boris cleverly offers August individual therapy, something he sorely needs.

Subtext: It's of course a bit ironic that pretty much the entire fandom hates August and has decided that he can't be forgiven or redeemed. Yes, you, dear reader. But Boris lays out a way for August to start his redemption arc. Will it work? Tune in for next week's episode!

Culture: These usernames reek of white supremacy. Norse mythology references are very popular, and 88 means H*il H*tler, so that's the kind of people we're dealing with. The show is also foreshadowing what's gonna happen at the end of the episode.

Blink and you miss it: Linda made Pabellón, a Venezuelan dish. In season 1 we didn't know where Linda was from, but in season 2 she was canonically made as being from Venezuela, just like Omar is in real life.

Subtext: I think August actually cares, Kristina is family to him too, but Wilhelm refuses to treat him as family, so he lies about how she's doing. Not very convincingly, though.

Cinematography: This is an absolutely hilarious shot with a bunch of students anxiously peering out through the windows as the dreaded enemy arrives: Skolinspektionen! Dun-dun-dun!

Blink and you miss it: There's a rainbow flag on the board to the left.

Subtext: Vanessa totally knew she interrupted a makeout session between our boys. Oh, and there's a lot of purple in these two scenes, colour theory exploded with joy.

Subtext: Simon will be proven wrong, someone will be honest.

Subtext: It's also ironic that Simon joins the rest of the Forest Ridge boys pretending to have a great meal together that is totally not stiff and awkward at all, absolutely not.

Lost in translation: Simon Walter says that May 1st is a "röd dag" - a red day, which is how Sundays and public holidays are usually marked in a Swedish calendar. "Bank holiday" is the term used in the UK for public holidays. There are 13 public holidays in Sweden each year.

Culture: Första Maj is the name of the International Workers' Day in Sweden, because it always occurs on May 1st. In defence of Henry and Walter's shared braincell, most Swedes actually don't participate, but it's a bit weird to not even know what it is.

Subtext: This entire sequence shows how Felice's dad tried to stick up for himself, but quickly learned to keep his head down instead and conform and roll with it. And it wasn't just the other students who were racists, the staff was in on it too. This goes for all the shit the students are doing, the partying, the booze, the alcohol, the bullying: The staff is in on it. They know. They're complicit.

And despite all of this, Poppe's immediate answer when asked how his time at Hillerska was, is that it was the best time of his life. This is why schools like this stay the way they are, why they never change, because they're very good and very bad at the same time. Trauma-bonding works, the kids will all get friends for life, they'll forget the shit and remember the good times. They'll become like him.

But when Felice learns what the school did to her dad, she decides to help shut it down, to stop the cycle of abuse. The reason she goes in alone is because she now knows she can't trust her dad, he's gonna defend the school, and she also doesn't want him to know that she snitched.

Subtext: In official surveys, students from schools like this generally rate them very highly. Student satisfaction is very high. Maybe they're lying, maybe they're delusional, but they sure care more about their schools than public school students.

Blink and you miss it: REAL SUBTLE THERE, SHOW.

Subtext: Keeping with the school theme, this is how students defend the shit that goes on. Outsiders are kept in the dark, you don't tell them anything, because they "wouldn't understand", they're missing the "full context", etc. Oh, I don't know shit about fashion, but Fredrika's jacket smells very expensive.

Blink and you miss it: While Wilhelm pinned a polaroid of himself and Simon prominently on his wall, August keeps a similar polaroid of himself and Sara hidden.

Subtext: Micke's redemption arc is in full swing, so why not play a song that reinforces the idea that people can change?

Subtext: August's redemption arc is in full swing, so let's cut to him nervously waiting outside Micke's place for Sara to come home, while the same song is playing. Is he gonna be a villain forever?

Blink and you miss it: Micke introduces himself as Micke af Eriksson when August introduces himself as August Horn af Årnäs. The English subtitles for some weird reason went with "Micke Eriksson of Bjärstad", but that's actually not what he says.

Subtext: Sara is pretty realistic about her expectations of her dad because she's seen this before, but this also applies to her expectations of August, because she knows that he can also slide back into his normal shitty self. Also, she's wearing a purple sweater.

Subtext: In case you forgot, August's dad also struggled with addiction, and died from it, so he and Sara actually has that in common. Maybe there's hope for this redemption arc thing?

Cinematography: I don't fucking know why they included this baking scene. It serves no purpose, and I suspect quite a few people in the production have a serious hand fetish, because what is this? What is this? Also, why are Simon and Wilhelm joining what appears to be a Manor House thing with the rest of the girls? How? Why? This makes no sense! It's very cute, though!

Subtext: Oh ok, we got a social media pic that Sara could see and feel bad for her lost friendships. But man, those Hillerska aprons! On point!

Subtext: This is unfortunately a very common thing for people on any kind of psychoactive medication. How can you tell if you need medication if you feel good right now? Is it lasting or temporary? Can you trust your own brain? Either way, fantastic conversation between Micke and Sara, which starts her on her journey to reconcile with Felice at least.

🎵 I can change, I'm not the same, not forever. 🎵

Culture: The official hat-on-putting ceremony where all the third-year students put on their hats, set to another traditional Swedish spring celebration song: Vårvindar Friska.

Culture: It's Valborg, so Hillerska has their own little bonfire. We saw some students with torches pretending to light it, but it's actually floating in the middle of the fountain so, uh, how did they do that? Normally, your local bonfire or Majbrasa is just a huge heap of wood that you set on fire.

Cinematography: Man, this is a pretty show. Look at that shot. The fire, the sunset, the pool reflection. The end of April is over a month after the spring equinox, so the days are getting longer, and the sun now sets at about half past nine in the evenings.

Subtext: Ok, let's do one more on-the-nose lyrics thing for when August sees Sara back at school. Yes, yes, he needs her.

Culture: I had to post about it immediately after watching the episode, because setting a sex scene to Uti Vår Hage is hilarious. Everyone in Sweden knows it, most people have sung it at school, it's a cute little song about enjoying your garden, flowers, and giving your loved one a wreath of flowers. I can now never hear this song without thinking about this scene. Thanks a lot, show.

Blink and you miss it: Simon fucks Wilhelm. Yay! Versatile supremacy!

Subtext: Sara is still so suspicious of her dad's behaviour, she can't make herself trust that his current good period will last.

Subtext: Even though this dialogue is about how Simon and Sara are so different, it of course also applies to how Wilhelm and Erik were different, because Wilhelm struggles with not being able to handle his duty the same way Erik could.

Culture: Alright, it's time for the actual local Första Maj event in Bjärstad. The town is probably a bit small to have a proper demonstration parade, but there's people with banners and socialist slogans, and a bunch of local organisations have joined in, including Bjärstad BK, the football club Rosh plays in.

Culture: Meanwhile, the absolutely not socialist rich kids at Hillerska are nursing their hangovers and enjoying the day off, and they're doing some yoga and playing some padel instead. As you do.

Subtext: Drugs. He looks like he's selling drugs.

Culture: These apparently confused a bunch of viewers, but they're just raffle tickets. It's one hundred numbered, rolled up, paper tickets stuck on a metal ring. When you buy a ticket you just tear it off at the perforation, and when all tickets are sold you can just break the seal on the ring and pour all the stubs in a bag or whatever so you can draw winners.

Blink and you miss it: Cute kiddo has a pride pin on his jacket.

Lost in translation: The show waited a bit with showing what it says on the banner behind them in the photo, but if you can read Swedish you immediately saw that it says KROSSA ÖVERKLASSEN - CRUSH THE UPPER CLASSES. Oh no, Simon, what have you done?

Blink and you miss it: Like a pack of rabid wolves, the social-media starved Gen Z kids rush to their phones for an hour of glorious feeding on Instagram and TikTok.

Blink and you miss it: I love Vincent so much, he's terrible, but he's just so much fun! The little fist he makes as he says "kampen" just seals it.

Subtext: The show still hasn't revealed the banner text to the non-Swedish audience, but Wilhelm immediately sees it and knows how bad it is and why Farima tried calling him seven times. Also, Vincent is just on a roll here.

Cinematography: Man, this is a pretty show. Look at that shot. Look at how they perfectly aligned the hole in the window with Simon, the police car, and the entrance to their house, as he discovers that someone decided to vandalize it.

#young royals #young royals subtext #young royals analysis #young royals season 3

[anonymousys]

useful system apps

hi ! we're an anonymous system, feel free to call us anon !!! we are making a list of apps* we find useful for system things !!! feel free to add any other things :)

*it was supposed to be just that but i forgot in the middle and just said a bunch of extra stuff. mb

our app suggestions

simply plural: useful for keeping track of alters and fronting. there's a chat function as well, though we don't use it anymore because of the way it formats messages. it is useful for reminders and tasks though! plus, insys communication if you aren't bothered by the formatting. (mobile and desktop free, but desktop is a little iffy.)

fortelling: an app for writers keeping track of their characters, stories, plotlines. however, we tested out how it would work for keeping track of alters and communication/journaling, and it worked pretty well! there are group options like simply plural, but formatted very differently. good for keeping discreet. (mobile is free, desktop is availble but payment needed)

firefox multiacc extension: we just started using this, and it's really helpful!!! we are able to have multiple accounts and tabs open, all organized by system! this, paired with protonmail, is really good for having seperate accounts if that's what your system wants. (desktop available, havent checked mobile)

feedbro: its a simpler, slightly lacking version of the usefulness of firefox multiacc ex.. we used it for a while for certain interests and added tumblr accs on it, and it wasnt the best, but it did work then! (desktop available, no mobile).

twinote: fake twitter. good for sys communication, plus it's just fun! (mobile availble, no desktop?) other fake social media apps work, too, though instagram ones are pretty annoying bc they need images

ifake: fake messages! good for sys communication, plus, again, fun! only thing is that you need to watch ads to make chats :( but the chats are good! many formatting options. (mobile available, no desktop)

notion: good for sys communication/journaling! we use one, and it's really helpful. we have a journal, task list (with reminders), alter list, interest list, plus more (feel free to ask abt it! can show ppl how it looks) unlimited amount of pages and elements as long as you only have one account per workspace! (mobile and desktop available, desktop preferred.) some alternatives are coda (limiting), evernote (limiting, formatting), and onenote (formatting).

pluralkit: bot for systems. we only use this on our phone as we have our own seperate discords on our computer (re: use multiacc firefox ex. <3) but it's helpful! plus, you can change your avatar per server (mobile and desktop available.) alternatives include tupperbox (formatting + old).

youtube music: pair this with firefox adblocker and i swear its so good. its just youtube but focused on music. cant change the playlist pictures, but lost of playlists available! plus less, shorter ads (if u dont use firefox adblocker for some reason). (mobile and desktop available, desktop preferred.)

other suggestions

keep a digital journal/diary! physical is good, too, but we personally find it easier to access digitally, plus less chance of people accidentally finding it.

use firefox. not too system related apart from the multiacc thing but firefox is great

some things we do

we have "certain alter [piece of clothing/thing/accessory]" that helps us determine whos fronting sometimes :)

try to keep track of what happens in life! its helped us integrate to be a little less confused with life

dont feel bad if you dont use any of these! its your system, your choice, you choose how to navigate everything <3

#* prince #plural #actually osdd #actually plural #actually traumagenic #osdd #osdd system #osddid #other specified dissociative disorder #plural system #traumagenic #* tin

[energeticwarrior]

GLOBAL STRIKE FOR GAZA 1/21-1/28

Apologies for my delay in using my platform, I found out about this strike yesterday and was taking some time to figure out what to say

Palestine has been suffering long before October 2023 and I need everybody to understand that. There is a genocide happening right now and if people don't use their voices to speak up, then they will become a lost cause in our history. We do not want the stories of their people to be told 50 years from now with a side comment like "oh no I wish someone would've done something" or "I can't believe that actually happened." Our voices can spread like a wildfire, so I hope that everybody joins the global strike this week in support of Palestine and uses their voices, social media, platforms, etc to voice their support.

If you are unsure of where to start, I suggest reading up on the history of Israel's occupation of Palestine dating back to 1948. Here is a free PDF download of this book. To be honest, I have not finished reading this book yet, but it's been highly recommended to me by multiple people. Buying the book from the author would be better, but I understand that it's not within everybody's budgets which is why I included that link.

______________________________________________________________

If you follow this link, this is a great guide on how to participate and support the strike this week. Doing every single thing is not realistic but do what you can and that is enough.

Here are some Palestinian journalists you can follow on Twitter, as they are the most reliable source. Many news sources worldwide have been misconstruing this "conflict" and completely ignoring the blatant genocide happening before our eyes. These journalists are Palestinian people who have been living this their whole lives (there are many more people and the Twitter thread can be viewed here)

Additionally, here are some other Twitter accounts that you can receive information from.

I urge everybody (art blogs, fandom blogs, etc) to put their interests on pause for the week and use that time to educate themselves on what's been going on for the last several years. This did not start in October. Keep speaking up and uplift Palestinian voices!

______________________________________________________________

Resources and other ways to help:

BOYCOTT STARBUCKS AND MCDONALDS (among other things)

Donate E-Sims to help journalists be in touch with the rest of the world

Stop supporting Zionist celebrities (ex: Noah Schnapp, Gal Gadot)

Uplift Palestinian journalists

Donate menstrual products to menstruating people in Gaza

Donations to UNRWA, Islamic Relief Canada, Arab (daily clicks and proceeds go to UNRWA)

If I missed anything, please feel free to message me or send me something in my inbox. Again, I urge everybody to pause their week to stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people and continue to uplift their voices. We are all stronger together.

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[kingdom-of-sins]

Charles Leclerc x reader

A/N: Friends to lovers

You and Charles knew each other since you were kids. Went to the same school and had play dates almost every week. Both were each other's valentines when you two were just five year olds.

You two kinda lost touch when your parents sent you to boarding school in a different country. Charles got busy with his karting career and you got busy with your studies. But you two would meet once or twice in a year whenever you go back home or both coincidentally in the same city.

Both of you had relationships with other people as you two grew older, but your break ups were not as controversial as his. You would hear your friends talking about it, and with social media everyone just knows about every thing.

Once you moved back to Monaco the friendship took a new life. It's not a big place so you two run into each other almost every day. See each other at every event. Same gym. Same neighborhood.

Your professional life soon got hectic when you started working in your parents' company. A fashion/jewelry company. Famous internationally. You managed to sign Charles as a brand ambassador.

Imagine him doing a photoshoot for your company's new line of clothing. You at the set as well. Both constantly talking and discussing just normal stuff. Both going out for lunch just as friends. Your social media is private, so imagine Charles posting a funny video of you taking ages to choose what flavor of ice cream you will have...just imagine his laugh while he is explaining what's going on and zooming the camera on you. Imagine the fans reaction, but obviously they don't know you two are just very good friends.

Charles and you started to spend more time together. It's like the play dates you two had when you both were kids, but the difference is you two are now adults and instead of playing fun silly little kid's games you two just hang out, vent about your hectic lives, share interesting life events, all that...

Since the friendship rekindled Charles didn't feel the need to jump into a new relationship. He didn't know why. He didn't even think about it. But both of you still under the impression that you two are "just friends".

Imagine you invited to the Monaco GP by Ferrari. You at the back of the garage during the weekend, having a front seat view to everything and Charles. Charles will occasionally come talk to you if he gets the time. Obviously the cameras will get that. It will even be posted on the Ferrari social media. Imagine Charles winning the Monaco GP for the first time (i think we all want it to happen). He doesn't say it but a part of him thinks he won his home race because you were there.

Imagine bored Charles during his week off. Visit you in your office with lunch because you are too busy to even eat. He doesn't disturb you or anything, just making sure you eat something. You find a few minutes break from your work and spend it with him.

Gradually you find yourself regularly keeping tabs about the races and important news regarding F1. You will be doing some important work and the race which is happening in a different continent would be playing on the tv or your phone.

The first time Charles realized that he loves you is when he was in desperate need of a haircut before a social event. He was not in Monaco, but fortunately you were in the same city, probably invited to the same event. So hours before the event he was in your hotel room, sitting on a chair with a towel on his shoulder, and you with a comb and scissor in your hands. Charles trusted you to cut his hair and you were his only option. The entire time he was thinking how "right" it feels. He was looking at the mirror while you cut his hair, and the longer he looked the longer he wanted it to last. The bonus is the hair cut is exactly how his mom would have done it.

You are not dumb or oblivious to everything. You know you are falling for Charles. Whenever you think about you two, about the past and all the moments spent together, falling in love with him seems just inevitable. But you are kinda scared to take the first step. What if he doesn't feel the same way? Charles too is scared to confess his feelings. He knows he doesn't have a good track record when it comes to love and relationships. He doesn't want to mess things up with you. He is scared and nervous and completely in love.

You were very good at hiding your feelings but Charles was not even half as good as you. Everyone around him could tell that he is in love. Even the workers at the Ferrari factory could tell.

Imagine Charles in a different country for a race, and you in a different country for work. Suddenly he sees an article of you with some model or designer. It's just a work meeting but the media made it seem like there was something romantic. Charles knew that but he so badly wished that it was him in that article instead of the other guy. He won the race, mostly because he just wanted for the race to be over as fast as possible so he could hop on the plane and fly to you.

When Charles knocked at your hotel room door you thought it was room service. You opened the door expecting to see your dinner but found an exhausted Charles standing there. He didn't give you a chance to speak and immediately kissed you. It took you a couple of seconds but you kissed back. The way he held you, the way your fingers ran through his hair, the way it felt to kiss each other said everything.

Everything just felt natural. Everything just felt like it was all meant to be. Everything just fits like a perfect puzzle.

BONUS

Imagine both you and Charles decided to keep the relationship private. Of course your families and close friends know and they were all thrilled.

Both finding the right balance between work and relationship. Sometimes you are able to sync your travel with his so you both can be in the same city. You understand what it takes to date an F1 driver, and Charles soon understood what it takes to date someone who is one day going to inherit an entire company.

It's okay if you two don't call each other every day, but you two keep each other updated with texts, photos, videos and voice notes.

Imagine Charles trying to attend your company's events to support you. And you try to attend as many races as you can, at least 10 races a year.

While the relationship is private you never enter the paddock with him. It's for the best. But people are not blind and most are overthinkers and great investigators. Of course speculations started to spread about you two.

You thought the relationship would be private for at least a few more months but Charles accidentally posted a video of you driving his Ferrari while he is just being the passenger princess. The video was supposed to be for the "close friends" but he accidentally forgot to choose that potion before uploading it on his insta story. He realized it immediately and deleted it but a lot of fans have already seen it and recorded it.

Now imagine entering the paddock together. A power couple. Charles holding your hand, fingers intertwined and all. Him introducing you to some necessary people.

Imagine one of those photos where he helps you get in his car and see how it feels. A very unique experience. Him explaining the steering wheel and all the buttons and switches.

Charles kissing you before getting in the car and after finishing his race. If he is in the top 3 or won the race then he just knows you are with the Ferrari team at the parc ferme waiting for him and celebrating for him. Hugs and kisses. Smiling at you from the top of the podium.

Your social media accounts are private so the fans just hound him to post photos of you. Occasional hate is there. You don't care but Charles does.

Summer break. You surprise Charles with an amazing vacation. He is thrilled and excited, but he just can't stop smiling when he finds out that you invited his family as well, because you know he loves going on vacation with his family.

Cute videos of you two from race weekends.

Charles posting cute photos of you or of both of you. It's very rare but he proudly posts them.

Whenever someone asks him questions about you or your name comes up he just gives a love sick smile "my girlfriend..."

You live in Monaco, you are rich, you already have expensive cars, but imagine Charles gifting you a Ferrari. He was completely involved in designing, choosing the perfect color, anything that can be personalized.

Imagine cozy nights at home. You cooking and Charles helping. Watching movies while cuddling under the blanket.

Imagine both working out together.

Imagine both buying a house together. Both equally involved in designing and all. There is no shortage of money so you two can have anything you want.

Imagine you two having a perfect relationship.

#f1 #formula one #formula 1 #charles leclerc #charles leclerc imagine #charles leclerc x reader #charles leclerc x you #charles leclerc x female reader #charles leclerc fanfic #charles leclerc fluff #charles leclerc f1 #charles leclerc one shot

[holllandtrash]

6 to 1 | lando norris (part 3)

paring: lando norris x leclerc!reader part 3 in the 6 to 1 series (read part 2 here)

so you agree to go on a date with lando, much to charles' dismay and even though you made it a rule not to date drivers, part of you knows that the second the night comes to an end, you'll be wondering why you ever made that rule in the first place

word count: 5.7k tags: subtle mention of death, established friendships, minor social media au aspects, this is mostly fluff

Ignoring social media was easy. You could just silence your phone. 

Ignoring your brother was impossible, seeing as he practically forced himself into your hotel room after leaving the circuit. 

A lot of the drivers were going out and partying, Charles should have joined them. Instead, he was pacing back and forth at the end of your bed as you finished touching up your make up. 

“I lost a bet, Charles, stop making a big deal out of it,” you didn’t want him to overreact about you going out with Lando, but it was too late. 

Charles was standing only a few feet away when Lando approached you at the end of the race, but he couldn’t ask you about it until you were all back at the hotel. Needless to say, when you dumbed it down and said you lost a bet which resulted in you going out with Lando, Charles wasn’t too happy. 

“So you like him?” Charles questioned, catching your glare in the reflection. 

“As a person, yes.” You applied a layer of lip gloss and blotted it on a tissue before continuing, “Do I want to marry him and have his babies? No, Charles, I don’t. I lost a bet. It’s one date and you’re the only person making a big deal out of it.”

That wasn’t true. Most of F1 twitter was making a big deal out of it. Lando might have asked you quietly if you were free tonight, but apparently there were some professional lip readers out there who managed to piece together what he asked you when the videos of him leaning in had surfaced.

You stood up from the chair and nudged Charles out of the way so you could grab a zip-up hoodie resting on the edge of the bed. Lando didn’t tell you what you were doing tonight, but you assumed it would be casual. 

“So where are you guys going?”

“No idea.”

“Do you even want to go out with him?”

You pulled the zipper up halfway and turned to Charles, trying to understand why he was so against the idea of you going out with one of his friends. You both knew he was a good guy and it wasn’t as though you made it clear you were actually interested in Lando nor have you ever come out and hinted towards a relationship with him. It was just two friends going out.

This date was going to be a casual, a one time thing. It wouldn’t happen again, but no matter how many times you repeated that to Charles, he still had his concerns. 

“Lando and I are friends. This is no different than me hanging out with Carlos.”

“But you don’t usually hang out with Carlos and if you do, it’s because I’m with him.”

“You need to cool it with the whole overprotective brother thing. It's very early-2000's-romcom."

There was a knock on the hotel room door and both you and Charles turned your head. 

You held up a finger towards him seeing as he was closest, “Don’t you dare.”

Of course he didn’t listen to you. Charles bolted towards the door and you swore at him as you caught up, grabbing his arm and trying to pull him back. Charles pressed his hand to your forehead, pushing you out of the way and you had no choice but to dig your heel into the back of his knee so he dropped to the ground. 

Charles still tried to reach for the handle and you forced your way in between him and the door, keeping him at an arm's length by pressing against his shoulder and when you had a free second, you finally answered it.

“Hey,” you were breathless. And not because Lando looked, dare you say, adorable in his typical Quadrant shirt and rosy cheeks and also not because he was holding a bouquet of daisies this time instead of a single flower. But because as soon as you swung the door open, Charles had stood up and pushed you out of the way, practically knocking you into the wall. 

Lando had no idea what he was getting himself into. He took a step backwards and watched as the door closed slowly. He could have sworn he saw you about to take a swing at Charles, but no sound followed except for you yelling at your brother to fuck off and him yelling something back at you in Italian.

The door opened again, but this time it was Charles instead of you who was standing there.

He was also breathless. He eyed Lando up, eyebrows pinched together in an attempt to be intimidating, “Where are you taking her?”

“Joyride, probably, in a stolen vehicle,” Lando answered without any hesitation. “And then we might get matching tattoos, but that depends on how long it takes for us to rob a bank first.”

With literally all of the strength you had, you side-checked Charles, sending him stumbling away from the door. You smiled at Lando and quickly ran your fingers through your hair, knowing that none of it was in place anymore.

“Hi,” you said again, less out of breath this time. “Bank robbery?”

“Yeah I figured committing a felony in a foreign country is probably on your bucket list.”

 A laugh passed through your lips, “You know me so well.”

Charles gripped the side of the door and pulled it all the way open, “I don’t approve of this.”

“We’re not actually doing anything illegal,” Lando clarified with a chuckle of his own. When it was evident that Charles wasn’t finding this amusing, Lando’s smile dropped and he cleared his throat. 

You were expecting him to apologise, or to tell Charles what he actually had in mind, but with the most serious expression he could force his features into, Lando plucked one of the daisies from the bouquet and handed it to Charles.

“Don’t wait up, mate.”

Lando grabbed your hand before Charles could get another word out, pulling you into the hallway. You glanced over your shoulder just in time to see the door shut on your brother's face. 

You felt so childish. Lando’s hand in yours as you ran towards the elevator, both of you knowing that this date probably wasn’t the best idea but neither of you caring enough to say something to stop it. There was an incredibly high chance that Lando would be recognized wherever you went, and if you were spotted with him, which you would be, twitter would be all over it.

But you didn’t let yourself think about that as you stepped into the elevator. Lando let go of your hand and pressed the button to head down to the lobby. As he leaned back against the wall, he finally handed you the daisies. 

“What am I supposed to do with these?” You asked, carefully grabbing the steps.

Lando shrugged, “I did my part.”

“Your part?” You asked. “What does that mean?”

Lando let his head fall back against the elevator wall as he laughed, “I said I’d get you a bouquet and I did! I don’t care what you do with them.”

You should have expected that sort of answer from Lando.

“Where are we headed anyway?” You asked next. “What did you plan?”

The doors opened with a quiet ding. Lando grabbed your hand again. You noticed that each time he reached for you, you grew more and more comforted by his touch. It was a slow progress, but it was something.

But Lando wasn’t going to give away what he had in mind for this evening adventure. He stayed quiet, lips sealed and turned upwards into a smirk as he led you towards the front doors of the hotel. 

Parked out front was a luxury, black Audi. You didn’t have to ask if Lando rented it for the night, that question was answered when the valet handed the key to him. He grabbed the handle of the passenger door and pulled it open for you, taking the flowers momentarily as you buckled your seat belt. 

Before he could shut the door, you looked up at him and asked again, “Come on Norris, where are we going?”

“Do you trust me?”

“Not in the slightest.”

With another laugh, Lando shut the door, leaving you as clueless as you were before. You watched as he spoke to the valet for a moment before getting into the driver's seat. Lando took a quick look at his surroundings and then he sped off into the streets of Montreal. 

4

“You don’t like red velvet?” Lando asked as he took a bite of a cupcake he had just purchased from a pop up vendor. Some cream cheese icing stuck to his upper lip and you stifled your laughter behind your hand as you shook your head.

“No, it’s not my favourite,” you said, grabbing a napkin before leaving the stand. You handed it to Lando and his quick eyebrow twitch doubled as a thank you as he wiped his face.

He swallowed the bite before moving onto his next question, “Does pineapple belong on pizza?”

“Absolutely not,” you shook your head again. “And what the hell are these questions?”

Lando quickly scarfed down half of the cupcake, stepping closer to you when a couple of kids went running past in the opposite direction. He’d been asking you the most absurd questions ever since he parked the car, ranging from childhood related ones to favourites and dislikes. It was giving you whiplash, and he also wasn’t letting you ask any. 

“I’m just trying to get to know you better,” Lando answered casually. “I feel like everyone knows me, or knows a lot about me which is fine, it’s the life I signed up for but I don’t know anything about you.”

“That’s not true,” you argued. “You know my favourite desert.”

“And that you like daisies.”

He finished the rest of the cupcake and you took the wrapper from him, tossing it in the nearby trash can. When you turned back around, you spotted a few strangers watching you, or more specifically, watching Lando.

“Go take a picture with them,” you encouraged.

“I’m out with you,” he said quietly, purposely avoiding the eager eyes of the motorsport fans. “I don’t want to be rude.”

You rolled your eyes, this might have been the first time you rolled your eyes since he knocked on the door. “Lando, it’s not rude. If I didn’t want to be interrupted, I wouldn’t have gone out in public with an F1 driver.”

You could see how conflicted he was. He really did want to spend time with you. He’d been signing autographs all weekend.

But he was still a world famous driver when he stepped off the track. You pushed on his shoulder, subtly moving him in the direction of the fans before he could argue with you. 

You watched as his face instantly lit up, mirroring the young fans, as they exchanged a few words and he signed the back of their shirts. Lando glanced your way and you offered him a smile, but he wasn’t done with this impromptu meet and greet. A few other people recognised him, and then a few more, and then a few more. 

After almost ten minutes passed, you found a bench to wait on. You could still see Lando and the circle of fans that had grown around him and you made sure he could still see you. He’d look over his shoulder every few seconds, just to make sure you hadn’t grown tired of hanging around. 

But Lando didn’t know it was impossible for you to become bored of this. You got a lot of joy out of watching him interact with the people who looked up to him, admired him. It put a smile on your face each time someone new asked for a selfie or for him to sign something. 

It was obvious that Lando had a huge heart. Not only did he care about his friends and family, but he cared about every single person that ever approached him. He tried to make their experience special, even if it was a five second conversation. 

When Lando pointed towards you, you watched as a few girls wearing Ferrari shirts recognised you instantly. You smiled of course, but you were planning on staying seated. You weren’t the Formula 1 driver, that title belonged to your brother and the boy you were on a date with. 

You were always the proud sister of Charles Leclerc, but that same fulfilling feeling started to sink in as you watched Lando. 

When Lando finished up a few minutes later, he approached you with his arm outstretched for you to slide your hand into his. 

“You ready to call it a night?” 

You and Lando had been out for a few hours already, time raced by. Much like the evening he came to your flat unexpectedly, conversation flowed naturally, Lando didn’t allow there to be a lull with all of his questions anyway.

You didn’t want this night to end, but you both had early flights and this date wasn’t supposed to take your entire evening away. You could admit you had fun, but you were okay with calling it here.

You grabbed his hand and he helped you up. Lando waved once more at the group of fans as he led the two of you out of the market. 

He cleaned his neck to look down at you, “I’m s-”

“Don’t even think about apologising,” you were quick to cut him off, already knowing that the next word out of his mouth was going to be sorry. 

“But I am,” Lando said. “I was with the fans for a while.”

“So?” You raised your eyebrows. “Lando I love that there are people out here who love you, who recognise you in Canada for christ sakes. I can hang out with you whenever. For these fans, those five seconds they just had with you might be the only five seconds they ever get. I’m not going to take away any time from them nor should you feel bad, ever.”

You arrived at the parked car and you reached for the handle, but Lando stopped you before you could do anything just by tightening his grip on your hand the tiniest bit. He brushed his thumb over yours and as you met his gaze, you couldn’t get a read on him. You had no idea what sort of thoughts were going through his head.

And then he smiled, the kind of smile that would make his cheeks hurt if he held it for too long.

“Thank you,” he practically whispered those words. It made you wonder what sort of people he hung out with that made him feel guilty for giving his attention to fans.

“You don’t need to thank me, Lando,” you assured him. “I grew up in this lifestyle too, remember?”

You couldn’t count all of the times you were out with your family and Charles and Arthur were stopped by adoring fans. Over time, it just became a normal occurrence and you never let it bother you. 

Lando opened the door for you and waited until your seatbelt was on before shutting it. When he slid into the driver's seat, he didn’t turn the car on right away. Like seconds prior, he just turned his head to look at you, his eyes darting all over your face.

His mouth parted just enough for his tongue to poke through as he licked his lower lip, “If I wasn’t such a gentleman, I’d kiss you right now.”

His comment wasn’t supposed to make you laugh, but it did anyway. You pulled your fingers through your hair. “Oh, you’re a gentleman? Really?” 

Lando rolled his eyes at your rebuttal, “You hurt me, you know? You crush my ego. A lot.”

You nudged his arm, “Just drive the car.”

The hotel wasn’t too far away, and you were lucky enough that silence with Lando was comfortable, not awkward. For a while, the only sound came from the quiet radio station, playing French songs that Lando kept asking you to translate on the drive to the market, and the faint hum from the air conditioning.

And then Lando turned the radio off completely, keeping his eyes on the road, “Can I ask you something?”

You snorted, “You’ve been playing twenty questions all night, you’re really asking for permission now?”

Lando laughed as well, taking a second to glance your way. Your answer was equivalent to a ‘go ahead,’ so he went for it. Unintentionally causing this night to take a turn. 

“Have you ever dated anyone?”

You didn’t even need to think about it, “No.”

“Why not?”

Lando stopped at an intersection. The red light from above beaming down on half of his face. You could hear the crosswalk countdown through the glass and laughter coming from a group of people crossing the street, but the second you looked at Lando, all of that became background noise.

“It’s hard to let my guard down around people,” you admitted. “When Charles and Arthur started working their way up in motorsport, a lot of people wanted to get close to me just to get close to them. Girls wants to date them. Guys wanted to be their best friends. No one saw me for me. I always- I still am, I guess- the sister of the Leclerc drivers.”

The light turned green and the engine came to life again, but Lando reaching across the centre console to rest his hand on your leg only encouraged you to keep opening up to him. 

“Growing up, it was hard to figure out someone's true intentions,” you noticed Lando’s jaw clenched for a moment, like he could understand what you meant by that. He could. “I’m still young, but I like to think I have a better idea now than I did back then. And honestly, it’s for the best. Why allow myself to get heartbroken by someone who doesn’t actually care about me?”

If only you knew what Lando was thinking. 

I care about you, he wanted to say. God he wanted to scream it. 

But he couldn’t. He knew that this date was a one time thing. He knew your intentions, you wanted to remain friends. You didn’t date drivers. 

Why didn’t you date drivers?

You slept with Pierre, but you never actually had feelings for him. Or any driver for that matter, from what he could recall.

“Can you explain something to me, then?” Lando asked, again taking a second to look at you. He hated that he was driving right now, he wanted to give you all of his attention. He didn’t want you to have to share it with the road. “Why don’t you date drivers, Y/N? Or, athletes in a similar field? You grew up in this lifestyle so wouldn’t it be easier to be in a relationship with someone who you don’t have to worry is trying to get something out of you?”

His question was innocent enough. It wasn’t as though he was trying to convince you to date him, or even give him a real chance, it was a genuine thought that he had. He was only trying to get to know you better.

But he had no idea the can of worms he just opened.

Lando saw the sliver of a painful smile stretch across your lips as you looked down, fiddling with the ring on your thumb. He didn’t know you to be nervous, you were never nervous. Not even when Pierre made you uncomfortable, not when strangers approached you. You were always confident. Maybe a little apprehensive, but never nervous. 

“Lando I’ve seen people I’ve grown up with have their lives destroyed because of motorsport.”

The heavy exhale you let out almost broke him. He thought about pulling over just so he could take your hand in his as you spoke, but he kept his eyes on the road, letting you work through whatever was sitting on your shoulders. 

“Friends,” you said quietly. “Family.” 

Jules Bianchi wasn’t just Charles’ godfather.

“Being the sister of racing drivers, I’ve accepted reality as it is,” you scratched the side of your face, feeling a sense of uneasiness travelling all throughout your body. “I know how dangerous the sport is, I know what my brothers have signed up for and I know the risks they face every time they get in the car. It’s not easy to think about, but I’ve accepted it. They want to drive the fastest cars in the world and I’m going to stand behind them and support them no matter what.”

Another breath. Lando sensed what was to follow.

“But…” you paused, needing a second to shake your head, needing a second to ignore the flashes of all the incidents coming to the forefront of your mind. “Every time there’s an accident, I can’t breathe. For ten seconds, twenty, thirty, however long it takes until they get out of the car or confirm that they’re okay over the radio, my world stops. I’m lucky, you know, my world hasn’t stopped all that much recently, Arthur and Charles have had some really good races, but the risk is still there and I have to brace myself for that silence over the radio every time something goes wrong. That’s what breaks me. Thinking that maybe I won’t get a response this time.”

You still hadn’t answered Lando’s question. He knew that everything you said, while important, was only the lead up to what he really wanted to know. 

“Now imagine I was dating you,” you shifted in your seat but Lando kept his hand on your thigh, refusing to let go. “Imagine we were together and for whatever reason, you collided with Charles.”

If Lando was being honest with himself, that was never a thought that crossed his mind. Of course he knew all about the risks when he got into the car, and of course he thought about being with you, but he never looked at those situations from the same perspective. 

“That's twice my world stops. Twice as much silence I have to brace myself for,” you explained, your voice breaking while doing so. “And if something did happen, that’s twice as much pain. Twice as much heartbreak. Twice as difficult to find a reason to get out of bed in the morning.”

You were crying now. Not much, you took pride in yourself for being emotionally strong, but there were still a few tears that slipped as you thought about all of the dangers that could come from Formula 1. You raised your hand to wipe them away and Lando was quick to interlock his fingers with yours before you could go back to fiddling with your ring.

Lando was nearing the hotel now and he didn’t know what to say. There was nothing he could say, nothing that would help, nothing that would assure you that scenario would ever happen because that was simply a promise he couldn’t make.

The lights of the hotel growing closer had you wiping your eyes again, just to make sure they wouldn’t be puffy as you stepped out of the car. The last thing you needed was to run into someone you knew and for them to question what the hell happened with Lando that left you in tears.

“I’m sorry,” you sighed, finally turning to face Lando. He parked in front of the doors, but held a finger up to the valet, indicating that they still needed another minute before getting out. 

“This isn’t something you need to apologise for, Y/N,” Lando told you, sounding sincere and defeated at the same time. His eyes met yours and you could see the weight that was originally on your shoulders was now being transferred to his. 

“But we had such a fun night,” you said through a soft chuckle. “And then I just dumped that lot on you and-” you shrugged, “I’m sorry, I don’t want you to think I don’t like you. I do. I just will never allow myself to be vulnerable with you, or any driver for that matter.”

You did like Lando. As a friend, definitely. Possibly, probably, more if his occupation didn’t involve driving up to 300 km/h. 

But he was in the same dangerous field as Charles which meant you had to be safe because they couldn’t be. 

“Hey,” you whispered, squeezing his hand. “If it means anything, this was probably one of the best dates I’ve ever been on.”

That did make Lando smile, but it was followed with an eye roll, “It’s probably the only date you’ve ever been on.”

“And now the bar is set incredibly high.”

Lando didn’t want to let go of your hand. 

You also didn’t want to let go. 

The second you stepped out of the vehicle, the date was over. He’d go back to working his way up your ranking and he wouldn’t be able to use the podium ultimatum again, it was a one time deal. You’d have no reason to keep seeing him outside of the races and you knew that simply because you wanted to just wasn’t strong enough. 

You and Lando weren’t supposed to be anything more than what you were now.

So you let go of his hand and reached for the handle of the door to push it open. Lando took an extra second to let that entire conversation sink in before he followed you, making sure to grab the daisies that had been left in the back seat. They were a little wilted, but they were still yours. He wouldn’t let you forget them.

You walked side by side to the elevator, thanking him quietly when he handed over the bouquet. When the steel doors opened, you both stepped in and it would have been perfectly okay if you stood in opposite corners.

Instead, you leaned against the back of the elevator and dropped your head to his shoulder, staring down at the white and yellow flowers wrapped in brown paper. Lando dropped his head too, to rest on top of yours.

An unspoken agreement that this was coming to an end. This date, this night, this moment. 

But that didn’t sit right with Lando.

“What if…”

You lifted your head, once again trying to piece together what he was thinking as the numbers on the screen slowly started to ascend. 

“What if we pretend for two minutes that I’m not a driver?”

It took all of you not to roll your eyes because you could see that it was a genuine question. Your mouth curved up into a gentle smile and you so badly wanted to go along with that idea. 

But those two minutes would be enough for you to forget every promise you’ve ever made to yourself. Two minutes with Lando, acting as though he wasn’t a Formula 1 driver, would lead into four and then eventually ten and then an hour and the next thing you knew, you’d be in McLaren garage, holding your breath for him, not just for Charles anymore.

“No,” you whispered. “I can’t.”

Lando nodded. It was worth a shot. 

Two minutes would be enough to destroy you.

The elevator doors opened on your level and Lando held his arm out, letting you take the first few steps. As you walked quietly down the hallway, you glanced up at him, wondering how much this night would affect your friendship moving forward.

You handed Lando the flowers so you could take a second to find your room key, but before you could unlock the door, Lando took hold of your hand and forced you to give him your attention one last time.

“For the record, this was probably one of the best dates I’ve been on as well.”

A blush crept up to your cheeks. No matter what, you couldn’t stop yourself from smiling like an idiot. 

You desperately wanted this night to end on a good note, you wanted him to know that you still cared about him, that you were still friends, that you still liked him even after you basically rejected all of his advances, serious or not.

So you playfully pushed on his arm, “You didn’t even bring up my driver ranking once.”

Lando hit his forehead, “Damn it, I knew I was forgetting something.”

And you rolled your eyes, because you always did when something stupid passed through his lips. Lando laughed at that reaction as he handed the flowers back to you. 

“Have I passed Mr. Canadian yet?”

You thought about it for a second before eventually leading into a slow nod, “Yeah, I’d say you did. Your up to fourth.”

“LN4,” he grinned. “That’s me, baby.”

God you hated how much his smile affected you. You hated that the muscles in your face went into auto drive and smiled back because of how contagious it was. And you fucking hated that you liked being the reason for that stupid grin.

You almost regretted saying no to his two-minute proposal in the elevator, but again, two minutes had the power to destroy you. That was too long, you couldn’t risk it. That was enough time for him to kiss you and trail his lips down your neck to find the spot you couldn’t resist. You’d be opening up the door and dragging him in before those 120 seconds were up.

But…

You inhaled a sharp breath, “Thirty seconds.”

Lando’s eyebrows pinched together, “What?”

“Thirty seconds,” you repeated, a bit quieter, contemplating if this was a good idea. It probably wasn’t. “I can’t give you two minutes, but we can pretend for thirty seconds that you’re not a driver.”

You knew Lando had good reaction time, but you didn’t expect his hands to cup your cheeks that quickly. The flowers fell from your grasp as Lando pulled your face to his, tilting your chin upwards so he could crash his lips against yours before you could take back anything you said. 

If it was possible for someone to take all of the air out of your lungs from a single kiss, Lando was doing it and you didn’t even care because the feeling of his mouth on yours was more intoxicating and inviting than oxygen, or the lack of, ever could be. His tongue slid past your lips. You could taste the red velvet cupcake he had earlier and all of a sudden it was your new favourite dessert.

You gripped onto the front of his shirt, pulling him close as his fingers slid towards the back of your neck and twisted through your hair. Both of you doing everything you could to memorise this moment before it was gone. You wanted to still feel the ghost of his lips on yours when these thirty seconds were up, you wanted to regret putting a timer on it and simultaneously regret letting yourself do this. 

Lando kissed you like he had been waiting all night to do this, maybe he had. Maybe this was something he wanted to do since the second he parked his car after finishing third in the Grand Prix. 

And then he pulled away.

His nose brushed against yours and it took all of your strength to not reconnect your lips. It didn’t help that he teased you by brushing them right over yours. He was breathing in each of your exhales and in return you were doing the same. 

There was no way that was thirty seconds. You weren’t counting, clearly too preoccupied with his tongue roaming around your mouth, but you knew damn well that wasn’t anywhere near thirty seconds. 

Lando must have noticed your confusion, you weren’t doing a good job at hiding it. His usually cheeky grin was replaced with a smirk instead.

“You didn’t think I’d use all thirty seconds now, did you?” He asked. “I’ve got to ration that…make it last.”

You shook your head slowly in disbelief. Leave it to Lando to find a loophole. You thought this was how the night would end, you were certain this would be the only time you’d ever kiss him, that you’d ever allow yourself to be vulnerable with him. 

“You’re such a little shit.”

“I know,” Lando agreed, his thumb brushing over your cheek. 

He tilted your head forwards, just enough to press one last kiss to your forehead before he dropped his arms to his side. He bent down to pick up the flowers and handed them to you, all with a very obvious arrogance to him. He was proud of himself, of his cunning little plan. 

He had another ten, maybe twelve, seconds with you, to pretend that he wasn’t a driver and he wasn’t going to rush through them. 

“I think I hate you, a little,” you finally said as you pressed your key card to the lock. The light turned green and you turned the handle, giving Lando one last look. “Yeah. Definitely hate you a little bit.”

Lando didn’t buy it, of course he didn’t. You wanted to kiss him as much as he wanted to kiss you. 

“No you don’t,” Lando slowly started to back up towards the elevator. “I think you love me, actually.”

“No.”

“You could.”

“Nope.”

He shrugged, “I think, maybe-”

“Goodnight, Lando.” you finally said. Giving him one more of your signature eye rolls before stepping into your hotel room. You leaned against the back of the door after it shut and let the daisies fall to the ground. All you could do was let out the heaviest breath your lungs could muster.

You didn’t want to admit it, you wouldn’t even let yourself think about it for more than a second, but deep down you knew Lando was onto something before you cut him off. 

If you stopped creating barriers for yourself, if you let yourself be vulnerable for more than thirty seconds, maybe, just maybe, Lando might actually be someone you could fall in love with. 

And now, for an entirely new reason, one not backed by fear or panic but because of a British driver with hazel eyes and a smile that had you forgetting how to breathe, your world stopped.

part 4 here

masterlist here taglist: @moneymasnn @thotd-f1 @masonspulisic @mcmuppet @f1-futurewag-16-3-4-63 @alilstressyandlotdepressy @themisric @happydazzz123 @moonxblossom @norrisleclercf1

#lando norris #lando norris au #lando norris instagram edit #lando norris social media au #lando norris fic #f1 requests #f1 #f1 fic #formula 1 #lando norris x y/n #lando norris x reader #lando norris x you #holllandtrash

[nobodyfamousposts]

The Hero of Paris

...so when Gabriel was in the bathroom on that train when he transformed and tried to akumatize someone...

...you think anyone could have just...I dunno, recorded it?

__________________________

Michael Donahue was the hero of Paris.

In truth, he was an American tourist. And about as American as one could get.

And AS a young American in a foreign country, he did what most Americans do: abuse his phone's camera function for anything and everything he thought was interesting and likely to get him likes on social media.

He recorded a man feeding pigeons before being run off by a police officer.

He recorded some curator at a museum telling a wild fanfic idea at the Louvre.

He recorded a bunch of people chasing after a blond haired kid and screaming at the sight of him. Which...okay, weird?

Well, he'd known Paris would be weird. But he didn't think it'd be THIS weird.

But then THAT day happened. And what he thought was perhaps the silliest…even the downright dumbest thing ended up being what made him go viral in the last way he ever expected.

Some would consider it uncouth. Most would have just politely ignored it.

But Micheal was a young American with a need to record everything.

And he was already in his seat in a train waiting for it to depart for his next travel destination...only to be delayed due to some reason that he, not being French-speaking, didn't understand.

Ultimately, that made this the perfect combination of bored and impulsive in JUST the right way to achieve a miracle.

So when he heard what sounded like shouting and insane laughter coming from the bathroom on the train, Michael—in true American fashion, decided to record it.

"Dude, some guy has taken over one of the restrooms and is yelling like crazy!"

…and for the sheer hell of it, he started livestreaming.

And his chat started to come alive.

What's going on?

"The train's held up. My French isn't that good. An 'akuma' or something?"

What's an akuma?

He looked over his shoulder.

"I dunno. But that guy in the restroom has been shouting about it a lot."

On the other side of the door, the faint sound of yelling could be heard. Most of it garbled that Michael couldn't quite make out except for a few words.

"—akuma—"

"—Ladeebuug!"

What's he shouting?

"Something about Ladybugs and noir? Is he shooting a movie or complaining of a lack of pest control? Lol."

Out of all his vids and livestreams, he hadn't expected the one about some random making a scene in a bathroom to be the one that got attention, but more people were joining the chat and he saw his numbers rise more than they ever had.

"Wow. Okay. Didn't expect to get this level of response."

He made sure to keep the camera on the bathroom door the noises were coming from rather than himself. It was what the people wanted to see apparently and it allowed better audio quality.

What was perhaps the most interesting was that he started getting comments in French.

In all caps.

With many exclamation points.

Is this real!?

HAWK MOTH!

IT'S HAWK MOTH!

WHERE IS HE?!

"Hawk Moth? What?"

Then a particularly insistent commenter named LadyWifi joined and started to spam the chat.

Où est-ce?

Où est-ce?!!

OÙ EST-CE!!!

"Wait hold on. What?"

Où

où!

WHERE?!

WHERE IS IT

OÙ

wherewherewerewhere?!!!!!!!!11!!1

He balked at the repeated demands. Given the chat seemed to be repeatedly questioning where in English, he could only presume that's what they were asking in French, too. But he had no idea why and no explanation was forthcoming! Any attempts anyone made to tell him what was going on quickly got lost in the flood of comments demanding a location.

Before he could comment further though, his thoughts were interrupted by a cry of outrage from the restroom, loud enough to ring his ears.

Silence.

Then…

"Nooroo, detransform moi."

There was a strange sound from inside. Muffled, but distinct enough. Like how sparkles should sound? Something from one of those magical girl shows his little sister watches.

A click signaled the door unlocking.

"I think he's about to come out!"

The chat was going wild. Everyone commenting. Making random names? Maybe trying to guess who the person on the other side of the door was?

Then some blond guy in glasses and a really unfashionable suit came out of the restroom.

…and his livestream promptly exploded.

#ml fic #gabriel is an idiot #ml oc #ml crack #ml funny

[northgazaupdates]

Journalist Hossam Shabat responds to a problematic article about journalists in the west being unable to reach Gaza. Hossam writes,

The biggest problem is not Western journalists being unable to enter, but the fact that Western media doesn't respect and value Palestinian journalists. My colleagues and I risk our lives every day to report on this genocide. No one knows Gaza like we do, and no one understands the complexity of the situation like we do. If you care about what's happening in Gaza, you should amplify Palestinian voices. We don't need Western journalists to tell our stories; we are capable of telling and reporting on our own stories.

Context under the cut:

From the very beginning, Western journalists have neglected the people of Gaza. They focused on how resistance actions have impacted settlers, and mentioned Gaza in only the most reductive of terms. But now, as the scale of atrocities by the IOF finally becomes too great for them to ignore, these same journalists are crafting a new narrative: ‘We didn’t ignore Gaza because we don’t care, or because it was politically convenient to do so. We just couldn’t get there to report on it.’

This is a lie concocted under the weight of ever-fickle Western guilt. They deflect their accountability for creating IOF propaganda by claiming they were kept from reaching the area. However, even more than a lie, it is an insult to Gazan journalists—those still living and those murdered by the occupation.

Gazan journalists often have contacts outside of Gaza who could help them evacuate, but they chose to stay. They chose to stay and document the genocide against their people, and did so at immense personal cost. Montaser Al-Sawaf was injured and lost 50+ family members in a bombing attack, before he was bombed again by the occupation and left to slowly die in the street. Mahmoud Ziad Aliwa and Mohammed Saber Arab are still missing after being kidnapped by the IOF while reporting from Al-Shifa Hospital during the latest siege. Eshak Daour lost his brother just a few days ago.

But as they tried to share their footage and words with the world, they were ignored, in north Gaza especially. The world had no interest in the words of Gazans, but especially if they were Arabic-speaking. Rather than undertake the relatively simple task of finding a translation for Gazan sources, or contacting Gazan journalists directly in English (of which many of them speak at least a little), they were flat-out ignored. Only English-speaking journalists with massive social media followings received any acknowledgment, and even then it was extremely minimal.

The journalists of Gaza have always been there, they have always been speaking out and asking others to simply share their words. The implication that only western journalism counts as “real” journalism is insulting, degrading, imperialistic, unprofessional, dishonest, and cruel.

This blog was created due to uplift the words of north Gazans, which were not and often still are not reaching the rest of the world. We will continue sharing from people in north Gaza, but we ask that you, reader, do so as well. Do what western journalists have refused, and uplift the voices of people fighting for their survival in all of the Gaza Strip.

Many journalists post partly in English, but for those that don’t, Arabic speakers will often leave English translations in comment sections. You can also ask for someone to do a translation in the comment section, and often someone will reply. If they don’t, you can copy and paste Arabic text, or take screenshots and upload them into Google Translate. These are not perfect tools, but they give you some idea of what is being said. It’s better than simply not listening.

#gaza #gaza genocide #gaza strip #north gaza #gaza under attack #free gaza #from the river to the sea palestine will be free #palestinian genocide #gaza journalists #text #hossam shabat #12 april 2024 #gaza under genocide #gaza under bombardment #gaza under fire #gaza update #gaza under siege #stop gaza genocide #stop genocide #stop the genocide #stop israel #end israel's genocide #gazan genocide #israeli war crimes #israel is a terrorist state #israel is committing genocide #palestine journalists #palestinian journalists #save north gaza #save gaza

[delulujuls]

gifted | cl16

hi! i couldn't help myself so here is something with a bit of festive spirit. also i can't believe that is only a week left til christmas lmao

anyway, enjoy this one as well!

summary: y/n decided to finally reveal her feelings, a lot of miscommunication in the house of ferrari, fav red duo being completely chaotic (and all of that with christmas songs playing in the background)

warnings: none, its kinda fluffy at the end tho

pairing: charles leclerc x fem!ferraridriver

Even though there was only a week left until Christmas, the festive atmosphere was practically unnoticeable due to the amount of work still involved.

Although the season was over and most of the sporting events had passed, the work was still piling up and had no plans to end.

Y/N sat in the chill room, waiting for two interviews she was scheduled to have later that day. She had been at Ferrari's headquarters since the morning, recording materials for social media. Of course she was accompanied by Charles, who was currently lost somewhere.

At that moment it was to her advantage, as she was lying on the couch and browsing the Internet, looking for a Christmas gift for him. Which, by the way, was quite a challenge.

Y/N and Charles became teammates three years ago. Three years were enough for the couple to find a common language and, apart from working together, became friends. Even though they knew each other well, the issue of gifts always remained problematic. What's worse, the girl's love language was giving gifts and surprises, so she always tried to give the best gifts for various occasions. Charles, however, was a tough guy to please.

She sighed, closing another tab in her browser. Time was running out and she still had no specific gift or even an idea of what specific direction she could go. Especially since this year her task was much more difficult, because for several weeks Y/N had a problem with looking at Charles only as a friend. At the beginning, everyone is in denial that no, he's just a friend, there's nothing in common between us and nothing more serious will ever happen, but when you spend so much time together and the bond is so strong and emotional, it's hard not to fall head over heels in love.

Which in Y/N's case just happened.

The problem, however, was that the girl had absolutely no idea how to admit her feelings to her friend. So she decided that this year's Christmas gift would be perfect and meaningful enough for Charles to connect the dots and understand that the girl's feelings were beyond their friendship. At least this was the scenario Y/N had hoped for.

"You look like you just ran the race of the century"

Charles said, which brought his friend out of her thoughts. He held two cups of coffee in his hands, he gave one of them to the girl and plopped down next to her on the sofa.

"I think I need your help."

Y/N said and looked at him as her last resort, which he actually was.

"Something happened?"

He asked and his expression immediately became worried.

"What Christmas present would you be happy about?"

Charles frowned at her direct question.

"Are you asking what you should buy me for Christmas?"

"No, what should I buy for you, but what would a guy around your age with similar interests generally be happy with?"

It was obvious that the contacts in Leclerc's brain were working like crazy, but despite this, they were unable to understand the given command.

"I like someone and I would like to show it to him with a gift. And since I have no idea, I'm asking you for advice"

She explained, trying to sound very convincing. Of course she lied like hell but she assumed that it was darkest under the street lamp and if she played it right, Charles wouldn't guess anything and would also give her a great gift idea.

Leclerc, hearing her words, only nodded and took a sip of his coffee. It was obvious that he was thinking hard and really wanted to help her with the answer.

"Maybe a leather belt, a wallet?"

Y/N frowned.

"Would you be happy with a belt or a leather wallet?"

"I don't, but I'm trying to give you some ideas. I would be happy with a new tennis racket, mine is currently being repaired and I don't know if it's time for a new one."

"A tennis racket?"

Charles nodded, but then changed the subject completely.

"By the way, firstly, why I don't know anything about the fact that you like someone, secondly, why I didn't receive any photo for analysis and thirdly, if you want to show your feelings through a gift, then I think you should do something with your own hand. Or at least show that it means a lot to you"

Y/N analyzed his words carefully. The racket idea wasn't a bad idea, especially since she could have gone a step further and, in addition to the racket, bought them a stay on the court together. Charles tried many times to convince her to play with him, but Y/N had no idea how to play tennis and in her eyes, making a fool of herself on the first date was a bad idea to impress her love interest.

"You actually helped me, you know?"

The girl said and smiled at him. Charles probably helped her more than he expected.

"That's great because you could help me too."

He replied, glancing at her. Y/Ns stomach dropped to her throat, but she decided to act unfazed. In a second of inattention, everything could go to hell.

"Do you also need some gift inspiration?"

"Yes, and I have exactly the same problem as you."

Charles sighed and drank his coffee.

"Some time ago I met a girl. We met a few times and it seems to be nice between us. I would like to give her a gift so that she can see that I care."

"You didn't mention anything about dating anyone."

Y/N said, trying to adopt as neutral a tone as possible. However, her heart was pounding like crazy and she had no idea whether Charles was following her tactics and was actually asking her what she would like to get, whether he had actually met someone and would like to reveal his feelings soon.

"Neither do you, so we're even."

He replied and laughed.

The girl shifted on the couch, feeling her stomach hurt from nerves. She was about to continue talking to him when someone entered the room and informed her that everything for her interview was ready.

Y/N apologized to him and stood up, saying that they would come back to this conversation. However, she sincerely hoped that today was her last day at the headquarters and that she would not have to come here until the new year, which would mean that she would not have to be in Charles' company.

To be honest, she felt idiotic. What if Charles is actually dating someone? What an idiot she would look like if she admitted her feelings.

When she finished all her duties at the company, she returned to the hotel without a word. She spent the rest of the evening on social media searching for any photos or mentions of whether Charles Leclerc was currently dating anyone.

The lack of any information did not help her at all. His words kept drilling a hole in her head, causing all the pre-Christmas cheer to evaporate from her like a burst balloon.

Maybe she was in a bad mood, but at least she had the idea of a Christmas surprise off her mind. She also hoped that Charles' new friend would give him some great gift, for fuck's sake.

The girl threw the phone into the pillows and fell onto the bed, staring at the ceiling. The thoughts swirling in her head were interrupted by the sound of an incoming message. The notification "new message from: lord perceval" appeared on the screen

"You still haven't helped me with the gift."

"If you want to show your feelings through a gift, I think you should make something with your own hands. Or at least show that it means a lot to you."

She replied, quoting exactly what he had recommended to her a few hours earlier.

She locked her phone again and stuffed it under her pillow. Y/N hoped that by the time they met again, she would have gotten over her feelings and Charles would be her teammate again. And the teammate only.

The next day, the girl returned to Monaco, spending preparations for Christmas alone. This year she happened to be spending the holidays alone. Did it bother her much? Not particularly.

She decided to spend this time in peace and quiet. She kept her phone on airplane mode most of the time and she also avoided social media. Did she have any specific goal for this? The only goal was to avoid Charles, both direct contact with him and any mention of him.

On Christmas Eve morning, she went in search of a Christmas tree, which she bought, brought it herself and even installed it in the corner of the living room, wanting to prove her independence at all costs. Although it was all pricked by fresh, sharp needles, the tree still looked beautiful. While she was in the process of decorating it, she heard a knock on the door. She flinched almost so much that she almost dropped the bauble from her hands.

She hung it on a branch and went to open it. How surprised she was when standing in front of her was none other than Charles himself.

"Hey. Something happened that you are here?"

The girl asked, glancing at him.

"I guess so, since I haven't had any contact with you for several days."

"I've been busy. You know, Christmas and all that craziness."

Charles looked at her worriedly, trying to read the truth on her face that he felt like she was hiding from him.

"Everything's all right?"

Y/N just nodded.

"I'm just busy. I guess you are too, so run away to your place. You're probably planning a big family Christmas Eve."

"Can I go in?"

The girl sighed, knowing full well that she wouldn't get rid of him anytime soon. She walked deeper into the apartment, leaving the door open for him. She went to the Christmas tree and took another ornament out of the box and hung it on the tree.

Charles followed her without a word. There was silence inside and the only sign heralding Christmas Eve afternoon was the Christmas tree standing in the corner, which she was decorating in silence. There was no indication that Y/N would be expecting guests in a few hours, so he was surprised that if she was to catch a plane back to her hometown today, she should have been getting ready to leave long ago.

"How are you spending Christmas?"

He spoke after a moment, walking up to her. Without thinking, he took the bauble out of the box and carefully hung it as well on the Christmas tree.

"Here"

"When are the guests coming? I don't want to disturb you."

He laughed quietly, trying to lighten the atmosphere that seemed extremely thick to him. However, when he glanced at his friend, she was straightening the decorations on the tree with a sad expression on her face.

"Why did you come anyway?"

"What do you mean?"

Charles asked, frowning.

"From what you said, you have another girl you should be interested in."

The Monegasque was silent for a moment, having no idea what she was talking about. However, when he connected the dots, he understood what she meant.

"Are you the one who's jealous?"

Charles asked and he couldn't hide his smile. But she was absolutely not in a mood for jokes.

"I'm not jealous, I'm just stating a fact"

"As I see, your entire attention has been completely taken over by your love interest, because since the last time I saw you, you have only replied to me four times."

The girl remained silent, gritting her teeth. She felt like an idiot again.

"Talk to me Y\N, please"

Charles touched her arm, trying to get her attention. He was afraid that something bad was happening between them and he couldn't imagine losing his friend.

"I have nothing to tell you, Charles."

"Nothing, absolutely nothing?"

He asked, looking at her. When she shook her head, he let go of her arm and snorted.

"Wow, your new boyfriend material totally took you away from me."

"There's no new boyfriend material!"

Y/N exploded, no longer able to stand the stupidity that she herself allowed to come to fruition.

"There isn't any and there won't be any, at least not when you are there, damn it!"

"What do you mean?"

Leclerc frowned.

"I like you, idiot! I like you, a lot!"

Y/N felt tears in her eyes and a blush on her cheeks. She was angry with herself for not being able to stand it and gave vent to her emotions, she was sad knowing that she would face some rejection and she was ashamed that despite everything she gave in and confessed her feelings to him.

Charles smiled when he saw the person standing in front of him. Currently in a messy bun, with eyes full of tears, in red Christmas pajamas. And he wasn't smiling because he was amused by her feelings, not at all. He smiled with happiness, because he felt exactly the same.

He stepped closer to her and took her face in his hands, wiping her wet cheeks with his thumbs.

"You couldn't have told me that straight?"

"How could I tell you that I like you, we are friends!"

She said, breaking down into another wave of tears. Seeing his smile made her feel even worse.

"Do you find it so funny? I knew it, I knew perfectly well that it would be like this!"

Y/N wanted to break away from him, but he held her tightly. He leaned down and pressed his lips to hers, wanting her to finally calm down.

It worked magically, because the girl froze when she felt his lips on her. He pulled away from her after a moment and stroked her face with his thumbs.

"I like you too, crazy."

"Really?"

"Of course I do. Except I guess we had the exact same fears about revealing our feelings."

"But you said you were dating someone."

Y/N looked at him confused.

"I wanted to spite you. I was a little stung when you said you liked someone."

"I only asked because I wanted to know directly what you would be happy about. I wanted to give you a nice gift from which you could conclude that I like you."

Charles laughed and pulled her to him, hugging her tightly.

The girl squeezed her eyes shut and hugged him, breathing heavily.

"I'm sorry, it was totally stupid"

"For Christmas we should buy each other textbooks for successful communication"

Charles laughed, rubbing her back.

"Doesn't change the fact that you're probably busy today."

Y/N replied, pulling away from him and wiping the remaining tears from her face.

"Say hello to your family from me and wish them a Merry Christmas"

"You will be able to do it yourself. I invite you to join us"

He replied, handing her the last bauble from the box.

The girl looked at him uncertainly.

"I can't, Charles. I can't come empty-handed."

"I think your presence will be the best gift for everyone."

Y/N still wasn't convinced. However, he smiled reassuringly.

"Trust me"

She nodded and took the bauble from him, hanging it on the tree.

He hugged her and kissed her hair.

"Don't feel bad, from all this confusion I didn't manage to prepare any gift either. I didn't want to be a rival for your love interest."

He said and laughed quietly.

Y/N huffed and snuggled into him again.

Standing in each other's arms, they both couldn't believe that after such turmoil they finally managed to talk about their feelings. In an extremely twisted way, fortunately with a positive result. For both of them it was definitely the best gift in the world and the upcoming Christmas Eve evening looked really promising too.

#f1 imagines #f1 one shot #f1 #formula 1 #f1 oneshots #f1 imagine #charles leclerc #charles leclerc x reader #cl16 #charles leclerc fluff #charles leclerc oneshot #charles leclerc imagine