Memories.

Sir Lewis Hamilton with Tommy Thayer, Gene Simmons, Paul Stanley and Eric Singer of the band Kiss (2008)

i fully believe that luffy was the most clingy kid ever after the incident

Garp, Fascism, and Parental Failure

Garp is truly one of the most interesting One Piece characters for me because of the extent to which his dogged, relentless devotion to a fascist system–and the supposed "order" it promises to uphold in the face of anarchy or rebellion–perseveres no matter how many times it fails him and his son and his grandsons. He's fully aware of the deep-seated corruption and atrocity, and feels some kind of moral obligation to bend its rules to protect the innocent (as we can see with his attempts to protect Rouge and Ace), but when faced with widespread femicide and infanticide, genocide, slavery and endless examples of egregious cruelty, he is unable to comprehend the notion that the system is indefensible, or that the only moral choice he can possibly make when faced with that level of atrocity is to leave and resist it. His son recognizing the inherent, inexcusable failures of the World Government and its armed enforcers changes nothing. The order to slaughter pregnant people and infants at Baterilla can't convince him otherwise. The countless instances of bribery, the tolerance of atrocity from state-sanctioned privateers, everything about the history of the Valley of the Gods are all things he's aware of, and takes issue with, but never comes to the conclusion that he cannot affect positive change within a system designed for oppression. The public execution of his grandson–a prime example of the marine's fundamentally irrational, arrogant, vindictive cruelty clearly bound to blow up in all of their faces even before their Pyrrhic victory at the summit war–makes him waver, but even when confronted with this obvious, indefensible injustice against a child he raised and rescued by people seeking to murder him on live TV and desecrate his corpse as a show of power, he cannot bring himself to act against it in any meaningful way no matter how much it hurts him to leave his grandson to die. If he can't veto it, he'll stay Vice Admiral and suffer through Ace being sacrificed on the altar of fascist state control, and functionally leave Luffy for dead in the process while he's at it. He fails every single person he wanted to love–Ace, Luffy, and almost certainly Dragon–and allows himself to be reluctantly complicit in countless crimes against humanity again and again and again because he's so deeply steeped in this notion of preservation of order through state control that he convinces himself that even this disgusting, atrocious, fundamentally flawed and untenable excuse for a government is better than abolition, better than revolution, or just the act of expecting accountability or literally anything better from the systems that issue false promises to protect you. Dadan beating the living shit out of him and calling him a failure as a grandfather, as a self proclaimed defender of the people, is one of the most important scenes in the Postwar Arc because a lesser series might frame Garp as a tragic, helpless figure suffering more than anyone else due to conflict of love and duty, but One Piece refuses to whitewash his actions or allow the grief caused by systems he's complicit in to take precedence over its real victims: the D brothers.

There's so much I could say about statism and anarchism and the ways people have internalized the supposed necessity of state violence to the extent they can't oppose that violence even when it ruins them or their loved ones, but that horrible indoctrination and its devastating consequences for both him and his family are what makes Garp so fascinating to watch and so thematically/politically important to One Piece as a whole.

nico rosberg calling lewis the GOAT multiple times in under two seconds

My take is that all of Konoha 11 is insanely obsessed with Sasuke to the point that it is unhealthy.

All Sasuke did was mind his damn buisness, and all of them risked their lives for him to either get him back or completely hate his ass.

What will it take to get the thesis 👀👀

literally nothing, i will talk about brocedes on the internet for free any day of the week.

okay so, one of the things i find fascinating about it is that it's only that clue "i love to drive but i don't really like the attention and media that comes with the job" that lewis seems to focus on. because nico was a monaco princess and has never done any kind of manual labour in his life let alone national service. look at the video of him trying to chop down a tree for an environmental project with his extreme e team if you don't believe me. but lewis ignores that (maybe because the woman says that he'll get it after the next clue). kimi is the obvious choice for a driver who hates media, but lewis was never especially close with kimi, but he was close with nico. and nico did hate the media and the attention that came with formula 1.

something that he and numerous other people around him have said consistently throughout his career is that he's shy. one journalist specifically said that it was a finnish kind of shyness, where he was hesitant to share parts of himself with the world. although i think will buxton's "contenders" article is ridiculous, there are some important things in it. buxton says that nico tried to take control of the questioning during press conferences etc. and if you follow his career, you see that where nico has shared himself with the press and with the world it is very much on his terms. he wanted to be able to be the one to define himself and his image, and it actually backfired spectacularly several times because a lot of journalists in motorsport (will buxton for example) really resented it and became more negative in response.

a lot of people look at the media from nico's career and think that he was very boring or uptight or had no personality. and the truth is that he's actually incredibly fascinating but it never came across because he disliked the media aspects of the job so much (in fairness the media also hated him for just doing his job, and he literally once got told to smile more during an interview because they disliked his demeanour).

even when you look at things like his youtube channel, it was very much the first thing he tried after leaving f1, and since exploring more and finding other projects to be passionate about he's significantly decreased his usage (to an upsetting level to those of us who loved it). when he comes to commentate races it's because he loves racing. like i truly do not believe you can listen to nico talk about max verstappen's driving as art and not think that he's there because he loves the sport and even if he's not racing anymore the love is still there.

another factor for me is that nico's been surrounded by the media and fan attention since he was a child because of his father and his surname. there are photos of literal toddler nico in the williams garage with his parents. the first time he ever met jenson button and jenson nearly threw hands with a 12 year old is immortalised in photos. nico signed his first autograph at nine, because a fan of his dad's said "just in case". the media and the attention has been an intrusion on his life for literally his entire life. you can see from the way he's very careful about what he posts of his children that he wants to give them privacy and respect in their childhood. i do think the media intrusion etc. is significantly worse now than it was when nico was growing up, but i do think that nico's own childhood experiences have influenced the way he parents his children.

and coming back to lewis, the truth about lewis and nico is that they really were best friends. for a while they were pretty much each other's only friend. nico does know lewis better than most people in the world and lewis knows nico better than almost anyone in the world. that just comes with growing up with someone and being there for the life moments that come to define them. so lewis knows that nico is a bit shy, and he knows that nico has never liked media attention. and even though kimi is the absolute obvious choice for disliking media, the first person lewis thinks of for that is nico. because lewis can never forget nico

live britney react from Abu Dhabi 2021 pre-race interview

WHY ARE THIS TWO GIVING SO MUCH DIVORCED ENERGY WHAT IS GOING ON HERE

LIKE, THEY ARE SO PETTY FOR NO REASON?

IM A FIGHT RIGHT??

Shanks

like an old painting