f1 updates / the human impulse toward fandom reflection

[girlrock]

before i get into this post i went back to my top 20 k-pop songs from my 2021 & 2022 rankings and started a spreadsheet so i could track which artists reappear or change and just gauge my shifting tastes at a glance. i also tried to backfill songs for 2020, but i'm having trouble thinking of much outside of pantomime/ghosting/so bad... and i also feel like it's a misrepresentation to backfill a year because the whole point is that i am honoring the lists i posted in december regardless of whether i later discovered new songs that i would have included there or soured on some that i did include...... i don't know. anyway i'm making progress with my 2023 listening playlist so i'm still in heavy wip sorting/discovery mode but at least i've uncovered more contenders !

also ctfu because i spent ten seconds scrolling the bookt*k drama on r/hockey and why are people engaging in discourse about parasocial relationships in k-pop over there... i am literally too old to expend energy on this. so often issues that are needlessly moralized as relating to feminism online are actually just matters of You Are All So Corny Try Being Normal For 5 Minutes

ok anyway f1 updates..... wah :') this double-header was legitimately so much fun even though mclaren fucked up their spa set-up and the racing incident with carlos was whatever lol but i'm so proud of oscar and the progress the team has made since the start of the season. i want to like... i feel like this is a post Reflecting about Reflection, which is insane of me, but what i've been thinking about lately or i guess what i want to talk about is how our stanning ""styles"" can evolve over time and the act of analyzing why you enjoy things, or how much i like making needless spreadsheets and lists and tables and how that will never change!

also i want to do a summer break update of my f1 rpf stats post just so i can look at oscar stonks but i'm too lazy to clean the data :/ perhaps next weekend... maybe i can even do p/entry with fic output for this specific season but idk whether that would make sense we shall see LOL

fandom thoughts

i feel like i am a person who, even if i don't believe in the concept of loyalty as a sense of unconditionality or even staying a fan of something for a very long time, has a sort of limited categorical bandwidth where i like people in really regimented ways and am thus exceedingly "loyal" to them because i just don't have the energy to care about too many so-called narratives and complexities at once lol. with hockey my top three players happen to be one F/one D/one G, all in different divisions, with motorsports my top three are respectively from f1, f2, and (retired hag pundit), which is unintentional but i guess a natural way of how i maintain investment in specific people. i don't know if that makes sense... i simply cannot have 3+ favorite guys/groups/teams at once!

anyway i feel kind of insane because this past year has been a lot of like... aimless hot takes and disorganized journaling instead of proper structured timelines or primers, so i'm always trying to look back to reference something i said and i'm like this is a mess and i make no sense. i also realize that i love looking back on things i said a few months or years or whatever ago because it just gives me so much context into Who I Was and why i liked this specific thing, or to see where my predictions landed... with one year since oscar's TweetTM coming up compounded with the managerial implosion happening at alpine i was going to do another then/now examination of all the things we were saying this time last year vs. now, and then i was going through my docs earlier looking for some unrelated stuff and i serendipitously found all these old ass graphs i had made analyzing the most RANDOM shit from the peak of my txt posting in 2021, like which idol animal emojis i most frequently biased lol, and i remembered how much time i used to spend in k-pop not just having favs but really endlessly analyzing patterns in the act of stanning them and what my interest looked like!!! i don't even know why i was doing all of that... truly just for the fun of it and the personal satisfaction and curiosity i suppose

but i guess i also really have horrible memory and last year especially was so hard and weird, and because there are entire chunks and months that are just entirely lost to me/the fact that since like 2019 lol maybe half of everything i've gone through is just a total blur for reasons we don't have to delve into, i think i appreciated the security of being like I Like This Thing, This Is What Fandom Looks Like To Me Right Now, This Is What Goes Into My Concept Of Fandom As I Know It, etc. on here for just a little documentative pocket of levity so that even if i forget it's fun to look back and be like oh right! that's how it was! and sometimes you cringe because you've changed so much but other times you realize how much things are still entirely the same, or that your celebrity type is an everlasting constant in your life.

i don't know if i'm overthinking all of this lol maybe i sound very stupid. but looking at this just made me laugh because i forgot i did all of this... and i DID have a similar-ish hockey post attempting the same breakdown i really cannot be satisfied to simply like someone without additional quantifiable analysis.

anyway revisiting posts from last year... the thing is that oscar's performance in mclaren is inextricably tied to the alpine debacle, but then all of alpine's woes are not just tied to him but also the vast incomprehensibility of a centralized french feeder system that i have spent much time trying to understand despite hating most french drivers. except it's not like i don't WANT the french single-seater system to succeed lol, because i guess i do for the health of the sport, i just think it's depressing that it is the way it is and everything happening to it right now is like a tragicomic case study in symptomatic presentation delay. regardless

op81 vs. alpine: then / now
relevant posts:

(aug 26, 2022) op81
(sep 29, 2022) 2k23! (op81 redux)
(nov 3, 2022) for the love of boringdols!
(nov 19, 2022) 🪜 thoughts

(for the love of boringdols)

i like inconspicuous people and i like men who are boring and i like when people are quietly good at what they do but also intensely passionate and weird about their interests in a way that's all-consuming and i love how the stars somehow manage to be fraught with individual and team-based sports narratives without being upheld by any tangible ship profiles whatsoever.

imo it actually takes a lot of conviction in your craft to manage to be likable and boring but also genuinely good at what you do [...] in a lot of ways oscar is kind of like that [...] To Me a man is enjoyable when 1) he has that dawg in him but also 2) he's not annoying about it but also 3) he isn't deterred from his own conviction and confidence but also 4) he's not annoying about it.

i think i enjoy guys who have Potential And Skill for punditry but not necessarily Hunger for punditry. this is an important distinction!!!!!! [...] maybe it's Bleeding for the game but not the team. sharl is easy to explore narratively because he's pathetic and beholden to so much fraught legacy and ferrari's prestige and doesn't have a strong grasp of his self-autonomy [...] but i guess i like a guy who knows himself without needing other people to know him!!!!!!

i wrote this post to explain that boring is a term of endearment but also that i don't think robo/oscar Are necessarily boring, or what that even means in the context of professional athleticism. looking back now i think i am unnecessarily touched by people going >wait oscar actually isn't that boring??? and realizing he can be unexpectedly funny and witty despite constantly "winning the idgaf war" as the kids say... and that's why i have to continue giffing his post-quali interviews to spread the agenda. no lol i'm kidding, but i do feel like he and robo are SOOOO so alike and even to a degree that i didn't quite synthesize until oscar's debut season, because even though i was always drawn to a lot of their shared intangibles (as elucidated in the quoted post) the depth of those similarities has surfaced a lot more with all of oscar's recent interviews, where we can actually see how he adapts to and responds to pressures at the top level.

>re: i enjoy guys who have potential and skill for punditry without the hunger for it, it's like maybe robo will never be on an nba playoffs panel but he is so media conscious and can be charming as directed. also oscar's measured team radios, his subdued messaging after his sprint p2 vs. pierre being pierre lmfao, and then in comparison robo's enduring inability to celly excessively... there are nuances to robo's Team Mentality and his own perception of himself that differentiates the two of them, as in he carries self-effacing expectation exacerbated by the team nature of hockey that isn't quite as present in oscar, but the rationality they share in quantifying responsibility/blame is quite similar. in short:

also re: stars i really do think they're the perfect For The Sport team to follow, but a combination of 1) getting more embedded in starsdom and 2) just natural team restructuring coming into the 22-23 season with the injection of a New Rook/robo latching onto his failcore swede helped me uncover a more robust shipping culture that i wasn't committed to before. i saw the rotational potential in 2129 last year and i liked petey but........ i think there was a different gravity to 2124 and top line contributions to team offense before, as in they just Weren't A Very Good Team and robo was still on his elc lmfao, but i don't know... i want to say that having proper playoff runs is crucial in creating sustained collective narrative interest for team ships, but i don't necessarily think that's the only thing you can attribute my interest in several dynamics to because maybe it's just a natural continuation of nextgen guys either coming up the ranks or cementing themselves in trophy-caliber seasons.

Hmmm but all of this does make me think about how i have truly no shipping inclinations in f1 anymore and i wonder what it will take for my appreciation of oscar ships to develop... i appreciate robo specifically because he's a boring gfguy whose game is absurd to watch in its mechanical contradictions, and i like 2124 specifically because they make no fucking sense and don't actually know each other, but then again on some metaphysical level also understand each other so well it's unbearable, but really oscar will never have a piarles or carlando or whatever-esque ship so what can you even do with him before something appropriately neurotic and purposefully awkward surfaces.

the problem is that i will never like loscar. like it's cute i guess but they're just... fine. i used to read markoscar and i don't have any qualms with it, obviously i can't gripe about questionable age gap mentor ships when the only ship i'd actually say that i still actionably like is jendo lmfao, but it's also like. Girl. That's mahk webba......... and the guanyu optics are very charming to me but there's frankly nothing there.

the only oscar ship with potential right now is forcibly landoscar but it is very much like, i guess what do you even want to get out of this ship? i read 2 good fics for them and they really are at their best when the forefront of their dynamic explores lando's impulsive awkwardness and introversion above oscar's (landothesis voice) lando is like a girl but in a pathetic cringe autist 4chan way and not like charles paddock princess way, but. i don't knowwww. as of jul2023 i actually really enjoy their teammate dynamic and i think landoscar has endeared itself to some people because oscar is just a very attentive person and active listener so it constantly looks like he's hearts-eyeing lando lmfao, and i DO think he likes him a lot and that they get on well but the overarching ship optics still fully elude me.

(2k23! (op81 redux))

the more i think about it the more excited i am about oscar at mclaren next year!!!!!!! [...] realistically i don't think mclaren are a great or competent team [...] and i don't have high "expectations" relative to i guess oscar's... stock as a rookie/prospect that some people might have? lol in terms of his performance in 2023 that is, but it's at the point where i think alpine is a completely untenable environment to develop in [...] so i'm just glad he's out of there x__x and at this point it's obvious that i do rate lando despite my best efforts so i really want to see what they're capable of in terms of constructors standing

i think 2023 is the perfect year to get a rookie who is vastly cheaper than dr but has a high (hypothetical!!!) ceiling up to grips with the car and develop him within the mclaren system while also gauging lando's ability to be the established driver once promoted into very official and visible team leader status. with this context i don't think anyone at mclaren is expecting him to equal or beat lando lol but of course the exact quantitative measure of how he should perform relative to dr is more nuanced and i can't say exactly what i personally expect or hope for

like prematax is real but not to the degree in which people regard it, there's a level of self-selection involved, etc. and the thing about oscar is that he's "humble" but not necessarily demure either, just very frank and easy and reasonable in his self-assessments (hence why i think he and lando have the potential to mesh well), and it's why he doesn't give prema much credit when pressed on it lol. which is to ask: what will his mentality look like now if he were to be truly pushed in an uncompetitive and underperforming team/car? who knows but i guess as someone who supports him i once again like to believe in his quote-on-quote "adaptability"......

alpine is alpine... it's still too early to say much or comment on the teammate h2h but i think oscar really has shown that he's a smart and adaptable driver at the f1 level. in hungary when people were up in arms about lando undercutting oscar despite it being the proper strategy and his only radio message was Okay what do you want me to do now?... and the objective fact is that so far he's scored exactly half of lando's points in his rookie season while dr3 was at 1/3 at the end of last season. i remember feeling so insane from all the inflated expectations and then immediately afterward the extreme doomerisms at the start of the season, and although there are obviously still many uncertainties i'm extremely happy with how things have turned out so far...

from life update (dec 15, 2022)

i really like seidl frankly so it's a bit of a bummer on the mcl side but i'm also not that "alarmed" by the move (even considering its dramatically accelerated timeline) because it's clear that stella has been well-poised for promotion and mclaren seem generally transparent enough in their internal dialogue that they can minimize the consequences of leadership upheaval. this isn't to say that i expect mclaren to... well. i don't know. achieve the same level of performance next year? that's not even that high of a bar and it's not like i ever had big expectations for 2023 to begin with so i can just say that i still don't expect much.

honestly i don't know whether it's naive of me to be generally apathetic about moves within the mcl org that other people doomsday over but i guess my thought process is like..... hm. i think zak brown is fine and i will never truly understand dr fans. i think mcl will always be constrained by their identity as a customer team and of course lando can and should be ready to move to a better team if the writing is on the wall come an underwhelming 2024, but i can also understand why he signed the contract he did. i think all the things people worry about will come into play at some point or another but that a lot of it is perhaps irrationally positioned and makes no sense to speculate over given the team's current environment [...]

Hmmm looking back i'm still not really sure how i feel about the entire seidl thing because i really do quite like him and obviously he was the catalyst for recruiting oscar through mark, and there's a lot the team couldn't have done without him. i think it's easy to blame key for poor development but... i don't know the stella hype is fun and i love his interviews and how clearly he complements zbrown's business savvy and i appreciate mclaren going down the path of internal appointment & growth, and to whatever misguided detriment i do Believe in the vision. but as always only time can tell...

(🪜 thoughts)

i think it's unfair to say that the junior system is entirely broken because it has done some good, on a certain quantifiable level, in providing opportunities to its academy and affiliate drivers, which again is maybe a matter of perspective (is the point of a team academy necessarily to promote everyone to f1... clearly few systems can be as ruthlessly efficient as rbjt. say what you want about marko but he is at the least directly communicative in his expectations), yet still the ladder of ascension remains in pieces, especially considering that the man responsible for so much of the scouting and alternative support was ousted by revolving leadership. worse yet is that the bottlenecks atm are a twin consequence of patriotic exaggeration and miserly indecision. greed and self-misevaluation on every extreme...

it really is the most hilariously unserious situation wherein normal people will be like yes rossi is systematically dismantling everything cyril ever touched out of sheer incompetent bumbling egotism, or maybe putting two french drivers who notoriously have not gotten along well is maybe not the best look, etc., and these fans will see the situation and be like well it seems that actually zak brown is the problem.

i think the [alpine] system is fucked because there are too many entry points but also contingencies, conditions that are exploited and repurposed in the name of narrative control and inefficient efforts toward ill-envisioned ideas of stability [...] in the end the identity of french motorsport in f1 is stymied by infrastructural fragility. and renault's future vision in f1 doesn't really exist on a tangible level, ultimately, but i digress. otmar is a mouthpiece for rossi who contributes to the rot but isn't necessarily the only pollutant. the relationship with prost really does say enough

the alpine team right now has no plan because it was designed that way. it's been a game of optics for as long as rossi has been there, since prost was driven out and since ocon's untimely contract, and otmar played the role of the bumbling idiot taking on public pr fallout because that was his job, and now it no longer is so he can apparently make weird quips about getting women pregnant to paddock media with the unfettered confidence of a temporarily unemployed man.

>(messenger) (nov 20, 2022) i really think pierre is so mid... alpine will be a sight to behold next year

lol but the other thing about alpine is that i always am like well this is going to end up being bad probably because the foundations are bad, because the politics in french motorsports are bad, because it's all governmental to a degree that isn't seen in the british and italian feeder scenes, but then it's always even WORSE than you expect it to be. it's not even on like an oscar schadenfreude level thing anymore, because it just makes me SAD, like again oscar is inextricably tied to the fallout of the alpine academy because of his contractgate but him getting scapegoated by alpine to deny hadrien support into an f3 seat is just depressing and ridiculous and a further indictment of the lack of tangible support they actually offer their juniors/affiliates. but whatever.

i guess nothing has changed except that the inevitable has finally come to pass (as in i think it's not just one of "alpine is imploding because they lost oscar/fernando" or "oscar/fernando left early because they knew alpine would implode," it's a mix of both situations and in spirit leadership was out the door the moment they dropped the ball last summer and dug themselves into an optical horror, but it's been a slow burn toward the official acknowledgment of their disarray.) i don't know what that means for the future of the team but.... what i do know is that this is the most beautiful quote i've ever read in my entire life.

i did not expect to write this much and now i'm embarrassed all over again. for posterity new grid ranking just dropped ✨

ok some other life updates... been making some rather fantastic hummus lately i must say... finally beat it takes two after literally a million years... totally stopped watching runext after episode 1 because i simply do not have it in me to follow survival shows anymore but i love to vicariously experience it through sam and am so heartbroken that no one appreciates miss CHOI JEONGEUN as much as i think they should, she is an honor roll graduate of the national institute of cuntology in my heart!

also need to finish reading and replying to various oomfsfic and posts and comments... aghh soon. monday again... no problem TTTT have a great week everyone see u all later 💗