It Is Very Important To Learn How To Do Cpr And Learn First Aid. I Did It And Even Though It Can Be Scary,

i want to tell you guys a story from my life, about something that really happened in my family, & then i want to talk about that story in relation to what happened between ray & sand in ep10. let me be very clear -- this post is not intended to scold people for disliking ray. part of the reason i waited so long to write this was so i could have confidence that i was being fair & not letting my affection for the character colour what i wanted to say. i would really appreciate it if people who feel negatively about ray in particular took the time to read this & take it into consideration, as a sincere appeal from someone who has alcoholics in her family to really consider some of the ways i've seen this fandom talking about ray's addiction.

so. the story. some half-dozen years ago my uncle was trying to get sober. his marriage was on its last legs & no one wanted his kids to be living with their father while he was going through withdrawal if that could be avoided, so he came to stay with us for a while. my mum did her homework, understood enough to know that he shouldn't have easy access to alcohol in that time, & so we moved all of the alcohol we had to hand into a locked room in the cellar & gave the key to a neighbour for the duration of his stay. it went okay for a little while, & then my uncle had a fight with his wife over the phone, or something to that effect. in one night, he drank three half-bottles of prosecco which we'd forgotten we had stored in the garage.

we didn't even know that alcohol was there. we'd totally forgotten about it. but because we missed it, what should have been a bad night turned into a relapse. keeping alcohol in close proximity to a recovering alcoholic, especially in the early days of sobriety, makes it so, so easy for them to backslide. partly because constantly knowing it's there can wear on them, sure, but mostly because no matter how strong anyone's commitment, there will always be moments when they falter, & the easier it is made for them to relapse in those moments, the likelier it is that they will. & maybe not everyone in this situation would relapse, but you cannot know whether a person will or won't until it happens. most of it's up to factors far beyond your control. it is not worth taking that risk with someone you love.

so trust that i am speaking from bitter experience when i say that sand's home-brewing was always, always going to be a problem. they put it in the opening credits, for god's sake. i was absolutely certain from ep2, when we first found out about the plum wine, that whether ray ultimately tried to get sober or not, the easy access to alcohol that a relationship with sand granted him was destined to be point of conflict between them. sand was always going to have to confront the tension between his relationship with an alcoholic & his main (?) source of income being home-brewed alcohol, & he was always going to have to choose between them. & it is not fair to sand that he has to make that choice, i know. it's fine if you think that he made the wrong choice, or that he shouldn't have had to make that choice at all, but it was inevitable that he would have to, fair or not. because if you have an alcoholic in your life, you are most likely going to have to change your behaviours around them, in big ways & small, for their benefit. this is just how it goes.

i was astonished that there were people who seemed caught off-guard by this fight -- the only thing that surprised me was that it happened before ray was really taking rehab seriously, because i fully expected that this fight would happen after a relapse, likely one involving the plum wine, a couple months into sobriety. there was no version of this show that could both be honest about ray's alcoholism & fail to highlight this conflict at some point. they gave sand this source of income specifically so that sand & ray would have this problem down the line. it was so obvious to me that this was coming, i just took it as a given that everyone else saw it too. & again, this post is not intended to judge anyone for how they have interacted with this show or with this character, that's not what i'm here to do. but i do want to address an element of the way that i have seen some people talk about ray & his addiction.

it is fine if you don't like this character. i am not going to scold you for being understandably mad about the way that he has treated the people around him. but it is very frustrating, & sometimes downright upsetting, to occasionally see people speaking with great confidence on alcoholism despite saying things which i know from lived experience to be inaccurate, or worse, unfair. i am not here to judge you, but i am going to ask you extend a certain amount of grace to this character, & more importantly to all the people who see themselves or their loved ones in him. if you're going to talk about alcoholism, or the aspects of ray's character & actions which are intimately linked with his alcoholism, i would ask you to take some time to make sure that you do actually know what you're talking about. if you're criticizing ray -- & there is plenty to criticize! -- i would ask you to take a moment to think about whether you're really just holding him accountable, or if maybe you're being unduly harsh on him. i think there's more than a few people in this fandom who have some unexamined biases around addiction & those who suffer from it; this is an excellent opportunity for all of us to educate ourselves on this subject. i've been learning a lot about what different structured recovery programs look like; neither my uncle nor anyone else i'm close to ever pursued one, & i'd never sought out information on that before.

ray isn't real. none of the people he's hurting are real, either. but he & the people around him are a very well-written reflection of a very common, very difficult experience. you don't have to like him, but if you want to understand more about addiction i think he could be a really good starting point for that. if you don't want to, i genuinely get it -- sometimes you just want to watch a show & enjoy it without having to do homework. that's okay. but if that's your position, then please think twice before making public posts passing judgement on the show's representation of an incredibly complicated & sensitive topic.

i'll reiterate one last time that this post was not intended to judge, scold, or otherwise castigate; i hope that i've managed to maintain an acceptable level of the objectivity i was aiming for, & if i haven't, then my apologies, i definitely tried. if you're going to disagree with some of what i've written, that's fine, but please remember that i wrote all of this based on my personal experience with a family member, & be kind.

fic idea. jeremy introduces jean to scrapbooking— they collect mundane things at first, like grocery store receipts, the tags from his new USC merch, the boba shop punch card. jean gets embarressed by how much the scraps of paper make him feel. he scrawls next to the items in cramped lettering:

#16: ripe strawberries.

#17: laughter.

when cat and laila find out they start bringing him little things here and there- a dandelion from outside their apartment building, doodles of the team drawn during class, a silly cat sticker they bought for him from a craft fair.

#29: pressed flowers.

#30: gifts.

jeremy gives him an old film camera of his—he never used it anyway— and so the pages begin to hold memories in images and not just in their absence.

#52: noise-cancelling headphones.

#53: independent bookstores.

#54: holding hands.

on his 20th, he stays up late making a page just for their birthday card for him. its the first one he has ever recieved.

#77: birthdays, if they’re anything like today.

(Putting this in anti tags to be safe but I don't think I'm anti more than just dissapointed)

Myself and some friends were chatting about why it feels bad if Lando wins the WDC

It's because he hasn't had that "wow" drive (yet)

When you look at drivers like Lewis and Max (actual world champions) and Charles and maybe George (both definitely potential world champions), all of them have iconic races that people point to to watch - that is a race that only they (or maybe a select few) could have done at that point in time.

It's the race that everyone talks about, no matter who wins or whatever, everyone is talking about that driver; "did you see what they did though?!"

Sure, load of drivers have had great recovery drives (like Lando now! Baku 2024, 15th to 4th), but could any of them have done what Lewis Hamilton did in 2021 Brazil, last to first in the thick of a championship fight? It really doesn't fee like it- iconic drive from Hamilton, its all everyone was talking about. Wow. Not even Max could do that the same year in Sochi (last to 2nd).

It doesn't even have to be a winning drive- Sure, in 2016 the championship was heating up between Hamilton and Rosberg, but nobody was really talking about that in Brazil because did you see what Max Verstappen did with his car? An iconic recovery drive in the wet that took out other champions like Raikonnen at the same time! Niki Lauda took his hat off for that drive- iconic! Wow.

Even this year in Monza, sure Lando closed the gap to Max but did you see what Charles Leclerc did? He won with a brilliant tyre management, holding off the Mclaren of Piastri! Wow. (We're debating whether this one is truly an "iconic" drive, but Charles has had several of these moments already too, like holding off Hamilton himself to win in Monza 2019 too)

And Lando just... hasn't inspired people the same way?

He's had some good drives but that's kinda it? The best ones we could think of are some of his recovery drives (do you really want a world champions who can only do recovery drives though?) And maybe that time he was leading in Sochi 2021 vs Hamilton? It was painful when he span out (that was more mclarens fault too hoenstly), and people did sorta talk about it... for like 5 minutes until Max came 2nd and the championship talk was back on.

Lando is a good driver, they all are, but he hasn't had a "wow" drive where everyone was talking about him and his skills only.

(Miami we think was more about the safety car and Zandvoort wasn't iconic because everyone had just spent 2 years hating on Max for doing the same thing in the dominant car at the time, and then Lewis before him. Lando wasn't alone in being able to do that. If Lewis, Max, Charles had the car they would also do the same thing.)

So it's just sort of "eh, sure" when people talk about Lando being world champion. Sure, I guess, whatever.

He's not properly "wow"ed us really :/

whenever i read books i cannot actually imagine what the characters look like, they're all somewhat like this.

Driver of the day

Marshal of the day ✅️

The second ao3 stops working I go straight to tumblr. I'm past checking the wifi.

Perfect fit

no but like... the thing about pierre and charles knowing each other by heart... yeah. yeah.

like we've seen it mentioned that charles' dad used to bring gifts for pierre when he was on the podium in karting races, and that now pierre's parents promise charles has a family with them no matter what. they used to go on vacations together as kids and pierre used to basically live with charles when they were karting in the south of france and even as recent as 2019 they've mentioned trying to have a holiday together every year even since joining F1.

and how charles saw pierre suffering in 2019 but we still saw them supporting another seemingly every weekend when even other well respected drivers took opportunities to dunk on pierre's shortcomings. how charles' friendship and support didn't falter even when pierre got demoted despite everyone else treating that situation so cautiously. how in brazil he crashed out in a stupid and embarrassing incident but still showed up for pierre. made a post for him to congratulate him on his first podium even though he's never done the same for anyone else. and same in monza even though we know he hit the wall hard enough to need medical checks but he embraced pierre hard enough to push him back a little. how in baku he sped up in his cooldown lap to wave at pierre and nearly ran through parc ferme to congratulate him even though he himself just lost out on that podium.

and then there's the way they interact. pierre saying "in 8 years, teammates again?" to charles bringing up their karting days. pierre, without hesitation, associating charles with the word friend. saying "me and charles saying basically the same thing? that's not surprising," in reference to their team radios in 2019. pierre saying he would pick charles to take with him on a desert island because he'd know he would have fun. how he'd pick charles as his teammate over world champion idols.

and then there's charles crediting one of his best qualifying performances in 2020 to watching pierre's onboards and learning from him. charles telling the media he would love to have pierre as his ferrari teammate even though at the time everyone knew there was basically zero chance of that happening. he praised pierre as the most impressive last year on more than one occasion. charles fulfilling on a not so sure promise to pierre that he'd win in spa in 2019 for anthoine, and never once even implying to the media that maybe it's strange that a fellow competitor would ask for that.

they continue to speak well of each other even though more often than not they've been in direct contention with each other across several teams. today most of us were sweating, afraid they'd take each other out and then both of them got out and gushed about how fun it was.

so yeah. it really is fair to say they do know each other by heart.