play it cool, boy (real cool)

And this whole quote from Jordan that I absolutely love:

The intimacy of being in sports, especially in motorsports where the pool is so small and the only ones who can really understand you are your direct competitors, but you're also on such a grand stage all the time and that's where the glory of it all comes from

AND THEN, Nick's feelings when he first meets Gatsby (to me) are a reflection of Gatsby's feelings about Daisy: romanticizing a vision of a person that ultimately doesn't exist, or is at least greatly exaggerated and polished

Nick slowly falls out of love with Gatsby as he sees how pathetic he is, but Gatsby cannot let go of his dreams of Daisy, which by the time we meet him are so overly romanticized that he's dreaming of a women that doesn't exist, and never did

I personally think Marc knew what Valentino was like with his other rivals, but didn't think that would happen to him (at least not that year) because well, those were rivals, and Marc and Valentino were crucially never title rivals. Obviously no one could have expected what would boil over in Sepang lol

So anyways, Marc falls out of love with Vale and what is left is pity, maybe sympathy as well, which is exactly how Nick talks about Gatsby

The book literally opens with the quote from his father:

And I think you can really see a similar mindset in Marc, who always shies away from criticism or anything too harsh that might be taken as a headline for the media, like seriously he's almost always giving other riders' the benefit of the doubt (or uh. not addressing safety concerns lmao)

Meanwhile, Valentino is the complete opposite, always twisting the media to his advantage and saying things he knows will fan the flames, which eventually blows up in his face

And yet Marc still refuses to play the game! Because that's not the kind of games Marc likes to play, but crucially, he now also has a sort of pity for Valentino

Quoted from this post (in which they asked about him being fed up with being asked Valentino):

"I think living with resentment is very hard. I mean the people who live with a grudge, it’s hard. So, my fans, I don't want them to hold a grudge, just save their energy to cheer for me. So… it’s just that. So I always ask for.. for example, when I got injured, [Bezzecchi] bumped into me and he took me out. But it’s not that "he took me out". I mean, he made a mistake, he bumped into me, and we crashed. But nobody does that on purpose, the thing is that we are riding at the limit, which is something that people sometimes don’t understand."

Marc has always been transparent about his idolization of Valentino and how it continued even after Sepang

And Nick still like Gatsby after everything! Literally mentions in the first chapter how Gatsby, despite being everything he hated and judged, is his one exception. And he's the only one besides Jay's dad to attend his funeral, while everyone else is moves on without any consequences

Well, at least move on from Jay, because word of his parties still gets around!

And then this line from Nick about how Gatsby's dream must have seemed so close, so within reach:

The blue lawn... like yamaha blue...... shaking the bars of my cageee

Also your post mentioning how Valentino has been the "bad driver" all his life and then finally met another "bad driver" in Marc and it takes two to make an accident AUGHHHHHHH

ALSO during the confrontation between Tom, Daisy, and Gatsby, Nick has the realization at the end that it's his 30th birthday. I've always interpreted this as him feeling like an adult finally and somewhat figuring out who he is and where his morals lie, also he's mentioned that before moving to West Egg he was fresh out of the war and wanting to get out of the midwest and see the world.

In S1, the immediate purpose of this scene is to emphasize how Warlock Dowling is a smart and lonely kid growing up in a fishbowl. While he wants for nothing material because his parents are wealthy, his father is the U.S. ambassador to the U.K.. Warlock is considered a potential target for kidnapping and, as a result, is growing up under constant surveillance. There's even one of his Secret Service agents four feet away in the shot, listening to him whine about the birthday party.

The poor kid can't even talk to his mom alone-- shades of Crowley, trapped in his Hell-owned prison cell of a flat in S1 that symbolized him being imprisoned in Lucifer's fishbowl, begging "his mom"-- God-- to just tell him why he can't have his birthday in an escape room already.

In S1, Warlock is living a child's version of the lack of privacy and autonomy disguised to others as privilege and rank that the much, much older Crowley knows, in different ways, all too well. With Warlock's questions and his puns and his general air of 'sensitive, sweet-if-snarky kid stuck in this awful environment'? He is as Crowley as they come. And what Warlock wanted, we learned in S1, was to escape.

The psychology of this is pretty obvious. Warlock doesn't know the kids of The Them in S1 but he wants experiences like what kids like them get to have. The Them have autonomy and freedom and privacy; they ride their bikes around town unsupervised and get ice cream and play together in the woods. On the surface, Warlock and his friends seem to have everything a kid could ever want and then some but what they're all missing, really, is the freedom necessary to actually be a kid.

What Warlock and his friends have in common is that they're all going through versions of this so Warlock's idea for his party was that they all go together to a place where they get locked in and have to work together to figure out to get out of it. They'd have to find Clues and solve puzzles and riddles and work together to all make it out of there.

It's a party idea that would give him and his friends the room to imagine and create and play together-- that would give them the agency and autonomy which their world doesn't really allow. It would help bond them all together more as friends by giving them a fun experience they all went through together.

The Dowlings and the other parents have vetoed Warlock's plan, though. This is the worst thing ever for Warlock when it first is happening. On the day of the party? He can't believe he's living this absolute nightmare. All of his friends are here to visit his fishbowl and judging him. Whatsherface is going on about how she had Penn & Teller and a silent disco at her party and that other kid is pointing out the truth of all of it-- this magician performing is a thing we see all over Evil Whickber in the S3 spoilers: rubbish.

This whole thing is trash, as far as Warlock is concerned, and he's at rock bottom. Right when he could have been having the best eleventh birthday party ever! if only his mother had un-damned him and allow him to have all he wants through the magic of escape from everything? Everything has fallen to pieces and he's in Hell. It's a child's version of where we just left Crowley.

The party just goes from bad to worse-- the magician's having some kind of anxiety meltdown and can't seem to pull a rabbit out of a hat. Warlock's mother hired a carousel and a bouncy house thing-- like he's turning six years old. Do Warlock and these other kids kinda want to play on them, though? Of course! They never get to. To the otherwise kind of awful Harriet's credit? She appeared to have heard Warlock's true birthday wish at the core of his escape room wish-- the plea for something like what "the normal kids" get.

And, not for nothing, but a version of this is what Crowley really wants, too, of course.

He thinks what he wants is the temporary escape of an escape room adventure lark but what Crowley is truly saying he wants and needs when he tries to flee and escape? Is freedom. It's a world from which he doesn't need to escape anything at all because there's nothing to escape. He wants out of the fishbowl entirely.

(May I point out that, on the S3 poster, the thing that looks like the snowglobe actually has an opening at the top, making it really also a fishbowl?)

Warlock and Crowley want the temporary escapes of an escape room party because they're trying to manage the fishbowl. They think they're trapped in it forever and struggle to see a world where they don't have to live in one at all so they say they want to grab some friends and run for awhile to escape it as long as they can. They beg for the quick fix of escape because they cannot see a way out entirely.

So, there Warlock was, at rock bottom-- just unimaginable horror happening at first for this poor kid on his eleventh birthday. There he was, sitting on the ground and feeling alone and like no one understood him or cared, trapped in his worst nightmare, his surroundings his version of Hell. His friends judging him, no real magic, no one seeming to understand his need for escape. But then?

The magician is just so bad that what starts to happen is that Warlock begins to have the only truly memorable birthday party that any of them have ever had.

He starts to get what it is that he actually, truly wants, which is the freedom of true friends, with whom he's bonded and made some memories-- something that can sometimes only be formed by going through something less than great together.

Because, ultimately, none of those kids could remember which of their rich parents paid the boy band of the moment to come sing for which of their birthdays or which one of them had Cirque du Soleil do a private show. They are always performed for and it's always good and fabulous to a point that the idea that one of them would have a real party with this total disaster of a magician becomes what is truly novel.

When the magician starts to have an anxiety attack and can't even pull a bloody rabbit out of a hat? Warlock and his friends are all suddenly in an escape room of sorts anyway-- bonding together over trying to escape the misery of this magic show. It's not exactly what Warlock asked for-- but it also kind of is, as well as something ultimately so much better and more of a long-term solution.

"It's in the table," Warlock groans, mortified, and then one of his friends (an honestly rude little twit lol) starts telling Aziraphale that he's "rubbish" and this other, jaded kid is looking at his way too expensive watch and this other girl is going on about what she had at her party. All the kids are bored witless-- and they're all in this together. At some point, one of them starts a food fight and these kids get what they really need: to just let it all out. To mess up their clothes and giggle and run around and play.

Harriet and the Secret Service and the caterers and the other parents let the kids be kids, at least for a little while. We get that shot of Warlock, now wide-eyed, euphoric, and covered in frosting, looking into the camera and declaring the truth: that it was the best eleventh birthday party ever.

It had started out a complete disaster but it ended up being the answer to everything-- just as I expect will be the case for Crowley in S3.

Because, just as I suspect it will for Crowley? It turned out that the only path out of the fishbowl of misery for Warlock was to experience it all with others like him in it. It turned out that he needed the escape room of an anxious magician messing up his act and them needing to work together with their friends to find a way out to discover that, if you can get out of the escape room? You now have friends you've bonded with for life. You're never again really in the fishbowl because they're your ticket out.

What Warlock really wanted was to go from classmates to real friends with those kids like him and that meant they all needed shared starting point-- really, truly, memorable memories, made together. And, as we all know? The human mind has tendency to remember the unusual, and the negative, before all else.

The only birthday party those kids are going to remember when they get older is the one at the U.S. embassy when Warlock's mom hired that godawful magician and they all threw food at one another and rode the carousel and pushed each other into the bouncy castle and played under the sun. The day they all had an in-joke now and some memories they had been left free enough to make on their own-- all set into motion by a very believable human magician making some very human, very well-intentioned mistakes, as everyone does sometimes.

Crowley keeps asking to have his birthday party in an escape room.

We could just run away to Alpha Centauri, angel! We could just get out of here for awhile! He thinks there's no way out of the fishbowl. He thinks he's damned and the only way to even sometimes try to get a little free is to run. Too much trauma has made him basically not capable of seeing what Aziraphale sees-- which is that what Crowley truly wants and needs is not to run away but to have a fully free life with no fishbowl at all.

It's a life that Aziraphale has been feeling like he's failed to make for them but he doesn't realize that he has, just by even showing up to try? Already begun to set in motion that happy ending.

Because what Crowley truly wants and needs is the best birthday party ever-- the one that begins at rock bottom and the end of the world but then? Then, there's his anxious magician and neither of their miracles working right. Then, there are problems and puzzles to solve and they can't do it without Gabriel and Beelzebub and The Whickber Street Traders and Shopkeepers Association. And, when it's all over?

Escaping from the rubbish world of Hell and Death and saving the world? That is then their starting point for the new world outside the fishbowl they all have just made together, for one another.

And when Crowley is then there, on the other side of that in the end of S3? Having escaped his prison and become free to marry his love and spend eternity with their friends? He'll likely look around and realize the truth-- that maybe the most human thing ever is how it likely never would have ended so happily with this new beginning if it didn't first begin with a bit of disaster, and, really?

That was all the best eleventh birthday party ever.