#chgtj

i finally figured out what hikaru should do

she used to be a primary school english teacher but retired early to focus on her real passions: oil painting and pottery

she's mostly an abstract and impressionist painter. she also runs a small flower shop but it's only really there as a source of income and as a place to display her art

from the start, i knew i wanted hikaru to have a job/hobby that wasn't directly competitive like racing. something you can improve at, but you can't necessarily become the objective BEST at. abstract art is also commonly dismissed as "not real art" but hikaru doesn't care! all that matters to her is that she enjoys the very act of making art itself

and that's the big lesson that chick needs to learn. he stopped enjoying racing a longggg time ago. he let competition and the need for validation and superiority consume him and destroy him

ingesting sodium silicate

according to wikipedia, if a car runs its engine on half a gallon of sodium silicate instead of oil, the car's engine gets damaged catastrophically within a few minutes

The Tides of Time has themes of karma and krux paying for specific crimes he committed in s7 and theum is literally the personification of "valuing material goods too much is harmful"