I said I'll be a literary blog, but unfortunately cars going around in weird shapes very fast have a chokehold on me and I'm nothing if not opinionated so...
I fear all McLaren fans (Lando fans in particular) will suffer this season.
Tldr; It's a business and presently Oscar is winning therefore making them more money and why he is getting the preferential treatment.
- written after Miami gp-
As I talked earlier in my post about women behind the scenes in motorsport, all of the teams are businesses. This matters because businesses have one goal - profit. And so teams profit from winning.
In terms of McLaren - Lando will most likely be relegated to second driver. And this isn't anti him or a hate post, just an explanation from somebody who studied business and analysed way to many companies.
McLaren needs wins, Oscar is presently winning. Ergo, the most logical strategy is to support his chances. To fans this is going to seem unfair or Oscar biased - it's not. He was just in the right place at the right time with the right people.
But on human or fan terms essentialy not caring about the driver that was with you for a long time and giving preferential treatment is going to seem cruel.
On business terms thats just business. This season Oscar is outperforming Lando and therfore business puts their money on the safer bet. Nothing to do with mental health, disrespect or whatever. How things currently stand Oscar is more likely to make them more money. These things happen every day in workplace.
What would happen if team were to give Lando preferential treatment?
On this note. Every team looks at other teams and their decisions (long and short term) and tries to avoid them. In this case Ferrari's 2022 championship run is a cautionary tale so to say.
They had a driver leading the championship and who was comfortable with the car, then they decided to develop in other driver's direction to even them out as they said. The only result this yielded was barely a second and very solid fifth place in wdc and second in the wcc when they could have been first in both.
On the other hand Red Bull's 2023 championship run is also a cautionary tale - developing a car too much in one drivers direction causes the other driver to gradualy lose confidence over the season making him mistake prone resulting in a season like 2024.
What McLaren needs to do is find a middle between these to situations and most likely they are going to need to start (or they already have subtly or not) letting their drivers know of the dynamic change (Oscar over Lando, who is 1a and 1b how some of you refer them to), lest they start taking points from one another and Max gets his fifth/George his first like Kimi Raikkonen in 2007.
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One thing I noticed a last year is how people, mostly men, treat women working in sports. This is particularly about McLaren winning the wcc and a few young women that work in McLaren, marketing mostly I think, posted a videos of the victory or their day at work etc. etc. And they used "WE won the wcc". A LOT of guys in the comments were like. "You didn't win ish, You didn't drive. You don't do anything meaningful to the team, just a seat filler"
First of all, that is absolutely disgusting.
Second of all, it lacks the basic understanding that all of the sports are businesses. FC Barcelona - business, LA Lakers - business, Yankees - business, McLaren racing - business. It isn't as obvious in basketball and football, well, most sports, because it's a club and isn't directly tied to a parent company, but in motorsports it is VERY CLEAR that this is business. There is a company standing behind the team.
Now that that we made that clear, these girls/women were very important to the team. In today's day and age marketing is everything and f1 is expensive.
A car is from 12 - 20 million dollars. ONE. Two are from 24-40 million and that is without damage done to the car through the season (which there is, like the only driver in 75 seasons of f1 that did no damage to the car due to driver's mistake is Gasly, but there was damage due to other issues), and that is without transport, employee pay, etc. How do teams get money? Parent companies and sponsors, because, paying for the team out of pocket isn't profitable. According to Forbes in 2018 Torro Rosso had 181.1 million dollars in expenses and net profit of about 1.8 million dollars (about 183.6 million dollars of revenue) and red bull payed them a bit under 83 million (calculated in aforementioned revenue). So if you want your team to be profitable you need sponsors.
Take Williams for example, they were struggling for finances and sponsors until this year. If you don't have money, you can't develop a competitive car; if you can't build a competitive car, sponsors won't be interested in you; if sponsors aren't interested, you are going to be short for money. It's an enchanted circle. But they have quite changed their marketing tactic - 'Team torque', more tiktoks, relatable brand etc. And they worked - Williams has a title sponsor (i cant find the exact numbers, just that this is the biggest sponsorship in teams history).
I think you can see how this relates to earlier point of treatment of women in marketing saying 'We won', because, that same marketing is the reason McLaren has a lot of its sponsorships. More visible the team, more visible the sponsors (HP is using its blue corporate use logo on Ferrari for a reason). Those women helped sponsors stay with the team, which means that the team has money, and back to the enchanted circle we go.
In conclusion, they are important part of the company/team and have absolutely every right to say that they won.
Welcome to what is probably going to become a series of rants about the very unimportant details of books that live rent free in my head
Today I present to you:
The older brother of a least mentioned side character in a (unfortunately) very unapreciated sci-fi ya book
Now that that introduction is out of the way I have thoughts about Daniel Batu Wing from Warcross.
And I was not kidding about the character introduction. Warcross has a fandom with like 4 people in it in total, which is tragic in my opinion. Asher is a side character, the captain of the team and out of all of the friends Emika makes during the events of the book the one mentioned the least. So, now imagine how much his brother is mentioned.
I'll tell you - it's about 1.5 pages and 2 by-the-way mentions in around 600 pages of the duology.
So what are the things we know about Daniel:
He's Asher's older brother (if I had to guess maybe like 2-3 year age gap)
He's a famous actor and stuntman
He comes off arogant in Asher's memory when he is touched by Zero
He's Day's ancestor, so at some point he was married/had a girlfriend/one night stand - procreated so to say
And... that's about it really
So not much as you can see.
Now, what I have thought about reading the book and what led to this post is Asher (as a character I wish had more developement) and in turn his relationship with Daniel and that somehow led to a very badly done psycho analysis.
On to the bussiness.
The first time we see Daniel mentioned is when Emika meets Asher. She says that he is famous and that Asher was originally known as his younger brother and Ash gets a brief cold look at the mention of his brother.
The second time is when the dorm is blown up and Hamilton mentions that Asher's parents and brother are there to see him.
The third time is the memory in which we find out maybe the root of the problem between the brothers.
I would like to present to you my personal headcanons for the ages of Daniel and Asher. I like to think that Asher in the series is 22-23. Which would make Daniel somwhere around 25. I may explain my way of thinking this later, this is already long and I have told you nothing that you did not already know.
Why are the ages important, you may ask? The memory. Since Emika places the memory some 8-9 years, before the events of the series. The boys would be around 14 and 16.
From what we know their parents are getting a divorce and their house is a mess as well as the relationships in their family.
Daniel's way of dealing with this? Absolutely ignoring the situation around him. For what I understand to be a significant amount of time - a couple of years would do the trick.
So he sees what is happening and ignores his feelings and thoughts about the matter.
Why? Simple - he's neglected and feels alienated from his family so he alienates them back.
One another headcanon I would like to mention, that sort of makes Daniel's attitude and things he says make sense, is that Asher lost the use of his legs in an accident some time before their parents divorce.
This, understandably, makes the parents dote on Ash and in turn neglect Daniel.
And I say this because to me at least it seems that Ash does not understand that Daniel does not want him around and sees Ash as a problem. Most likely due to some change in dynamic Asher is not aware of. Which is perfectly understandable because why would his relationship with his brother change?
We see some evidence for this in:
Asher: Where are you going?
Daniel:...
Asher: You know what? You don't have to tell me? I don't have to know every single thing about your life, when you clearly don't care for me.
Daniel *sarcastically*: You only need me to care. Don't you have enough people giving you attention already?
Or something along those lines, I have the translated copy.
He sound so bitter and jelous there.
And Asher ( who is not good at dealing with people, like at all (also a post for another time)) calls out on Daniel's coping mechanism (ignoring the divorce). In which part I understand given the next part of the conversation where Daniel tells Ash that he isn't doing much better and Ash, not at all reading the situation or understanding that Daniel also means ignoring the divorce, says that Daniel is not doing much better, but at least his victories are the reason they have food on the table.
First of all, some A+ parenting, right there.
Second of all, Dany straight up goes for Asher's throat after this and that entire conversation causes a rift between them.
Very fun on all sides, as you can see.
What's fun to point out is that Daniel acts like a threatened animal. He was ready for jumping at his attacker the first available moment from the moment Asher refused to put the matter to rest.
We see this from Ash's POV, but how would it look like to Daniel?
He has a small career, that he's very proud of
He's starved for attention from the people he needs it from the most in his teenage years
The only attention he gets from family comes from the very reason he is neglected (not to say Asher is at fault here, because he is not. Daniel just seems to place the fault on him)
All of the family's finance and well being is put on the shoulders of the youngest member of the family who is disabled
Like, he, as most older siblings (it's a curse), feels the need to, in some capacity, provide something to the houshold when the parents clearly don't, but he only continues to ignore the situation at hand.
If their parents have not gotten a divorce, Dany would have probably ran away from home a mnd cut all contact.
And like all things that are ignored, the sitation at hand comes to bite him in the butt in the form of Asher (the aformentioned problem) who just keeps on pressing the sore spot until Daniel has to options - run away again and keep the cycle going or bit back and get rid of the problem. And bite he does.
To his credit, Daniel was most likely 16 at the time of this and none of us emotionally mature at that age, he delt with his emotion really badly, took it out on the wrong person and soured his relationship with his family.
They have most likely made up (I do not think that the cold look Ash had at the mention of Daniel was because the had bad blood, but rather that Emika put him again in the back of his brother's shadow when Ash worked hard to get out of it). Why do I think this? You don't fly half-way across the planet to check on someone you don't like/don't speak with/have bad blood with, when if he wanted to come across as caring he would have called or texted. Or ask third party who knows what happend and has seen Ash like Roshan, Hamilton or their parents.
So yeah, to sum up this way too long of a rant in which nothing was said, Dany was just a teenager in a horrible situation with which he delt badly.
And to those who have suffered through this, thank you :)
Welcome to episode 2 of Things that frustrate me, Hellou, for some reason
Today I present to you:
STOP CALLING IT A MULTIVERSE IT'S NOT A MULTIVERSE
This entire post came to be simply because I have seen many people and videos say 'All franchises (MCU and Star Wars most frequently) now want a multiverse' or something along those lines.
Now onto the program:
It's just semantics, really.
I think that it is pretty clear what the word 'multiverse' stands for, but I like the order so you get the unnecessary etymology.
The word 'multiverse' is made up of two words - multi and universe. It's used in science and storytelling to tell us that there are multiple different universes that happen at the same time where things are different.
From a storytelling perspective it's mostly used in comics. Firstly used in 'The Flash', but now commonly tied with MCU because of the Multiverse Saga.
And here is my a bit harsh opinion - MCU is not a multiverse. Currently at the very least. Not many things that are called 'multiverse' are actually functioning multiverse.
They deal with the multiverse but are not the multiverse.
DC and Marvel as comics are multiverses, because they have comics happening in different universes to theirs, but I will not be focusing on those, because I don't want to entangle myself into like 90 years of comics and retconning and 'is this now cannon or not or did it happen on Earth xxx'.
So there are a couple of examples I would mainly like to focus on in this amateur essay - Star Wars, DCU (the presentation on Gunn's plan for it specifically), MCU - the multiverse saga and 'Legend of Zelda' Franchise (post 'Ocarina of Time').
Gunn's plan for DCU
This will be brief as we don't know much about how this will actually pan out, but DCU as it is planned is actually a multiverse.
Simply due to them not dismissing the other movies and saying that they plan to make movies not connected to the storyline that they will call 'Elseworlds' stories.
So essentially the story is taking a place in another universe and exists inside DCU it just isn't the part of main continuity we are following.
That is a multiverse as they exist inside the same entity with same characters, but in different universes. Simple enough.
MCU - The Multiverse Saga
Unlike the above mentioned DCU, the MCU deals with multiverse. Doctor Strange, Ant-man, Spiderman and Loki are characters whose stories are interconnected with the multiverse - hence the name of the saga.
However, MCU as entertainment entity owns no films or TV shows that have stories running or happening in different universes that have nothing to do with the main continuity. All of the stories take place in one universe with brief touches on other universes.
If the MCU, for example acquires Iron Man: Armored Adventures and that comes under the MCU umbrella, then, yes, the MCU is a multiverse, but until that or something similar happens it is not a multiverse.
'Deadpool and Wolverine' does not change this fact as the MCU has acquired characters, but not the movies from 20th Century Fox. They essentially have the same entrance to MCU as America Chavez.
The Legend of Zelda - post 'Ocarina of Time'
As anybody who played the games or has watched a lore video explaining the Zelda timeline at 2am instead of sleeping will tell you - it's a mess.
I'll be short (shocking), after the events of 'Ocarina' the timeline splits into three - the hero is successful which leads into child and adult eras and Ganondorf succeeds. Different games happen during this three eras and they are fully independent of each other and events that happen in them. 'Wind Waker' has no impact on 'Twilight Princess'.
This was specifically included for that rift in the timeline, because whether 'The Legend of Zelda' is a multiverse depends on how you see the multiverse.
If your definition of multiverse is completely different universes that have existed independently of each other then no, it is not a multiverse.
If you count diverging timelines as different universes branching out from the same one then yes, it is a multiverse.
Of course, these are only valid if we ignore the existence of 'Breath of the Wild' and 'Tears of the Kingdom'.
Why? Because of their placement in the timeline.
If the timelines converge sometime before the events of 'BotW' then no, it is not a multiverse, just a timeline issue bordering on multiverse.
If they don't refer to previous if loop.
Unfortunately, 'BotW' has no official placement in the timeline and this thing is still murky. I have seen people put it in different spots in the timeline.
Star Wars
While we're on the topic of timelines. Star Wars is the most frequent franchise I have seen referred to as the multiverse and it's just not.
It's the simplest example here do dissect.
It's stories taking place in different points in the same timeline of one universe. There is no mention of other universes of diverging timelines.
Same as 'House of the Dragon' and 'Game of Thrones'. It's the same universe, it's just that one takes place nearly 200 years before the other. There are just larger time jumps and different political conflicts and state of political rest (empire and republic).
In conclusion, just because a franchise has different projects or deals with the multiverse does not mean that franchise itself is a multiverse.
If you read this far - thank you, sorry for the long read
A quick introduction - my name is Hellou and as a very opinionated entity with a big tendency to yap, I have put together a masterlist of my ramblings about books, trends and culture.
So, if you're interested - you are very welcome to check out what's under the cut.
quick note: episodes/rants are categorized by content not numbers because I have very weird organization, numbers just mean chronological order of posting. The ones with '?' are planned but not yet posted or fully written.
BOOKS
General YA/booktok book rants about characters/plot
EPISODE 1 - Character analysis of Daniel Batu Wing (Warcross)
EPISODE 3.1 - Character analysis of Asher Wing (Warcross)
EPISODE 3.2 - Character analysis of Asher Wing (Warcross)
EPISODE ? - Tradition v Progress - South v North (Gone with the Wind)
Rants about plot devices, tropes and writing
EPISODE 2 - Multiverse; meaning and misconceptions in today's marketing and fandom talk
THOUGHTS ON TRENDS AND CULTURE
EPISODE ? - Slavic Doll trend and continuous sexualization of Slavic women
MOTOSPORTS
Note: I do have a few rants here, but most of those thoughts have been moved to my other blog @hellou-partiedeux so feel free to check it out if you wish :D
Women in motosport marketing not being given credit for their role in winning
McLaren's business practices when it comes to prioritizing their drivers done after the 2025 Miami GP
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Welcome to Hellou what the - or episode 3.1 of Analysis no one asked for
Today I present to you:
Somebody get Wing family a therapist ASAP
But, like seriously, none of these guys are ok. Like we saw Day and Eden being not ok. RIP John. Daniel Batu was referenced to have childhood trauma (I did a post) and now I break down Asher.
Originally this was supposed to one piece, but it was getting very long, so I split it in two parts. In the second part I'll discuss his personality and get into like one snippet of childhood we have.
I have three things to discuss in this part: the position of captain, Asher's age and his career.
The Captain position in the game
So, to summarize we know of the 5 positions in Warcross: Thief, Architect, Shield, Fighter and Captain.
It would make sense that in the beginning when you log into the game you can choose between four options - Thief, Architect, Shield and Fighter. All of which have been described including the uniform i.e. Thieves having a lot of pockets.
The Captains uniform is described as 'looking like the captain' which ??? Not sure what that means, but from the description of it, it seems more behind the scenes type of thing and game wise relies more on strategy.
Also, the position of Captain is never mentioned as one missing from the teams in the wardraft, meaning that the captain is individually chosen among the teammates.
One more interesting thing is that at no point is any of the professional teams described as having more people than the players. Like there are no PR or management. Which is a problem especially when it came to big drama like Emika and Hideo's relationship braking out to the public. Neither is there a coach.
Since there is no people behind the scenes, all of the responsibilities fall onto the shoulders of the Captain, meaning that at the same time the Captain is the manager, PR manager, coach and strategist while being the literal target of 5 people on the opposing team.
All in all, it makes sense that if teams were formed professionally or not that not some random person will be in charge of the team. But in a game with random people, yeah, the algorithm will choose one random player to be captain.
Like, in Ash's case in particular, we know that he wasn't in the first championship and I highly doubt that Riders, as a professional team, would take a random wildcard none of them know as a captain. So, most likely Ash became a captain later in the games and played some other position in the game.
Asher's age during the events of the book
So, I did say in the analysis of Daniel that at some point I would analyze Asher and how I got to what I assume are their years.
I may have explained this earlier, my personal headcanon is that there is like 3 year age difference between Daniel and Asher, mostly because that is the most common age difference between siblings.
Other clue we have about Ash's age is that Emika could tell how much time passed between Ash's current age and the memory we were shown in 'Wildcard' (about 8-9 years) which means that Ash was most likely 14-17 in the memory, placing him at 26 at the oldest at the games. Personally I lean towards the younger age in the memory (14/15, which would make him 23/24 during the events of the book).
For that I have no other reason besides the larger span of years Emika was able to tell, because it's easier to tell 9 year difference between 24 and 15 than it is between 26 and 17. If you were to look at your yearbook pictures from those ages or anyone really, you'll notice the baby fat maybe and not that much change in the face, but in the early teens and early twenties you can tell said difference at the first glance, because it's a difference between a child and an adult.
Of course Emika could have always seen Asher's pictures from his younger years and made a connection about time span there.
Another thing were my headcanon falls flat is that, during the most logical flow of Ash's career, he would be about 17 when he becomes captain, but then again Jena MacNeil is an established captain at 18 meaning that she would have also taken up the position at 17 at the latest.
Career
I'd say I wouldn't make this long but alas I could probably break that promise so step-by-step onto the actual analysis.
First I'd like to present the above mentioned career flow. I don't think Ash was in the first games. Hamilton makes a comment to Emika about being the first pick and how she didn't think they'll have an American first pick, so she'll have to stop teasing Asher.
Meaning that Asher was either a) the second pick b) the last pick c) he was the first pick, but isn't American. Option c) holds some merit, as Ash is the only side character that does not have his citizenship stated. Hamilton and Roshan have theirs stated in 'Wildcard' and Tremaine grew up in UK and still lives in UK, so there is no other option for him. Asher, however, is only stated that he represents Los Angeles (by himself) and almost 36% of L.A. population doesn't have American citizenship. Where this falls flat is low chances that Phoenix Riders would have first pick of the draft 3 times and there are 16 teams.
Citizenship wise, Daniel (his brother) has a middle name Batu, which is used in Mongolia from what I could find online (often not by itself, but it is a Mongolian name and Turkish as is Altan). Speaking of Altan - the other Daniel, Daniel's descendant Daniel, to us known as Day is stated in 'Legend' to be of predominantly Mongolian ethnicity. Do with this information as you will.
Back to drafts and first picks: 8th championship - Emika, 7th championship - Anna, 6th - Penn, 5th - Kento, that's as far as canon is concerned. Going off of the fact that it took Roshan 2 years to get to the draft it's safe to assume that he started some time after the first championship as that would be when it got more traction and had the highest possibility to distract him from Mario. So that would make Roshan the first pick in the 4th championship. Asher was already a captain by then.
Another interesting thing to note is Hamilton, who transferred from Titans to Riders (this will be relevant later) and who does not strike me as a person who would make comments or judge others after just having a horrible season or burnout. She probably got back on track and then made comments about Roshan, which would mean that Hamilton transferred to Riders between second and third championship. Again guess who she described as better captain? Asher.
Going off by this there are two possibilities: Captains are chosen as wildcards occasionally and Riders chose Asher or when he was chosen he played on a different position, proved himself in that season enough that they entrusted him the position of Captain (considering that Ash was playing warcross obsessively it could be very well that he was drafted in the first games and wildcards were always a feature and took two seasons to prove himself a capable captain).
Going off by the second option - what position did he play?
This is where we get into personality a bit. Asher is described as one of the most intuitive captains and from his gameplay we can see that he is observant (opening game - 'And there is no doubt, Asher noticed something before anyone else') and a pretty quick thinker (First game). Based on those traits I would say that he either played Thief or Architect.
Bringing up the Hamilton transfer again, teams most usually take other players when they are better than what they currently have or to fill position they lack. Hamilton is one of the best thieves in game currently and she was good enough to be chosen in draft or just straight up for the team when they formed and gets transferred to Riders. Considering the horrible season she had it wasn't very likely for her to be taken by another team if not in need. My theory goes that Ash was a Thief for Riders and when he got the position of Captain, he chose Hammie as his successor.
This is in character for what we know of Ash and his choices. They are described as odd. A burnt out thief, Tremaine (by Tremaine's admission), a DJ, and untested player. All choices that were fine in game and gameplay wise, and when they backfired it was due to personality issues.
What this tells us is that Asher is very good at recognizing people's skills for the game. (Emika notes that Ash does pay attention).
I'd finish this part here as other examples are more related to who Asher is as a person then they are to his career.
Apologies for a long read, but thanks for reading nonetheless,
