#personal ref

so here they become Aegles, the elf-like people that lived in a certain contingent and world from Postknight 2 :D (links goes to a website about some more about the race/world +the game!)

tried my best to incorporate their story n personality with the world's setting, and occupations I think could fit them. also I'm making most of their shenanigans happening in Regalle because I'm biased.

we start off strong with george winning teacher’s pet by a country mile. there’s consensus among a vast and varied grid group on this: isack, alex, carlos, max, pierre, lance, ollie and oscar. one wonders who each of these drivers conjure as the supposed teacher. the obvious answer is, of course, toto, and it is both possible and plausible that even the non-merc rookies have picked up on that psychosexual dynamic and have Opinions on it (isack smirks like he knows something. like we’re on it with him).

the answer i’m more interested in is that “teacher’s pet” is less about the literal sense of the expression and more about the associative traits abstracted from their context of deference to an identifiable authority. which is to say it’s vibes, but specific vibes. a know-it-all. Involved in Classroom Activities. people pleasing, but possibly, no one is very pleased. obedient, but in that specifically annoying way where a raging superiority complex manifests through strategic submission.

there are things about george, outside of toto wolff, on a pretty varied spectrum of superficial to core characteristics, that fit this persona. it comes up later in the video, but we also all knew: george, in meetings, is the kid raising his hand in class, presumably to ask and answer the questions. and then there’s the GPDA. though george, as a GPDA director with a vocal focus on safer racing is the closest thing to a union leader, this is not something most drivers are fully able to comprehend as a relationship, and that’s including fellow vocal proponents of safer racing, sustainable mechanisms, etc. generational wealth, incredibly stunted amateur socialisation processes and a job that keeps adrenaline levels sky-high means that in a very serious sense, responsibility, especially unpaid, unsexy and voluntary responsibility is something they’re just not that proximal to. GPDA director is then less union leader, more class prefect or head boy, which you only get to be in elite, private schools if you are a teacher’s pet. the GPDA is really the ultimate classroom activity and george is up to his neck in it.

and this stunted relationship is somewhat ironic. the GPDA, and george as its most prominent spokesperson, is pretty constantly in conflict with the actual authority in the sport, the FIA. but a. the specific way george communicates with the FIA/puts his two cents about swearing regulations in the media is not how most drivers conceptualise conflict with authority (because max is the most established and public model of beef with the FIA, and max makes statements in what can only be called a very different way) and b. the FIA is such a mutually agreed upon evil among all the drivers that beef with them doesn’t really count as not bending over for authority. it’s too default, too normie.

(george’s own perspective on all of this is conspicuously absent. the official f1 channel did not include his answer. a patented move of script writers and editors everywhere is to have a bunch of people go, “x person” in response to something and cut to that person either agreeing (funny) or completely disagreeing (double funny). this happens in this video, multiple times, but not for the answer where it would be funniest. which does make me wonder what the hell george said, and how.)

and in some convoluted ways, this thread ties into the “brainiac” question, which is interpreted somewhat differently across the board. lance’s parameter for “brainiac” is “who talks the most in the drivers’ meetings? probably george.” which is different from how the question is explained to alex, “who’s the nerdy one?” and allegedly, alex’s “mind goes to george.” carlos and pierre also say george, without the final cut divulging any further explanation. but re: interpretive difference, max says fernando because he’s the most experienced, esteban says “fernando is very clever” and gabi says carlos “looks quite clever”. so even though george gets 4 votes, and shows up in denim in the yearbook photo, it’s difficult to determine exactly what the votes are for.

but if “talks the most at meetings” and “nerd” is what we have, then the commonality there is not necessarily the perception of intelligence, but rather an identifiable performance of knowledge. george behaves like he knows things, has the information, can make powerpoints with data systematised into readable graphs and flowcharts. but all the drivers who explicitly interpret the question as cleverness, probably most proximal to the kind of brain/intelligence these drivers value having (on-track and off-track ability for strategic thinking) do not go for george. apparently he’s an enthusiastic nerd, but he isn’t clever like that. that’s carlos. definitely fernando. maybe oscar.

both george and oscar take a weird sort of meta route in their answers to this one, where they both assume they’ve got the most votes and try to pre-empt the final cut operating on that assumption. oscar answers himself, and it’s heavily implied that he says it because he agrees with the consensus. george— george says, “i feel like people would say me, but i’m actually not that intelligent.”

which, fair play to george, but i don’t think he won that one because people think he’s intelligent. but there’s a multi-layered tension between perspectives on george russell at work here that’s still interesting. take him at his word (and i will, because the environment at mercedes seems to cultivate a naïveté in george + that contract kind of infantilises him) and operate from there, he thinks he isn’t actually that intelligent. but he thinks enough other people will think that he is for him to have the votes. there does have to be a conscious show george is putting on, then, of whatever he thinks intelligence is. he also thinks this is successfully landing. except, talks too much, and nerd and never very clever. the show is obvious. and there is truth to every performance; it’s believable that even if george isn’t super strategic, isn’t a chess player about races or the paddock, he does put work into the ‘knowing’ being real in all the ways that matter: staying on top of information, having eloquent or at least well-crafted opinions, making sure they’re heard.

the hefty agreement among everyone about “teacher’s pet” and the fragmented, vaguely reluctant agreement among four people on “brainiac” are cut from the same cloth: the awareness of persona. teacher’s pets are annoying because they, intentionally or unintentionally, but always non-consensually, include you as both audience and participant in a scene whose success banks on your relative inferiority. and the scene, in this case, i think, is the performance of intelligence that george believes will win him power points. in a lot of ways, since he was a teenager, george has lacked significant decisive power over his own trajectory.

all info based on what we know as of May 2025

* indicates estimated birth date, no canon given yet

(original age had Blip not happened)

Yelena Belova - 35-36 (40-41) - 1988-89

Bob Reynolds - ? anywhere from 28 to 39 - ~1990-2000*

Shuri - 24-27 (29-32) - ~1996-9

Xu Shang-Chi - 29-30 - 1999

Maya Lopez - 28-30 - 1999-2000

Joaquín Torres - anywhere from 26 to 29 - ~2000-2002*

[absolute youngest possible age in TFATWS/2023 is 21 if the Snap didn't affect process, but could possibly be younger if the armed forces altered their process due to mass shortages post-Snap]

Peter Parker - 23 (28) // Aug 10 2001

Kate Bishop - 26 - Q4 2002

Riri Williams - 24 - 2005

Cassie Lang - 21 - July 2008

Kamala Khan - 19-20 - Q4 2009

Billy & Tommy Maximoff - [ 3-4 - Nov 2013 ] / 18-19 - 2010

(shows that i feel a more pressing need to watch sooner rather than later. Realistically everything i've ever heard about is on the list but oh my god oh my fucking god)

Eddie Munson Tattoos and Vest Refs

The patches visible in this picture are the Iron Maiden patch behind the right pocket, and the Megadeth patch on the bottom hem

From this angle, you can see some of the other patches on his vest (the leviathan cross and the buttons over the left chest pocket, which are Judas Priest, wasp, mercyful fate, and accept)

Not pictured here, but over the opposite pocket there is a Motörhead patch