#'and the droning engine throbs in time with your beating heart' i couldn't use it for anything else tbh.

[apocalypticdemon]

for the wip title ask game:

'the droning engine'

oh boy, this is my super self-indulgent fic, lmao. I've been super into IndyCar my whole life, as is the rest of my family, so it's my IndyCar AU for the Terror (with a focus on fitzier as the narrative drive behind it).

It's kind of unwieldy and a bigger project than I thought it would be, so it's still very much in the works/in the planning stages while i draft prose as it comes to me, but I've been poking at it in my free time. The basic premise is Crozier is an older driver, signed to team Terror, a smaller team, but one that generally is in good standing. He's got a really odd rivalry with Fitzjames, and this comes to a head at the start of the work, when the Terror management signs James on as a driver. Basically, the plot is going to stretch over the entirety of an IndyCar season, and I'm going to try to hit major plot beats from the show in this story as the characters all vie for the championship for the season. Some stuff gets changed around, just to make things work, but that's the general premise.

I have it planned for the final driver lineup for team Terror to be Crozier, Fitzjames, Silna, and I think Little, but that's still in flux. Hickey was on the team, but gets let go after publicly starting a fight with Silna and suffering the consequences, lol. He continues to scheme in the background as the season continues to unfold, because a different team snaps him up pretty quickly. Is it conventional for how drivers are passed around and contracts are signed? no, probably not, but I do what I want, lol.

I have plans for general plot beats, how I want to draw narrative similarities for things like the no good, very bad wardroom dinner from the first episode, carnivale, and character deaths in the show without...... actually killing anybody, because I can't really have that.

I want the vibes for the fitzier part of the story to be the kind of "they would absolutely fuck several times before actually talking about their feelings" kind of dynamic, so I think that's the route I'm going to take and have their relationship really blossom towards the end of the season, but i'm also still planning out the specifics of that one. I really like the added tension of a secret relationship, given that they're on the same team and that motorsports doesn't necessarily have the most.... open-minded audience (it's very fun being an unpatriotic queer person at these events. i am....... very much in the minority there), so I want to play with that a bit, too. I thought I had a neat and tidy plan, but it rather started crumbling in my hands when i sat down to actually try to write it, so I think I'm going to be wrangling this one for a bit.

but i'm very excited to actually get to it someday! i know this write-up is very rambly and a bit unhinged, but i truly have so many thoughts about it that it's hard to organize into a coherent, short summary, lol. I have a lot of personal history tied up in this, too, so it's hard not to just go on cool tangents about the sport. this project has taken a back seat as my master's work ramps up, since it's just.... so much bigger than i thought it would be. but i really want to work on it over this winter break, creative juices willing.

and as thanks for reading........... all of this rambling, lol, here's a snippet from my draft of the "birdshit island"-cum-team-dinner scene:

Francis is at the end of his patience with the man, at this point in the day, and snaps. “Why don’t you tell us all about that crash in Monterey, James? That one was rather spectacular, if I remember right.” Fitzjames sours immediately, frowning and gritting his teeth. Francis has exactly a half a second of deep satisfaction at the expression before Blanky viciously kicks him in the shins under the table. Francis winces and glares at him, leaning down to rub at the spot. It had hurt, damn it. That prosthetic leg wasn’t soft by any stretch of the imagination.