#girlestappen

[scuderlia]

GIRLESTAPPEN 💕💕🩷💖💖 ok. who makes the first move? are they the only girls and gays on the grid or are there more... what do they wear in the paddock? if there is girl charles is there girl chiss [gets dragged off stage]

girlestappen eventually cringefail their way into a relationship by doing what they do best: being weird about each other and ignoring the obvious tension between them until they can't anymore! i think in a traditional f1 au max is out and idgaf about her sexuality and charles is, on the cusp of realizing that she's a lesbian and DOESN'T actually fuck with men like that. she just hasn't put two-and-two together quite yet.

but basically, charles rocks up to the paddock in 2018 and is hit with the girl she grew up karting against being a terror on the track to all these men, beating them in many cases, and also looking... hot? (little dotted circle swirling in charles' brain) and she doesn't really know how to cope so she goes with what she knows: repressing the feelings and being incredibly normal (not normal) about it. for a long time.

random hcs under the cut:

when they finally get together, lando is their strange little guy friend who follows them around and is like ALLY but also half his jpg account is just. inexplicably. photos of them like, kissing at the club. everyone thinks it's weird but no one mentions it.

if max somehow wasn't out before getting to f1 she probably came out in a [waves hand] unintentionally dramatic way. like she made a gay joke, got cancelled on the internet for it, and then her statement was: I Am Actually Gay.

charles has her world turned upside down and inside out when she properly finds out max likes girls for the first time. it weighs on her so heavily she spirals and sleeps with [waves hand again] pierre or carlos or someone and it's terrible and max is completely oblivious to the fact that charles is #goingthroughit.

girlestappen are still butch4femme. they always will be to ME.

all those bizarre interviews with like, lewis and seb saying strange things about grid girls and girlfriends to max and charles in 2018/2019 still happen, but there's an added layer of what the fuck did he just say? the youtube comments are either: wow, they're so woke for asking max about liking girls on a public broadcast OR i can't believe seb actually said that about grid girls with charles sitting right there. does he hate women?

everyone should send a prayer out into the world for carlos sainz, who has had [checks notes] both of his girl teammates come out as lesbians. this begs the question: is it him? is he that bad? the italian press run articles on it weekly.

wherever charles goes, chiss will follow. obviously.

[anitalianfrie]

re: your pinned post on genderbending those old men -> care to share your genderbending headcanons

anon i'm giggling kicking my feet it's like i've waited all my life for this ask and the time has finally come!!! numerous thoughs under the cut

formula 1

in this case i mainly thought about them as couple dynamics, so every one is their separate au

lestappen: grew through the ranks together, super strong hate because of course only one of them could get to the top. almost phisically fought a couple of times. charles actually pretended to be a boy for the first years of her career (because she didn't want to be left out and thought that the only way to race was being a boy) while max idgafs her way through everything, she's been raised with a purpose and that purpose is winning. when max wins her first gp charles is literally fuming because she was supposed to be the first and you can guess how bad is their antagonism in 2018/2019 because they're always paired together, always compared. max struggles less with redbull than charles does with ferrari (thank you italy and sexism), but she wouldn't be allowed to come out anyways. charles is always underestimated because she's "too pretty", "too feminine" an thus not able to drive the car in the "correct way". But once she starts beating seb she becomes "la predestinata" anyway. And of course they were each others first crush (girl crush in charles' case but you get the point)

brocedes: they have already the crazy middle-school psychosexual codependent girl friendship down to a T, so my thesis is it would be even worse. somehow.

strollonso: nanda who wins her two back to back championships and then suffers by the hands of numerous teams, gets called a whore for getting the "preferential treatment", gets told she should retire by the age of thirty. And lance who grows up watching her on the tv and begs her dad to race and works and pleads to get sponsors because she might be rich but she's still a girl. and then after years and years they become teammates and lance gets hit with the super embarassing middle-school crush she had on nanda of ages. and fernanda who married a man because she thought that's what she was supposed to do (and then divorced him once she realized she was a lesbian) can't help but to be charmed by lance's clumsiness and to tease her (lance literally vibrates out of her skin every time it happens and calls este to talk about it. este hates her)

motogp

no more separate aus baby, i'm shoving an embarassing amount of girls on the grid!

vale: i've already talked estensively about her here (like. waaay to much. i'm obsessed)

marc (marcia): she's a girly girl, she loves to feel pretty and traditionally feminine and to dress in pink and to wear skirts, she's the og babygirl. people try to underestimate her for this, but once on the track she transforms into a ruthless monster and the excuse of "too girly to ride a motorcycle" doesn't exactly stand. "en la pista soy putilla" yes she is. a lot. she pretends to be small and weak but her arms are the size of trunks and she can benchpress her brother. she's a big girlTM in a short body (but she's still taller then dani). and of course. big tits.

bez (marzia): big girlTM. she's big she's strong she's tall her face is too masculine. she's a lesbian. she's a tomboy. she doesn't know where she fits. vale is her idol, her goddess, since she was six and pretending to be her on her bike (she also had a crush on her. of course). she fight tooth and nail to get what she wants and to arrive to moto3 and her family supports her fiercely. when vale asks her to get into the academy she cries (alone in her room)

cele: weird girl, weird face, she doesn't know what's her place, she's not feminine enough but also not masculine enough, she lives in the no-man's land. she's a bit off-putting and her humour is weird and she's serious and extroverted but like, in a weird way. she's lanky and lean and shouldn't be able to ride a motorcycle but she does anyway. she's had a crush on bez for the best part of her life.

pecco: "too serious, she should smile more". small but her arms are the size of trunks. has been in love with luca for half her life and refuses to aknowledge it (but her first crush was vale. of course)

[foggieststars]

so..... the real question is what did girl max go home to do after fucking girl charles silly in the bathroom in sail on silver girl

she went home and used her vibe with her face pressed into one of charles’ ferrari polos that she left at max��s place that still smells like her. and afterwards she maybe got a little sad about how charles doesn’t want to be with her Really because they’re both as clueless as each other 💔

[drivestraight]

hey if it isn’t an issue where can i find the lesbian lestappen tag on ur blog,,,?

should be in #girlestappen . can’t say there’s much in there though

[gayferrari]

Carlando, carloscar, lestappen and maxiel for the ship thing? ♥️

OK THIS GOT SOO LONG. sorry

Carlando isn't my vibe! I don't really follow Mclaren so I never checked on their teammate content + don't find Lando especially compelling so I don't really see it.

Carloscar TO ME is a ship that's veeeery context dependent. Like, we are assisting in real time at the rise of Carloscar — they don't really have an established narrative so the fandom is mostly focused around what's going on this season, and I'm enjoying the current output that's being magnificently spun out of crumbs. But I think my long term enjoyment depends on how their actual dynamic evolves both irl and in term of fandom trends. So basically: need to know more.

Maxiel: Biggest ship I check out where I don't really like any side of the pairing that much. THE platonic ideal of a RPF ship, to me: could not care less about those guys but there's so much good fic out there that I will read it if it's recced to me even if I don't pay attention to their actual irl interactions. We need more of it => more Maxiel dealing with Danny Ric's flop era.

Lestappen: The ship that made me circle both “overrated” and “need more” in that I personally don't gel with most of the fandom but there are some specific dynamics / characterisations that spawned some of my favourite fics ever. Also one of my favourite shippy sandboxes to play with for genderbending fic, shoutout to the heroes writing girlestappen.

[scuderlia]

haircut!anon again: ok. wow. had to slam my phone down in my uni computer lab and wait until i could string together a coherent thought again. first off like au itself on back burner your MIND and the way you construct this narrative is INCREDIBLE and so raw adn true and pulling on the queer (as in deviant and as in gay) hair experince sooo deeply i feel soooooo deeply you are a magician. further. i was PICTURING max in braids and god fuck the tenderness of charles and max setting their mise en place and sitting together and braiding her hair before their prey comes in…. god. jesus. i can't stop re-reading the snippets. FUCK! sorry this isn't coherent thoughts after all. max and control and cutting charles' hair. fuck me uppp….

anon! i spent so long smiling like an idiot because of this ask, at this point you're basically my betrothed <3

but yeah, you get it. at the core of max and charles' relationship is truly their hounded devotion and acceptance of one another. the queer experience really is defined by those you hold close, and it's been interesting (for me) to try and thread that idea through this greater story about desire and hunger in a way that feels genuine. i've pulled on a lot of my personal experiences of being a young lesbian and being guarded about sexuality, but ultimately it all comes back to (like you mentioned) the idea of relinquishing some control and feeling comfortable enough with someone to let go of the safety of doing things alone.

i also love love love giving characters their own little rituals, and seeing as how max and charles both have a lot of emotional connections to their hair/haircuts/etc. the braids were an easy decision.

(more about max and her relationship to hair below the cut)

there's this really interesting article by Amelia Abraham titled 'What butch queer identity has to do with hair' that got put out by Dazed in 2022. it primarily covers a photography exhibition called Close Shave—which centers itself around butch haircuts and identity—but also goes into the cultural relevance of 'masc' hairstyles and their role in queer (mainly lesbian) expression.

i remembered and re-read it when i was in the early stages of fleshing-out max's character. i recommend the article to everyone, but especially people who are maybe looking to better understand the history of butch optics, and kind of where i'm coming from with some of max's characterization.

(see one of my favorite quotes from the article below)

While having short hair and identifying as butch don’t necessarily come as a pair, for butch people, haircuts can be transformational – getting your hair cut off brings you closer to your gender identity.

like I mentioned in the the answer to your previous ask, max's haircut kind of serves as a physical manifestation of her relationship with her father, and more specifically, how that relationship influences her feelings of shame (and eventually acceptance) towards her own sexuality.

part of the reason that max is so struck by charles saying she'd let her cut her hair is in large part because, for max, hair is incredibly representative of an individual's ability to control how others perceive and relate to them. by breaking the ritual with her mother, charles is essentially showing max that she not only finds comfort with her, but also trusts her enough to have her identity placed in her hands.

i could honestly talk about this forever... since body politics and queerness are things i'm just genuinely very passionate about... but i will save the innocent bystanders of this blog from having to read through all of that in one sitting.

(anyways, i'm so happy that people are as invested in this as i am... keep sending me long asks like this... if you couldn't already tell i'll take any opportunity to talk more about this au)

[scuderlia]

when i picture girl! charles, i always think abt audrey hepburn. the eyebrows are kinda similar and the face shape too

you must have transported into my pinterest board... charles' features are sharper, which is the primary difference, but there's no denying that they look very alike. i think it's (like you said) the eyes and eyebrows more than anything... plus the default 'doe' expression.

my particular brand of girl!charles is a tad more severe than audrey, and i envision her with slightly different hair (i wrote a mini-thesis on it here) but honestly... the comparison is very accurate. if ms hepburn had dimples they'd really look related.

[scuderlia]

new girlestappen snippet! unedited, so if there's anything glaringly weird please close your eyes and pretend you cannot see it. xoxo.

(writing below the cut)

Charles sits on the road in front of the truck, eyes fixated on its headlights. They’re out now—sleeping, probably still warm from how Max had burned them on the highway. 

Absently, Charles picks at her fingers. She can hear Max and him, their voices carrying over the crest of the cab. Max is laughing at whatever he said, high and pitchy. It’s different from how she laughs with Charles. Something nasty curls in her stomach. 

“Where’s your friend?” He asks.

“Hm, she’s fine. You do not need to worry about her.”

“Does she want to join us?”

Charles listens as Max huffs a punctuated breath, like she does when she’s unimpressed. 

“What,” he laughs, “you don’t want to share?” Charles breaks the skin on her nail bed when his voice drops. “There’s plenty of me to go around.”

“I know,” Max returns, flicking her half-finished cigarette out the side of the bed and onto the asphalt. Charles watches the embers choke. “But I wanted to do this by myself.” 

Charles closes her eyes. The face on the truck disappears. There’s the sound of mouths meeting, a protrusive exhale, and a muffled cry, followed by the distinct tear of teeth on flesh. 

It took Max long enough. Charles is starving.

[scuderlia]

at the intersection of fuckass bob posting and girlestappen posting: what hairstyles do you picture girlestappen having? -> obsessed with the au and finding different ways to visualize and rotate it around in my head

this ask made me do a cartwheel in my room. i'm being so serious.

charles starts with longer hair, kind of like a '60s Jane Birkin look, and then she lets max cut it for her and her bangs get a little fucked and everything goes way too short. the goal was a classic french bob... the execution was more manic pixie.

max has long hair that she can't really be bothered to deal with initially. after they get closer, she lets charles put it in two braids to keep it out of the way while she's killing and eating people <3

max's haircut actually plays super heavily into my characterization of her over the course of this fic (her relationship to her dad, how he views and treats her, her performance of femininity, etc.) but i don't want to spoil everything so... i will close my mouth. the important thing to note is that she ends up with short hair. maybe even a buzzcut... very quintessential butch.

(i wrote this in my notes app the day i came up with this au, basically it's charles' first impression of max's hair)

Her hair is long, but not intentionally. More like she forgot to cut it—or simply didn’t want to—and this was the byproduct. Charles’ mother would kill her if she ever came home looking like that. Charles thinks that’s why she likes it.

(i've got vast pinterest boards dedicated to both of these girls, but here are a few visuals of what their haircuts might look like)

(anyways, bonus snippet below the cut, featuring a tender moment between max and charles where they're talking about haircuts...)

“My mom is the only person who’s ever cut my hair.” Charles says, fingers tracing the bite marks on Max’s torso. “I think I’d let you do it, though—”

“Really?” Max’s eyes are twice their usual size, staring down at Charles with an indiscernible expression. 

“Yeah, I mean, if you wanted…” She trails off, focus pulled by the way Max sits up on her forearms, taking Charles and her body with her. 

There’s a painful silence, and Charles doesn’t know if she’s messed up or said something wrong. She can’t always tell, with Max. There’s a part of her that knows it’ll never get easier. 

“You’d let me?” Max’s voice registers barely above a whisper, heavy exhales pushing the pout of her lips out further. Charles nods, staring up at Max unblinking, words all caught in her throat like she’s forgotten her English entirely. Max reaches down to draw them out herself.

Her mouth is hot, wet, and open. Max kisses like she wants to eat Charles alive, and Charles knows that she could, but doesn’t. It makes her whole body burn whenever she thinks about it. 

[scuderlia]

k.d. lang and Cindy Crawford by Herb Ritts for Vanity Fair (August 1993 Issue)

[scuderlia]

haircut!anon back to yap! (not directly abt haircuts this time but i like the pseudonym.) topic on the board today is-- animal symbolism! reading the most recent snippet my eyes caught on the visual of charles crawling like a dog, which is really in sharp contrast to his typical fanon personification through dominantly herbivores/prey animals (mouse and deer/stag come to mind). (i feel kind of insane typing this out.) feel free to take this idea anywhere you please but like - herbivore-carnivore transition, or was he blood hungry from the start? do you have other strong animal-relational symbolism u associate with girlestappen? is this just a weird fucking question? lol

in reference to this snippet

eee! haircut!anon, i think you may actually live in my brain.

this is all delicious and i have lots to say about it, so bear with me!

i am not immune to the typical charles characterization of prey animal (see: the very elaborate web weave i made about him and deer theory...) but i think that when it's contrasted against his hunger, it really gets interesting.

(section a: CL field-notes)

the biggest thing with charles and what makes his character so compelling is the juxtaposition. he's passionate (and borderline obsessive) about his own performance, and also someone who is quite reserved and considerate of himself and others.

to contextualize this through racing: there is a clear distinguishment between charles on-track and charles off-track—a morbid desire to succeed that is housed within someone who is incredibly caring and attentive, especially towards those he cares about. the fact that charles has kept pretty much all of his friends from childhood (many of whom he karted with, or competed against) speaks volumes to this.

one of my absolute favorite charles characterization/personality quotes comes from his former Team Principal at Prema:

"The first thing that comes to mind when we talk about him is once again his determination, and his almost sickly desire to improve. Whether it was after the first test with us or after the end of the season, he always asked us where he could improve and how he had to do it. It is at the extreme of perfection." — René Rosin (Prema Racing, 2017) via 'Charles as seen by his former team managers' (Charles Leclerc Fans)

i think that above all else, charles' determination is funneled through the consideration of how he can push himself to be perfect. and ultimately, that is the driving force behind his pursuit of desire.

charles is self-described as being non-sentimental, and not particularly religious either. i think a large part of that comes down to how he never falls back on the idea of 'divine fate' or things being out of his hands. yes, there are little rituals he keeps up through racing... memories of his childhood, family, etc. that he carries, but none of them are ever pinned as a reason for either success or failure. ultimately, what happens on track and in competition are direct results of charles, his decisions, and efforts.

the best way i crystalize this for the sake of the narrative is that, to be very one-dimensional about it, charles views his car as a sort of 'phantom limb.' while it is this greater object that is separate from Charles the Person, any mishaps or incidents can ultimately be tied directly back to his direction and control.

charles has this morbid need to reach the pinnacle of what he believes himself to be capable of, and anything that falls short of that is viewed (by him) as a failure. this is primarily evident to me through how, even in the anger of moments where he's crashed or DNF'd, the blame is always directed inwards. he curses himself out, blames his own lack of performance, and even in media interviews afterwards tends to only reference the things that he should have done differently to gauge better results.

to tie this back to ideas of him being ruthless vs. meek, it's not necessarily that charles becomes a different person when he races, but instead that his hunger for perfection comes to the forefront, eclipsing everything else.

(section b: translation to girl!charles)

for girl!charles, i took this greater concept of having hunger eclipse nerves and reservations, and stuffed it into a little guilt-shaped pouch. in order to initially cope with killing and eating people, charles separates her person from her desire, or more-so allows it to be swallowed when necessary.

it is a very transformative thing, being around max. without giving away the entire plot, charles does devolve a bit, or more so gives into her hunger and desire instead of restricting herself. it's mentioned briefly in the snippet i posted, but charles' arc of being a cannibal follows in succession to max's—essentially, max was one first, and charles becomes more ruthless and willing to devour as their relationship progresses.

as killing and eating, especially with max, draw closer and closer to becoming a sacred act, she starts to chase this image of perfection within her own craft. it's something that she wants to be good at, and to do so, she sensationalizes some aspects of it (or maybe romanticizes is a better descriptor... i'm not sure)

the comparison in the drabble was mostly to allude to the animalistic nature of what they're doing, and how charles still makes efforts to try and separate herself from her actions when she eats. Charles the Cannibal and Charles the Girl are two different identities that she carries with her. over time, she starts to realize that the degrees of separation between the two were not as great as she thought, and thus begins her divulsion.

(section c: hunger as an animal)

i'm pretty sure that anything/everything i write will always include animal symbolism, so yes, there's definitely some present within girlestappen. their loyalty and devotion to one another is incredibly dog-like, and evident within the greater narrative of cannibalism and the act of devouring together. lesbians go crazy when a gentle creature bites to protect them.

aside from that, there's also allusions within the individual kills to animals/ideas of predator-and-prey that i haven't yet posted about, and likely won't until i finish the whole fic and publish it (we're 17k in... making moves...)

the one that i will point out now is charles likening the wire that max holds in this snippet to a snake. at this point, charles is still grappling with her attraction to max, and the comparison is intended to a) act as foreshadowing for how the guy she's with is about to die, and b) how his death, and max's actions, are ultimately going to push her to act on that temptation (think serpent in the Garden of Eden)

also... on the herbivore-carnivore topic... i've actually written charles as a vegetarian early on in the story (a decision she initially makes as a means to curb her desire and hunger)... so you nailed it.

this may be incoherent but tldr; charles contains multitudes.

[scuderlia]

Hiya! I love your girlestappen series and can't wait to read the fic! Quick question, I know that Audrey Hepburn is a face claim for Charles (or close enough), but what do you think about Max? Because Max's face is so singular irl, I struggle to imagine what he would look like as a woman, especially as a butch. (Faceapp isn't bad, but adds so much makeup and long hair that it doesn't really work imo). Also, I'm always stuck between Max being bi or a lesbian, but I think this is one of the first Max as a butch verse I've come across. Love it!

hi anon! first off, i'm so sorry it took me a literal month to answer this ask... that's embarrassing for me. but as for the "face claim" for max, i'd say that it's not really set in stone. even girl!charles as audrey is something that i don't really stick to, since when i'm writing i see the both of them less as extensions of any pre-existing women and more as an accumulation of real-life characterizations that have been shifted to better fit this specific narrative.

with that being said, i've been drawing a lot on the look (and general vibe) of young chloë sevigny, especially from when she had shorter hair and a more tomboy-ish style. like you mentioned though, max has such a distinctive face, and it's honestly very difficult to compare it to anyone else's.

also maybe i’m just like, a bitter lesbian... but i feel like so much of female characters and the way they're presented tends to default on their looks, when the process of trying to genderbend these men has so little to do with that. i'd say that me understanding/deciding how girlestappen's interactions and personalities are fleshed out is a much bigger part of the actual au than their physical appearances.

[scuderlia]

who is the man in the new girlestappen snippet i demand to know

... i'm deliberately picking sections that leave out major identifying details, so you will unfortunately have to be patient and wait until the entire fic comes out.

[scuderlia]

girlestappen wip just hit 10k words... we're really in it now.

anyways, here's a fun fact that i found while researching other cannibal media and medical specs for this fic:

“Several pathologists provided us with answers on how you perform a bite on the body of someone who just died [...] It takes a lot of effort to bite through the skin. Someone was wondering if we would need [more defined] jaw muscles, but Americans are like that anyway. It’s from chewing gum.” — Luca Guadagnino, via 'What to Know About the Book Behind Bones and All' by Shannon Carlin (TIME)

[scuderlia]

newly fixated on lestappen as murderous cannibal girlfriends...

(very small snippet below the cut)

They eat him together in the bathtub, stripped down to their underwear and socks. Max forgoes her bra entirely, breasts hanging like ripe fruit from the solid plane of her chest. Charles can see the thin, blonde hair dusting them, raised by the cold. If she were to reach over and touch it, she knows it would be soft, like the skin of a peach. 

“You are pretty like this,” Max whispers, smearing the blood on Charles’ lips with her thumb.

With a punctuated breath, Charles leans forward to press her mouth to Max’s, feeling her body loosen at the contact. Max tastes sweet and acrid—Charles barely notices the gore.

[scuderlia]

posting about my favorite hungry girls once again! dinner date this time, because they're romantics <3

(cw: cannibalism below the cut)

His body is lean—legs still propped at an awkward angle from how he’d been sitting. Charles crawls over like a dog, bending her head and sinking her jaw into the soft give of his stomach. Last time, she’d only eaten the pieces that Max pulled off for her, watching as the straight edge of her teeth tore flesh from bone. Now, Charles gets it—why Max’s eyes glaze over when she talks about biting into them. 

The gush is pleasant, a thick sweetness coating her throat. Charles grinds her molars into a piece of fat, feeling how it gives under the pressure, splitting like bullet casings in the back of her mouth.

There's a shuffle, followed by the silent press of warm skin against her own. Max’s cheeks are naturally flushed, a blotchy pink that stands out against the cruel, pale cut of the rest of her. When she’s well fed—when they’ve eaten together—it’s harsher. Like the new blood in her body is rising to the surface, trying to claw its way out. 

Next to Charles, Max is sticky—painted with a dark, gooey red from when she burst the artery in his neck with her incisors. They both go for the same muscle, but Max wins out, tugging it from Charles’ hold. She rocks back on her thighs, considering Charles briefly before leaning in to nip at her bottom lip after she’s swallowed. 

“He tastes good,” Max mumbles, tongue flashing across the top row of her teeth. 

Charles hums in agreement, then moves lower to position her hands against the meat of his thigh.