#unfortchunately its demand avoidance its a thing in my brain that doesnt let me do things :/ this ask was delightful tho

[mcl38]

and in light of fun stuff i'd love to hear your thoughts on, saw a post a while back that got me thinking and basically reached the conclusion that carlos and lando's personalities complimented each other perfectly, which in a way brought out the best in both of them, while lando and daniel have very clashing personalities (not that they didn't get along eventually, just very different). meanwhile lando and oscar's personalities just like. match.

seen people say lando is to oscar what carlos was to him and in a way, yes (oscar clearly does look up to lando a bit and lando took the brunt of the media stuff in the beginning to make him more comfortable), but i also think there is a pretty big difference there. landoscar just feel very aligned to me idk. would like to hear what your opinions are :) think you always have good takes

so i left this for a couple days bc its literally been slow cooking in my brain like a stew... thinking abt this so much. u bring such a good point abt the difference between complementing and aligning / matching...

i often find it rly fun to look at friendships and relationships thru the lens of sibling dynamics - its my own personal brand of astrology or ig personality typology that im addicted to. and w carlos and lando i think the reason they 'complemented' each other so well was bc they very easily fell into an older-younger sibling dynamic - both r middle children, and idk the exact numbers but carlos should probably be around oli's age (landos older brother, who lando's rly close to, arguably the closest of all his siblings - not only did they used to travel for karting competitions back in the day, but nowadays they share a core friend group and go on holiday together, which is cute). so like, lando as a 19 year old rookie, shy but full of energy, is in the perfect position to be lightly bullied, shown the ropes, taught random shit, be shoved into walls, etc by someone who likes to play within that older brother role

so you have that first of all, which already creates some familiarity for lando (who otherwise is quite slow to thaw out of keeping ppl at arms length), and also the fact that they got along w each other quite easily. i dont think theyre that similar (again, complement, not match, its so brilliant), but theyre both entertained by quite simple things, which is y their humour tended to be so lowest-common-denominator: words that sound funny, hitting each other in the balls, dirty jokes, etc. i think where they DO find similarities is when theyre serious - they both have a very head-down team-first sort of attitude (which i think rly solidified in lando BC of carlos), so their trust in each other in terms of that helped make their more personal friendship rly straightforward and natural

daniel meanwhile... where do i start. i spent two years losing my mind in dms over the glorious trainwreck awkwardness that is dando and their interactions. i still cant QUITE parse it but its so good. u have lando whos used to having quite a reactive/passive friendship with carlos, suddenly putting his feet on the ground and his shackles up bc he stopped liking the directions he was being pushed in w daniel. i think daniel deffo is a big, domineering personality, naturally kind of selfish (youngest sibling AND im pretty sure the only boy) (im not judging him im also the youngest i can reclaim), and to keep it concise i think it kind of gave lando the ick.

lando is a very judgemental person, and his humour is quite specific - he'll laugh at the dumbest things ever, like the word 'blowy' or 'pubes' or jokes abt girls running away from him, AND also rly subtle sarcasm that takes a lot of context clues. but he just cannot operate within the middle ground: the typical snl-style (american type) classic humour. he just doesnt get it. when ppl try to do it with him u get things like 'lando i hope you're sitting down... you're p2' 'i don't know why will said that, i'm literally strapped to my seat' and 'throwback thursday' 'it's funny cos it's friday'. he sucks at metaphors and doesnt have patience to wait for punchlines, so the fact that daniel is kind of like universally 'classically' funny actually worked against him - especially bc daniel was fuelled w the confidence that lando liked him and found him hilarious

so thats actually the other thing - is daniels incapability of actually listening to lando. again, we kind of start from the standard of the carlos relationship, with lando as the reactor, but carlos was always rly attentive towards lando. and then daniel comes in - u have lando like a dog who figured out ur trying to exit the park and has suddenly refused to keep walking along, and daniel holding an endlessly extendable leash, whistling a little tune, completely oblivious that his dog is still like three streets down. lando was throwing him jab after jab after joke after joke for like the entirety of 2021 ('they just dig up jam' forever my favourite), but they would just fly over daniels head, making lando become more and more detached and disinterested in interactions w daniel. waaaay into their partnership as teammates, theres this video of lando telling daniel that theyre serving cookies (?) somewhere, and daniel says 'so you got a brownie?' and i think lando says smth like 'nah a cookie, not a brownie, otherwise i wouldve said brownies', to which daniel is like 'i respect that, you're finally dishing it back'. and i rmbr my reaction was like FINALLY ? WYM FINALLY?? hes BEEN doing this for SO LONG like ALL THE TIME now.

idk, its weird bc opinions r rly split on dando, some ppl in yt comments or reddit or whatever still say they were the funniest duo in f1, but other ppl will always pipe up saying the energy was awkward and it was clear they didnt like each other. neither of those things r true for me - i think they did like each other, especially later on (professionally, i think lando definitely had a lot of anxieties abt having to outperform the big new top dog in the team, which made him a bit colder, but i think he gained a lot of respect for daniel when he saw how much daniel was struggling but how much he was still willing to show up and do the whole job until the end w a smile on his face). i have a suspicion they probably get along way better 1 on 1, bc a lot of daniel's off-putting intensity happens when he tries to play up for the cameras. but i am also partly thankful for that too, bc we had a couple art challenges in 2021-2022 where daniel did all the talking, so lando could focus on having fun with his Little Tasks, and thats literally my fav type of mclaren video, so cheers danny.

so then we get to oscar. i think the main difference with oscar is that, for the first time, lando doesnt have a bigger personality imposing itself on him. if he used to b reactive with carlos and daniel, oscar is way more laid back and passive than him, which means lando is finally for the first time the one setting the pace. especially in the early days, this was obvious - lando would throw out the beginning of a bad joke, expecting to be interrupted or one-upped, but oscar would just sit there quietly creature-staring, waiting for lando to finish his train of thought. it was so awkwardly delightful. so what u get now is that lando isnt playing catch up anymore - which doesnt mean hes making oscar do it now. on the contrary, what ive found is that lando brings his personality to oscar-volume, which sounds like it would be dull but it so isnt. again, he thrives in quiet subtlety, and so does oscar, so u get videos like the finish the lyrics where u have to turn the volume all the way up to even hear what theyre saying, but its so worth it bc its SO fun once u do.

in terms of matching, theyre definitely quite similar in terms of humour. both of them love the awkward pauses and jim halpert looking into the camera and eye rolls and deadpan. it took a while to find their rhythm w two of them playing the same joke-role and not having a straight man (comedy term!!) to bounce off of, but i think they figured it out. theyre different enough in terms of family dynamics (oscar is an eldest brother w many sisters, but also younger than lando) that neither of them would fit a pre-made space, so they can just kinda be on equal level to each other. this is especially true since theyve grown up in the same circles - never raced each other directly, but lando moved up categories rly fast, which means oscar spent his late teens mostly racing ppl lando was racing in karting and early single seaters. (most significantly, max fewtrell, who oscar used to b in the junior renault academy with, and who i think is kind of a good representation of what lando and oscar have in common - lowkey, sarcastic, deadpan, but also not taking himself too seriously)

to come back to what u said abt oscar-lando being inverse lando-carlos: i also see it to some extent, like u said (theres those tiktok edit parallels like lando telling oscar to cut his hair the way carlos said it to him in 2019). i think its mostly something lando himself is conscious of and sort of imposes on himself - he often compares oscar's personal trajectory to his, like when he says oscar will open up and be less quiet once he gets comfortable (which was true), so i think hes deffo aware of the comparison. but i dont think it runs any deeper than that, bc i havent seen lando position himself as the same kind of mentor-guru in-the-know older figure. i just dont think his personality can mould to that

idk sorry for this novel size answer. i have even more thoughts abt oscar and lando that im currently trying to shove into a fic so like. all of this has been floating in my brain for ages now