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kaleidoscopic is up!

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kind eyes extended notes

for kind eyes on ao3

be prepared for the yap fest. please read this after the fic because there are spoilers.

1)

first of all, I wrote this fic very out of order because of several reasons. one, because my caffeine-addled brain couldn't string together a cohesive story or outline before it was begging me to put something down, and two, because I took a little bit of creative liberty with my characterization of oscar, which leads me into…

2)

oscar is usually a really analytical and cool/collected guy, very logical and realistic, but sometimes he just can't think around lando. he's in romantic/platonic love (reader's choice!), your honor. he never lets his emotions get the best of him, so when they do he has no idea how to handle it and can't even recognize it until hourssss later. his thoughts are a mess and he needs a bit of time to even begin to process what happened. when lando's in the vicinity, he's even more scattered. he's struggling to catch up, really, and he's trying desperately to read the social cues that lando is usually so open with but is kind of on and off with this time around.

he's also obsessed with lando's eyes. I mean OBSESSED. which, me too, I kind of projected hard on this part, but it shows through the fic because oscar is like, "lando look at me!" "lando please show me your eyes" "lando pay attention to me, don't avoid me" yada yada yada. it stems from lando being the kind of person where you can usually tell exactly how he's feeling. he doesn't shy away from showing his emotions on camera or in front of other people, even if they're very very ugly to look at. we kind of saw the peak of this in austria, where lando didn't mince his words AT ALL after the race despite knowing the backlash he would get (this kid will give me a stress induced heart attack one day I swear). we've seen his ups and downs, his high after scoring pole in barcelona and his crushing low after losing it, his fury after the on-track incident at the red bull ring, to his… honestly I want to say slow and steady loss of hope after silverstone. he still gives his everything in every race, he's still determined to go out there and do the best he can, but like you can tell the difference in his reaction after he got pole in spain vs in hungary - there was a very big difference and a lack of unfiltered excitement this time around. he knows what it's like to win and to be so so close to a win he can feel himself lose it. lando feels everything so strongly, and after so many disappointments and close calls he's kind of learned to protect himself in this way. going into budapest, he still expected and wanted to win, but his confidence has definitely taken a hit. oh my god this turned into a lando character analysis I'm so sorry let me cut it short and just say his eyes are so expressive and after hungary he was very subdued and oscar's internal lando alarm sounded and was like "show me your eyes!" "why won't you show me your eyes!" "even when you look at me I can't tell what you're thinking anymore something is wrong!!!" until lando does something very obvious with his face like smile at him. oscar you silly boy.

all this just to say in this fic oscar's just a bit of a dunce, and I mean that in the most affectionate, loving way possible. he doesn't know the full story getting out of the car (neither of them do) and all he cares about is if lando is mad at him, but he can't even admit that to himself so he just feels like a crazy person whenever it looks like lando might be upset and he doesn't even understand why. every bit about the dread he feels, the lightheadedness, nausea, feeling cold, etc. that's all his physical and visceral reactions to lando not looking happy, to him being scared his relationship with lando won't survive this. along the same lines, the pressure in his stomach easing up, the warmth he feels, being able to breathe and think (relatively) normally again, those are all reactions to him seeing lando react or interact with him positively. I'm sorry, but he's whipped and he has absolutely no clue. but yes, that's what the unreliable narrator tag is for.

3)

some other details I mentioned in the fic but didn't really expand on:

there's a lot of other parallels and barely touched upon details in this fic to be honest. besides the obvious and reoccurring mention of lando's eyes and oscar's desperation for eye contact throughout the whole thing, there's oscar seeing his reflection in lando's visor at the very beginning and in his own phone screen at the very end (he just wants to see lando's eyes but instead he's seeing his own, he wants to figure lando out and find out how upset he actually is with him but what he actually needs to do is look at himself and figure everything out from his own side first).

oscar doing everything on autopilot and muscle memory at the beginning because he's still sorting things out in his brain, cringing at himself a lot which isn't normal behavior but he genuinely does not know what to do or how to act in this situation, only rebooting just in time to give some non-answer to nico in his interview and barely coming fully back online when lando first actually talks to him, how it really doesn't hit him that he won (HE ACTUALLY WON. THIS TROPHY IS HIS.) until he's basically (almost) alone in a familiar setting after he has time to process everything.

lando procrastinating taking off his helmet because he, too, needs time to school his expression into something. decent.

lando being uncharacteristically quiet in the beginning, silently congratulating oscar in the car, silently acknowledging him. silently motioning for him to get to his interview, his first actual words being trivial and ultimately meaningless small talk ("no big fumbles. good interview.") he's still teasing oscar, he wants oscar to know they're okay, but he still needs time to process what he lost, lick his wounds a little, needs to cool off for a bit before he can start to actually be genuinely happy for oscar's achievement. it's why it takes him until after the interviews, the cooldown room, the podium, when they're both alone (3 hours later) for him to finally muster up the strength to text oscar an actual heartfelt congratulations.

and his simple "you will" at the end of the first section is his unwavering belief that oscar won't stop here, he'll keep rising, this is nowhere near his peak as a driver, despite what lando wants or wishes for in regards to his own career, wrapped up as a nice little generic reassurance. oscar catches the weight of the words, but he doesn't know what it means exactly. yet.

oscar in the cooldown room expecting to eventually get a verbal knockdown from lando (max his best friend on the grid someone he's known for a decade wasn't even safe a few weeks ago, oscar's nobody special in comparison, lando's definitely mad he got prickly at LEWIS OF ALL PEOPLE oscar is not safe) so he's trying to find the right thing to say but then lando notices him floundering and trying to fix things for him so he just deflates and apologizes to lewis and smiles at oscar.

mclaren social media admin (who is faceless and genderless and honestly only in this fic because of reasons discussed in section 5) mentioning that oscar seems happier alone just staring at his trophy, which, again, yeah it only just registered for him, but also, he's in the comfort of his driver room with no actually hostile cameras around so he isn't on high alert for every move he makes and lando isn't here so he can actually think! hurray!

another kind of obvious one is the texts. oscar's knee-jerk reaction to seeing a message from mark, someone who's supposed to be on his side all the time, is negative? he's very surprised at himself and he doesn't know it's because he knows mark dislikes lando and can already envision how his opinion will only worsen after today. he's like noooo don't hate him I don't even know why I'm defending him I'm upset at what he did too but I hate that you hate him. absolutely zero below-surface level thoughts. soooo real.

also oscar's contact names for them (bless his heart), how mark uses correct spelling and punctuation while lando's dyslexic ass just wings it (and how some of the only messages without misspells are his congratulation messages because he painstakingly typed those out ok?), lando calling oscar by name and not any of the stupid nicknames he came up with that oscar secretly hoards close to his heart, and the timestamps, ugh. and yes, mark's last message is a reference to red bull and multi 21. sorry, even the commentators mentioned it and you want me to not bring it up in the fic? [loud buzzer noise] never. lando is also very much running away from everything that's why he's hiding out on max's private jet they can both wallow and drink their sorrows and beef with their engineers away together 30,000 feet in the air.

throughout the fic as well, you can kind of note the changes in tone. the beginning focuses a lot on minuscule details, how oscar feels millisecond by millisecond, because that's all he's able to process at the time. as the fic progresses, oscar's internal monologue gets less self-judgy and gets its snark back. it goes from "god, he doesn't know how lando does it" and "what is wrong with him today?" and speeds up as he goes back to normal and starts being... well, funny again. "after lewis has enough of waterboarding them both" "his phone starts up its never-ending seizure of notifications again" like ok king we're so back.

and then it proceeds to all come crashing down again.

oscar's (loud QUOTE UNQUOTE) "sickness" (read: unintelligible mixed feelings) makes a reappearance when he's listening back on lando's radio messages because he had no idea to the extent of what will was saying to him and it is extremely shocking I'll give him that. even I was like. jaw on the floor when I found out. because your engineer, the little guy in your ear, is the one person you're supposed to be able to trust unconditionally. they are the ones keeping you out of harm's way, the ones keeping you from crashing, your direct and only link to the rest of the team connecting you to the mechanics and the pit wall, the person telling you the strategy, like. it's not the norm, but it is also not entirely uncommon for when a driver switches teams to literally take their engineer with them. that's how instrumental they are to a driver's race, and it takes a lot of time to build up that trust and rapport. mclaren has a separate underlying issue where lando for some odd reason has three different race engineers that just switch out between weekends and it's SO ODD but that's a whole different story. point is this - a driver's race engineer messing up and giving out of date/incorrect information to them by accident is one thing, but a driver's race engineer guilt tripping and straight up lying to their face is another, and it is a hugeeeee no no. will joseph did that to lando, and now that trust might be completely broken. as one driver to another, oscar knows exactly how big of a deal this was. it's something he never expected from them.

at the very end after oscar realizes what exactly happened during the race and watches the compilation video and realizes despite everything lando is still so so genuinely proud of him for winning, he feels so many mixed and indistinguishable emotions that he's just kind of in shock for lack of a better word, which is why it kind of just... ends like that. sorry guys, it's going to take him another few hours to work through that one as well.

and again, the eyes. the entire point of this fic is centered around lando's eyes and how he expresses his emotions through them, and how oscar is so used to looking at them to tell how lando is feeling, so that's why he's always so desperate to actually be able to see his eyes. lando is genuinely happy for oscar winning, but it's incredibly bittersweet (and I explain more why in section 4). the pit in oscar's stomach starts out as dread, that lando's pissed and won't continue to be on good terms with him, it fluctuates up and down whenever he thinks lando is happy for him or mad at him, and gnaws away at him for the rest of the fic before eventually settling on a combination of fear that their relationship will never be the same again and guilt that although what happened was something he couldn't control and wasn't even aware about until much later, it still happened, and despite it all lando still looks at him with the kindest eyes. it's sickening to think about.

4)

some things I didn't get to add into the fic because one, I couldn't figure out where to fit them, and/or two, my wrists are close to giving up and I need to clock out for the day. I have just used up all my writing inspiration for the next year.

anyways, part of the original reason why I wrote this in the first place was because I was reading some other new landoscar fics about what happened and (absolutely no shade to them!!!!! I want to stress) I didn't agree with some of the ways they portrayed lando or oscar. ultimately, they're both f1 drivers. they're both selfish, they wouldn't be on the grid if they weren't. lando didn't want to give up the position because he's selfish and is desperate for that second win. oscar wanted him to because this is the strategy they agreed on earlier that day and he also wants that first win, even though TECHNICALLY prioritizing the driver ahead in wdc rankings wouldn't necessarily be a wrong call. they're each other's closest competitors, all they have as an equal comparison is each other, and they know it. lando has his pride as someone older, more experienced, who has been with the team a much longer time than oscar has. he had to wait more than five years for his first win. oscar gets one almost dropped in his lap just a year and a half into his career when he didn't have to stick with a singular team through all their trials and tribulations, when he wasn't lugging a glorified shoebox into the points for all of 4 years amidst criticism of renewing with the same team again? it's not fair. oscar plays the team game because he's biding his time, he is intimately aware of his position in the team as the second driver, but he lucked out to be at a mclaren because it's currently the only front running team that acts like it's still in the midfield and prioritizes "being fair" over a championship. he knows if he follows the rules normally he can capitalize on them being "fair" again and he'll have a chance to prioritize himself. both of them know this and if there's an opportunity to win, no matter the situation, they'll capitalize it. it's not actually really fair to either of them, but that's the nature of f1, and no one should be blaming either of them for their line of thinking.

got a little away from me there again, but you get the point. neither of them really blame each other for acting the way they did in hungary, but at the same time both of them blame each other for not acting better, if that makes sense. oscar is not going to apologize for asking for team orders to be honored. lando is not going to apologize for waiting until the last possible minute to let him through. oscar was going to do anything for the race win. lando needed to prove his point. in f1, this is how it works. both of them are warring with emotions of happiness, guilt, pride, etc. and it just turns into a mess.

oscar is thrilled by his first win, but it's tainted by shame of the way he had to win it, how he wasn't really good or fast enough for it, and guilt of making lando give up the lead. lando is pissed that he lost out on yet another race win, genuine happiness at seeing oscar succeed, and crushed pride of being treated like a second driver and berated on live tv because of this so called fairness. still, deep inside, lando wishes he could have ignored that strategy call until the very end and just took the win. still, oscar does not regret winning this race, no matter how it ended up happening or what anyone else had to do.

there's also the whole thing about lando starting his interviews off with "the team messed up" and somehow progressing into "I didn't deserve to win", missing scenes from media pen interviews, the press conference, etc, how he blamed himself for his bad start while nico rosberg the man himself was like lol no that was not your fault??? and chewed andrea Stella out on live tv, backstory on mark's one sided beef with lando, events after oscar's immediate reaction when he realizes the truth and how he would war with himself but still end up being selfish and glad he won and feeling even more guilty about it, the tense team debrief, lando being miserable, the subdued meal with the rest of the team after lando hightailed it out of there at the earliest possible opportunity, oscar's lonely plane ride home, the possible dinner with mark, eventual confrontation or closure ("you never did answer nico properly back there, did you doubt I'd give the position back?"), and so many others... but I never planned on including a lando pov in the first place which a lot of these scenes wouldn't work without, and also oh my god my wrists.

I wish I could have included all of this in the fic somewhere, but disjointing rambling on tumblr will have to do instead.

5)

lastly, and I promise this is the very last section, I tried my best to stay as close to actual events possible for a lot of televised scenes, but f1 broadcasts are notoriously stingy with letting people rewatch things that didn't happen in the race itself, especially since I. do not pay to watch this stuff lol. so I had to scour social media and youtube for clips of lando's radio messages, the post-race interviews with nico, what happened in the cooldown room and on the podium (rip lando he's being torn to shreds right now but it's ok I support his rights and wrongs), etc etc etc

there are still some things I'm not too sure about (i.e. the order of events, some quotes, non-televised events) so I took a bit of creative liberty regarding those. I'm pretty??? sure??? it went both park in parc ferme > lando congratulates oscar while he's still in the car > lando doesn't go to the team while oscar goes to them > both get weighed > both do the outdoor interview for podium finishers with nico (in finish order so oscar, lando (paraphrased), and lewis (not pictured but just imagine him flirting with nico and that's basically what happened)) > cooldown room > podium > media pen interviews (not pictured because at this point I just wanted it all to be over and I didn't watch them anyways) > press conference (also not pictured for the same reason) > go back to drivers rooms and clean up > team debrief (also not pictured partially for the same reason and partially because what I had was already a decent stopping point)

so again for all of this I tried to base it on real footage as much as possible. it basically matches every single move for move from the beginning until the interviews with nico (the question nico asked and oscar's response are both real quotes, lando and oscar's little interaction at the tables afterwards is partially real but the dialogue was written by me because I couldn't hear what they were saying). the cooldown room scene was my own little fix-it for lando because god he stresses me out sometimes (lovingly) but the overall events written did happen.

the podium is more accurate to what actually happened. randy was actually up there, god forbid, but the broadcast angle gets really awkward and crops lando out of a lot of the celebrations because he goes into the corner, so I'd say it's almostttt move for move again.

for the driver room scene, the social media admin is literally only there because I needed to fit in the part where oscar just lovingly gazes at his trophy and soaks it in a little (this also did happen check mclaren social media) and for that I needed for one, the trophy to get to him somehow, and two, someone filming him while he's making his trademark heart eyes at a lump of ceramic. everything after that is obviously events I came up with. there's no one video I referenced for lando's radio messages but they're all real quotes and you can find them... multiple places online. the second video that oscar watches is completely made up, but it also probably exists somewhere. those two can't exactly take their eyes off each other.

aaaand I think that's it! honestly, this is just all rambling that couldn't fit within the character limit in the fic end notes, and like I stated above, won't make sense unless you read it. if you got this far thank you so much and also I'm so sorry for subjecting you to this. let me know what you think about the fic itself by commenting there or about these notes by replying here or sending an ask... at your earliest convenience! (hah.)

[xuer]

don't you know you got my eyes

max verstappen character study, 2k words

(please read the beginning notes before reading!)

Max Verstappen was born in Belgium on September 30th, 1997 to former Formula 1 driver Jos Verstappen and former karter Sophie Kumpen. He was in a go-kart by the age of four and competing internationally by seven. He was not given a choice in this matter.

extended notes post

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kind eyes is up! fic extended notes is linked here

[xuer]

my fic extended notes

for "don't you know you got my eyes" on ao3

warning for fic spoilers. also PLEASE read the beginning notes on the fic and the warning there before you read this. tl;dr this is fiction it is going to be inaccurate PROCEED WITH CAUTION

ok first of all, I have determined that I have an obsession with using eyes as a comparison tool in fics, which makes me very unoriginal. this is unfortunate. however, I have good excuses reasons as to why I needed to use them in this fic

the entire fic is inspired by youth by glass animals, and I took the title from a lyric of the song (obviously it doesn't have the same exact message/theme as the song but it had the vague handwavey vibes and I was listening to it on repeat while writing so)

max looks SO MUCH like jos it's kind of insane. one thing that stuck out to me was their eyes, especially since sophie's are brown

one thing I was going for was max's and jos's eyes are all blue (hence "don't you know you've got my eyes") which while they may not be safe max is familiar with because he spent so much time with his dad growing up. victoria's are too. sophie's are brown, and while she's his mother and he loves her, she's more unfamiliar/foreign to her, and he has a lot of mixed feelings towards her (getting into this later). it was going to be connected to dilara's eyes being brown and kelly's eyes being blue but I think I went blind or something during my initial research because it turns out dilara's eyes are like a light green or hazel or something. definitely not brown. so I had to scrap that aspect, but she still vaguely looks enough like sophie (will also get into this later) that I could make that main plot point still work.

the entire point of the fic is that max grew up under jos's eyes which were "cold," and at some point along the way he realizes his own eyes became the same, so again, reference to the title/song lyric

some details/themes I kind of hinted at or touched on

choice, or the lack thereof. max didn't get a choice in going with his dad. he didn't get a choice in going into karting or taking the path to eventually reach f1. he didn't get a choice in having to win in order to live up to his dad's expectations. all he does is win, and eventually that becomes all he knows how to do, and when he has an issue he doesn't know how to fix it except try to win. yet at the end, when he's won everything, when he's been crowned as the best driver in the world, he's still lost because it's not a real solution. but it's all he knows how to do, it's his only choice, so it's the only thing he can and continues to do.

the cold. I touched on this earlier in the first list but it's important because it's not just one "type" of coldness. "the most he remembers from his karting days is the cold" = it's an integral memory from his childhood, even more integral than his actual wins. yes, it actually is colder in the netherlands, but it's not just physical. there's an emotional coldness from his mother leaving and how he felt abandoned, the lack of warmth that his father gave him, and the "coldness" in jos's eyes.

eyes (an expansion). I discussed it briefly in the first section, but it goes farther than just him realizing he has the same eyes as his dad. it acts as a metaphor to compare how jos treated him and his ex-wife and how max treats his partner(s) and p. cycle of abuse or whatever and parallels with how jos and sophie split because of abuse and max and dilara split because of neglect/trauma/emotional unavailability/infidelity and how jos and sophie both neglected max growing up in different ways and how max and kelly neglect p in different ways, partially because max is deathly afraid of becoming even more like his father than he already is. like he doesn't want to take on a caretaker role in her life because he's afraid he'll fuck it up because all he has to fall back on is how jos treated him, in the process he's neglecting her even more, but as we have established he's not exactly a great problem solver in this fic.

dilara and sophie. listen they don't look alike but they do. just look. same face shape, same hair, similar noses, similar mouth sizes. the only thing extremely different are the eyebrows.

my point though is that max is drawn to dilara because she reminds him of sophie and he has insane mommy issues here. so even just on an unconscious he took comfort in the fact that they look the same, they both speak german, they're both intelligent and affectionate woman. it's also part of why his family loved dilara so much, but that's a different conversation.

this also leads into another theme of comfort, or how max won't let himself feel it. he doesn't realize how deep his mommy issues run until victoria blasts it in his face at full volume during that fateful family gathering. before then, he loved his mother and looked up to her unconditionally even if he couldn't quite understand why she left him behind, even hoping to himself that he could carry on his mother's dreams as some sort of tribute because she had to quit karting after marrying jos. but after he realizes how abandoned he truly felt and the things he did to subconsciously combat that (date older woman, get with someone who looked like his mom, etc.), he completely retreats into his shell and purposefully sabotages his relationship with dilara so that she'll leave him, even going as far as to cheat on her with kelly and proceed to getting with kelly afterwards, despite internally describes their relationship as "not as real" as the one he had with dilara. it's also the same with how he retreats from his mom and sister despite how spending time with them gives him comfort and makes him happy. he spends more time with his dad, despite always describing him as "cold," because he thinks what's wrong with him is that he isn't winning enough, so he throws himself into trying to win more. which, I guess technically works? he starts winning more, but yeah. he thinks he "solved it" because he and dilara broke it off, but the underlying issue isn't actually solved and he's obviously not actually healed because he proceeds to date a woman 9 years his senior. again, not great problem solving skills.

names. jos alternates getting called "jos" and "his father" whenever appropriate because there's always been a distance between them. max convinced himself he quote unquote "fixed" the distance between him and his mother until his little realization/mental breakdown (again, tying back to the previous point), which is when he refers to sophie by her name for the first time. after that though he goes back to calling her his mother because he still has a soft spot for her, despite him now being aware of how mixed his feelings are towards her.

water. it's just something I bring up throughout the fic because it relates a bit to the coldness max feels in the beginning and the coldness he unintentionally eventually begins to treat others with towards the end. his dad "throwing him into the deep end," max "learning how to swim" so he won't drown, describing f1 media as "shark-infested waters" (also combining this with another comparison to his dad's eyes), and in the end realizing he's actually been drowning this entire time and still not knowing how to change it.

looks in general. you can tell by now eyes are a bit part of the fic, but I use looks/glances as well to describe a lot of unspoken emotions. how other competitors look at max as if he's a snot-nosed kid at first, then how they look at him as if he's a threat after he tests the cars, how other f1 drivers look at him and call him dangerous, how victoria looks at max and dilara together and sees what max is actually trying to do despite max himself being oblivious, how she looks at him earnestly after confronting him because she's doing it out of genuine concern, how max looks at his girlfriend and mom together, how victoria looks at his reaction after he realizes, how he looks at himself in the mirror, how he can't look at dilara anymore because he can't get the similarities out of his head, how lando looks at him when he sees p being neglected, how his sister looks at him after he and kelly get together because she knows she was the catalyst for it, and how the general public look at him in pity when they see him defend his father for his own treatment and keep him in his life despite how it's destroying him.

expansions on events or portrayals of some characters in this fic

obviously I take a lot of liberties with this fic but for the most part the timelines of max's karting and racing career stay the same. the first two paragraphs are almost completely ripped from his wikipedia page. jos hitting his helmet, leaving him at the gas station to walk home, and cursed him out for not being able to win are all true stories. his karting and racing achievements are accurate. the timing for his f3/formula renault testing and f3 debut is accurate. he got his first win with his first start with red bull racing in spain 2016, but he only won twice in 2017, twice in 2018, three times in 2019, and twice in 2020 (although that was covid year). compare that to 2021 where he won ten times, and yeah, he might have been consistent, but it wasn't enough for him, which is why he has the motive in this fic to do... all that I described earlier. the dating timelines also line up with this. he started dating dilara in 2017, and officially stated they had broken up in october of 2020. max and kelly started dating sometime in 2020.

speaking of dilara and kelly... well, first of all, the first meeting between max and dilara is completely made up. dilara is an incredibly private person, even while they were dating, so basically no information about her is known besides her full name and what she decides to put up on her linkedin. we have no clue how they met, so I just fake it. also, yeah. there actually are rumors out there of max going home with kelly from a club while he was still with dilara, and dilara ending things with him because of it, but obviously those are just rumors, but I did take inspiration from that because fiction. it's also true that max's family seemed very close with dilara (sophie and victoria posted her a lot and even hung out/took trips with her without max) and they seem a lot more neutral/distant with kelly. I think jos has even said he doesn't like kelly at some point, and kelly has publicly bad-mouthed jos in the media, so I really don't think they're that close if anything. kelly also describes her relationship with max as "easy-going" herself, which made me think their relationship is pretty low-maintenance and is what gave me inspiration to describe it as "not as real" from max's pov and even use the phrase "kelly is in portugal or ibiza or something" basically implying he doesn't know and doesn't really care.

as for the relationship between max and kelly and p (and daniil), I also went off of rumors that obviously may not be true (again, fiction) but there have been people saying that kelly neglects p and leaves her at home to travel with her friends for vacation or fashion shows or whatever, and at one point daniil had to get involved somehow even though he was in the middle of a race season. it's also really obvious daniil loves p which is why I made him a little judgy towards max regarding his care of her, but as for actual beef between daniil and max personally, in the fic I made things between them strained and hint towards the red bull seat fiasco (if you are unaware max being promoted to the main team was at the expense of daniil being demoted) and I'm guessing at the time daniil was kind of praying on max's downfall so he could try and say red bull made the wrong decision to promote some 17 year old, only for him to win in his first start after the infamous brocades crash out. you can probably even point to max as the main reason why daniil eventually had to leave f1. daniil has probably already moved on since then as he is obviously an adult and is currently competing in wec, but I decided to make beef between them in the fic anyways just because.

now, sophie is complicated. obviously none of the characters are accurate to their irl counterparts, but besides max, sophie is the one I think I took the most liberties with. obviously she had her own struggles with jos and her kids, and she's publicly talked about how hard it was for her to separate from max when he was so young. it's obvious how supportive she is and how much they love each other, so even though I WARNED YOU ALL that the portrayals of these people are inaccurate, I want to reiterate that I do not view sophie like how I wrote her irl. she's a victim of abuse herself and I'm sure she did the most she could in her situation in reality, but I don't really expand on her in the fic so it can seem kind of victim-blamey, which I really really do not want, especially since it's max's pov and he's very obviously an unreliable narrator. so from his point of view, yes, he thinks his mom abandoned him in a sense. obviously he thinks she still loves him and he still loves her but things are awkward between them for a time because he was a child and he couldn't help but ask the really hard questions of "why her and not me?" "why did you take victoria but leave me with dad?" but despite her giving max mommy issues even he doesn't blame her for what she did lol. he just wonders sometimes how things could be different.

as I'm writing this section on victoria I am realizing this fic does not pass the bechdel test. sorry. victoria isn't covered as much just because she doesn't play that big of a role other than the one line of dialogue. she's mostly just there to be a supportive sister with good intentions for max but he can't help but hate her a little because he's jealous (he knows it's unreasonable but) that his mom "chose" her over him, even if that wasn't really the case, and kind of upended his world.

finally, max himself. there's a lotttt of things different between fic!max and irl!max. first of all, I changed his entire outlook on racing. in the fic max really only races because that's what he's always done and his dad didn't give him any other choice, but obviously max in reality would not be racing if he didn't like it. no sane person who doesn't like racing would spend that much time sim racing for fun. even most people who do enjoy racing do not want to do iracing that often. max in reality also has a lot more autonomy than fic!max and has made it very obvious that he'll be here until he feels like it and when he doesn't feel like it anymore he'll go fuck off and retire. he's not desperate to find some meaning to his life or fix whatever he problem he has, and he definitely doesn't view winning the same way I describe fictional max does. if I have to say, irl!max is much healthier mentally than fic!max, which is wonderful and I wouldn't change a thing. again, this is all just for fun.

some other notes or details/ideas not quite expanded upon include

there's a big tone shift after max has his little mental breakdown. pretty obvious, I think. he goes from kind of clinical and as unemotional as possible while still being kind of depressing to no fucks given yeah I'm fucked in the head what is wrong with me. type shit.

the wdc dedication to his family. and to his dad specifically. him describing his sister, then his mom, then getting to his dad and choking up. like. how does he describe the man who raised him and fucked him up so badly he's terrified of caring for children and loves and despises and who made him into this monster who doesn't feel right in his own skin and hates looking in the mirror because he's scared every time he does he becomes more and more like him. how do you even. so he just didn't.

christian horner was actually supposed to play a bigger part but I wrote it out because I felt like it was distracting from everything else but it was supposed to highlight another aspect of max, being that he'll drop people immediately if he thinks they'll cause him problems even if they're good for him but he's incapable of letting go of people he deems important to him even if they're not good people, and his judgement on which category people fall into is genuinely terrible. case in point ruining his relationship with dilara because of his issues with his mom but keeping jos in his life, and this is emphasized especially in the last paragraph of the fic. jos and christian (and also kelly's dad) were supposed to be examples of the latter category. christian does care for max in his own way but we all know what happened earlier this year and max brushing past it in media and essentially saying it has nothing to do with him, which shows how he'll defend the people close to him even if objectively they're just terrible people just because he's familiar with them or associated with them or needs them for his career. but I couldn't find a place to fit it in so I scrapped it.

the lando cameo lol sorry he wasn't supposed to be here originally but I couldn't help it he's like jackson wang and his parties to me. I saw a video on twitter the other day of him with a kid and I was like. fuck. gotta add an interaction between him and p now. I swear I had no say in this my hands wrote him in without my permission.

and that's it! this is actually a behemoth of a post holy shit if you've gotten through all of this thank you I applaud you. I feel like I would have tapped out halfway through and I'm the one who wrote this? anyways please let me know (reply, reblog, send an ask, whatever) if you have any questions or want to yap more about this or if some part of this is nonsensical because I'm writing and posting at 4am.

[xuer]

wiwu prequel is finally, finally, up.

[xuer]

was about to write something but it's making me think too hard and I'm tired so. maybe tomorrow.

[xuer]

“every decision I make, it seems like the water is closing in on me. every time I look at you, it climbs just a bit higher. but I can’t stop. it’s like I want to drown.”

— my notes app, 2020

iruka knows getting involved with kakashi is a bad idea. a terrible idea, even.

kakashi, for one, outranks him. he’s a jounin while iruka is a chuunin schoolteacher who rarely even takes field missions. it’s not that iruka feels inferior because his position; no, he loves his job and where he is in life, and just because he’s a chuunin doesn’t mean he’s weak, doesn’t mean he’s useless. but that doesn’t prevent others from seeing it that way. iruka is used to receiving the slightly condescending remarks from his superiors, how they act like he won’t be able to hold his own in the field or needs protecting. he doesn’t bother to correct them anymore.

but that isn’t the only reason getting involved with kakashi is a bad idea. kakashi is also closed off and extremely secretive. it’s basically an open secret that he used to be ANBU. he’s constantly on life-threatening missions, and often enough comes back half dead or chakra depleted or a combination of both. he takes the most s-rank missions out of anyone in the village, and there is a certain grim acceptance around him all the time about how this next one might be his last.

him being a jounin and iruka being a chuunin isn’t really anything in the grand scheme of things. it’s more so that combined with the fact that no one has seen more than the upper half of kakashi’s face in decades, or that everyone who has is dead, or that kakashi is incredibly difficult to get to open up, or that there’s a high possibility that he will not come home.

so yes, iruka knows getting involved with kakashi is a bad idea. doing so would be getting in over his head. which is why every time kakashi teases him or makes a suggestive comment at the mission desk, he ignores it or guides the conversation away. every time he feels a shiver go down his spine or an uncontrollable blush rise on his cheeks or his traitorous heart fluttering, he shoves everything into a cabinet at the back of his mind. he does not want to get involved with kakashi. he is not interested in getting involved with kakashi.

the gazes kakashi sometimes gives him makes him think maybe that cabinet is glass.

it’s those same gazes that do him in. to a certain extent, he could handle the heated glances or eyes flashing with amusement. but when kakashi looks at him consideringly, when it seems as if he’s trying to piece iruka together like a puzzle, when it seems like he wants to dig around his head, when it seems like he’s serious about this, it makes him feel too many emotions at once that he has trouble deciphering them. there’s confusion, and anxiousness, and embarrassment, and even a little bit of fear, but it isn’t until later that he realizes the biggest part of it is want.

iruka wants kakashi. he wholeheartedly wants to be involved with kakashi. and kakashi knows it too, apparently knew it before he did himself.

so when they next meet at the mission desk and iruka hands kakashi his nth s-rank mission scroll, he gives him a small, genuine smile instead of the professional jerky one he usually uses, and he adds a quiet “take care, hatake-san” to the end of his sentence.

so when kakashi asks iruka with a genuine eye-smile in return, not one of his salacious grins or the little smirk he has whenever he knows iruka is flustered, to stop calling him by his surname once he returns from his mission, instead of locking the himself in his little glass cabinet, iruka takes a deep breath, and dives in.

[xuer]

“if I could choose my dream, I just wanna stay right next to you.”

— tokyo, rm

yoo joonghyuk sits on a roof of a dilapidated building somewhere in what used to be downtown seoul. he’s on watch for the night, on guard against any potential threat, human or monster or supernatural creature, trying to break into the building where the rest of the party is resting. instead of looking down and keeping an eye on all the entrances, he looks up at the ink black sky. it’s dark, moon nowhere in sight, but stars still wink in and out, warning reminding him of the constellations watching him even when the rest of the city is dead quiet.

sometimes, he wishes it could all stop. just for a minute. just for a second. he doesn’t wish for the scenarios to be over, or for the dokkaebi to stop appearing, or for the regressions to cease. he doesn’t want anything to come to an end, per se, because he’s wise enough to know wishing for something like that will only lead to disappointment. he’s not stupid enough to wish for the before, either. he just wishes it could all stop, just for a minute, just for a second.

yoo joonghyuk flexes his shoulders slightly, ready to rise and change watch shifts. there’s a tiredness to his muscles that isn’t physical and can’t be cured as such, but he ignores it, thinking instead of the appeal of the slightly warmer interior of the building. he pushes open the roof door and begins climbing down the stairs, even as he thinks of how he wouldn’t mind staying up there, stargazing. the stars are different from before, but he could pretend, just for a minute, just for a second.

instead, he continues down the stairs. as he reaches the second floor, he’s greeted with the sight of the rest of the party in various states of slumber. second floor, because the first floor is vulnerable, the first place to be attacked. he wishes he could turn off his brain, just for a minute, just for a second.

han sooyoung is curled up in fetal position, burrowing inside her napsack. lee hyunsung is lying flat on top of his, hand resting over his shield. lee jihye is leaning against a nearby wall, head lolling to rest on top of her sword hilt as she snores. yoo sangah and jung heewon are back to back, supporting each other even while sleeping. lee gilyoung and shin yoosung are in a similar position but facing each other, hands clutching each other’s for warmth. kim dokja is also inside his sleeping bag, lying on his side. he grips his phone in his hand, screen dimmed but not completely off. he must have been reading who knows what again on it before drifting off.

kim dokja has the next watch shift, so yoo joonghyuk goes to shake him awake. he bends down to do so, but hesitates before he can touch kim dokja’s shoulder. instead, he gently pries the phone from his hand and turns it off, setting it off to the side. his eyes catch on kim dokja’s fingers, slim and uncalloused. yoo joonghyuk isn’t too surprised; he’s is a terrible fighter, and even worse swordsman. his gaze traces from kim dokja’s hands to his face, where his bangs flutter every time he breaths out, where the dark circles beneath his eyes are more prominent than from afar, where his eyebrows are screwed together ever so slightly. it’s as if kim dokja is still thinking of plans and schemes and how to outwit other competitors and the constellations watching them, even when he sleeps.

yoo joonghyuk unconsciously extends his hand, wanting to smooth out the furrow in his brow. just for a minute, just for a second—

he retracts his hand, clenching his fist hard enough to feel his fingernails digging into his palm. he thinks maybe he isn’t as wise as he thought.

[xuer]

vaguely inspired by this tweet

when the apocalypse began, shin yoosung was just a child. she couldn’t quite understand the looks between dokja-ahjussi and sooyoung-unnie when they first found her. all she knew was that sooyoung-unnie’s glares and yelling had scared her, but dokja-ahjussi’s hugs were warm and kind. she hadn’t known anything warm or kind for a very long time, even before the apocalypse began.

during the apocalypse, shin yoosung was still a child, but she was a little older and a little smarter and a whole lot stronger. she still couldn’t quite understand why some adults would stare at her in fear. all she knew was that their gazes made her uncomfortable, but dokja-ahjussi’s hugs were just as warm and kind as they had always been.

during the apocalypse, shin yoosung was still a child, but she was old enough to want to keep the people she loved safe. she still couldn’t quite understand why the other company members would protect her or keep her out of harm’s way or sacrifice themselves when she was just as if not stronger than them (she was beginning to think she would never understand why some people acted the way they did). all she knew was that the tears they tried to hide from her were colder than anything she felt before the apocalypse, and yet dokja-ahjussi’s limp and unconscious body was somehow even colder.

after the apocalypse, shin yoosung was no longer a child. years had passed, and she grew into a young woman. she was much older now, much smarter, much wiser, and maybe just as strong as before. she understood many things she couldn’t before. she understood that another version of her had turned into a calamity and harmed many people, which is why sooyoung-unnie didn’t like her at first. she understood that she was a powerful incarnation, which is why so many people were scared of her. she understood that no matter how powerful she was, she was still a child, and the other company members would never let children fight their battles for them.

but there was something that even now she couldn’t understand. she couldn’t understand why dokja-ahjussi kept dying for them. she couldn’t understand why dokja-ahjussi willingly gave up his life to keep them safe. she couldn’t understand why dokja-ahjussi would forfeit himself without a moment’s hesitation just so the rest of them could smile one more time.

she couldn’t understand, because what was the point of dokja-ahjussi sacrificing himself if they wouldn’t be happy without him? what was the point of dokja-ahjussi sacrificing himself if they would charge headfirst back into danger the moment they found out he wasn’t with them?

because what was the point of dokja-ahjussi sacrificing himself to keep them safe if he left them all behind in the process?

[xuer]

“I ask myself, what would you do if you had more time… oh, I can't wait to see you again / it’s only a matter of time”

— who lives, who dies, who tells your story, hamilton: an american musical

a continuation of this

kakashi could have done so much more if he only had time. now all they have is a story to tell. they won the war, but was it worth it? was it worth it if he wasn’t here to enjoy it with them? all of them know the thought sounds selfish, yet they can’t help thinking it.

kakashi could have been with him for so much longer if they only had time. years pass. his hair fades from brown to grey. he grows wrinkles from the passage of time and scars from pre-genin handling weapons. he never marries.

he smiles to himself as he ages. he thinks, I️ can’t wait to see you again. it’s only a matter of time.

[xuer]

“let me tell you what I wish I'd known / when I was young and dreamed of glory / you have no control / who lives, who dies, who tells your story?”

— who lives, who dies, who tells your story, hamilton: an american musical

kakashi didn’t expect to live long. they were shinobi, after all. but if he was asked to describe how he thought he would die, he would say a heroic death, a dramatic death. going out in a blaze of glory defending his village.

but in reality, no one knows how they will die for sure. in reality, it was quiet. it was slow. it was when he thought they were safe, a rare second. it was during a solo b-rank mission, supposedly an easy come and go for him. it was when he was alone in a shallow cave, having dragged himself there despite being utterly chakra depleted and bleeding to death. it was after he spent his last minutes taking laboring breaths that seemed to take more effort each time, thinking over his team, his students, his friends, his village, until all he could feel was the cold, and then nothing.

and it was heartbreaking.