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xuer · 8 months ago

Text

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 (literally) and the coldness he feels (emotionally) and 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, only at the very end acknowledging that it was partially himself who made himself this miserable ("sinking deeper and deeper, and he tied the weights around his own ankles a decade ago").

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.

#don't you know you got my eyes #f1 #f1 rpf #max verstappen #xuer writes

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