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Hey! I know you meant that nicely and thank you so much! But I haven't shown my face on here and I know, it's pretty easy to find my Instagram, TikTok and Twitter, but I would prefer if you tell me before following me there. I have nothing against that but please tell me before <3 And if we're simply mutuals on discord and you saw my profile pic, just ignore everything I just said and thank you!
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like i’m gonna be so real but the only “generational talent” i’ve seen yesterday is arvid who’s managed to do a genuine overtake in monaco, managed his tyres exceptionally well and went from p15 to p6 while in a midfield car
Laura: Hello, I'm Laura Müller and I am the race engineer of Esteban Ocon.
Interviewer: Have you planned on doing this from the start?
L: I wanted to do motorsport, I wanted to do Formula 1, but [erm] what you exactly do there as job is something I of course did not know beforehand.
I: What's the most important thing here for you?
L: That there aren't always some screws in here because then my water bottle won't fit. [laughs]
I: That is - okay, so this has to be cleaned up before the weekend.
L: On top, this is mainly important for the race, but also for qualifying, to check timings and all that. And here below I normally got my data, and of course the data is very important, because otherwise i have to rely on the driver on what is happening with the car, and one likes to double-check with the data that all of [what the driver says] is true.
I: We often hear team radios that say 'Plan A, Plan B, Plan something', how many plans do you have for a race?
L: I believe there is rarely more than two or three. Like, other teams that sometimes say Plan Z just move the letters, I think. [Erm], but there is always one plan that is the best for when you drive alone, and then one that is best for when you are stuck in traffic or something like that, and then sometimes there is something crazy that you plan on trying when you are in P20 or something like that. But most of it is a dynamic reaction to what is happening.
I: How was your career up to here?
L: I have [erm] studied engineering in Bachelor, and then automative and engine engineering in Master. I believe it is quite straight-forward, what you are doing there. [laughs]
I: Communication is also a huge thing. I have already seen what is written on here, I reckon you press this one [the Esteban button] the most, right?
L: Nope. [laughs]
I: Nope?
L:: GreenEng (?) here is the one I press the most, I believe, because there I talk with the performance engineer, with all the bells and whistles, and [erm] I usually have more questions for them than Esteban has question for me. [laughs]
I: is it sometimes like, like sometimes one hears it is like that, that [Esteban] says "leave me be" and you actually give too much information?
L: Yeah, this is often when he is like fighting with someone, especially when he is trying to overtake someone, one says 'uhhh, 13 laps left' or something like that, and that then annoys them often.
I: Is this your only workplace?
L: Well, whenever the car drives, I am here, but whenever the car doesn't drive, I am usually not here. [laughs]
I: Okay, then let's see where else you stay.
L: This is our office. Many people sit here obviously.
I: Yes.
L: My place is there.
I: What are the skills you need the most, also in the communication with Esteban?
L: You have to always stay calm and know everything even before he asks about it. With drivers, as soon as you say 'Hm, okay, I gotta look that up real quick', then there is already always the doubt if what they are told is the right thing.
I: Okay.
L: This means that I usually always try to answer all questions in my head beforehand.
I: Is there a team you think would be your absolute dream? Like, the drivers always all wanna drive for Ferrari.
L: Just like the race engineers. [laughs]
I: Yes? [They] also wanna go to Ferrari?
Laura: Mh. [nods]
I: I believe Haas wouldn't really like to give her away, I reckon, but [erm], I would say, anyways, thank you very much for showing me what defines your job, because those hidden heroes are among the most important, especially for the drivers.
i love your carcar in tough to be tender! so maybe you can give us a bonus scene of theirs?
BONUS SCENE 3 for Tough to be Tender, spoilers ahead (read the fic before you read this!!! like seriously, big spoilers!), carcar, around 3k, sorry that it became Christmas-y...i wrote on it all week, (TW: mentions of death):
Oscar Piastri knows an extraordinary number of facts about Carlos Sainz and if you string them together, they mostly tell the story of a man who should not have been allowed to move into Oscar’s flat.
He knows that Carlos likes Christmas with the sort of aggressive sincerity that should embarrass him and somehow never does. He knows that Carlos pretends to be very relaxed about decorations, but has strong opinions about warm lights versus white lights and that Carlos will say he does not need presents and then stare at the wrapped things under the tree like a child with cow eyes.
He knows that Carlos calls his mother every Sunday unless he is angry with her, in which case he calls his father and talks loudly about football until she takes the phone off him. He knows that Carlos cannot fold fitted sheets, but thinks he can and that Carlos buys fruit with too much optimism and then acts wounded when Oscar points out that no two-person household needs that many mandarins.
He knows that Carlos sings when he cooks, sings when he drives, sings when he is putting away laundry, sings under his breath when Oscar is working late on the sofa and Carlos thinks Oscar cannot hear him.
He knows that Carlos loves him.
He knows this in large ways and stupid ways and the sort of ways Oscar does not think about directly because looking at it too hard makes him feel like he has walked into a room without any skin on.
He knows that Carlos loved Alex too.
This is the problem with Christmas.
The honey burns at 4:17 in the afternoon. Oscar knows this because there is a schedule.
The schedule is written on the back of an envelope and stuck to the fridge with the tomato magnet Carlos bought at a market because I love tomatoes, Oscahhh! The schedule has the potatoes, the carrots, the chicken, the pudding, both planned parent phone calls, and the exact moment Oscar is supposed to put on the playlist Carlos likes without making a face at the third consecutive Spanish Christmas song that sounds, to Oscar, exactly like the second.
At the bottom, in smaller writing, it says: do not text George unless he texts first.
Oscar has been pretending he did not write that down.
The honey is not on the schedule, which should have been the first sign that it was dangerous. It is for turrón, or something near turrón, or something that looked possible when Oscar found the recipe at 1:12 in the morning and thought, with the confidence of a man who has been awake too long, that Spanish nougat could not possibly have structural complexity.
It can, apparently. The pan sits on the hob, smoking faintly, the honey dark and glossy and hardening into something less like food and more like evidence. This is exactly why he never cooks and lets Carlos take over.
Oscar turns off the heat.
He stands very still with the wooden spoon in his hand and the tea towel over his shoulder. The flat smells like burnt sugar and rosemary and chicken and the orange candle Carlos lit in the living room before Oscar told him to stop helping and sit down for once in his life.
Oscar scrapes at the pan. The honey does not move. He scrapes harder.
A black flake breaks off and skitters across the hob.
“Fuck,” Oscar says.
From the living room, Carlos calls, “I heard that.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“You said fuck.”
“I said fork.”
There is a pause.
“You are not holding a fork.”
Oscar looks down at the wooden spoon. “You don’t know that.”
Carlos appears in the doorway. He has been pretending not to hover all afternoon, which mostly means he has hovered from further away. He is wearing the red jumper Oscar bought him because he thought it would be funny and then had to watch Carlos love it, actually love it, without irony or shame or any sense that he had been meant to be mocked.
There is flour on one sleeve. Oscar has not given him access to flour. Carlos looks at the pan. Then at Oscar. Then back at the pan.
“Oh,” Carlos says.
Oscar points the spoon at him. “Don’t.”
Carlos presses his lips together. It lasts for about half a second. “Oscar,” he says, very carefully, “why is honey like this?”
Oscar looks at the pan. “I don’t know.”
“You do not know?”
“I looked away.”
“For how long?”
“I don’t know, Carlos, long enough for it to become like this.”
Carlos bites his lips harder. Oscar points the spoon more aggressively. “If you laugh, I’ll leave you.”
“No you won’t, my love.”
“You sound very confident for someone whose Christmas dessert is dead.”
Carlos steps into the kitchen. “I did not ask for the dessert.”
“But you like turrón.”
“Well, yes.”
“Yes, well, I was trying to do something nice.”
Carlos stops. Oscar hears the sentence after he says it: The edge in it. He sets the spoon down too carefully.
The flat is warm. Too warm. The windows have gone dark with their reflections. The tree in the living room is a little crooked because Carlos picked it and said it looked brave and Oscar had said trees cannot be brave and Carlos had said, “This one can.” The lights are too colourful and there are crackers on the table.
Two crackers.
Oscar keeps seeing that.
Last year there were four.
Last year Alex stood in this kitchen with two paper crowns on his head and stole a roast potato off the tray after he explicitly told him it was too hot. Alex had eaten it anyway.
He made a noise like he had been shot. George, from the doorway, said, “I struggle to feel sorry for you.”
Alex turned to him with his mouth still full. “You’re my boyfriend!”
“I am aware.”
“You’re meant to be supportive...Fuck, that's hot...”
Carlos had laughed so hard he had to put his wine down.
Oscar remembers that.
He remembers George in a navy jumper, one hand curled around his own elbow, looking at Alex like he was trying not to smile and losing. He remembers Alex leaning back against the counter, cheeks pink from wine, paper crowns slipping, entirely pleased with himself. He remembers thinking that George looked happy in a way that made him difficult to look at, then Carlos putting a hand on Oscar’s knee under the table later, when Alex started trying to convince George to sing and George looked like he might walk out to avoid it.
Oscar had looked down at Carlos’s hand. Carlos had squeezed once.
Last year, Oscar thought they were at the beginning of something.
He supposes they were.
Carlos comes closer now. He does not touch Oscar immediately, which is how Oscar knows he has noticed the edge too.
“Oscar,” he says.
Oscar looks at the pan. “I wanted it to be good.”
“It is good.”
“The honey is not.”
“I do not care about the honey.”
“You love Christmas!”
Carlos sighs a little. “Yes.”
“So.”
“So I love Christmas,” Carlos says. “I do not love Christmas because of perfect honey.”
Oscar snorts. “That’s not what you said when you made me go to three different shops for the right biscuits.”
“That was different.”
“How?”
“They were important biscuits.”
Oscar looks at him. Carlos looks back, face entirely serious, which makes it worse. Oscar has to look away because the laugh is too close to something else.
Tomorrow, Carlos flies to Madrid.
Oscar flies to Melbourne.
It is not ideal but it is what they managed. It had seemed sensible when they booked it, sometime in October, when everyone was still speaking about December like it was a thing that would happen to other people. Neither of them had been able to face the proper version of Christmas with each other’s families. Spain, New Zealand, all the questions abiut the accident, all the food, all the people who would mean well.
They decided on today instead: One Christmas Day in London with just them.
George is with his parents.
Oscar knows because he has checked. Several times. George texted at lunch with a photo of a roast potato and the words Mum is feeding me with carbohydrates.
Oscar replied, Good. Submit to starch.
George sent a thumbs up.
Oscar has been staring at that thumbs up in his head for four hours.
“He is at his parents’,” Carlos says.
Oscar’s head snaps up. Carlos is watching him in that way he does sometimes, like he has read all the footnotes and is trying not to be smug about it.
“I know,” Oscar says.
“He is not alone.”
“I know.”
“His mother will feed him.”
“I know.”
“Maybe too much.”
“Carlos.”
“She seems like a woman who would feed a man too much when she is worried.”
Oscar leans back against the counter. “You’ve met her like once.”
“Yes. I am good with mothers.”
“That is unfortunately true.”
Carlos smiles a little, then it goes.
Oscar looks away. “I’m not worried,” he says.
Carlos says nothing.
Oscar hates him.
“Okay, I’m worried,” Oscar says.
“Yes.”
“Don’t say yes like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you knew.”
“I did know.”
Oscar makes a frustrated noise and reaches for the pan again. Carlos catches his wrist before he can do anything to it.
“Oscar.”
“What?”
“You cannot save him with nougat.” Carlos seems to regret the wording instantly, but he does not take it back. Oscar looks at Carlos’s hand around his wrist. It is so, so warm and soft and a bit hairy. Carlos’s thumb moves once over the inside.
Oscar says, “I know that.”
“No,” Carlos says. “You know it here.” He taps his own forehead with his free hand, which is a very Carlos thing to do. “But not here.”
He touches Oscar’s chest, very briefly. Oscar hates that more. Stupid Carlos and his romantic metaphors and all that. He pulls his wrist away, but Carlos lets him.
“I don’t know how to do this,” Oscar says.
Carlos’s voice goes quiet. “Christmas?”
Oscar shakes his head. The word sits in him like something too large to swallow. “George,” he says and looks at the fridge. At the stupid schedule with the tiny line at the bottom.
“I don’t know how to keep him alive.”
Carlos inhales. Oscar presses the heel of his hand against his eye until little sparks show up behind the lid.
“I know,” Oscar says. “I know that’s not fair. I know he’s not mine to keep alive. I know he’s not a task.”
“No.”
“But every time he doesn’t answer, I think about it. Every time he says he’s fine, I hear him lying. Every time he goes home alone, I think—”
He stops. There is no good end to that sentence. Carlos is quiet for a long moment.
Then he says, “I think this too sometimes.”
Oscar hates the relief and hates that it is easier when Carlos is frightened too.
“I get angry,” Oscar says, and that is worse. Worse than the fear. “Sometimes.”
“At George?”
Oscar nods. Carlos does not look shocked. That helps too.
“It’s disgusting,” Oscar says.
“No.”
“It is.”
“No, cariño.”
Oscar looks at the dark window because his face is doing something he does not want Carlos to see. Which is stupid because Carlos always sees. “He lost more,” Oscar says. “I know that. I’m not an idiot.”
“I know.”
“I know what Alex was to him. Obviously I know. We all knew. It was impossible not to know. George looked at him like—”
His voice cuts. Oscar swallows. “But Alex was ours too.” Barely even loud enough for the kitchen.
Carlos’s eyes go wet almost immediately. Oscar looks away.
“He was ours too,” Oscar says again. The shame comes after. Oscar closes his eyes. “Sorry.”
Carlos says, “No.”
“That was horrible.”
“No.”
“It was!”
Carlos steps closer. “Oscar, my love.”
“I don’t mean it like that.”
“I know.”
“I don’t want less room for him.”
“I know.”
“I just—”
“You miss Alex,” Carlos says.
Oscar opens his eyes. His face open and sad and very handsome in the stupid red jumper. Oscar thinks, wildly, that Alex would have loved the jumper. Alex would have looked at it and said something about Carlos being physically incapable of passing a festive display without becoming prey to capitalism.
Oscar laughs once. It comes out broken. Carlos reaches for him andOscar lets him.
He goes into Carlos’s arms and hates that he needs it and is very grateful that he gets it. Carlos holds him properly, both arms around him, one hand spread over his back. Oscar puts his face against Carlos’s shoulder and breathes in.
Orange candle.
Carlos.
Burnt honey.
“I miss him,” Oscar says into the jumper.
Carlos’s arms tighten.
“Yes,” Carlos says.
“I keep thinking he’s going to text something stupid.”
“Me too.”
“Or send a photo of George being weird.”
Carlos makes a sound that is almost a laugh. “He loved catching George being weird.”
“George is always weird.”
“Yes, but Alex made it art.”
Oscar pulls back enough to look at him. Carlos wipes under Oscar’s eye with his thumb.
“Huh?.”
“You are crying.”
“I’m not.”
“Okay.”
“I’m not.”
“Okay,” Carlos says again, because he is smart enough to know when winning is losing. Oscar leans his hip against the counter. Carlos keeps one hand at his waist.
“Last Christmas was good,” Oscar says.
Carlos nods. “It was so good.”
“I didn’t know we were meant to memorise it.”
Carlos’s face folds. Oscar looks at the table in the living room. Two plates. Two glasses.
He remembers last year too clearly now that he has started. He remembers Alex making Carlos retell the story of how he moved in with Oscar because Alex liked taking credit for it. He remembers George, stiff with wine and affection, saying, “You can’t call it matchmaking if you lied about both sides of the housing crisis.” He remembers Alex saying, “George! I can call anything anything.”
Carlos had toasted him. Oscar had said, “You committed tenancy fraud.”
Alex said, “I created love.”
George had looked at him. “That is an extremely generous description of meddling.”
Alex had leaned sideways into George. “And yet.”
And yet.
Oscar had only needed a roommate. That was how it started, officially.
His old flatmate was moving out and London rent was doing the thing where it made everyone consider whether living in a cupboard would build character. Oscar had mentioned it at work, mostly because Alex was in the room and Oscar trusted Alex not to make a thing of it.
Two days later, Carlos stood next to Oscar’s desk with a coffee Oscar had not asked for and said, “Alex says you need a roommate.”
Oscar looked at the coffee. Then at Carlos, who had been hovering for weeks already.
Oscar did not call it hovering at the time because that seemed dramatic, but it was hovering. Carlos appeared near the kitchenette when Oscar made tea. Carlos asked him questions about edits that could have been emails. Carlos laughed at things Oscar said that were not jokes, which was suspicious behaviour.
Oscar said, “Did Alex send you?”
Carlos said, “No.”
Oscar waited.
Carlos said, “A little.”
It turned out Carlos did not actually need a room in any urgent sense. His lease was inconvenient. His commute was annoying. He had several options, all of them perfectly survivable, but Alex had told Carlos Oscar needed a roommate.
Carlos moved in a week after that with two suitcases, three plants, a coffee machine, a framed photo of his parents, and the pan currently holding the corpse of Oscar’s turrón.
The pan had, according to Carlos, changed lives.
Oscar had said, “If you are the kind of person who says things like that about cookware, I need to reconsider this arrangement.”
Carlos had smiled and said, “You will love me.”
Oscar had said, “That’s ambitious.”
Carlos had been right. They kissed for the first time in the hallway after a work party, both of them a little drunk and very tired and standing too close for no reason that made sense if they were going to keep pretending.
Carlos asked first. He always did, when it mattered. His hand near Oscar’s face, not touching.
“Can I?” he said.
Oscar said, “This is a terrible idea.”
Carlos smiled like Oscar had given him something precious.
“Yes,” he said.
Oscar kissed him anyway.
Alex, upon finding out, said, “You’re welcome.”
Oscar said, “For what?”
Alex said, “Your great love story.”
“You lied to us.”
“I encouraged proximity.”
“You manufactured a rental crisis.”
“I arranged domestic inevitability.”
Carlos lifted his wine. “To domestic inevitability.”
George came to Wolff Media a little later.
Carlos and Oscar were already a thing everyone knew about because Carlos had the discretion of a brass band and Oscar did not actually mind as much as he pretended. Enough that Alex had become one of Oscar’s favourite people at work, which was unfortunate because Alex knew it and was smug.
George arrived in a suit too serious for the building and with a face like he was expecting someone to grade him. Carlos leaned toward Oscar by the cafeteria and whispered, “He looks like a nervous giraffe, no?”
Oscar made a noise into his mug. Alex did not laugh. That was how they knew.
Alex, who laughed at Carlos’s worst jokes because he liked Carlos and had no taste, who found almost everything funny if it was stupid enough.
Alex went quiet.
He watched George speak to Susie. George had his hands clasped behind his back. Shoulders straight. Chin lifted. Polite in a way that seemed less like manners and more like self-defence.
Oscar looked at Alex, who was making the stupid face.
“Oh,” Oscar said.
Alex blinked. “What?”
“You’re doomed.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“You’re staring at him.”
“I’m observing a new colleague.”
Carlos leaned in. “With your whole soul?”
Alex threw a sugar packet at him. It missed and hit Linda from accounts. Linda kept the sugar packet for months.
It got worse after that.
Alex found reasons to pass George’s desk. George smiled when Alex walked away, which he seemed to believe nobody could see, despite having a face with very little hiding ability when Alex was involved. Carlos narrated developments until Oscar threatened to leave him at a service station.
Eventually, Alex asked George out.
Oscar thinks about that now, standing in the kitchen with Carlos’s hand still at his waist. How much of their lives Alex touched and rearranged, of how much he set in motion and then left them with.
It makes Oscar want to be furious at him, but it also makes Oscar miss him so badly he has to grip Carlos’s jumper. Carlos just covers Oscar’s hand with his own.
“We do not have to make this one like last year,” Carlos says. Oscar looks at him. “We cannot,” Carlos adds.
“I know.”
“But we can make this one.”
Oscar looks at the pan. “This one is terrible.”
Carlos looks too. “This part is terrible.”
“This part is solid.”
“Yes.”
“It may never come out.”
“We can throw away the pan.”
Oscar looks sharply at him. “It’s your life-changing pan.”
Carlos shrugs. “My life changed already.”
Oscar stares at him. Carlos looks suddenly embarrassed, which almost never happens and is therefore devastating.
Oscar says, “That was disgusting.”
“Yes.”
“Really awful.”
“I know.”
“You should be ashamed.”
“A little.”
Oscar kisses him because there is nothing else to do with that. Carlos makes a small pleased noise into his mouth. Oscar hates that he knows the noise. Hates that he loves it. Hates that Alex is not here to make fun of them for being disgusting in the kitchen next to a failed dessert.
When they pull apart, Carlos rests their foreheads together for a second. Oscar lets him.
Then : “He is alone,” Oscar says. Carlos is quiet.
Oscar looks at him. “Don’t do the face.”
“What face?”
“The face where you’re about to say something insane and romantic.”
Carlos looks offended. “My faces are handsome.”
“Carlos.”
Carlos smiles a little. “Maybe he will not be alone forever.”
Oscar blinks. “George hates most people,” Oscar says.
“Not most people.”
“Many people.”
“Some people.”
“Enough people.”
Carlos makes a conceding noise.
Oscar leans back against the counter. “Anyway. He’s not exactly making new friends.”
“No,” Carlos says. Then, after a moment: “But he argued with someone last week.”
Oscar groans. Carlos points at him. “You saw?”
“I see everything.”
Oscar thinks about George last week, pale and too neat at his desk, arguing with Max from sports over a cut in the Bahrain segment. Everyone in earshot had gone very quiet except Carlos, who looked delighted by the existence of conflict that did not involve him. Oscar had dismissed it at the time because George arguing with people is not notable. George could argue with a printer if it had the wrong energy.
But George had looked alive. Not like the motionless, numb shell. Angry, yes. Annoyed, absolutely, but alive.
Oscar looks toward the tree. Maybe alive is enough.
“Alex would probably find a way to take credit for it,” Carlos adds.
Oscar closes his eyes. After a moment, he laughs. It scrapes on the way out, but Carlos smiles anyway.
The ruined honey sits on the hob. The schedule on the fridge is useless now, or maybe it was always useless, but Oscar leaves it there because he cannot quite bring himself to take it down.
Carlos reaches around him and for a moment Oscar embarrassengly almost squeals when his hand touches his ass, but he just grabs Oscar’s phone from his pocket.
Oscar asks, “What are you doing?”
“Texting George.”
“We were not supposed to.”
Carlos points at the fridge. “You already failed at the schedule.”
“That is rude.”
Carlos types with one hand, tongue caught slightly between his teeth because he is terrible at typing and refuses to admit it. Oscar grabs it from him and looks at what he sent: There is burnt honey in the pan.
And a moment later, Oscar’s phone pings. George writes back almost immediately.
Tell Carlos I always suspected sugar would defeat him.
Oscar stares at the message.
Carlos gasps. “He blames me?”
“You are very blameable.”
“I was in the living room.”
Carlos looks at him with narrowed eyes, then types again.
It is not my fault your friend cannot cook Spanish food.
George replies: My friend cannot cook most food.
Oscar laughs and Carlos laughs too, loud and warm, and for a second the kitchen feels almost full. Not the same. Never the same.
Oscar takes the phone back and sets it on the counter, face up this time. Carlos looks at the pan. “We order something?”
“For Christmas dinner?”
“Yes.”
“That’s sad.”
“Then we make it not sad.”
“How?”
Carlos shrugs. “We put it on plates and fuck after.”
Oscar looks at him. Carlos grins. Oscar shakes his head, but he is smiling now. “You’re an idiot.”
“Yes.”
“I love you.”
Carlos’s face does the thing it still does sometimes when Oscar says it first. Like he is surprised and trying not to look surprised because he wants to be cool about being loved. He is not cool about it at all.
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I just started reading tough to be tender and I’m having such a great time!! I can’t remember who it was that said your fic is a love letter to fandom but I couldn’t agree more; George’s experience with ao3 and online friends was super relatable, if I had a physical copy of ttbt you can sure as hell bet it would be at least 80% highlighted. That wasn’t even what I actually wanted to say!! What I actually wanted to say was that I also really like your art and was curious to find out what your inspirations are and how you got into drawing?
Oh my god, thank you so much!! LONG REPLY HERE: I’m so happy you’re enjoying Tough to be Tender, because that fic is very, very close to my heart for probably obvious reasons, but also for all the meta fandom reasons. And people calling it a love letter to fandom is genuinely one of the biggest compliments anyone could give me. Also, I love the abbreviation ttbt so much. Will use that from now on. As for the inspiration question, I’m not fully sure if you mean my art or Tough to be Tender, so I’ll answer both!
With drawing, I used to draw a lot during Covid. I obviously loved drawing as a kid, like a lot of people do, but I only properly picked it back up on my iPad during lockdown. Then I eventually realized that I enjoy writing much, much more. I don’t think I have super deep art inspirations, honestly. I can draw people and that’s kind of it. If you go through my art tag, it’s basically only fanart, even from previous fandoms. I’ve always loved thick line art, so I just kind of do that. Very technical explanation, clearly. I’m definitely a writer first and an artist...last.
If you mean the inspiration for TTBT, though, the answer is obviously fandom itself. At some point I realized that one of my favourite things in fic is when you can feel the author’s passion for something coming through the writing. Like when someone has a hobby or an interest and you can just tell they know it, love it, and are weaving that love into the story. There’s a piarles ballet AU (I highly recommend) I read where I was immediately like, okay, this person either does ballet or loves ballet deeply. And the malex plant influencer AU (also recommend of course) did the same thing to me, because you can just tell the author knows plants and cares about plants. That kind of passion is my favourite thing to read.
So then I started thinking about what my own biggest passion is, and the answer was embarrassingly easy: fandom and fanfiction themselves. So I wanted to write a fic about characters writing fic, about feeling lonely even when you are a part of a community, about being known through words, about the strange intimacy of fandom and the way it can feel both deeply private and completely life-changing. I actually had this premise planned one or two years ago with completely different characters. In the very first version, Sebastian Vettel was the Toto of the fic, so obviously a LOT changed along the way. But the core idea was always the same: two people knowing each other online first, through fandom, while completely misunderstanding each other in real life. I also put a lot of myself into it, of course, but also a lot that is very much not me. George and Max both treat fanfiction as this huge secret, especially George, who feels a lot of shame around it. Whereas I am very much at the point where I wear writing fic on my sleeve. I love fandom. I love fic. If people think that’s cringe or weird, I’m old enough now to say I genuinely do not care. Obviously I’m not announcing it in a professional meeting or whatever, but with new people I meet, I don’t really make it a secret anymore. When I was younger, I definitely felt judged for it sometimes, but times have changed and also I simply have no energy left for being embarrassed about the things that bring me joy.
There are also emotional parts of the fic that come from real places, even if not always directly. I haven’t experienced grief the way George has, but I have definitely been an Oscar or Carlos in situations like that before. There are other things too, but I won’t get into them because spoilers. The funny thing is that I can’t really reread the fic now because I would immediately want to change everything. That is my curse as a writer. I finish something and then the second I look back at it, I’m like: what if I rewrote this entire paragraph. This is also why I have about twelve million drafts.
Anyway, I have rambled far too much, but this was such a lovely ask and it made me so happy. Thank you so much for reading and for saying such kind things about both the fic and my art <3
happy pride month to bisexual icon max “i used grindr once” verstappen.
alternative quotes include but are not limited to
“tickling the bumhole” half naked in a tiny tub of water with daniel
“has george sent you a topless selfie in the mercedes suit yet?”
“send itttttt” in reference to alex telling him george has (disappointingly) not sent shirtless photos (YET)
“and there’s nothing wrong with that” in reference to him and daniel almost kissing
“meeting a girl…OR A GUY” in reference to how old is too old (which is a whole other thing in itself)
“would you like to?” as a response to daniel saying he hasn’t seen all of max
*insert multiple references of calling men gorgeous and beautiful* (notably george and daniel)
“do you want it? do you want it? do you want it?” & “i made it ESPECIALLY for you” < max auditioning to be daniel’s housewife. the beloved maxiel stroopwafel incident.
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