VER - P1 | 🏁

the second line, immediate brilliance: "Max is big next to Checo (next to most drivers) and not shy about taking up space, but not in an overbearing way—more like the space is there for the taking and Max doesn’t see why he should hesitate." fantastic character observation and also so unsettling in retrospect after you've read the fic and know what's about to happen to max's brain, his body.

all the fic's core concepts are introduced in such a great manner as well, with the wifi implant and then the great-aunt in guadalajara. the idea of cheating via 'automated starts' to get across how different the baseline car operation is nowadays... plus such a great nod to the launch control scandal of 1994 which jos verstappen was on the vicinity of. and again so sinister on your second read-through! automated start... launch control... get away from him get a job!!

checo is a great narrator for this story. his aversion to the technology, his suspicion of red bull's [hand gesture] everything, but his fondness towards max and the slight distance he's holding himself away from everyone in his life. all these aspects work so nicely as a focusing lens so that by the time you're reading "[Checo] thought Newey was a racer at heart, but he’s not sure anymore", it feels SO damning and scary, like, when your parent who never yells raises their voice or seeing a friend always in control smash a wineglass. YOU'RE upset? okay so we're fucked...

that whole confrontation checo witnesses between adrian and max is such a fantastic read it is SO CHILLING i absolutely love it. all max's anger "popped like a balloon", of course, but the build up to it as well, how excellently you can imagine this eerie setting and the nervous nature of an eavesdropping situation plus that doomed feeling of max having already installed the technology and however he feels about its potential uses now it's already fundamentally too late for him to free himself.

it's a fantasticcc choice to make it ambiguous, after that moment, how much of max is still max, if he's in his own skull at all; what is the nexus of identity, let alone who has command of it? it's a deliciously claustrophobic story.

RIP MAX'S BONES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

sencha's done something so wonderful with this format and their worldbuilding which is that there's perfect ludonarrative synchronistic in The Feeling Of The Scroll; the story's about totally uninformed people fumbling around 'learning' things in real time (that chaotic messy untruthful method of learning that social media provides) and because the worldbuilding has nonstandard omegaverse ideas (LOVE) the reader is also 'learning' things as the frenzy of f1twit users surface them... like i loved going BONE MEDS!?!?! at the same time as the feed was also going BONE MEDS!!?!!

i also freaking love the concept of bone meds and everything the bone meds represent... pleaseeeee yes yes yes using omegaverse as a vehicle for discussing body regulation and the strange biochemical rhythms/demands of athletes, plus how the discussion of omegaverse sex-gender binaries sort of mirror the scrutiny of trans bodies in athletics in real life. amazing! really deftly painted out without being too heavy and the chaos of differing opinion means it's not lecturing either, which isn't fun in narrative, and instead you get to give yourself a stress migraine seeing a clip of alpha!carlos sainz confusing sex and gender and being subjected to all the opinions of the internet about that.

everything about this world intrigues me honestly. approaching it through the lens of "now that they're all off medication XYZ will happen" makes it all 100x more interesting, i loveee that approach. my favourite example of that: max is going to get fat but somehow lose weight, so here's some fatphobic tweets. it's genius.

you can super tell this author's been in the trenches for real actual because all the usernames/handles are SO delightful and plausible and authentic-feeling, plus the sort of cadence the posts fall into, the style guide these users seem to be using. i don't read social media au's sort of as a rule (another reason it's so great you recced this directly!! 💛) so i can't compare this fic to others of its genre but i think it does a great job painting these sorts of fanspaces and the way fans genuinely speak to one another. at least, comparing to my years-ago days on bts twitter lmfao never again.

lestappen isn't really my thing usually but i am very hooked on this, plus, the removed perspective means that whatever filtered third-fourth-fifth-hand version of charles-and-max we see in the prose will be quite interesting i think! like three chapters in and we haven't even heard a reference to charles (i'm guessing he'll be max's race engineer starting 2021) so it would be silly of me to discriminate against this brilliant fic because of his forecasted presence upcoming lololol. and even though we've hardly seen the man at all in this fic (a choice i also love) i'm already so fiercely on this max's side that if he falls for charles leclerc i'll be nothing but supportive! get your man, max!! and your championship!!!