#elle asks

The thing is, a very vocal part of Oscar's fanbase this season... feels like they aren't even Oscar fans. They just dislike Lando. Which, whatever, you don't need a fanclub membership card to have opinions about who should win wdc, but it feels like many people who're now vocal Oscar supporters weren't really checking on him last season. In the words of my friend [redacted], they just wanted a winning dog. Some people built this image in their minds of an ice-cold killer who's the murderous son of Max and KimiR, and went all-in on the championship mentality discourse bullshit. And now they can't fathom how a guy who's years away from hitting his ceiling in F1 might be getting a bit choked, in the middle of a championship fight, on the tracks he was noticeably bad at last year, after he spent the first part of the season in a car that suited him better than his teammate. Lando is more comfortable in the car now, Oscar is letting some pressure get to him, and I have to see epic crashouts and bullshit sabotage allegations because some people can't deal with the idea of supporting a guy they thought was The Best having some flaws.

ngl I also think the way many ~maxcar fans dropped Oscar like a hot potato the moment Max5 became halfway plausible kind of proves what I'm saying about many vocal Oscar shooters just being bandwagoners. Again, there's nothing wrong with that. BUT I get the feeling many fans who're being annoying about Oscar nows haven't really experienced F1 outside of the Max Era, and they were on the right side of that one, and don't know how to deal now with seeing someone they dislike being a wdc frontrunner. I promise you that it's fine if your guy falters a bit or even (gasp) doesn't win the championship on his first attempt.

is it this weird liminal space between school - uni students are moving back home/finding jobs & high school students are finishing exams/finals - and summer vacation that sees people offline? that's my running theory but it seems more dramatic this year than last

Alright, so I took a surprisingly long time to think about a response to this that didn't come off as the messiest answer ever. The short version is - both.

I think that, even sticking only to official media both in terms of canon and IRL comments from people who worked on the series, Shinji is the best accidental transfem character ever created. None of it (?) is intentional, but there's zero stretches that need to be made to interpret her as so, at least in my opinion. I could genuinely write an essay as to why I think this way (and frankly I will if prompted), but I'll just share my favourite example for now:

In an interview with main Evangelion character designer Yoshiyuki Sadamoto at the end of volume 2 of his manga version of the series, he briefly discusses designing characters, starting with Shinji. He first describes Shinji's hair as that of a "boyish young girl", and follows up by explaining how heavily based on Nadia (from Gainax's first TV series) her design is - leading to my favourite quote, "...in concrete terms, his eyes are a girl's eyes."

A girl's eyes trapped in a boy's body. I'm not sure how 1:1 Viz's translation is with his original quote, but fuck if this series isn't amazing at accidentally churning out trans metaphors (and that isn't even touching on the fact that a major component of Shinji's character is being forced to pilot a body she don't want to because the adults in her life say that’s what’s right and building her sense of identity around hating being forced to do so)!!

All that yapping aside, when you see me drawing her it's 99.9% likely to be my little headcanon AU based on episode 26's alt continuity with some... obvious tinkering. If you're willing to subject yourself to a bit of fanfiction, I'm writing an ongoing fic that demonstrates it far better than I ever could explain. It also has pretty pictures!

However, the girls getting these big brands (Aurelia and Sol De Janerio, Joanne and Wella Cosmetics etc) are indeed getting more followers, more than most boys in f4 series are by a mile, but they’re so focused on promotion it’s become a detriment to their racing at points

obviously the fact that they’re doing sponsorships isn’t the only reason they’re not competing for race wins, but it’s worth pointing out that the three women fighting for the title heading into Vegas is the three women with the most consistent backing from sponsors that aren’t traditionally feminine - Doriane, Maya, and Chloe. These women have sponsors directly tied to their respective academies and sponsors more likely to target men as well. This is possibly due to their academy backing.

so then why isn’t aurelia getting the same as everyone else? and by extension, Alisha and Rafaela? that’s a question i can only explain as the lack of actual care that most of the academies have for their female driver development. That’s probably why girls like Aurelia, Joanne, Chloe Chong and so on are so dedicated to the grind of promotion and marketing because that’s the only way they can get brand attention and further their racing career

This is such a thoughtful ask, and I'm so glad you decided to type it up, thank you! You make such a good point about drivers doing so much promo that it risks becoming incompatible with racing, and how it's something top drivers in the series have to worry less about. But also who knows how their careers will all evolve, and whether the girls who currently have academy sponsors will get to keep them (thinking about how Alpine dropped Abby Pulling immediately!)

Earlier, I was talking to @/antspaul about whether some of the more outwardly "racing-focused" girls worry that being too feminine may hurt their chances of being taken seriously, and they brought up how Susie Wolff talked a lot in her book about, like, remaining "marketable" while being taken seriously. There's just so much they have to do just to hope to get to F3.