#vettonso

aaaaah sorry about the delay I swear most of the chapter is written I just have like 1k left to do and then edit... multichapter isn't my strong suit lol

*taps microphone* I'd like to thank the team back at the factory for all they've done to get me here...

Anyway. Yes, the superpower au. The idea for this was spawned out of two things: one, the dearth of actual legitimate supervillain Fernando Alonso fic, and two, the image of Sebastian Vettel as the disney princess he truly is.

In terms of the actual AU, it's a fairly simple setup of superhero team vs various villains/monsters/disasters of the week, kind of like the old Marvel tv shows (you can blame Ultimate Spider-Man for this, honestly). I have a ton of ideas for this universe, but I decided only to put out one little slice just to see how it did and how I liked it.

The core superhero team at the time of "revolution" (as I've been calling it) consists of Sebastian (natural growth/animal control), Lewis (illusions), Charles (can't die), Mick (energy transfer/absorption), and Daniel (wings). Sidekicks and other support people are Lance, Yuki, and George.

Fernando was a hero, once, by the name of Comet, but had a mysterious split with the team and turned to villainy. That was a little before Sebastian's time, though, and since Lewis and the others don't like to talk about it, it takes him a while to figure out who his arsonist archenemy actually is. But that was ten years ago. Now, Fernando pretty much just does insurance fraud and minor property damage, though Sebastian usually arrives just in time to thwart his evil plans in some suitably dramatic way. He's been on the verge of reformation for a long, long time.

Sebastian's had quite the image shift over the years, too. He used to have a lion as his sidekick and basically didn't use the plant growth/control part of his abilities ("it looks stupid"), but then his lion was killed and he decided to seriously work on not endangering anyone but himself. (Fernando was there for that part. Sebastian doesn't know what happened to the man who did it, and from the glint in Fernando's eyes when he asks, he doesn't want to.) I wanted to portray him in the fic as a hero on the verge of a well-deserved retirement, who has let go of everything that once made him afraid.

Time when He foreshadowed Leo 🦁😌

For how deep a rivalry they had, they are surprisingly normal about each other. Alonso used to make a lot of noise- mostly when they were competing against each other for wins and titles- about Vettel not being able to win if he didn't have the car for it, but he pretty much stopped doing that after both of them had their Ferrari Flop ™️ eras. Vettel has acknowledged (multiple times) that Alonso was probably his most difficult competitor but also said that they never really got the chance to know each other, being "too different." He also, even when Alonso was not being super complimentary towards him, sang his praises at every opportunity.

Fernando once said he wasn't afraid of being Sebastian's teammate, and that if he came to Ferrari, it "wouldn't be a problem." Five years later, Seb took his seat. In 2022, Seb basically gave his up to Fernando in favor of retirement. Fernando, in return, ran a tribute helmet designed like Seb's own for Abu Dhabi and told the media that he wasn't going to try to overtake him during the first laps, preferring to just watch him race one last time. What an interesting evolution.

There are a lot of really good pictures and videos of them together (one of my favorites is below, from Singapore 2012), and a ton of fascinating interviews that give a lot more insight into how they viewed each other and how that's changed over time. In my opinion, this is a super underrated ship in terms of how much content we have, even if they were never more than on-track competitors.

these photoshoots make them looks like some serial killers