#zero cycle

And now he has to look again. Urgently. Compulsively. So he picks the phone back up from the sticky bartop, the screen already dark from inactivity, and unlocks it with fingers that suddenly feel weirdly clumsy against the display. The picture is still there at the bottom of the chat. Slightly blurry. Clearly rushed. But devastatingly, undeniably, tangibly real. It’s the McLaren jersey – his McLaren jersey, bright papaya orange and stamped with the number four across the chest – except the problem is that the body underneath it is objectively far too broad and muscular for a shirt that hangs comfortably loose on Lando himself. The fabric stretches across Oscar’s shoulders obscenely well.

I SWEAR TO YOU, THIS WAS THE INSPIRATION!! I am not even joking.

zero cycle has taken over the past 48hrs and counting of my life. Again, minecraft and landoscar is such a niche corner that I fit right into that I’m actually going insane over how in all the streamer!AUs I’ve both read and thought about, Minecraft never crossed my mind before this… it’s so perfect i have no words

I was just gonna come and ask to pick your brain for extra thoughts or side stories or snippets of both your ideas of this au and stuff to hopefully make it easier to not claw at my confines and instead patiently wait for the next updates, BUT THEN! I find out you also wrote bad bad news and I had to come and gush in your inbox about the absolute insane way you write landoscar and how precious it is to me instead. (Hopefully this doesn’t burden you cuz I’m about to just ramble/gen) I genuinely can’t even begin to put words to how emotionally invested I get about whatever situation you’ve thrown landoscar into because you characterize them so vividly and to me they just pop out of the page and come alive. I get shy with them, get second-hand embarrassment because these two idiots are oblivious and silly, feel their anger and frustration, etc. it’s all so good and it you are for sure on my top landoscar writers list (which I’ve lowkey just started now because you deserve to be on it)

Anyways, hi, tldr: you’re insane /pos and I love your writing and how you depict landoscar and im probably going to reread zero cycle an unhealthy amount of times from now on both waiting for it to update/complete and after that. (And i would still be open to any intermittent crumbs you’re willing to spill to the masses about your ideas for this AU in general) <33333

Hiii, omg!! Thank you sooo much for sending me such a sweet ask, aaaah.

Every time I hear that someone discovered two of my fics independently of one another, I get so, so giddy!! I'm genuinely so happy that you enjoyed both of my depictions of Landoscar - both the (half-)AU version and the more canon-adjacent one.

Writing Landoscar is such an immense joy for me that I genuinely struggle to put it into words. So hearing that you enjoy their characterisation, their dynamic, and all of the shenanigans they get themselves into makes me feel like the luckiest person in the world.

HMMM. Is there any little crumb I can spoil? In the next chapter we're, of course, going to be deep in tournament mode, which means a lot more Oscar coaching Lando through everything - and that gets surprisingly emotionally intense. We're also going to celebrate Christmas, and Oscar is going to reveal a little bit more about himself.

Especially because he has a very insistent sister in the background who keeps telling him to shoot his shot. Though, unfortunately, ZC!Oscar is anything but forward, hahaha.

When she says "stalked you on the internet […], cuz i always had a vision of us standing like this" it’s so Oscar and now every time I listen to it I think about them 😔

Also this might be random but I saw that you mentioned that you follow multiple sports. That’s so cool!! Which sports do you follow?

(btw this is me writing on Tumblr for the first time and you seem like such a nice person who you can talk about anything with so i decided to go with sport)

I personally follow F1 (ofc), but also Hockey (NHL) and a bit of volleyball!

YES!! The second Olivia dropped that song, I knew it was going to become one of the defining songs of Zero Cycle. That one plus Mastermind by Taylor are just so unbelievably Oscar-fanboy-coded to me.

Here's the link to my Zero Cycle playlist if anyone's interested!

And as for sports: my main sport next to F1 - if it can even be counted as a sport - is chess.

There is genuinely a little bit of chess in every fic I write. In Family Matters, Oscar is essentially a chess prodigy but too bored of it to play it professionally; in Bad Bad News, Edie and Hattie battle it out on Chess.com, hahaha.

I am absolutely obsessed with chess. I genuinely think it's one of the most interesting things humanity has ever invented - not even necessarily the game itself, but the culture, history, and art surrounding it.

Also i made the connection between it and heatwaves whilst reading it for the first time and now I cant shake it hahahaha

(I mean this entirely positively btw! mcyt was absolutely A Time but that fic was undeniably great and I am assuming given both your knowledge of speedrunning and the unfortunate mcyt>f1 fan pipeline you read it at some point or another? Idk i just wanted to share and see if you had taken any inspiration from heatwaves un/intentionally!)

Thank you so, so much!! I’m so glad you’re enjoying Zero Cycle!!

Oh, 100%. Heat Waves will forever be my favourite fanfic, without a doubt. It genuinely showed me what fanfiction is capable of, and I hold it so, so dearly in my heart.

I was a massive DNFer as well, so the MCYT-to-F1 pipeline has been especially real for me - although there was always a fair amount of overlap, since I’ve been an F1 fan since 2011, briefly disappeared into an MCYT phase, and then eventually returned to F1 full-time.

AHHHH, this is genuinely such a sweet, sweet ask. Thank you so, so much for your words, Danny. They mean so much to me!!

And I absolutely agree. Being anything other than frustrated while writing is such a delight, and probably something I need to cherish, haha.

I’ve been trying to start writing for so long but i never know where to start.

Also just wanna say I’m absolutely obsessed with the concept of Zero Cycle, it’s so good and i love the subtle links to DSMP. It’s been so long since i felt the thrill of following a faceless streamer ;)

I’m absolutely obsessed with OP and Lando, they live rent free in my head!

Thank you sooo much for your kind words about Zero Cycle!!

I was incredibly deep in the whole MCYT scene for years, but never actually wrote fic for it, so I suppose it's only fair that it has come back to haunt me now that I've already moved on to F1, hahaha.

The thrill of being obsessed with a faceless streamer is genuinely one of the most exhilarating things I've ever experienced online, and I think that's also why it's so much fun for me to write. Because I can actually relate to Lando and the way he is absolutely agonising over what Oscar looks like. I have sooo been there, hahaha.

And to your other question: where do I find inspiration and motivation for my fics? That's such an excellent question.

I think inspiration and motivation come from two very different places for me.

Inspiration is something that strikes all at once, usually with the subtlety of a fucking freight train, and suddenly gives me an idea that I absolutely have to pursue. Like when I was ill and watching that Midoffs video on Couriway's channel, and I became completely obsessed with the impressively calm way he coached Jumper. I immediately went: "Okay, but what if this was Osc and Lando?"

And motivation is something entirely different. Motivation is something I have to actively work for.

For me, writing is honestly 90% struggle. It's being demotivated, confused, overwhelmed, convinced the entire fic is terrible, and then showing up anyway. One of the biggest lessons I had to learn was that inspiration isn't what carries you through the writing of a story, but it just gets you started.

What carries you through is discipline, showing up every day, holding yourself accountable, and keeping your eyes on the finish line, even when you're sick of the story and want to abandon it entirely, hahaha.

That's really the best answer I can give. In my experience, a lot of writing is just hard work and deciding to keep going even when every instinct is telling you to just give up and find a normal hobby.