g'day! here’s a collection of potentially useful links, information, and recommendations for you to explore. just a quick reminder: this blog is a hate-free zone and a safe space.
faves: LS18, MV1, CL16, OP81, FC43
Cas (they/she), 27, based in the australian east coast timezone. I took a long break from Tumblr and writing to focus on getting my life back on track after experiencing internet community burnout. I stumbled into the chaotic world of F1 fandom midway through last year and have since become an enthusiastic plotter and angst merchant.
about tag | brainrot tag | edits tag | prompt fics
unnegotiable ship: lestappen
ships that compel me: landoscar, maxcar, lestapstri, lawstappen, lialex, strollastri, brocedes
ONE-SHOTS:
achilles come down | 21k | mature
lestappen | canon divergence
fool me twice (shame on me) | 10.6k | explicit
lestappen | canon compliant
seven clicks from solitude | 10.4k | explicit
lestappen | firewatch!au
swipe the key (come inside) | 3k | explicit
lestapstri | winners room | art insp
from my body, flowers shall grow | 16.5k | explicit
landoscar | resurrection!au | insp tag
in the firing line | 5.5k | explicit
landoscar | chef!au
taking the redeye | 8k | explicit
lawstappen | alt universe!not drivers
MULTI-CHAP:
bet on your hands and knees | 6.8k | explicit (ongoing)
liam/everyone & lawpinto | grindr!au
a single great error (pt i) | 12.4k | mature
what is done, cannot be undone (pt ii) | 13k | mature
landoscar & lestappen | hamartia magic!au
(bonus content here & here)
ONE-SHOTS:
what has been (what i can't save)
lestappen | time traveller!au
cut down to size
lestappen & lialex | boxing!au
i'd bleed myself dry for you
landoscar | hanahaki!au
MULTI-CHAP:
if you could see 'em now (you'd be proud)
strolawstappen | bullrider!au
ad astra (to the stars)
multi-ship | star trek!au | (insp)
the consequence of action (pt iii)
lestappen | hamartia magic!au
just one more time before i go
landoscar | mcd
I see you in the light that's in every morning
I hear you in the night when I'm all alone
You're everything my heart could've ever wanted
I don't wanna believe that you're really gone
Landoscar | From My Body, Flower Shall Grow | Sometimes by Ashley Singh
I see you in the light that's in every morning
I hear you in the night when I'm all alone
You're everything my heart could've ever wanted
I don't wanna believe that you're really gone
Landoscar | From My Body, Flower Shall Grow | Sometimes by Ashley Singh
🌀Post the fic summary for a fic you haven't written/published yet. It can be hypothetical or something you really plan on releasing...
❄️Share a snippet from a WIP of your choosing.
🌤️Share your favorite piece of dialogue from your WIP.
🌧️Share something angsty from your WIP.
🌈 Share something soft/fluffy from your WIP.
💧Share something romantic/hot from your WIP, or just something sweet if it's gen.
🌩️ Share something funny/cracky from your WIP.
☔Is there a fic concept you have that you'd like to just explain and share because you're not sure you'll ever write it? If so, what is it?
🌪️Sum up a WIP with a few fic tropes/Ao3 tags.
may i please ask aboutvtge lestappen second meeting fic? when did they first meet? is it just immortality or also a case of reincarnation? how many lives have they had together?
🥹🥹🥹 oh how i love love fics like this and youve written this one so well
eeee, thank you for the ask!
Max is a vampire, he's been one for over 600 years by the time of the prompt. He was born in the region that ends up becoming the Netherlands centuries later.
For the sake of Max’s memories within the story, he believes his first meeting with Charles took place in 1792, while travelling through France.
As a vampire, and perpetually hungry, the surge of revolution in France at the time provided a cover for his nightly activities and also a change of scenery after a few centuries sequesters to British shores.
Back then, Monaco was still referred to as the Principality of Monaco, not its own independent country just yet, as it was under French control until after the revolution. That’s where he meets Charles, a portrait artist living by the coastline.
Max had followed the coast because he'd been haunted by music for days, and had drifted for miles until he came upon an open window facing the ocean and the night, where Charles was humming softly to himself.
Charles, however, had no desire to be made immortal. He believed that life, that the weakness in his bones and the rhythm of his heartbeat, however weak they could get, was what allowed him to pour soul into his paintings and into his love.
It was that soul which Max loved. The same he couldn't bear to take it from him.
So when Max eventually lost Charles, he never expected to see him again.
—
So yeah, it’s a story of both reincarnation and immortality. The truth behind it is that Charles and Max share halves of the same soul, and they’re blessed (and cursed) to keep finding each other over and over again through time. But Max’s immortality stunted his cycle of rebirth, and now he’s stuck searching for Charles again and again, only to lose him each time.
Always knowing the Charles he finds is his, but also knowing he never truly is.
Because Max was once in love with a Charles he doesn't remember, from before he was turned.
a lot has been said over the last couple of days about the rise of AI use in f1 fanfic spaces, but I do feel like as a fairly prolific writer within lestappen, with a lot of followers who consume/write fic, I should say something as well.
I want to make it entirely clear that I have zero tolerance for AI usage in fic, and especially clear that I have never and will never use it myself.
There are a lot of reasons why I don't agree with AI, namely that it plagiarises writers and is incredibly bad for the environment, but I think that at this point, those reasons are probably not enough to make people stop doing it.
So perhaps something that might actually have a bit more meaning: please stop and think about why you're even bothering to do this.
do you think that you're going to get clout for writing fic? clout in ... f1 rpf spaces? do you think you're going to make money? do you think it's going to help you make friends within the community?
as somebody who is very lucky to have a lot people consume my work, I want to be abundantly clear:
the reason I get so much validation from people enjoying what I wrote is because I wrote it. I know the time I spent on it, how much of myself I put into it, and I'm proud to have people enjoy something that I spent hours and hours putting to page.
I do not make a single cent from anything I've written, nor have I ever been offered money.
I've definitely made friends, but there are a lot of people in my server that do not write and who have made friends through it. using AI will actually only alienate you from the community.
and, finally, please, for the love of god, consider what you're doing to this community. you're making people paranoid, and exhausted. making real authors not want to write anymore. making readers not want to read anymore! everyone is questioning everything, and it's directly because you're fostering an environment where nobody feels like they can trust anything.
the thought that somebody might ever question whether I use AI in my fics makes me genuinely tear up. the discourse around the em dash being a sign that a writer used AI, when the actual fact is that AI only uses the em dash because it stole from fanfic writers, is so upsetting to me. people are questioning their own writing style because of this!
I do believe that at the end of the day, the reason people are using AI is because they want to be part of this community and don't know another way to do it. as a writer here, please listen to me very clearly when I say that all you're doing is slowly causing the implosion of this fandom/fandom spaces.
If you want this community to continue to produce fics, please, please, understand that AI is not welcome here.
I say, I will love you till this life to the next."
lestappen for spa 25' prompt: second meeting
In the slow-moving hours of a London winter’s day, Max sits in silence, watching himself from across the canvas.
The National Gallery is quiet for a Monday; only the distant sound of children’s hushed whispers breaking the peace as they’re shepherded through the halls by an attentive arts tutor. The group is here to view November's new exhibit. Portraits line the gallery walls, each one bathed in soft, downcast light.
He’d arrived early enough for the sun to have yet risen, and now as the clock tolls into midday, he is imprisoned within the boundaries of the gallery and his own history.
Behind him, the tutor drones on about the influence of Rembrandt in the unknown artist's work. How the brushwork, the richness of the palette and the depth of shadows cling to each subject's flesh like memory. As though the artist was trying to immoralise the world around him in every creasing brow.
Max knows better.
Knows that the artist had never studied Rembrandt, did not even know of his existence from his studio on the coast of the principalities of Monaco. That his strokes did not seek to mimic masters, but had lived between raw urgency and original longing. The scratches and mistakes all marks of the manic fatigue of a man balanced precariously between life and death.
From his bench, a pair of blue eyes looks down at him through a heavy brow.
Perhaps if each passing stranger wasn’t so engrossed in themselves, they might notice the familiarities between Max and the portrait he gazes upon. But an age of mobile phones has stunted attention and made it all the easier to blend within plain sight.
“You don’t see work like this anymore,” comes a soft voice to his right.
Max does not startle, but he makes himself jump, brings air to his lungs he doesn't need in a mimicry of breath. He doesn't look away from the portrait, half in memory of a ghosts touch; the artist’s fingers grazing his cheek in gratitude for sitting so still.
“Too many think portraiture’s dead now that photography exists,” the stranger huffs, and the sound is like an echo of something Max had forgotten he’d memorised. “But you can see the love here. Especially… here.”
A step, then another on the hard wooden floors, and Max tracks the back of the man’s head as he steps up to the boundary of the portrait. Tracing a hand up along the curve of his painted jaw.
“There’s a dip,” the man murmurs, “from cheekbone to jaw. And that freckle on the lip; no photographer would have kept it. But the artist did. He painted it. Which means he loved him. Or else he wouldn’t have noticed enough to care.”
Max is stuck on the gentle curve of the man’s wrist, the barely glipsed relief of his profile under the warm gallery light. He’s too enraptured by the Max of centuries ago to fully turn to face the Max beside him.
“The gallery says they were friends,” Max says at last, his voice low. “Or perhaps brothers.”
It earns him a laugh. Then the man turns, and all of Max’s fake breath stills in his dead chest.
Charles looks at him, so clearly alive in the flush of his cheeks. He can hear the beating of his pulse in his throat, how his heart stutters when they catch each other's eyes.
“No, they were lovers,” he says with such surety that Max smiles, his teeth sharp in his mouth.
“How can you be so sure?”
It is not the question he wants to ask. There are too many others. How are you here? Do you remember? How old are you now?
Because the Charles before him is not the same as Max, set in stone against the passage of time. Yet, he is the same as he once was. Dark hair a mess of curls, eyes green as fresh pine. The only difference is his clothes and the energy in his stance.
Max’s Charles had lived in a fever dream of lethargy, half-drained in the name of inspiration. If Max remembers hard enough, he can still feel the stale echo of Charles’ blood coating his throat, the duel beating of their hearts as he fed each morning.
But this Charles, who might not even carry the same name, does not look at him with familiarity. If he notices the resemblance between man and portrait, he doesn’t mention it. Though his eyes flicker to the mirror of a freckle on Max’s lip, the same hollow creases of his cheeks.
That skip of his heart had been surprised at the familiarities, but he didn't question or leave. Perhaps he also feels the draw between them, like an orbital pull.
“Because he painted his muse the same way I would paint you now,” He says softly.
For all six centuries of Max’s existence, that surprises him.
“Then you should—” Max pauses as the other man arches a brow, a silent question. He finishes, “—paint me, that is.”
That smile, an aching sight Max thought would only ever exist in his memories, widens.
“I wouldn’t say no. But I think we should get a coffee first,” the man says, taking a step closer.
Max can smell him now, brushed through with familiarity but touched by the city's pollutants; dulled by this modern life. The purity of the Monegasque coast hidden beneath it all.
“Charles,” he says, offering a hand.
Max clasps it in his own, feeling the heady thrum of a heartbeat beneath the delicate skin of his wrist.
Spa had it all (I'll fight you for calling it boring)
Nico Rosberg basically taking the first half of the year off and then showing up in Spa as a full-blown tea-spilling, yaoi-peddling, goblin of chaos.
Lestappen is finally giving us "he is the only one who can match my freak and I his" again.
George somehow found a way to mix his DNA with a kangaroo and was literally bouncing all over the paddock and driver's parade truck. The weirder he gets, the more he grows on me.
Brocedes in the year of our Lord Yaoi 2025 in a mega dose unseen for years (pics were even shown live)
Yuki is going to be Oscar's new controversially young stepdad.
Lewis finally figuring out that if you just ignore logic and turn off your thoughts, suddenly the SF25 is borderline functional. Just don't perceive the car and it can go vroom vroom.
Jenson Button in a leather jacket...
Thierry Neuville and my favorite little guy Martijn Wydaeghe in the Paddock. BONUS: Thierry getting to hand out the pole award.
Rain delays are honestly a treat. Time filling always turns to chaos.
Max telling his poor sub engineer to "chillax".
The entire Redbull Staff showed up smiling and like they've spent the last week having the best sleep of their lives... wonder what changed (lol)
That's just the surface stuff. The racing was entertaining, all the rookies survived for once in the rain, and Charles Leclerc got to go home with a trophy that looks like anal beads.
