sorry abt this becoming wayyy to long lol i had it ready to go, you brought up sm stuff i find so interesting! the parallels between them are exactly why oscarmark are so compelling (at least to me) as a mentor-protege duo and why there is SO MUCH material when you bring them over into rpfland. the projection of their masculinity onto each other is something that could really go either way tbh. is the forcefemming to help mark come to terms with this self-perceived failure? in a slightly more messed up way, does he try to affirm his masculinity by doing it to oscar, who fulfills more of the 'traditional requirements'? by extension, is this something oscar is secure enough to enjoy at least in a sexual context and how does that affect mark's inner turmoil about the very part of his identity he's fighting so hard to deny? just so many avenues to explore those themes in nasty smut fanfiction because it reflects their approaches to their careers, the question then becomes who’s more macho, iceboy or aussie grit?
on the whole managerial thing, yes mark not knowing what exactly is the correct kind of relationship to keep with oscar, being too hands on and parental just like ann might have been with him. this is where i see more on oscars side of the story. hes been so self-sufficient sure but really, he went from doing all this karting with his own dad to being essentially all alone in a different country for opportunities he wasn’t getting too many of. then to have this older guy who you’ve looked up to (maybe not as a driver but as a countryman, more on that later) coming in and immediately telling you you’re a champion and offering to make your life so much easier for you, quote unquote ‘taking care of everything else’ so all he has to focus on is the driving? its easy for us now to turn our noses up at mark webber for his apparent failures in his career, but to the majority of young people in motorsport, he lived the dream just by making it to f1. for oscar, whos still not even 20 and struggling with sponsors/seats and wants exactly that, to have mark drop him right into the exact right places at the exact right times– prema, renault/alpine, mclaren– results in this whole other case of mark being a significant catalyst in oscar getting everything he wants, all while filling that pseudo-parental role he’s been lacking for years. i think there’s definitely an attachment that forms there. and of course, minus the prior career stuff, this is exactly what ann was for mark. re: what you said about mark when he was in that position, he never really did the growing up that oscar has already done but he’s able to kind of explore what it could have been like through oscar, he gets to revisit his youth in this manner and even though he doesn't necessarily have that control, he gets to feel like he does and he probably feels connected to oscar through that as well.
i think there’s also something v interesting to me about how ann as a manager might be, in marks view/hindsight, detrimental to his career in the whole gender politics of it all. his professional ‘failures’ could certainly been chalked up to unwise career decisions, red bull’s preferential treatment but also better contracts he turned down etc. and having a woman behind the scenes for his career becomes an easy target to blame those issues on because obviously women are weak and failures, that’s why mark has become a failure like a woman. however, now he sees an opportunity where he can be that strong, masculine presence behind oscar to help him and he can use that passive involvement in oscars subsequent victories as a second chance to prove his own success professionally to himself. going back to the oscar bit, there’s such an interesting power dynamic there, who’s helping who and who’s using who and how they’ve stuck to each other over the years. and along the way, who’s emotions are getting the better of them?
personally the best answer is neither and they’re both losers but that’s just One Person’s Opinion anyways lol
Oooo a lot of interesting stuff here!! Thank you for sharing so many of your thoughts! I’ll respond in depth below the cut to make the length of this post reasonable lol.
I approached my mark /oscarmark forceful post from the angle of Oscar (or Ann) forcefemming Mark as a sort of catharsis for his perceived failures of masculinity — tapping into the part of human psychology that blurs the lines between arousal and fear through Mark’s fear that he has failed as a man.
There really are so many different ways to approach forcfem as a theme in athlete ref!!! I really love that you brought up the potential of Mark forcefemming Oscar as a way for him to redirect his own insecurities onto Oscar. In particular because, as you said, because there’s a general feeling (at least today, right now) that Oscar is able to achieve his goals (and therefore affirm his masculine identity) in a more complete, palatable manner. Perhaps Mark and Ann play with gender in the bedroom, where Mark is able to acknowledge that he finds these things hot — until the minute he leaves the bedroom, and the full weight of his shame towards his sexual interests and masculinity falls down on him. Redirecting his desire to be forcefemmed onto Oscar could be a way for Mark to simultaneously absolve himself and punish him (vicariously) for his uncomfortable sexual desire. I’m thinking about the dynamic between a crossdresser/trans woman/sissy/etc and a “straight” man who fetishizes (and mistreats) them because he finds his own desire to crossdress/transition/etc shameful and repulsive.
Your points about Mark’s role as Oscar’s manager are very well-put — for a young Aussie trying to make it in the European/British junior series, having Mark’s expertise as someone who had actually navigated not just the transition to F1 but the transition from Australian motorsport to F1 would be invaluable, and very heartening for young, goal-oriented Oscar. This is admittedly where my knowledge of Mark and Oscar falters; it’d be interested to know what has been said, exactly, about the role Mark played in facilitating Oscar’s choice of teams in his junior career through today. Unquestionably Ann played a major role in getting him there too; she is British and has connections in the British motorsports world for longer than Mark has been racing (though I suspect that her involvement would have been written out of the narrative, as she often is when Oscar’s management is discussed).
And then there’s the matter of Mark observing Oscar’s coming of age, and living vicariously through it — this is interesting and I’ll have to give it more thought. I sort of wonder how much Mark would actually be able to look at Oscar’s life at 18 and see someone who was actively growing up. To justify getting into a relationship with Ann around that same age, I think Mark would need to believe that he’d already done all of the growing up he’d needed to do (or, at the very least, that Ann made sure he matured quickly). But perhaps closely observing Oscar being an 18/19 year-old kid, even a particularly mature one, would have Mark revisiting his youth, as you say, and wondering how much he actually was so grown-up after all. I wonder if he’d be able to sit with that thought. Maybe it would be too uncomfortable for him to look at face-on.
