norstappen 🤔
anonymous asked: nobody asked you about norstappen? 🤔 i was never a fan of that ship, but there were moments in the last couple of years that almost brought tears to my eyes, because, rpf aside, i know they were close 😭
goddd for a while i was actually extremely fond of norstappen. like nonnie said, i do think lando and max were genuinely really close, and when lando first moved to monaco (and was missing the other maxF), he hung out with maxV a lot, like he was even at P's birthday party. i think they had a lot of fun together being embarrassing at clubs and losers on the sim.
in 2024 i found the push pull of their on track tension and friendship fascinating. but it is my personal headcanon that after that time when lando said publicly he thought max should apologize but then was the one who reached out in the morning - which made max very happy, oh he and lando had such a great chat it was all good etc. etc. - ultimately severed the friendship. which could certainly still be interesting from an rpf perspective, like friend break ups (and you add the layer of unacknowledged attraction to gay it up) are ripe fodder.
but the unrelenting haterism last season by max fans saying the most unbelievably nasty mean things about lando has completely burst the bubble of any interest i previously had.
the fandom culture of joyful haterism in F1 feels very antithetical to creative inspiration. instead of talking about things that are interesting or chewy or juicy, it's just like. this guy is bad horrible awful irredeemable. it ends up with really siloed fan groups where it's like you can only follow people who support the same guy as you because otherwise you're going to see unrelenting nastiness, and i fucking hate that. i want to know what's appealing about different guys or other pairings. i want to be able to experience the second hand joy when other people's guys have an awesome time.
i think blocking culture is so counter to creating a COMMUNITY, and i hate that the default is just "i'm going to say whatever horrible thing i want and if you disagree with me, block me, and if i disagree with you, i'm going to block you."
i know with certainty that the max fans talking trash about lando don't care in the slightest that their meanness makes norstappen no longer feel like a fun pairing to explore, because they were never going to read it any way.
but i see endless posts about how fun it is to be a hater, so i think it's also fair for me to say that i don't think it's fun. i don't think it fosters creativity. i don't think it makes fandom feel like a community, but instead like this series of very niche in-groups that are very aggressive to anyone to likes the wrong things.
