extremely normal about 숑넨

HELLO EVERYNYAN

[MID 2010S GAMING YOUTUBER VOICE] welcome back to another fic commentary my name is RIVER and this time i will be explaining “tu tornerai da me con le mani giunte” both chapters ONE and TWO. heavy spoilers ahead READ THE FIC! let’s get into it!

CONTEXT

this fic has been a long time coming. i’ve been wanting to write something f1 since february but i had a lot of struggle coming up with something original. f1 just already has so many of its own archetypes that it felt like coming up with my own was an impossible task. if you are an f1 fan, you would have noticed that many places where i took inspiration from real f1 drivers and their dynamics and that’s because i learned to embrace the pre-existing archetypes, and learned to recognize where i simply had too much to say about a particular dynamic or driver that i had to include them in some way.

if you are curious, here are some of my inspirations behind the characterizations / archetypes (on top of the people themselves, of course):

park wonbin — charles leclerc, nico rosberg

jung sungchan — george russell, lewis hamilton

chung yunho — lewis hamilton

kim jaejoong — nico rosberg

osaki shotaro — sebastian vettel, max verstappen

lee anton — oscar piastri

as for why i picked ferrari and mercedes for wonbin and sungchan…

okay. ferrari and wonbin. this isn’t even me being biased as a tifoso but just being #real okay. ferrari is literally the most perfect team for wonbin if he was an f1 driver and it’s not even close. wonbin irl is such a perfectionist and he is so obsessive over his performance and being the best there ever is. #legacy and #perfectionism. hm. where have we heard that before. ah yes. scuderia fucking ferrari

i was not making up any of the insane and intense ferrari loyalty and legacy in the fic just for dramatic purposes btw that is as real as real can get. charles leclerc succession edit if u even care. my favorite charles leclerc webweave if u even care. the beauty of scuderia ferrari if u even care. like i’m being dead serious when i say ferrari is something so personal to the entire nation of italy and anyone who ever has and ever will drive for them and ferrari is the second biggest religion in italy next to catholicism. it’s sebastian vettel saying “everyone is a ferrari fan. even if they say they’re not, they’re a ferrari fan” and enzo ferrari saying “ask a child to draw a car, certainly he will draw it red” and charles leclerc saying “if ferrari is a cage, i will happily lock myself in it.” it’s SERIOUS. and it’s perfect for wonbin’s perfectionist, obsessive personality

as for sungchan and mercedes. this has a lot to do with mercedes’ history in f1. it’s the way no one thought of mercedes to be a championship winning team at all for its first few years in f1 after they reentered the competition but when they finally stopped being dumb with their car development, guess what? yeah. they dominated the sport for the better half of a decade. it was seven straight years of pretty much back to back wins, guaranteed podiums and seven fucking championships in a row. that’s insane. this is also how i feel about sungchan and his idol career thus far

he also just fits the vibe really well. sungchan’s kinda sleek and chic and ‘minimalist’ in some ways and that’s just mercedes’ brand in f1 honestly and as a car brand in general. he fits their image, i feel like he would align with their values as a team, and when i think of mercedes’ most well known drivers (lewis hamilton, nico rosberg, valtteri bottas, george russell) sungchan just. fits in with them. 

if you are an f1 fan you can feel free to disagree with this and have your own headcanons for which teams fit them the best, but if you are going to make that argument i need a thousand word essay with an annotated bibliography on my desk by five pm tomorrow ok. (aka: idgaf this is my fic and i’ll do what i want)

okay moving on

IDEA

okay. so. lots of things here. basically i knew i really REALLY wanted an f1 au but after thinking about it some more and finishing nbmb, i just realized that if it was JUST f1, it would not be more than 10k. at MOST. there are only so many dynamics that two f1 drivers can have with one another you know. i needed to add another thing to it that would make it unique and would make it interesting for a longform narrative. after mixing and matching a lot of tropes (enemies to lovers, engineer/driver, fan/driver, driver/other kind of celebrity, etc) i eventually landed on soulmates. the specific brand of soulmates was its own thing too, i almost had them have matching bruises or something like that. the rest is history and came into its own naturally!

i am obviously a huge f1 fan and i may be willing to explore the above ^ dynamics at a different time with a different pairing, but it’ll definitely be way shorter and it won’t be over an entire season 😭 and it also won’t be at any point in the near future just because i think it’s safe to say i’ve had my f1 fill for now. so that’s that as it stands currently

i also obviously have to give credit where credit is due and say that the quiet machine by ada limon and behind f1’s velvet curtain by kate wagner inspired a lot of the running motifs in the fic! go read them if you haven’t already. the second one is also so interesting even if you don’t like f1, trust me just read it.

TITLE

so i actually wanted to use this title for a different syongnen fic! i wanted to name it either something else in italian (maybe ‘striscia, prega, confonditi’ in lividi sui gomiti or something) or “those starved dogs howling” (hunted down – soundgarden) but i ended up going back to this title Yes even if it is so long because it fit narratively in lots of different ways. it’s in italian, it translates to you’ll come back to me with folded/praying hands and it is just. so HEART WRENCHING in a way that fits the fic perfectly. it just fits! i recommend listening to at least the final verse of the song because it really encapsulates the feeling i wanted to convey well

QUOTES

CHAPTER 1 

“He was born in England to immigrant parents, particularly a father who loved motorsports, but never raced himself.” - if u were wondering why i made wonbin english and sungchan monegasque (by nationality) it’s because both england and monaco have huge ties to motorsports and south korea… doesn’t lol. as for why sungchan’s from monaco, monaco is a VERY rich and very small country and it’s heavily implied that sungchan’s parents are also rich throughout the story. this also is never mentioned but a lot of drivers can race under the flag of their ethnicity and not their nationality, but wonbin races under the english flag and sungchan races under the south korean one. another reason why wonbin is english is because he could race and compete in a lot of local karting championships in england and get to other european championships through sponsors, but sungchan doesn’t have that problem because wherever he’s missing money, his parents can fill it in

“Now that he’s at Ferrari, Silvia always emphasises that — Think of the history, think of the brand, every move you make, everything you say, you are representing Ferrari with it.” - silvia is a real person and a real pr officer for ferrari! lol i was going to replace her with maybe a 2nd gen gg member but i just decided to keep her in anyway. and yes she does say things like that all the time. luv her

“Ferrari is Fangio. Ferrari is Lauda. Ferrari is Schumacher. It’s Lauda being buried in a Ferrari suit, and Vettel saying his career is a failure because he didn’t win with Ferrari, and it’s speed, power and tragedy.” - trying to figure out where the real f1 grid ends and where the kpop one begins was sooooo hard lol like unfortunately in my calculations sebastian vettel (again another real f1 driver and a 4x world champion) raced alongside [checks notes] chung yunho kim jaejoong and sungchan too. great!

“He knows that many before him have tried fulfilling a prophecy that doesn’t want to be fulfilled, and failed doing so.” - this refers to the fact that currently ferrari haven’t win a drivers championship since 2007 and a constructors since 2008. before michael schumacher’s first championship win w ferrari in 2000, they went through another drought from 1979. by the statistics, ferrari is the most successful team in f1, but they also go through long periods of championship droughts lol

“It was a silly thing, but no one could tell him then that he deserved to have that too, not until he was in F1, not until a championship. / Or if he decided to be impatient, then a race.” - lolololololololol

“There are no punishments that are directly tied to [having a soulmate] (not after what happened in 2005, that’s for sure).” - don’t ask me what happened in 2005 bc idk either. there were LOADS of scandals happening in f1 in the 00’s so it just felt right. (look up spygate, crashgate, michelin tyre fiasco in 2005, etc etc. again a lot of controversies back then)

“There has only been one known soulmate bond on the grid — Chung Yunho and Kim Jaejoong.” - emphasis on KNOWN. there is 1000% other soulmate bonds on both the past and current grid, but yunho and jaejoong are the only ones which are publicly KNOWN.

“They had found out after they became teammates and agreed to keep it a secret over a decade ago. When that secret only turned into resentment, and resentment turned to tragedy, Kim Jaejoong won his maiden, and only, championship.” - this is very obviously inspired by brocedes (lewis hamilton and nico rosberg). explanations posted HERE and yunjae explanation posted HERE

“...what it means to drive for Red Bull is something completely and utterly different than what it means to drive for the Scuderia.” - this is true! like again i explained mercedes and ferrari earlier and it’s easy to think that it’s all the same when it comes to the f1 teams but i assure u it’s not. not only in differences between sponsors machinery and quality of the teams, but their cultures are wildly different. redbull and ferrari have VERY different cultures and values as a team, and so do mercedes and mclaren.

“He’s not the only person who has felt like this before, he knows, he understands. However, he’s the only person in the world who feels like this currently.” - here is a quote by james baldwin: “You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was Dostoevsky and Dickens who taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who ever had been alive. Only if we face these open wounds in ourselves can we understand them in other people.”

“Hey, why did you call me an arsehole?” Sungchan’s face contorts in anger, turning to the person driving the car and the medical officer in the front, “Didn’t you hear that? He just called me an arsehole!” - drivers used to get into fist fights now they just whine to fia staff that their soulmate called them an asshole

“Can’t you like— Send me something like a warning? Through my chest or something? He breathes in through his nose and out through his mouth.” - this is a remnant of their soulmate bond that didn’t make it through in the final fic lol i Was gonna make it so that they can actually feel and affect each others emotions through their bond on top of being able to hear each other but. it just didn’t work out and i’m glad it was only them hearing each other instead

“He sends back, Is it not your dream? To win with Mercedes? / No. He sounds very— Firm, is the word. Here is the line in the sand. No one is allowed to draw in, on or around it. It is my line in the sand. It is my job, and there’s a very crucial difference.” - honestly just kinda how i feel about mercedes in general (as a tifoso so i’m very biased) but there’s just something about mercedes that is soooooooo. detached. they’re there to do their job (sometimes very badly lol sorry to any merc fans) and that’s about it. which obv plays a role later for sungchan and his characterization

“He congratulated him and partied with him for all the days afterward no matter how much he hates partying (yes, plural)...” - just feels right for shotaro to celebrate his first championship win for like five days straight in a row lol love him

“And he does mean friends, not because their team’s PR is forcing them to.” - i’m not gonna comment too much on pr friendships in f1 esp bc some ppl will get ummmmm [checks notes] Very Very mad at me but they exist and they’re a disease. lots of u need to get better soon (aka know that ur drivers are not friends in any capacity but not gaf anyway n jus having some silly fun)

“No. He digs his fingernail into one of his cuticles. He tries to take the calmer approach to it: You are just here, and there is no deeper meaning to it. It’s been four days since the crash, and therefore, four days of being soulmates. You are just here.” - wonbin trying to convince himself that a) sungchan being there has no deeper meaning and b) it’s only 4 days of being soulmates, and not an entire lifetime, which would mean they weren’t already soulmates when they kissed lol

“Sungchan is P8 which is frustrating for him too. This is just so frustrating. I dont even know if it would be any different if we weren’t F1 drivers. Whatever” - sorta meant to imply that they would still be struggling even if they were in riize btw like lol it makes no difference that they’re f1 drivers. this comes from my personal frustrations with soulmates being portrayed as like people who ~~ complete ~~ you and connection with them is just so ~~ easy ~~ and ~~ frictionless ~~ and i just. couldn’t disagree more. that is so dumb. ur soulmate is a person whos supposed to challenge u in every way. theyre supposed to help u grow. i’ll elaborate this more later

“This is going to be a very, very long season.” - true! even i wasnt expecting it to be this long even though it covers an entire season of f1 lol

“When the ceremony is over and they both walk out, Wonbin finds it appropriate that they’re both wearing masks and sunglasses, therefore not being able to properly see each other.” - soooooo heavy handed yes i know sorry but it’s trying to say that even after the ritual they’re still gonna have some trouble understanding one another and well. that’s exactly what happened

“He knew it’s often not like what he imagined it would be, but he had hoped for a kind of instant connection.” - a lot of people have this misconception with our version of soulmates too but again thats just not how it works

“Maybe he was conflating the concepts of ‘soulmate’ and ‘significant other’ together. They do both start with S, anyway.” - hm. s. sssssssssss. s. Sungch

“He wonders if he’s feeling the correct thing. He wonders if he’s ever going to really figure this out. / Right now, it feels like he never will.” - goes with the whole machine thing in a way, wonbin thinking he can either be ‘good’ or ‘bad’ or the things he can feel are either ‘correct’ or ‘incorrect.’ that’s true with machines, but not with human beings. there is no correct way to be soulmates. there’s no guidebook for a reason. the whole story is basically them struggling to figure out how exactly being soulmates works for them, and them alone

“...He likes that the race is held around the time of cherry blossom season, and he likes Suzuka as a circuit.” - yes yes it was usually held around september but it was held during cherry blossom this year and it will also be held at a similar time next year so it works fine enough

“Maybe it’d be easier if they were a different kind of athlete, like football, volleyball or track and field. Maybe it’d be different if they were ghosts. Maybe it’d be different if they were writers of novels and TV shows. Maybe it’d be different if they were office workers. Maybe it’d be different if they were singers.” - in order: a combination reference to nbmb (and how i was considering making it syongnen for 0.2 seconds before eunseok worms took over) and how sungchan likes football/soccer and wonbin used to do track and field, a reference to spectre, a (somewhat) reference to an old wip of mine, just a random idea i had once for riize coworkers (that’s probably not gonna happen btw), and a reference to obviously this universe where they ARE singers lol. but again, their problems as soulmates wouldn’t be much different in any of these different scenarios. 

“He hums back, “Well, of course it would be fun. We’d be singers. That’s infinitely easier than what we do.” / “Everyone’s got their own struggles, Wonbin.” He shrugs, “They don’t have neck exercises, sure, but they got vocal exercises. And I’m sure the bigger singers would relate with us on the jet lag if nothing else.” - a huge difference in perspective here which contributes to some problems later

“The hotel beer is giving him enough confidence to call out, “Um… Sungchan,” while he’s twiddling with his controller and thumbs, and Sungchan has his PS5 open on the menu now. At least it’s not media day tomorrow, or otherwise they both would’ve been far too dead and tired to give a coherent sentence to any reporter. Sungchan looks up from his own controller. The unidentifiable Japanese beer has given him enough confidence to ask, “What— What do you think about… You know… Us?” - if you have never been a man trying to have any kind of honest conversation with another man i promise you you’re not missing much because this is it. some of the most heart wrenching conversations i’ve had in my life thus far was while the ps4/ps5 menu screen was open 

“It’s not about what’s easy. If it were supposed to be easy, maybe it should’ve been friends or lovers instead. This is supposed to be hard.” - this isn’t to say that having friends and lovers can’t be hard, but having a soulmate is exceptionally hard in a different way because it encapsulates every kind of love. and while the love you have for your friends or lovers can transform you, it is possible to fall out of love with them, but for soulmates, you’re always going to love them and miss them. always. it’s incurable. that’s what makes it so hard

“this car is an actual wheelbarrow ohhhhhh ferrari you piss me off just like the day i first met you” - i had SO MUCH FUN writing the tweets (even if writing the code into the fic was a little annoying) and this is also my real genuine reaction watching the sf-24 in action even as a tifoso. forza ferrari

“It’s how he earns his first six points in the championship. Yunho has nearly five times more points. Sungchan nearly has double the points. Speaking of him, he’s the reason why he fell back into the positions he did. He couldn’t focus when getting overtaken by the McLarens. That’s his issue. Focus. Being quiet. The forever thing.” - this is how the first beads of resentment in wonbin start planting themselves in :-D

“If the machine starts making noise, loud noise, in a way it’s not designed to, that usually means something is wrong. Something is broken.” - some of u probably picked up on the whole machines = humans thing very early on but yeah. machines aren’t supposed to be broken and make noise. they’re not supposed to cry and wail. (sarcastic i’ll also explain this later)

“He is so good, it’s made him a living, breathing legend. He’s so good, he drove his best friend, teammate and soulmate away from him. He’s so good, it’s made him bigger than Formula One, and therefore bigger than himself, and more than he will ever know how to handle.” - kind of sort of a comment on lewis hamilton and yunho too after being in the industry for over 20 years now. it’s hard to stay attached when ur so far beyond it and lewis especially is just soooooo much bigger than formula one like a lot of f1 drivers are known in the wider motorsports and sports community yes but lewis hamilton is srsly a household name. can’t blame him for it

“Well— You and… Jaejoong…” / Yunho’s eyes shoot wide open before they turn over liquid smooth. “Ah,” He even smiles, but they both know it’s not really something to find funny. “Of course. Should’ve seen this coming, and yet, I didn’t.” - yunho, just like lewis, never ever talks about jaejoong in public and he refuses to say his name even if he’s referring to him in an anecdote. jaejoong, like nico, cannot shut up about yunho in public and in interviews lol so it shows a lot of trust/respect for wonbin that he’s willing to talk about his soulmate to him. it’s not really touched on in the fic, but yunho does like wonbin even if they don’t get personal or too close w each other

“We’ve agreed to keep it private now, but I would say that now— We’re much better. We’re very quiet.” -  right now, yunho and jaejoong never directly talk to each other unless one is bothering the other in some way (disrupting sleep or being too loud). but since i’m a gigantic sucker i do have hope that they’ll be able to repair and mend their bond once yunho retires (just like i have hopes for lewis and nico after lewis retires) </3

“Hmm. Rather than being my other half, he’s just another part of me. He is full, and he is his own person, but he’s a part of me, with all his fullness and personhood.” - including jaejoong’s problems, flaws, pitfalls, and everything yunho hates and loves about him. you can’t cherrypick what you like when you have a soulmate

“He’d always imagined others taking that pair of scissors only to carefully cut Wonbin out of their lives, all the things that they hate about him, but all the things they love, too.” - oh my cognitive dissonance… how he doesn’t understand that he’s doing the exact thing to everyone around him. he has so much left to go omfg sorry but i almost feel like tu tornerai wonbin is like a BABY at this point in the story

“One of us will leave. One of us has to leave. Wonbin isn’t so sure that he’s ready to find out who that is.” - huge fan of this thing called Escaping The Narrative

“Instead, he tried telling Sungchan to Shut the fuck up — Sungchan did not hear him.” - was sungchan deliberately being loud to sabotage wonbin’s race… who’s to say really!

“He’s not so sure he wouldn’t have aimed the barrel of champagne directly into Sungchan’s eyes, blinding him with all the glory he’s seeking. If that’s what you want — he thinks quietly, in a language not his own — I will softly gauge out your eyes, and fill the sockets of them with all the trophies and podiums and champagne you want. / If only you’d leave me the fuck alone.” - not much to say here sorry i just like how i wrote this ♥️ let me be proud of myself ok

“When Sungchan ruins four straight races for Wonbin with the team he has been dreaming of driving for since he was a child, he can’t be blamed for thinking that Sungchan might just be yet another thing added to the long list of things that are hard to love about himself. / ‘You’re easy to hate, and hard to love.’ When he says this, thinks it quietly, he doesn’t know who he’s talking to.” - amazing combination of Self Loathing and Lack of Accountability <3

“park wonbin has suffered more than jesus of nazareth” - this is true for not only ferrari driver wonbin but actual wonbin. and honestly any goregrief wonbin. sorry man

“The vibes are… Okay. It can be best encapsulated by the Will Smith song.” - if u like the miami gp Amazing for u but i rly don’t. i only like the will smith edits

“The usual ones like ‘What would you be doing if you weren’t an F1 driver,’ and ‘What’s your favourite track,’ and ‘What do you do on your days off?’ The simple answers, in order: MotoGP, Monza and Imola (Spa), and sleep. See? Easy.” - in another universe i wrote a motogp au. also how he lied and said monza and imola bc even tho theyre amazing tracks he in actuality likes spa more but he needs to win the tifosi over so. yes

“It’s difficult, of course, especially when their fans compare them to each other. It’s only the fifth race, but Wonbin has learned that it’s not a great idea to check his phone more often than necessary or to search his name up on any social media platform.” - speaking of socmed again i was actually gonna make way more accounts and also include lowkey ship tweets of syongnen (yes f1 shipping happens. do not look up charles leclerc/max verstappen or lando norris/oscar piastri on ao3.) buuuuut it was way too time consuming with only a small handful of accounts. please feel free to imagine an alternate universe in which you still exist but instead of shipping idol syongnen u are shipping f1 driver syongnen instead. thank u

i’m not gonna include the quotes of the commentary transcript from miami but yeah if you didn’t know david croft (crofty) and martin brundle are real people and they are commentators for f1 on sky sports. lots of people have very mixed opinions on them but undoubtedly they (esp crofty) have delivered some legendary commentary lines so it felt important for me to include them

“If you’re so fucking sorry, then do me a favour and get out of my fucking face. Cunt.” - british people really ate with calling someone a cunt i’m sorry but it’s too good

“He registers that hurt little quiver in his lip when he sends back, Ah. Right. He looks away from him, but holds up his empty shot glass in the air and in direct view of Wonbin to prove something. Had one too many of these. I’ll leave you alone, mate.” - something about this imagery of a very hurt and tipsy sungchan absolutely breaks my heart but he deserved it lowkey

“If you cared about me, if you really, really cared about me, if our time knowing each other in F2 meant anything to you, if Barcelona meant something to you— You wouldn’t, you would not— / Are you trying to talk to me? Drunk. He’s so fucking drunk, he’s even slurring his thoughts. He’s so drunk and horny out of his mind, he can’t even think. God. Italian is such a funny language, haha, ah— Fuck, it feels so good— / No. That’s the point. I don’t want to talk to you at all. I told you that already, you fucking muppet. / He is just far too cheerful when he responds back with, Okaaaay. Hehe.” - listen i know it’s painful but lowkey this miami club scene might be one of my favs in the entire fic. it’s just SO angry and SO possessive and SUCH shitty behavior from sungchan even if he doesn’t really know what he’s doing it’s just too good. i also like how i made it clear that wonbin is thinking loudly in italian without having to translate it into italian.

“He wants to go home so badly. The problem is— He is already there.” - sungchan is his home. sungchan is always there. that’s a problem. (at least for right now). :-)

“It feels hopeless. It feels futile. It feels rotten. It feels like this game was invented just so Wonbin could always lose, and Sungchan could always win. / It feels like nothing at all.” - again i like the wording of this and also the whole plane scene even though it’s so brief its just so. can you even fucking imagine having to be FORCED to listen to your soulmate/enemy/rival/hate crush’s thoughts as he fucks a girl after he made you crash out in the race that same day and ruined all the other ones. wonbin is a better man than me because i think i would have jumped out the plane swam back to miami and strangled sungchan with my own bare hands like THIS IS CRAZY and also the fact that wonbin is a virgin and sungchan took his first kiss (and eventually his virginity) adds sooooo many layers to this. top 3 scenes and it’s not third!

“Aren’t you proud of it? Is it not your child? I’m certainly not.” - again wonbin’s struggle with getting accepted by the tifosi and feeling like he actually belongs to ferrari (even tho he quite literally ferrari running thru his veins)

“He wonders if Eunseok knows. He wonders if they will ever be in a position where they could tell Eunseok and Shotaro, then Sohee, Yunho and Anton, then the Ferrari and Mercedes higher ups, then the rest of the world, and not have it end in absolute disaster. He wonders if he will ever be able to share any of this.” - feel free to make up ur own interpretations of how these (inevitable for the most part) conversations go btw i’m not gonna tell u if ur right or wrong!

“He wants to be buried in a red grave. He wants the red to be the colour of blood. He wants it to be blood. / Instead, he places his fingers underneath his helmet and unclasps it. He gently takes it off his head, then drags his balaclava over and up his head.” - reaaaaally liked the juxtaposition of these two paragraphs back to back honestly. all consuming anger is just too fun to write man

“He wants so much. None of which he can achieve, it seems.” - slowly starting to see the machine = human thing

okay now we are onto the grief and formula one article. THIS IS NOT BASED ON MY OWN EXPERIENCE!!! I’M A VERY NEW F1 FAN ACTUALLY!!! this came as me thinking about sports team loyalty and how that connects families through generations, and how shared love for something can be used to ignore the other problems. this article was VERY close to getting cut out of the fic, but since hearing some ppl’s thoughts on it and how it touched them because it reminded them of themselves and their family members, i’m very glad i kept it in! 

it is also the result of me thinking about how. ok. this is gonna sound crazy. but f1 cars are the result of grief. the halos? grief. the survival cells? grief. the fact that f1 drivers are now covered head to toe and u cant see a single inch of their skin? grief. it’s all just so much grief and death. it’s also just such a unique case on how voyeuristic public grief can get, especially with charles leclerc, pierre gasly, senna, etc. this is my actual opinion and feelings on it: “It didn’t help that deaths in Formula One are often painted in a glorious, almost voyeuristic light, that the drivers and their grief become public property because they are public entities. These personal deaths, they’re often painted as the ‘catalysts,’ the ‘launching pads’ for good drivers to become great drivers, but that never sat well with me. The grief I held after both Lauda and my father passing away wasn’t pretty, it didn’t serve to launch me into great success, and it certainly wasn’t for others to spin a narrative around me. It wasn’t public property.”

it unsettles me greatly just how much the narrative surrounding charles leclerc, as an example, is about his personal grief regarding jules bianchi and his father. it unsettles me how just because charles is both a public entity and has the bravery to grieve publicly, his grief in and of itself becomes public property. i know charles is a grown man and he can handle himself and i’m just his fan blah blah blah but. i hate that jules himself cannot be seen as his own driver, his own person, outside of charles. i hate how some people don’t understand that charles’ grief is his own, and how he deals with it is none of our business. i hate that charles leclerc is inherently associated with tragedy just because he’s had so many personal deaths in his life and great misfortune with his time at ferrari. i hate all of it!!!

grief is not pretty, it’s not glorious, and (speaking from my own experience) it didn’t launch me into success or to go from good to great or anything like that. grief is just grief. it’s not public property. i deserve to have my privacy surrounding my grief, and so do you, and so do public entities. it just makes me sick to my stomach sorry this is kind off an off topic rant but i had to get it off my chest. ok now we are moving on

“He rips the door open to Sungchan’s driver room, it’s not hard to miss with the big bold letters that spell out JUNG SUNGCHAN, MERCEDES-AMG PETRONAS FORMULA ONE TEAM, but at the moment, all it looks like to him is STUPID CUNT. The stupid cunt in question looks up when his door is opened in confusion, his race suit tied around his waist. “Wonbin?” - listen i know it’s a serious scene but this paragraph is so fucking funnyyfyuewfguwerfteywdfwed if i had to pick only one thing to be proud of myself for in this fic i think i would pick the way i used cunt in it. muppet is a very close second

“But you make it so fucking hard not to when you ruin my last flying lap and I end up in P fucking 2 instead of pole. You make it so hard.” - monaco is veryyyyyyyy driver dependant bc of how narrow it is btw like qualifying is honestly life or death here so yeah. i’d be pissed too if i knew i could’ve gotten pole position and have a very strong chance at winning but another driver impeding me on my very last flying lap ruined it

“I am trying to accept that you are with me for the rest of my life.” He opens his eyes. He is the rest of his life. “And yes, you are making it difficult for me, too.” - contrast this w sungchan in the suzuka hotel scene saying it’s not wonbin but it’s just sungchan being weird abt the forever thing :-) oh how he knows to hit it where it hurts!

“With Wonbin setting the fastest lap, that is a difference of four points — but Sungchan is still ahead of him in the Drivers Championship, and Mercedes are still ahead of Ferrari in the Constructors.” - having to calculate the points for the first eight races and make sure that sungchan’s ahead of wonbin and mercedes are ahead of ferrari btw was a pain in the ass

“It still stands true that Wonbin has a small, sneaking suspicion that all of this is a fucked up, cruel joke, and he and Sungchan are not soulmates. The jury is still out on that, and they might not hear the final decision until Abu Dhabi — or maybe, just maybe, when they die. Wonbin hopes it rains when he dies.” - and then in the second chapter wonbin saying they should both just die if this is the result of what happens when they miss each other. and sungchan saying yeah. maybe. hahahahahahahaha

“He dreams in a language not his own, and he does not think of Sungchan.” - someone once asked if this was a reference to the movie ‘past lives,’ and it’s not! it’s meant to say that wonbin is thinking in italian so much just to avoid having sungchan understand him, that even his dreams are all in italian :-)

“Boys and their girlfriends. Girls and their boyfriends. Wonbin hasn’t had either. He wants one more than the other, and that’s always been a little terrifying to think, and even more to say out loud.” - in the second chapter: “The last time he called him was a year ago, and it was only quick, short and impersonal. A confirmation that they are father and son, though it doesn’t feel like it. Not since a little bit before his F2 championship win, when his dad found out that despite doing his best to raise him to be a championship-winning machine, one chip in his CPU was misplaced. The one that programmed his sexuality.”

“Your long hair. Your eyes. Your lips. Sometimes, you look like a girl. You’re so pretty. It confuses me.” - when wonbin had his super long hair i always thought it was so funny how every time sungchan called him pretty he also had to tack on how he looked like a girl too. in my head it was just like sungchan not believing that he can like a boy but w wonbin its ok bc he kinda looks like a girl anyway lmfao

“You look so pretty gulping the wine down — Even though I know you think it’s so bitter and awful. You’re doing it for me, I think.” - haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

“Really, he just doesn’t want to end up the same as Yunho and Jaejoong. He wants to escape the narrative.” - CONGRATULATIONS TO PARK WONBIN AND JUNG SUNGCHAN FOR ESCAPING THE NARRATIVE 🎉

“He was supposed to be a champion, but he is still winless. Sungchan was here before him, and he has eight wins to show for it. All of these things combined together, moving to Ferrari, crashing into you, finding out we’re soulmates, struggling with nearly every race since, the pressure, the media— It feels like nothing is going right for me.” - someone asked if their f1 careers are supposed to mirror sungchan and wonbin’s idol careers, and the answer is yes, in a way

“I cannot win with you. I cannot win with you.” - feel like this is obvious but wonbin feels like he can’t win at the ‘game’ he has with sungchan and he can’t win a grand prix with sungchan by his side either

“Now what’s that supposed to mean? He furrows his eyebrows, confused. You’re in my head.” - okay this is a very subtle thing but notice both the bold and italic in the word ‘in’? that’s VERY intentional. this is the conversation where they finally start ACTUALLY understanding each other, and before this, i never used bold with wonbin’s thinking nor italic with sungchan’s thinking because i wanted to show that they are very much two different entities and they can’t understand each other at all. that’s why sometimes in the dialogue even where it felt like there was supposed to be emphasis, there was none. it was deliberate to show that they had a long way to go before they could start to understand each other

“Yunho and Jaejoong love each other very, very much.” - okay i feel like i need to elaborate on this more since a lot of people understood it as yunjae still have romantic feelings for each other and that’s not really what i meant (and i touched on it here)

i will say that in my head yunho and jaejoong probably had something going on as teenagers that was never strictly defined (sorta like syongnen but not really) that dissipated as they grew older and went off into different series (kinda like brocedes) but. just as i said in the retrospring they want the absolute best for each other and they don’t want to be in the same room as it happens. they love each other in every sense of the word (platonic, familial, and yes, romantic) but they probably will never have a romantic relationship the way syongnen do (and that’s why i keep saying they escaped the narrative). in my heart of hearts i want to believe that they can repair their relationship and enjoy each other’s company again, but they’re never going to get married nor is jaejoong going to be yunho’s affair partner. yunho does love his wife! it’s possible to be in love romantically with someone else as you have a soulmate! some soulmates really are just platonic even if their love can be defined as everything (and it’s bigger than just the word ‘love’)

i honestly don’t know if i can explain this better because to me it makes sense but i can understand how it’s confusing for someone else. their relationship is everything and nothing. it’s romantic and it’s not. it’s deep platonic affection and they hate each other. also again the whole “i can only stop missing you if i was dead” thing very much applies to yunjae and every single soulmate bond. it’s contradictory and it doesn’t make any sense. that’s what soulmates are. they make no sense, and you will love and hate them for it all the same

“He knows that there is still much to go for them to fix their relationship, and to be good soulmates. There are many different ways to be a good driver, and to be a good soulmate, and he’s starting to find all the ways in which they overlap.” - okay yes there are many ways to be a good driver but when it comes to soulmates. YOU DO NOT HAVE TO BE GOOD YOU DO NOT HAVE TO WALK ON YOUR KNEES FOR A HUNDRED MILES THROUGH THE DESERT REPENTING YOU ONLY HAVE TO LET THE SOFT ANIMAL OF YOUR BODY LOVE WHAT IT LOVES. and i love mary oliver!

“He then turns his head towards the crowd, finding each red dot in the crowd screaming and roaring at him with happiness and excitement and pride, and he roars back just as loud.” - PANTERA NERAAAAAAAA listen i know black panther is so basic but it’s catchy and it absolutely works as an f1 nickname (which are in abundance. the iceman, il predestinato, mr monaco, the professor, etc etc etc)

“I know it’s silly, I know this is how break ups work, but… Now that she’s deleted any and all traces of me from her account, from her life, I just can’t help but think— Am I really that easily removable? Is it really this easy to just… Let me go?” - jung sungchan the man who understands that every relationship has an end cannot comprehend when someone else leaves him and he’s not the one doing the leaving. love him

“I mean— I think I’ve found something. He sounds like he’s smiling. Something to believe in, I mean. / Wonbin can’t help his heart jumping into his throat. Sometimes, it just does its own thing. Yes? Care to share? / You will find out. Eventually, you will find out.” - if it wasn’t obvious enough he means wonbin lol

“Thank you for the anger. Thank you for all the nights you spent sad and alone. Thank you for all your effort on this track. Thank you for your blood, embedded deep in this angel. Thank you for your effort, and all your energy, and all your sacrifices. Thank you for doing what you had to do, no matter how painful it turned out to be.” — okay while i’m a big believer in recognizing your strengths and your efforts but wonbin is kind of going about it the wrong way. wonbin spent more than half of his life denying himself friendship and community. that’s nothing to be thankful for. i’m a big believer in that having friendship and community makes you stronger, NOT weaker, and wonbin didn’t have to “spen[d] nights sad and alone” to get his first win. it wasn’t exactly necessary to get his first win, if you get what i mean

“And no, I’m not going to be sorry about it.” - well. he wasn’t! and he isn’t! so

“Confessing Your Feelings: How To Tell A Girl You Love Her / Here are 5 Ways of Confessing To Your Crush / FAQs About Having a Crush: Signs, What to Do, and More” - sorry for skipping forward so much but i just don’t have much to say about the whole feelings realization part since it’s pretty straightforward. anyway i’ve really enjoyed the kinda “multimedia” aspect of tu tornerai and experimenting different methods of storytelling that’s not just strictly … writing about it? does this make sense. idk i just had fun w the transcripts and a slight glimpse into wonbin’s search history and the tweets. it added a lot of depth and personality!

“Fuck, I owe Seunghan five hundred Euros. Why would you do this to me?” - funny little scene for sure. i think i would kms if my friend betted on me having feelings for another friend however

“He takes a shaky breath. I mean, how do you feel about Yunho?” - the implications. THE IMPLICATIONS

“Don’t you think it’s insane how Donald Duck never wears pants? Like, Mickey and Minnie do, so does Goofy, how come he never does? That doesn’t make any sense. / He blinks. Then, he grins from ear to ear. / It’s crazy just how much life has gotten better ever since I let you into it. Who would’ve thought that you could’ve become the light of my life like this? Yes, I do think it’s quite insane.” - shamelessly taken from pete wentz’s livejournal

“I want to kiss you just as badly as I did when you hugged me the last time.” - idk if its clear but he means canada win when he wanted to kiss sungchan even w their helmets on

“Hope I got everything u need. There’s more stuff I bought for you in the kitchen fridge that’s not in your mini-fridge. I didn't know what brands of shampoo you liked, so I got a lot, and there’s some basic skincare in the bathroom drawers. As for alcohol, I have a cellar so you can just ask if you want to drink. I think that’s all. If you have any questions, you can just ask me. I hope you have a nice stay. :-) -SC-” - sungchan got the entire apartment professionally cleaned and paid the ppl double to clean the entire guest room area twice and he consulted with some friends on everything he should get wonbin btw. all that for wonbin to not sleep in the guest room for more than the first night too @!?>@>@!?!@>@? but i’m sure sungchan does Not mind at all

“He’s here, in Monaco, swimming in the ocean with his rival/soulmate/crush. Sounds about right.” - kinda obvious but it’s in an intentional order

“He feels his heart, red and bleeding and all there, pulsing in his chest when he says, “You want me?” / “Yes,” Sungchan swallows. “I do. Everyone wants you.” - the constant ‘everyone wants you’ from sungchan is from jeff buckley btw. he was ovulating when he wrote this song

“You’re in love with everybody. You fall in love every day.” I only love you. I can’t love everyone like you do.” - ik i wrote this but this is heartwrenching. moving on

“You’re supposed to love me, that’s different.” He looks away, mumbling, “And again, you love everyone.” - this obviously becomes a problem for them in chapter 2

“He would even wear the hurt like a badge of honour. Look, you hurt me. You hurt me. Isn’t that just the greatest thing in the world?” - and isn’t that the whole point of this anyway? hurt and be hurt, love and be loved

“Wonbin races cars for a living. Freaks of technology, aerodynamically perfect angels, four wheels on steroids, whatever you want to call them. He’s had crashes with up to 30G worth of force. He drives cars that can go up to two hundred and fifty miles per hour, and he does that every other weekend. He’s had to stand in the middle of a track with cars going just as fast moving past him like he’s nothing, like he doesn’t exist, while waiting to get picked up by a medical car. He’s experienced all kinds of pain and forces and sensations that no average person ever will in their entire life, and he’ll keep doing that for at least the next twenty years of his life. At least. / He’s experienced all this, and still, Sungchan’s cock remains to be the most Earth shattering experience yet. Funny how that works.” - i did laugh writing this. immovable object vs unstoppable force. horny repressed virgin wonbin versus sex freak sungchan who will win. anyway ok we’re moving on

“He wants the exact HEX code of the shade of red Sungchan is sporting. Maybe he’ll suggest it for a special livery.” - ok yeah he’s horny out of his mind here but also. the extreme love he has for ferrari and how much he sacrifices for it and loves it and he wants sungchan’s exact shade of red for the car and team he loves so fiercely is really a huge display of love when u rly think abt it. one of my favourite little moments

i’m not gonna paste the text here but the part where sungchan describes all the things he wants to do to wonbin is sooooo funny it’s like “i don’t want to hurt u :-(“ “ok just tell me what u thought of” “ok well since u asked i wanted to get a collar and fifteen different toys and just out of curiosity do u want me to get u a red vibrator or a pi-” 

CHAPTER 2

“A good, working machine stays quiet. It does what it’s told without any errors or fuss. It performs its task perfectly each and every single time up to hundreds and hundreds of times per day. A machine’s only future to look forward to is death. Even when it dies, it dies quietly. Certainly, it doesn’t die on a weekday when it would be most inconvenient — It dies peacefully when all the workers or owners are gone, in its corner, with not a single soul present. When the workers show up on Monday, ready to start the machine again only to find that it's dead, they send a replacement form request by their lunch break. The next day there’s a new machine, and no one knows that a good, working machine had died the day before.” - okay. okay okay okay

i think this is the chapter where it becomes very obvious that it was never about a machine in the first place. ever. it was always about humans. every time a machine is mentioned (outside of angels and f1 cars), it’s talking about people. this is gonna sound crazy but it’s just kind of how i feel about living in a late stage capitalist society, where you’re only as good as you are useful in a workforce. when you’re only just a number, when the only thing that’s important (or deemed important) is your job, it really is far too easy to feel like a machine. the wonderful, fantastic thing is that you’re not. you don’t have wires, a motherboard, computer chips, dials or buttons. you have a heart, blood, lungs, hands and feet, and a mouth. isn’t that so fucking wonderful?

it’s so easy to get treated, and to treat yourself, as a machine. wonbin lost himself for months in that line of thinking, until he remembered that he’s not. don’t forget: you are not a machine. you are a human being. thank fucking god you can bleed. moving on

“He doesn’t know what it is about Sungchan and alcohol that makes him like this. “I don’t care.” This being— Hurtful. In ways Wonbin can’t properly explain. “As long as we’re together, I really don’t care about any of those things at all.” - this being the most unfortunate thing because wonbin is really just the kind of person who needs things to be very intentional and deliberate and sungchan is just so in love that he doesn’t care eitherway 😭😭😭😭 just because he gets to be w wonbin eitherway 😭😭😭😭 like yes if he had to think abt it and choose he’d pick loving wonbin on purpose and not because he’s ‘supposed to’ but his heart just works far too fast than his mind. lord

“What? I started winning and getting podiums instead of you, and now I’m the reason you’re losing focus? You want to break up with me?” - again. sungchan’s superfast heart over his overactive brain

“INTERVIEWER: Have you two ever dreamed of racing together? / CHUNG: Sometimes. / KIM: Always.” - just makes a grown man want to smoke a cigarette

“I’d only be able to stop missing you if I was dead.” / He stares back. Sungchan’s gaze is unwavering. He keeps staring back, not being able to believe that this is really what’s happening, and he scoffs. “If this is the result of what happens when we miss each other, maybe we should both just die then.” / He expects Sungchan to tell him to fuck off, or to die by himself, or to disappear into nothingness, but instead he says, “Yeah. Maybe.” - they’re both much stronger than me btw because if someone told me that if this is the result of what happens when we miss each other we should just die i would kill myself and if i said that and the person said YEAH MAYBE i’d also kill myself. both very difficult positions here

“He’ll stay on this side of the podium, loving him pathetically. It’s what he’s done since Spa, and what he’ll continue to do for the rest of his life. He knows that for a fact.” - i need a cigarette

“I just want to go home. / That’s exactly the problem. / Before Sungchan makes his way to the table and before Wonbin can make it out of there, there’s a point where their path intersects. Instead of just breezing right past him, just like he did in Brazil, Sungchan grabs Wonbin’s wrist. It feels like hellfire. “Wonbin.” - wonbin immediately being presented with his home after wishing he could go home hahahahhahahahahhahahha

“I’m just— Well, I’m like this. I just want to be with you, and I’ll take whatever preconditions needed for it. I’m just like this, I’m a fool. I’m sorry for hurting you. I’m just in love with you— That’s why I said that. If— If it matters to you, then yes, I would’ve chosen to do this either way. How do you not know this? I just love you.” - ‘i just love you.’ haaaaaaaaaaaa

“God. He’s so fucking cute. / Wonbin feels as if he just got electrocuted. Oh. / He recognizes the shocked, faint recognition of Wonbin’s voice rising across Sungchan’s face. He asks as if he can’t believe he’s even saying the words, “You heard that?” / He doesn’t say anything back. Not out loud, at least. Can— Can you hear me?” - sungchan’s first thought after losing their ‘hearing’ being that is the most sungchan thing in the entire universe. love him 

“Bye bye, everyone! / Oh, come on. Yes, yes, say bye, and hurry up!” — OKAYYY i mean i’ve broken the 4th wall by using 2nd person before but i’ve never actually had the characters acknowledge the audience in any way so this was new but it felt necessary to me just because it’s SO long. like you’ve been on this journey with syongnen the whole time through all the ups and downs for nearly 92k words and it just felt right to have them acknowledge the audience and say goodbye, especially since i’m the kind of writer who doesn’t really like returning to characters and writing more for them after the fact so yeah. idk it felt right (and it also felt like a post-credit scene in a tv show or a movie or something lol)

sorry that this fic commentary was lowkey surface level i just kinda think a lot of things were. kinda obvious. but

i think with this fic the main point i’m really trying to drill home is that YOU NEED OTHER PEOPLE IN YOUR LIFE!!!!!!!! YOU NEED THEM!!!!! THEY ARE NOT OPTIONAL!!!!!!!!! i totally understand the struggle of making friends but oh my god isolating yourself and cutting off the rest of the world and not allowing others to enter your life in ANY way and just assuming the worst out of everyone is genuinely the hardest way to live. easily. yes, in essence, not having other people in your life frees you from other people’s emotions and thoughts and burdens and that makes life ‘easy’ but. not really. not at all. you are a human being. you NEED connection. depriving yourself of human connection is like depriving plants of sun and water. it’s detrimental to your health i cannot stress this enough. i haven’t always been the best at this either, trust me i understand, but you need them.

i’ve had a lot of these moments in my personal life lately. a lot of sobering moments. a lot of moments where i’ve realized that what i think others' perception of me is is actually very wrong, and that ended up in both negative and positive ways. what i’ve come away with from those experiences is this: now, more than ever, i need people in my life. you need people in your life. having a connection with another person hurts so much, and it’s the best thing that will ever happen to you. yes, the hurt is a trophy. yes, the love is the most wonderful thing. they’re both necessary!

it’s also just how much of how both wonbin and sungchan had really the wrong mentalities about themselves, about other people, about their passions in racing — they both did fucked up things, they both did kind things, they both hurt each other and hurt themselves. that’s a given when you’re with your soulmate. and i don’t mean to allow others to consistently treat you terribly and do terrible things to you (to try and push your consent, to try and convince you that no, actually, you liked this experience we had, you like the relationship we had, to try and convince you that they never even hurt you in the first place) — but what i mean is that we’re all trying our best to be loved and love others. 

learning how to love someone else can be a complicated journey, and it can be just as hurtful receiving it and giving it out. try to give yourself some grace, and to the person that you love. and sometimes, it really just comes down to perspective.most of sungchan and wonbin’s problems with each other during the story came from a lack of it, even when they both thought that no, actually, we have enough perspective. wonbin was deeply aware that he wasn’t the only person who’s ever felt like this, but he still treated himself and others as if he was. sungchan was deeply aware that he had issues with his confidence in himself and others, and still tried convincing himself and others (especially wonbin) that he didn’t. at the end of the day, no matter how much i tell you or myself otherwise, it really does come down to gaining perspective through experience. that’s why i consistently try and put out the message there that you need to go out and HAVE SOME FUN. get your heart broken go fall in love go make some friends with the most wild and most fun people you’ll ever know. they will change your perspective on not only them and the world — but yourself, too. and isn’t that just the most wonderful thing?

so sorry if this was an incoherent ramble-y mess, but i just had to get it out there. thank you for reading ‘tu tornerai da me con le mani giunte’ and this, too. go have some fun for me out there in the big wide world and i’ll be back soon enough! ❤️