musings x: beats per minute

[caihong]

[taps mic] caihongs' first f1 fic (hopefully not the last?) and it's a sequel/remix of keystrokes by ladyeggplant! let's get into it:

the context

i am very much a kpop rpf/rps fan but unfortunately fell into the f1 hole after lando's gq essentials video was released. i had a few twitter mutuals who were already into f1 so when i tweeted about how i watched lando's videos with gq out of curiosity, i had a whole bunch of them asking me to watch drive to survive. this was late october this year and now, i'm officially in the mud. i dove into the daniel/lando archives, got back on tumblr just before twittergate and started consuming f1 rpf like a starved animal. safe to say, ladyeggplant's fics were up there for me given i am a sucker for loser lando and silly goofy daniel, and she writes them so well! after scouring the dando tag on tumblr and watching a tonne of videos with daniel, lando, and them together, i definitely had the seeds for a keystrokes remix idea. once i asked her if i could and got the okay, the fic plan looked a bit like this:



i am not a planner in the slightest when it comes to writing fic but once i started rolling with the beginning paragraphs, it was *almost* smooth sailing from then. i started writing on the 6th of november and finished writing on the 6th of december, so it took exactly a month to write 15.7k words, which is half-incredible and half-ridiculous. i confess that i did write this—e-rated scenes and all—during my work hours, in the dead of the night, and all the way through my exam block. moment of silence for any manager who walked past me writing about daniel getting pounded into the sheets.  

the inspirations

1. egg's keystrokes tag: i started writing with only reference to the fic itself before i found the keystrokes tag and realised that i could also refer to it to flesh out the universe a bit more. the ones i referred to in particular were the club scene ask, daniel's first impressions of lando (1) + (2), and daniel losing it over charlando. there are some broader references i took like michael vs the hr fiasco that was dando, and daniel and lando's impressions of each other. there's also a post-story ask that egg answered here, which coincidentally also involves daniel going to australia without lando (completely by accident that bpm ended up going the same route but pretty cool that it did!) but [tries not to froth at the mouth] it's so good!!!

2. daniel's essentials: i watched this video after i saw lando's and my mind already started concocting < guy who has rps brain switched on at all times. this was a slice of danny ric to keep in my wallet for a rainy day > uses it in a fic a month later LOL. in all seriousness though, daniel's sentimentality and attachment to the ipod, having had it for almost fifteen years and never changing the music on it made me think about what it would mean if he gave it to lando. here i want to introduce the term 'bid for connection'. i learnt it from a video by anna akana, in which a bid for connection means paying attention to your partner and answering 'calls' for love. it's also the sole factor in lasting relationships, and by listening and paying attention to lando's concerns and tells, daniel answers him with this response. he fights his fears of fucking up his precious ipod to curate the perfect tunes for lando, and share what he likes with the person he loves. 
 

3. daniel and lando sharing music: i saw this clip on tumblr first but guessed that it was from the video of them in the studio. apparently there's an interview where the two of them talk about how awkward it was in the beginning as teammates, so the way they bonded and got to know each other was through sharing PLAYLISTS (?!! me to me: you have got to be more normal). i very much clocked lando talking about daniel's taste in music and how it's similar to his, even before i became a citizen of dando nation, so i just put two and two together and made this the crux of the fic. while music just underpins the fic rather than being threaded in and out of it, the lyrics of tortoise by frankie stew and harvey gunn in particular had me floored...

• "Why would I be touring / If you're not on the tour bus": daniel wanting to take lando with him everywhere, from new york to japan to australia, and have him at most, an arms-length away. 
• "Grow old with you yeah I'd love too / I can't see anybody else but us two": (have no idea where this interview is from but i'm transcribing a screenshot)
  • Interviewer: Tell me a little bit more about your relationship with Lando / Daniel: I would say it's complicated. We are not married but it's like we are thinking about marriage I guess. 
  • ??!???!???!!!! i need to lie down 
• "And when it comes to you yeah I feel certain / It's not a doubt in my mind / Wonder why I feel so proud all the time": aka daniel being proud of lando for leading the awareness week and is another confession through song. 

4. daniel typing slowly: i made up the number 47 but i don't feel it's far from the truth... he's probably a one-finger typist who also can't touch-type while his boyfriend is tech boy wonder born in the year of our lord 1999 who finds it atrocious.
 

5. the spotify vs apple music debate: one of my twitter mutuals and i have (light-hearted) debates over this but they made some points about how spotify is marketed for its collaborative features and variety in how one can interact with friends on the app while apple music focusses on that less so and more on the streaming quality of the music. in the same way daniel wants to gatekeep his playlists and how lando openly shares his recommendations on instagram, the same applies here. except in this universe, daniel would only share his playlist with lando, no blends or friend activity allowed. 

6. the instagram coming-out: yeah... the moment daniel3.jpg dropped, i was at a loss for words. what else was i supposed to do but include it in this fic too?

the breakdown

• introduction: i tried to summarise keystrokes as succinctly as i could while maintaining creative freedom in how i wrote daniel's pov here. my favourite section is this one:
  • "He tries his hardest not to pine after Lando like a lovelorn teenager. He tries to stop wondering when Lando will let him in, and miserably fails every time. Just because Lando wears his heart on his sleeve, it doesn’t mean he’ll let Daniel in and let him consume Lando out of a house and home, taking what he can get just because he likes him."
    • daniel recognises that his wit and charm that would have a client or any unsuspecting person falling at his feet won't work on lando, nor is the right/only way he should go about 'courting' lando. he isn't entitled to lando's attention or reciprocation, and for someone who wears his heart on his sleeve, he's still hard to read and daniel is literally battling this until the end of keystrokes. 

• “Caamp’s new album has been his new go-to living room music and while Lando has been more than vocal about how American folk music is a boner-killer, Daniel won’t throw away his values just like that, despite how often he wants Lando in between his sheets."
  • lando would point and laugh at me if he know the amount of time it took for me to add daniel's three-by-3 recommendations from his highlight, then every song on his music highlight, which involved shazam'ing every song recorded against a sky backdrop or some nondescript corner of his ceiling, listen to every single song, and add the ones i liked into the final playlist that made it to the fic. i'd like to say it was worth it in the end because i genuinely found songs i liked that i would have never listened to had it not been for dj dr but man. those are hours of my life i will never get back OTL

• "Whether he’s taking away the best years of Lando’s life, where he could be making memories and mistakes, kissing pretty girls and having summer flings with handsome boys instead of spending lazy Sunday mornings with him, is something that plagues Daniel more than he likes to admit."
  • daniel has a skewed perception of what youth/young adulthood is. he moved to america when he was lando's age, yet they were surrounded by very different people - lando had alex and george (and charles) who got up to their own shit but always made lando feel safe and protected, while daniel wasn't quite afforded that luxury. he has his own track record of doing what i called less-than-savoury acts and in hindsight, daniel does regret some of the choices he made back then so really, their argument and his projections on lando don't make sense. this explains why lando is so upset and mad over it, and daniel has to shed these preconceived notions otherwise they'll keep creating new reasons to fight. 

• "He sheds his fears for Daniel and in hindsight, it’s impossible to ignore how much Lando has changed since they met... Even more shocking and disappointing for Daniel, was that Lando truly beat him to the punch the night after Blanca’s. He remembers the taste of soggy coleslaw clinging to his breath as Lando told him what he wanted, open and vulnerable under the yellowing lights of the diner."
  • daniel acknowledges how much lando has grown and changed since he's known him, and it's a startling realisation that age =/= maturity (dr himself isn't even a good example of this and he knows it) and lando himself, is making a bid for connection here by confessing to daniel. while the bid only really applies to people in existing relationships, i feel you can still make a bid for anything; vulnerability, honesty etc etc. which is what he does by telling daniel he likes him in this scene from keystrokes.

• "“What am I going to do with you?”": this is 100% taken from fruits basket (2001/2019) the anime (kyo talking to tohru <3) but i know it's a commonly-used line but man... every rendition of it has me on my knees! it's the resigned sigh and affection that follows that's the real kicker!

• "Loving Daniel is like having honey flow through your veins instead of blood. Sweet, slow, and bright yellow. / It stains every surface and is difficult to remove, but Lando wouldn’t dare to. Everything he touches turns to gold so when it’s time for him to leave, Lando has a hard time letting go of the sunshine." 
  • this is inspired by one of my favourite poems auto-immune by destiny o. birdsong. the motif of honey being this viscous, almost indelible kind of substance is what i took from it, alongside all of the imagery. also love how visceral the poet makes the strife of the everyday woman in her writing. ANYWAYS, my favourite line in the poem is this one: "i am destined to infuse survival with meaning, like honey clotting in syringes."

• "If anything, Lando knows he can get away with looking a bit pathetic and that Alex is softer than George and will usually concede to him, especially since Daniel is away. The cheese toastie was delicious and Lando is not above taking advantage of his sweet best friend the only time he has him under his thumb." 
  • imagine lando looks like a wet dog that has been shaken around in a laundry machine. alex is the only one who can cook and wants to make sure lando is still functioning while george would give him a clap on the back and a 'you right mate?'. 

• "There are several terms of endearments that he’s certainly fantasised about calling Daniel but they never came to fruition because Lando’s skin boils at the thought of calling Daniel ‘sweetheart’ or ‘honey’, or any variation of Dutch pet names that he’s heard his mum use on his dad."
  • i thought about lando having a nickname for daniel on his phone but went against it because one, i remembered how michael's name came up for daniel when he called him in the car in keystrokes and while lando doesn't have a car of his own, if he'd ever try to use an AI assistant to call 'mijn schatje' (my little treasure), he would quite literally die of embarrassment. two, lando cannot speak dutch for his life - that one interview with ziggo sport is enough proof that he is monolingual ._.

• the dinner + wiggy's scenes with george, lando, and alex: i loved writing the three of them and hope i did their relationship/dynamic justice >< their friendship was so important to the keystrokes plot and lando's characterisation so i knew i had to include them here too. i gave them a backseat, but not without their own scenes together. the scenes in keystrokes that made me almost cry was them all sleeping in one bed after the club, george and lando's fight and them making up, and landorge sharing the bed during christmas :')) 

•  "“You’re the only one who gets to have me like this,” Daniel says, like it’s normal to say shit like this, like Lando won’t go absolutely feral thinking about how Daniel gets off on giving. How he’s always been a slave to the people he loves."
  • i've still got a ways to go with writing smut [head in hands] but the dialogue in between is probably most difficult for me </3 but this line was one of my favourites to write because i wanted to show this particular aspect of their relationship here too. egg extrapolates on that in this ask but basically, lando wants to make daniel feel good, to feel as loved, wanted, and cherished as he makes lando feel everyday, regardless of whether it's through sex or not. however, it's always been daniel taking the lead and lando following because of his inexperience and in general, sexual escapades pre-daniel that have not been worth writing home about—lando doesn't want to disappoint. but this time he wants to show daniel what he's learnt, in that lando-brand of earnest and borderline-desperation. when daniel says this though, lando now needs to achieve what he strived for, and revels in how much daniel wants to give to him and how much he wants to be taken.

• "“Okay… good,” he says, stilted yet giddy with relief and satisfaction. Being with Daniel only feels this good when he knows he makes him feel the same way, that in between the pedestrian moments and routine behaviour that characterises their lives, Daniel can still come home to him." 
  • running off from the above, lando thrives off the fact that they make each other feel at home and it's why the reciprocal nature of their relationship now versus before is what makes him feel content and happy :^)

• "Understanding him is like unveiling the history of an apartment and all of its owners before, wallpaper peeling back to reveal something new each layer. Daniel is reminded of that fact the hard way sometimes, but it’s always worth it when it comes to him."
  • this is my take on the onion metaphor but this whole last section delves into how lando is difficult in all meanings of the word. he's a little weirdo freak with a penchant for squealing and going pink in the face, has brat engraved in his dna, and gives daniel hell. he's come a long way from his inability to say thanks or be grateful without being a bitch etcetera etcetera but in the words of anne carson: "I’ll take care of you. / It’s rotten work. / Not to me. Not if it’s you.” 
  • daniel would do it again and again because it's lando <3

• "Lando finds his hand across the table, tapping his fingertips on the inside of his wrist absentmindedly as he chows down. Daniel sneaks his fingers underneath the stack of bracelets on Lando’s wrist and thinks about how nice it would be if his boyfriend got a tattoo on the smooth, almost hairless skin of his arm."
  • an homage to these lines from chapter 2 of keystrokes:
    • "Lando looks at it, own hand hovering in hesitation, just for a second, everything coming into sharp focus. He doesn’t grab hold, just presses their palms flush, finger tips tracing over the soft inside of Daniel’s wrist, feeling Daniel’s stroke along his own, electric."

the conclusion

if you got up to here, thank you so much! not sure where my first conclusion went (dw html will be the death of me) but happy belated new year and i'm wishing all of you a brighter and better 2023 <3 manifesting a dando renaissance during the 23 season of f1!!!!!