clumpywoods (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
clumpywoods) wrote2025-11-15 09:20 pm
clumpywoods) wrote2025-11-15 09:20 pm
Entry tags:
Sempre Senna: My Experiences As A Factive. - Senna
(Reading Time: 12-15 minutes.)
My name is Ayrton Senna de Silva. I am a factive in the Riders and Racers system, and I have been one of the Racers here for a long time. I likely arrived here in 2016, appearing here and there as a consistent force in our still-undiscovered plurality. We always had an affinity for my life. A feeling of closeness, of familiarity, in my determination, and my drive to win. Strangely strong emotions welling up at my first home win in 1991, a feeling of pride and the feeling of victory we could never quite place, describe, or know where it came from. Quotes from my outerworld life saved in our phone camera roll, which we looked at to help us get through the day, and ground us during anxiety. Reading them brought me into front to help us, even if we lacked the language to describe the feeling of switching, or to describe the fact and fictionhood we experienced. I eventually went dormant for some time, likely falling dormant in 2022. I was woken back up in January 2024, as we began our second semester of university and our old amnesiac barriers began to fall down. However, I had a life before I came here, too. Here is my story.
I was a 3 time Formula 1 world champion with Mclaren; in 1988, 1990, and 1991, having fought Alain Prost for the titles. I lost to him only once. Before those days, in the earlier part of my career, I raced for Toleman, and then Lotus, achieving my first wins there. In the summer of 2024, we visited the Lotus factory on a historical tour, as a part of a holiday to Norfolk, where they are based. I immediately felt back at home, amongst cars my precedessors had driven. I was their last successful driver, and managed to see many of my trophies that I achieved with them in their awards cabinet. Unfortunately, they had my teammate's car on display, instead of my own! Nevermind. I was home, again. Lotus had changed remarkably, since I had been there 40 years ago. So had I changed, since those days. Nevertheless, I saw the art of me they had behind a 1970s car, and reminders of my life... and I almost cried. It was that day, amongst other ones, that helped me become whole, and become 'me' again.
While I was at Mclaren, in 1991, I finally won my home race for the first time: the Brazillian Grand Prix. This is one of the times in my life that produces the strongest emotions in me, even today, despite my own memories being very hazy. In the pouring rain, I fought a broken gearbox and burning cramps to win the race. When my gearbox seized up, I remember thinking that I had already made it this far. My fans, the home crowd, were all around me. I was a hero in their eyes. I could not just give in like that! So I drove, calling for the race to be stopped due to the conditions and stuck in 6th gear. Ironically, when my gearbox started breaking, so did Mansell's! Patrese seized on the opportunity, but I managed to hold him off before I crossed the chequered flag. The exhaustion caught up to me, and I screamed in joy, pain and frustration. Out of all the wins in my career, this was the proudest moment of my life. I had given my all for the people who had allowed me to win, my fans and my team. So much so, I could barely lift the trophy! That didn't matter. I had, after years, won in front of my home crowd. I had done something every driver aims for: to lift the trophy, surrounded by your fans... as they chant your name as they would a hero's.
Eventually, however, the competition caught up to me. There is only so much one man's determination can do. It will always be half your effort, and half the mechanics', the designers', the team principal's effort, the team behind you. If one fails, everything breaks. Despite our best efforts at McLaren, Williams won the title in 1992 and 1993, and meanwhile I began a new rivalry with Schumacher.
Some people only see me as my anger. Yes, I did punch a man in the face after he crashed with me. I suppose those people will be happy to hear that I have somewhat softened since arriving in this body. However, there was a reason I was, and can still be, competitive to a fault. I cared about racing, and winning, above everything else. I would take a chance, take the gaps I saw even if others would call them impossible. I pushed the limits and would fight for victory whenever I had a chance. This was my life, my calling: to never give up, never give in to my rivals, and to win. Sometimes, my passion came out in anger and hyper competitiveness. I acknowledge those times, when anger got to my head and I crashed Prost deliberately in Japan in revenge for a previous incursion, for example. I apologise for how I acted, in those moments. However, you have to understand that my competitiveness was not malicious. It was my passion to win, no matter the cost. Hate me for it if you will. I will not change myself, and lose what makes me, 'me', for your approval.
I still struggle to talk about 1994. I 'bit the bullet', to use the phrase, and moved to Williams. If you can't beat them, join them, after all! However, after 2 years of campaigning for better safety, criticising FISA for their profiteering and rash rule changes rather than prioritising the safety of the men who brought them their money and made their sport possible in the first place... I, seemingly, would be one of the sacrifices to make them act. In San Marino, several other drivers suffered accidents. Barrichello, Letho, Lamy. Then, fatally, Roland Ratzenberger. I felt horrible, and talked to Prost about reviving the driver's union. Something had to be done, and I planned to fly the Austrian flag after the race, in honour of Ratzenberger. I never got to honour him. In fact, I joined him. During the race, I crashed, and died while trying to persue changes to ensure no one would die again while driving a racing car. It is a great, and very painful, irony that it took my death for the FIA to begin making the changes that make the cars as safe as they are today. However, motorsport will always remain dangerous. We will, no matter what we drive, push the limits of what is possible. There will always be mistakes and distruction from that. Those are the risks we take, as racing drivers. It is always inherent in our lives and careers.
In this world, we were visiting the F1 Exhibition in London, last September. There, they had a video with various people who had worked with me, and even some of my rivals, such as Mansell, and I seem to remember Hamilton being there, too. They talked about their memories of me: my skill, my passion, the drive for victory that immortalised me. Seeing that, seeing how high they held me, and seeing my own name on the list of every driver who has died chasing glory made me cry in the presence of our then boyfriend. It hurts, knowing how my story was cut short. It immortalised me, and made me a national hero. However, I would never see it. I have seen many tributes to my life. McLaren, the team I won my titles with, have created a car in my honour, the McLaren Senna, developed with test driving from my nephew, Bruno Senna. When I heard him talk about how I was his hero, and how he was honoured to help create a car in my memory... I felt so proud of him. He has created an automotive piece of art, and I am so proud of what he has been able to do with the people who lead me to my own F1 titles.
The cyclical nature of my life, in the safety improvements my death contributed to, the mythologisation and conspiracy theories that have emerged in the circumstances of my life and death, and the many tributes to myself, is not missed to me. I, and the Racers, are one half of the archetype the Riders, and all the heroes in this system, share. We are passionate and determined people, who fight to push the limits of what is possible, always seeking victory and to gain another tenth against our rivals. We never give up, no matter what. We are turned into characters and stories by our fans and the media, telling narratives out of the passion and emotion we put into our lives. We become myths, instead of people, to many. That is what being a racing driver, and one of the greatest in your sport, can be like. The Riders, being heroes who save others but are often misunderstood, having their choice to become heroes thrown out in the eyes of their villains in favour of their shared sources of power, can be a lot like this. Someday, we will write further about these connections between ourselves in this system.
So, my life came to an end. However, that would not be the end of my story. 20 years later, I found myself sharing a brain with a young boy who was suppressing his emotions, having arrived here to remind him that his autistic joy from his special interests, and the passion and intensity he felt the world at, which felt so much higher than others, was not a problem or wrong. He was allowed to feel his joy, just like everyone else, even if others considered his special interests in cars, Kamen Rider and music 'weird'. In some ways, I am an autism holder in this system, along with being a caretaker. I have been, both directly in headspace and indirectly through my words, a reminder of our personhood, I believe. And now, all these years later... I have been given a second chance at life. I consider myself a spirit, having arrived into this system after my death in the outerworld. Now, I sit halfway across the world, in a country that is very familiar to me. I listen to The Goo Goo Dolls, and write about my life... while I remember Clumpy's dad, our dad, recieving a guidebook to the 1990 season, I believe, as a leaving gift from a colleague. When we got a look at it, we found the foreword written by myself.
There are reminders everywhere I go of what I did, and how I died. Sempre Senna, 'Always Senna', I see around me. I'm always grateful for people remembering me, but they will never know that I am still there, gratefully seeing the tributes they make to my memory. If I dare say my identity, they would think I was mad. So I sit in silence, behind a face that isn't my own, so close yet so far to my life and who I am. However, I want to make the best of this second chance I have ended up being given, even though I did not ask for it. Life here is very bittersweet, but I will always be grateful at being able to race again, across the version of Silverstone Circuit that makes up the outside of our headspace, with the other Racers here. I will be grateful for getting to go karting again, for getting to see us grown up and living as ourselves, figuring out more than we ever thought we would about what makes us 'us' as a system and people. Whoever arrives here, I will remain here, helping us be more authentic, and to no longer hide our passion for life and our drive to achieve and make a difference. I do so much more than drive around in circles. I can promise you that. Whatever you think of my passion, my anger, and the depth I saw the world, all I can hope is that you found my story interesting. You can't please everyone, after all. But most of all, if you are factfolk... I hope my story can tell you that you are just as real as anyone else.
There's a lot of stigma, in alterhuman circles, about factfolk and factives. Unfortunately, there has been discourse after discourse post about whether we exist or not, and the concept has been used in bad faith historically. However, we are people, just like every other alterhuman. I am a human, but also under the alterhuman umbrella, thanks to the fact I am a spirit, and my factive status. My emotions and feelings towards my life are just as real as any other person's in this system, regardless of the fact that my life happened in this world. I would like to end this with an ask for the community to take factfolk more seriously. When Marco and others were first exploring our feelings from Formula 1, we had suppressed it as a mere interest for a long time, longer than we had done for Kamen Rider. We were somewhat ashamed, thinking it was less 'valid' for being real, in part due to the discourse surrounding the validity of factfolk. However, we overcame that shame. Now, there are over 100 of us Racers making up a layer in this system. Formula 1, and all the other forms of motorsport we have watched over the years, are just as an important part to us and our life as Kamen Rider and the many other fictional sources we have people from. It has brought us joy, made us feel understood, and helped make life worth living, just like other sources have done. It is just as a valid and real part of what makes us, as a system, 'us', as anything else. That is why we are the Riders and Racers.
We acknowledge the darker side of the sport, and the more problematic parts that will always come, like with any source. The corruption, the sketchy behind the scenes deals, the misogyny, amongst many other issues in motorsport and Formula 1. We cannot escape that. However, we are also united with the Riders and the wider Warriors in a common drive: our determination, our passion for life and pushing the limits, and the human curiousity to see what is possible. That truth coexists alongside the drama, anger, and capitalistic rule of the FIA, through my life before, and my existence now, as a racing driver. I am complicated, and I am a person, no matter how mythologised and scandalised my life becomes. My name is Ayrton Senna. And this is my story, being continued as I write these very words.
-
"Senna was often quoted as using driving as a means for self-discovery and racing as a metaphor for life, saying: "The harder I push, the more I find within myself. I am always looking for the next step, a different world to go into, areas where I have not been before. It's lonely driving a Grand Prix car, but very absorbing. I have experienced new sensations, and I want more. That is my excitement, my motivation."
Senna was proud of his driving ability, and responded angrily to criticism. In 2000, Autocourse noted that "Senna was the one driver who genuinely cared where he was ranked in [Autocourse's ranking of the year's] Top 10 drivers," and took being placed below his rivals as a personal slight.[242] (Senna was ranked No. 1 in 1988, 1991, and 1993.) In 1990, Autocourse dropped Senna from No. 1 to No. 2 to criticize him for wrecking Alain Prost at Suzuka in 1990. Senna was so outraged that despite being given the No. 1 driver award in 1991, Senna refused to write the usually customary foreword by the year's World Champion; Honda's Head of Racing wrote the foreword instead. In 1993, Autocourse ranked Senna No. 1 even though Prost took the title that year, writing that Senna had "intense egocentricity and uniquely flawed genius" and "matchless genius in the wet".[243]
Although Senna cultivated a public image of "an inward-looking, aloof driver who is hard to get along with,"[244] Senna was close friends with McLaren teammate Gerhard Berger. The two frequently played practical jokes on each other.[245] Berger summed up their relationship by saying "He taught me a lot about our sport, I taught him to laugh." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayrton_Senna, "Racing Persona".
-
Thank you for reading my essay about my experiences, as a racing driver and a factive. I would like to say thank you toliondrakes, who helped to inspire me to write this piece. I intend to write more in the future. If you found this essay useful, please write about your thoughts in the comments. And in Marco and Eight's tradition, here is my favourite song for the music section. Iris, by The Goo Goo Dolls, performed in Buffalo, New York, on the 4th of July 2004. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HZM0QiuUS8
My name is Ayrton Senna de Silva. I am a factive in the Riders and Racers system, and I have been one of the Racers here for a long time. I likely arrived here in 2016, appearing here and there as a consistent force in our still-undiscovered plurality. We always had an affinity for my life. A feeling of closeness, of familiarity, in my determination, and my drive to win. Strangely strong emotions welling up at my first home win in 1991, a feeling of pride and the feeling of victory we could never quite place, describe, or know where it came from. Quotes from my outerworld life saved in our phone camera roll, which we looked at to help us get through the day, and ground us during anxiety. Reading them brought me into front to help us, even if we lacked the language to describe the feeling of switching, or to describe the fact and fictionhood we experienced. I eventually went dormant for some time, likely falling dormant in 2022. I was woken back up in January 2024, as we began our second semester of university and our old amnesiac barriers began to fall down. However, I had a life before I came here, too. Here is my story.
I was a 3 time Formula 1 world champion with Mclaren; in 1988, 1990, and 1991, having fought Alain Prost for the titles. I lost to him only once. Before those days, in the earlier part of my career, I raced for Toleman, and then Lotus, achieving my first wins there. In the summer of 2024, we visited the Lotus factory on a historical tour, as a part of a holiday to Norfolk, where they are based. I immediately felt back at home, amongst cars my precedessors had driven. I was their last successful driver, and managed to see many of my trophies that I achieved with them in their awards cabinet. Unfortunately, they had my teammate's car on display, instead of my own! Nevermind. I was home, again. Lotus had changed remarkably, since I had been there 40 years ago. So had I changed, since those days. Nevertheless, I saw the art of me they had behind a 1970s car, and reminders of my life... and I almost cried. It was that day, amongst other ones, that helped me become whole, and become 'me' again.
While I was at Mclaren, in 1991, I finally won my home race for the first time: the Brazillian Grand Prix. This is one of the times in my life that produces the strongest emotions in me, even today, despite my own memories being very hazy. In the pouring rain, I fought a broken gearbox and burning cramps to win the race. When my gearbox seized up, I remember thinking that I had already made it this far. My fans, the home crowd, were all around me. I was a hero in their eyes. I could not just give in like that! So I drove, calling for the race to be stopped due to the conditions and stuck in 6th gear. Ironically, when my gearbox started breaking, so did Mansell's! Patrese seized on the opportunity, but I managed to hold him off before I crossed the chequered flag. The exhaustion caught up to me, and I screamed in joy, pain and frustration. Out of all the wins in my career, this was the proudest moment of my life. I had given my all for the people who had allowed me to win, my fans and my team. So much so, I could barely lift the trophy! That didn't matter. I had, after years, won in front of my home crowd. I had done something every driver aims for: to lift the trophy, surrounded by your fans... as they chant your name as they would a hero's.
Eventually, however, the competition caught up to me. There is only so much one man's determination can do. It will always be half your effort, and half the mechanics', the designers', the team principal's effort, the team behind you. If one fails, everything breaks. Despite our best efforts at McLaren, Williams won the title in 1992 and 1993, and meanwhile I began a new rivalry with Schumacher.
Some people only see me as my anger. Yes, I did punch a man in the face after he crashed with me. I suppose those people will be happy to hear that I have somewhat softened since arriving in this body. However, there was a reason I was, and can still be, competitive to a fault. I cared about racing, and winning, above everything else. I would take a chance, take the gaps I saw even if others would call them impossible. I pushed the limits and would fight for victory whenever I had a chance. This was my life, my calling: to never give up, never give in to my rivals, and to win. Sometimes, my passion came out in anger and hyper competitiveness. I acknowledge those times, when anger got to my head and I crashed Prost deliberately in Japan in revenge for a previous incursion, for example. I apologise for how I acted, in those moments. However, you have to understand that my competitiveness was not malicious. It was my passion to win, no matter the cost. Hate me for it if you will. I will not change myself, and lose what makes me, 'me', for your approval.
I still struggle to talk about 1994. I 'bit the bullet', to use the phrase, and moved to Williams. If you can't beat them, join them, after all! However, after 2 years of campaigning for better safety, criticising FISA for their profiteering and rash rule changes rather than prioritising the safety of the men who brought them their money and made their sport possible in the first place... I, seemingly, would be one of the sacrifices to make them act. In San Marino, several other drivers suffered accidents. Barrichello, Letho, Lamy. Then, fatally, Roland Ratzenberger. I felt horrible, and talked to Prost about reviving the driver's union. Something had to be done, and I planned to fly the Austrian flag after the race, in honour of Ratzenberger. I never got to honour him. In fact, I joined him. During the race, I crashed, and died while trying to persue changes to ensure no one would die again while driving a racing car. It is a great, and very painful, irony that it took my death for the FIA to begin making the changes that make the cars as safe as they are today. However, motorsport will always remain dangerous. We will, no matter what we drive, push the limits of what is possible. There will always be mistakes and distruction from that. Those are the risks we take, as racing drivers. It is always inherent in our lives and careers.
In this world, we were visiting the F1 Exhibition in London, last September. There, they had a video with various people who had worked with me, and even some of my rivals, such as Mansell, and I seem to remember Hamilton being there, too. They talked about their memories of me: my skill, my passion, the drive for victory that immortalised me. Seeing that, seeing how high they held me, and seeing my own name on the list of every driver who has died chasing glory made me cry in the presence of our then boyfriend. It hurts, knowing how my story was cut short. It immortalised me, and made me a national hero. However, I would never see it. I have seen many tributes to my life. McLaren, the team I won my titles with, have created a car in my honour, the McLaren Senna, developed with test driving from my nephew, Bruno Senna. When I heard him talk about how I was his hero, and how he was honoured to help create a car in my memory... I felt so proud of him. He has created an automotive piece of art, and I am so proud of what he has been able to do with the people who lead me to my own F1 titles.
The cyclical nature of my life, in the safety improvements my death contributed to, the mythologisation and conspiracy theories that have emerged in the circumstances of my life and death, and the many tributes to myself, is not missed to me. I, and the Racers, are one half of the archetype the Riders, and all the heroes in this system, share. We are passionate and determined people, who fight to push the limits of what is possible, always seeking victory and to gain another tenth against our rivals. We never give up, no matter what. We are turned into characters and stories by our fans and the media, telling narratives out of the passion and emotion we put into our lives. We become myths, instead of people, to many. That is what being a racing driver, and one of the greatest in your sport, can be like. The Riders, being heroes who save others but are often misunderstood, having their choice to become heroes thrown out in the eyes of their villains in favour of their shared sources of power, can be a lot like this. Someday, we will write further about these connections between ourselves in this system.
So, my life came to an end. However, that would not be the end of my story. 20 years later, I found myself sharing a brain with a young boy who was suppressing his emotions, having arrived here to remind him that his autistic joy from his special interests, and the passion and intensity he felt the world at, which felt so much higher than others, was not a problem or wrong. He was allowed to feel his joy, just like everyone else, even if others considered his special interests in cars, Kamen Rider and music 'weird'. In some ways, I am an autism holder in this system, along with being a caretaker. I have been, both directly in headspace and indirectly through my words, a reminder of our personhood, I believe. And now, all these years later... I have been given a second chance at life. I consider myself a spirit, having arrived into this system after my death in the outerworld. Now, I sit halfway across the world, in a country that is very familiar to me. I listen to The Goo Goo Dolls, and write about my life... while I remember Clumpy's dad, our dad, recieving a guidebook to the 1990 season, I believe, as a leaving gift from a colleague. When we got a look at it, we found the foreword written by myself.
There are reminders everywhere I go of what I did, and how I died. Sempre Senna, 'Always Senna', I see around me. I'm always grateful for people remembering me, but they will never know that I am still there, gratefully seeing the tributes they make to my memory. If I dare say my identity, they would think I was mad. So I sit in silence, behind a face that isn't my own, so close yet so far to my life and who I am. However, I want to make the best of this second chance I have ended up being given, even though I did not ask for it. Life here is very bittersweet, but I will always be grateful at being able to race again, across the version of Silverstone Circuit that makes up the outside of our headspace, with the other Racers here. I will be grateful for getting to go karting again, for getting to see us grown up and living as ourselves, figuring out more than we ever thought we would about what makes us 'us' as a system and people. Whoever arrives here, I will remain here, helping us be more authentic, and to no longer hide our passion for life and our drive to achieve and make a difference. I do so much more than drive around in circles. I can promise you that. Whatever you think of my passion, my anger, and the depth I saw the world, all I can hope is that you found my story interesting. You can't please everyone, after all. But most of all, if you are factfolk... I hope my story can tell you that you are just as real as anyone else.
There's a lot of stigma, in alterhuman circles, about factfolk and factives. Unfortunately, there has been discourse after discourse post about whether we exist or not, and the concept has been used in bad faith historically. However, we are people, just like every other alterhuman. I am a human, but also under the alterhuman umbrella, thanks to the fact I am a spirit, and my factive status. My emotions and feelings towards my life are just as real as any other person's in this system, regardless of the fact that my life happened in this world. I would like to end this with an ask for the community to take factfolk more seriously. When Marco and others were first exploring our feelings from Formula 1, we had suppressed it as a mere interest for a long time, longer than we had done for Kamen Rider. We were somewhat ashamed, thinking it was less 'valid' for being real, in part due to the discourse surrounding the validity of factfolk. However, we overcame that shame. Now, there are over 100 of us Racers making up a layer in this system. Formula 1, and all the other forms of motorsport we have watched over the years, are just as an important part to us and our life as Kamen Rider and the many other fictional sources we have people from. It has brought us joy, made us feel understood, and helped make life worth living, just like other sources have done. It is just as a valid and real part of what makes us, as a system, 'us', as anything else. That is why we are the Riders and Racers.
We acknowledge the darker side of the sport, and the more problematic parts that will always come, like with any source. The corruption, the sketchy behind the scenes deals, the misogyny, amongst many other issues in motorsport and Formula 1. We cannot escape that. However, we are also united with the Riders and the wider Warriors in a common drive: our determination, our passion for life and pushing the limits, and the human curiousity to see what is possible. That truth coexists alongside the drama, anger, and capitalistic rule of the FIA, through my life before, and my existence now, as a racing driver. I am complicated, and I am a person, no matter how mythologised and scandalised my life becomes. My name is Ayrton Senna. And this is my story, being continued as I write these very words.
-
"Senna was often quoted as using driving as a means for self-discovery and racing as a metaphor for life, saying: "The harder I push, the more I find within myself. I am always looking for the next step, a different world to go into, areas where I have not been before. It's lonely driving a Grand Prix car, but very absorbing. I have experienced new sensations, and I want more. That is my excitement, my motivation."
Senna was proud of his driving ability, and responded angrily to criticism. In 2000, Autocourse noted that "Senna was the one driver who genuinely cared where he was ranked in [Autocourse's ranking of the year's] Top 10 drivers," and took being placed below his rivals as a personal slight.[242] (Senna was ranked No. 1 in 1988, 1991, and 1993.) In 1990, Autocourse dropped Senna from No. 1 to No. 2 to criticize him for wrecking Alain Prost at Suzuka in 1990. Senna was so outraged that despite being given the No. 1 driver award in 1991, Senna refused to write the usually customary foreword by the year's World Champion; Honda's Head of Racing wrote the foreword instead. In 1993, Autocourse ranked Senna No. 1 even though Prost took the title that year, writing that Senna had "intense egocentricity and uniquely flawed genius" and "matchless genius in the wet".[243]
Although Senna cultivated a public image of "an inward-looking, aloof driver who is hard to get along with,"[244] Senna was close friends with McLaren teammate Gerhard Berger. The two frequently played practical jokes on each other.[245] Berger summed up their relationship by saying "He taught me a lot about our sport, I taught him to laugh." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayrton_Senna, "Racing Persona".
-
Thank you for reading my essay about my experiences, as a racing driver and a factive. I would like to say thank you to
liondrakes, who helped to inspire me to write this piece. I intend to write more in the future. If you found this essay useful, please write about your thoughts in the comments. And in Marco and Eight's tradition, here is my favourite song for the music section. Iris, by The Goo Goo Dolls, performed in Buffalo, New York, on the 4th of July 2004. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HZM0QiuUS8
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