#TopHatter

[anonymouskriz]

The Odd Fellows!

Yes that's them :)

Characters:

Penelope Ponygirl

Tophatter Strings

Detective Incognito

and Oliva The Feminist Nun!

Hope you enjoy, dear peeps <3

[shadowsndaisies]

the athena-verse

so far, it's just a series of random ficlets and blurbs introducing the world and the top.

let's talk athena:

athena; the preamble - (6.24.24) athena at a glance, basically

hangman meets 'thena - (9.17.24) word is, there's a new pilot on board carrier air wing nine, and she flies for the VFA-14, the Tophatters.

top gun: maverick

the recall

the hard deck:

01: too observant to play dumb - (7.16.24) how the arrival at the hard deck went

02: slow ride - (7.16.24) a glimpse through jake's eyes

03: athena, meet rooster - (7.16.24) I think the title says it all

athena settles debts - (6.21.24) what if Mav’s daughter settled his tab that night in the hard deck

dogfighting 101 (and then some): "so, today we start with what you only think you know."

01: let's make it interesting: (08.29.24) harvard is a good friend (and petty on your behalf)

02: rock and roll: (08.30.24) It's been a long time since I rock and rolled, It's been a long time since I did the stroll, Ooh let me get it back, let me get it back, Let me get it back, baby, where I come from

03: clear mind, clear skies: (09.01.24) tempers are rising

04: 'nix is sick of this shit: (09.03.24) phoenix prides herself on knowing almost everything pertinent, it's the parts she doesn't know that leaves her on edge.

05: sugar and spice: (09.06.24) hangman leaves everyone hanging... right?

06: dead and buried: (09.08.24) if it wouldn't result in a court martial or a dishonorable discharge, you probably would punch that stupid mustache off his face.

canyon runs: take one

iceman's final flight - (7.1.24) ice's funeral, as you can imagine, is painful and heartwrenching

...

athena-verse taglist (currently open. last updated 9/17/24)

@omgbrianab @smoothdogsgirl @bazellawriz @sbrewer21 @inky-sun @djs8891 @rory-cakes @geeksareunique @je6291 @whoismurphyslaw @kee-0-kee @samanddeaninatrenchcoat @thespillingvoid @youdontknowe @burningcoffeecupp @mrsevans90

[thatsrightice]

F-14 FUN FACT OF THE DAY #52

F-14 Tomcat squadrons have done paint liveries for tours marking special occasions. VF-103 and VF-14 have both done this in their history.

In 1999, VF-14 Tophatters commemorated its 80th anniversary with a special F-14 Tomcat livery.

In 2004, VF-103 Jolly Rogers marked its last deployment flying the F-14 Tomcat by adding text to the iconic skull and crossbones that reads “The Final Mission.”

[lycanirock]

Revenge for @tophattted ! 🤹

My final attack this year for ArtFight; I had a lot of fun! Thank you to anyone who attacked me <3

[usafphantom2]

Tophatter F/A-18E along the Sierra.

@Smitchphoto via X

[veryplanethinking]

Phantom F4B, 1968, Tophatters

[nocternalrandomness]

Tophatter over Luke AFB, Arizona

[dustyisegg]

af attacks pt 4 i think

1. Wandering Mind - @ask-wanderingmind

2. Three Flaming Spires - LuciDatum

3. Doxide - @helmeyes

4. CoraL - Rabbsational

5. Q - minersjob

6. Nowhere Left But Onwards - @bugsinspace

7. Clav - 94871487

8. Seven Bowls of Syrup - RealitySucks6720

9. Viktor - Tophatt

10. Stitches - FrankiesLab

[sharklingcorner]

two more artfight attack for @cookiedchicken and @tophattted

[silviaflowers]

Feels like I'm lost in space

Art fight attack 9! (Chryss)

This is revenge on Tophatt!

[ortly]

Attack for @Tophatt on artfight of their oc, Evy!

[shadowsndaisies]

hangman meets 'thena

wc: 1.7k

synopsis: word is, there's a new pilot on board carrier air wing nine, and she flies for the VFA-14, the Tophatters.

main masterlist

athena-verse master post

a/n: the highly requested hangman and athena meet blurb, let me know what else you'd like to see from this universe, especially things that exist outside the storyline. or even if you just want more of certain characters. This serves as a precursory understanding to Jake and Athena, it probably doesn't answer every question about them, but it might help you see their foundation a bit better. but special shoutout to @djs8891 @tgmreader @rory-cakes and @fanreader75 for asking specifically about hangman and athenas dynamic (mentions at the end as well)

You’d heard of him, everyone active had. The only active aviator with a confirmed kill, never mind that your dad had two.

Hangman was exactly what you expected if you were honest.

Phoenix, who had taken an instant liking to you as soon as you’d been reassigned to the Tophatters, had filled you in on all the Lemoore gossip. Phoenix flew with the VFA-41, the Black Aces, also based out of Lemoore, and in fact, on the same carrier as you, Commander, Carrier Air Wing Nine. Her first order of business was getting you caught up on the carrier, that included learning the players, and while she was happy to introduce you to different Naval officers, the only one she warned against was Hangman.

Someone really should have told her that at your core, you were your father’s daughter.

Let it be known, you did not go looking for him. He appeared in all his Ken Doll Aviator glory as you were doing a morning check on your F/A 18E. Apparently he also flew an F/A 18E, ‘Nix on the other hand had an F/A 18F, as she normally flew with a WSO.

He approached, full of cocky attitude, and maybe it was all the years being raised by both Ice and Mav, but when he spoke it was like you could understand him just as fluently as you did with them. You could see where Nat was coming from with “honestly, Athena, Hangman in two words? Texan Douchewad.”

“Well, Howdy, darlin’, scuttlebutt was that there was a new girl on board, glad to meet you, name’s Hangman,” was his introduction.

You couldn’t help the smirk when he said girl, “Isn’t the hallmark of a proper southern boy, that he’s, well, proper?” you shoot back, eye brow quirked. “I’m a woman, not a girl.”

It was fun, watching the way his smirk melted, how his brow furrowed, as he tried to catch up.

“You-”

“Phoenix gave me a run down, but to be honest, I’ve always preferred forming my own perceptions,” you shrug, as you continue your check.

As you brush past him, you aren’t surprised to hear him following after you. “Ah, so my reputation precedes me then?” he muses, and you can see the way he uses his charm and humor to cover, a shield of bravado, too bad he didn’t realize you were raised by bravado.

“Not exactly, though I did see your plaque at Top Gun, to be fair, I saw Phoenix’s too,” you shrug again.

“So you’re the fresh blood, huh?” he prompts, and finally you turn and smile at him.

“I guess fresh blood is better than being called new girl. Name’s Athena, you’d do well to use it,” you tell him, smile in place.

“Athena? As in th4e Greek goddess of war and wisdom?” he asks, brows furrowed down.

“That’s the one,” you nod, moving to check the landing gear.

“Athena as in, the Naval Aviator who climbed through the ranks and had two separate stations before she went to Top Gun?” he follows up and you turn.

You turn to face Hangman, and now your brows are pulled, “How’d you know that?”

“I keep tabs on things that pique my interest,” he shrugs, and your lip curls on the end. “Rumor was you had Admirals arguing over who got you under their command…”

“Nice to meet you Hangman,” you decide finally, climbing back from under the plane, and offering him your hand.

“Pleasure’s mine, Miss Athena,” he smirks back. “It true your old man flew too?” he tacks the question on as he shakes your hand.

You can see it in his eyes, nepotism, you know it’s where is brain’s gone. It’s like you couldn’t escape it, everyone assumed that’s how you got as far as you have, as quick as you have. They were wrong.

“Yeah, mostly f-14s though, nothing with the juice of my baby,” you straight up lie, so what if your dad was still flying? So what if he was probably flying f/a-18s or something experimental? No one but you needed the specifics, and you’re pretty sure it wouldn’t help you fight against the nepo-baby claims. Too bad no one realized how much of a detriment being attached to Maverick actually was. It made most of the higher ups uneasy about taking you on, unsure if you’d inherited your father’s need for speed and reckless streak, you had, but you were just better than him at keeping it in check, if Ice taught you anything, it was that — “ice cold, kiddo, no mistakes.”

“Must’ve been nice, having a leg up like that,” he’s still smiling as he talks down at you.

You match his smile and catch the flicker of confusion in his eyes as you walk up closer to him. “It was, see, it prepared me for a lifetime of dealing with cocky naval aviators and their inflated sense of bubble wrap bravado.”

“That all?” he presses, staring down at you, the two of you now face to face, staring hard at each other, but you caught the little twitch of his eye at your term.

“No,” you smirk before turning and walking away, “but I’ve got a hop to prep for, see you around Hangman.”

…

He finds you in the Mess later that day. You’d just returned from morning drills with your squad, and was eating with Phoenix.

“Ladies,” he greets, setting his own tray down in the seat opposite you.

“And I’ve officially lost my appetite,” Phoenix decided, standing up. “Athena, I’ll catch you later, I’d say it’s nice to see you, Bagman, but we know better,” she states, grabbing her tray, patting your shoulder and walking away.

“You sure know how to clear a room, Hangman,” you note, eyes flicking to Phoenix over Hangman’s shoulder, Nat was clearing her tray and pauses to look back and roll her eyes dramatically as she looks at Hangman’s back.

Your lip twitches and you lift your glass of water to cover up the smile threatening to split your lips.

“Bubble wrap bravado,” Hangman repeats back to you, echoing your statement from yesterday.

“What about it?” you challenge.

“Explain it to me,” it’s not a question, not in how it’s phrased, but you understand that he is asking.

“Protective to an extent, easier to pop than you think, so long as you apply the pressure properly. Problem is, everyone knows when it does, it’s usually a bit loud,” you explain, and he seems so incredibly focused on you.

You didn’t mind the hyper-focus though, you’d coined the term a long time ago. It had originally been for a different boy, one with a temper, but who you’d watched grow up. Ice had thought it an apt descriptor, he’d even taken it to describe a few officer’s he’d interacted with over the years.

“Hmm,” he hums, eyes glued to yours.

“You disagree?” you ask.

“No. I think you hit it on the head,” he admits and your lips curl up just the slightest bit, at least he seemed honest… cock sure and stubborn too, but honest.

“A naval aviator for a father was a lot of things, Hangman,” you admit, hesitating for a moment, deciding how much you wanted to say. “It was limited time, and firm goodbyes. It was getting behind a yoke for the first time when I was 12. It was learning ranks at the same time I was learning how to do multiplication,” you say, and you study how his expression changed which each revelation. “Having a Naval Aviator for a father might have given me a home field advantage, but that’s all it did. The rest, the wings, the assignments, I earned those,” you tell him seriously.

“Sure you did,” he nods along condescendingly, but his eyes betray his curiosity, and for now, that was enough for you.

You smile again at him, though this time it is a bit sour. “You don’t believe me, that’s fine, fair even, to be skeptical. But you should know, you’re gonna eat crow when you realize how wrong you were,” you tell him seriously, before standing up with your plate and glass, and walking away.

…

You get your chance to prove him wrong just a few days later when the Tophatters get assigned to a drill with both of the other squadrons on board the carrier, the Black Aces, and the Vigilantes. Meaning both Nat and Jake are in the air with you.

After is the first time Jake looks at you with something other than cocky contempt. As if seeing you fly up close resolved some of his concerns, but there’s still something there. He was waiting for the other shoe, too bad no one told him that you’d had both feet firmly on the ground since you signed your life to the Unites States Naval Services.

You get paired with him about a month and a half later for a cover assignment for an emergency evac of a SEAL team.

Normally assignments were set within squads, but it was an emergency evac and the carrier was docked. You and Jake had been the closest to the carrier at the time who were qualified, and so you were the two who were sent off. You flew south into South America, and while a lot of the details were later labeled as redacted, Jake never questioned your ability after. Nor should he. You saved his life.

He did however decide that meant you were friends, much to the immense annoyance of one Natasha Trace.

Considering the entire mission had been classified and redacted, you weren’t able to explain a lot of it to her, but when Jake started choosing his words a little more carefully she did her best not to start anything either. When he started sitting with you in the mess, she eyed him carefully. And when he started following you around in any downtime that lined up, she kept her mouth shut.

She found a new case study in the two of you, the outward and obvious differences between Hangman with Athena, and Hangman without. Her eyes jumping from how easily you let your guard down with him, and how utterly soft Hangman could be when he thought no one was paying attention.

Natasha, to her credit, had tried, desperately tried, to get more information out of you regarding your budding friendship, but all you would ever offer was a simple, “people tend to be more complex than what meets the eye, ‘Nix, I’m proof of that. So is he, and so are you.”

She decided then and there, you had way too much tact and patience, and maybe, just maybe, that was what Hangman needed.

...

everything: @butterfly-skinnylegend

athena’s tags: @omgbrianab @smoothdogsgirl @bazellawriz @sbrewer21 @inky-sun @djs8891 @rory-cakes @geeksareunique @je6291 @whoismurphyslaw @kee-0-kee @samanddeaninatrenchcoat @thespillingvoid @youdontknowe @burningcoffeecupp @mrsevans90

...

[thatsrightice]

I’ve been doing a LOT of digging on what path the Top Gun pilots would have taken prior to the events of the movie, specifically Iceman of course, but I found some information regarding the squadrons that Iceman and Maverick would have been apart of directly prior to TOPGUN.

In a preliminary script for “Top Gun”, Maverick speaks to Iceman saying, “You were in 124 with Bargamian.” In Maverick’s line, 124 refers to the VF-124 Gunfighters, a fleet replacement squadron (FRS). Iceman would have been assigned to the F-14 Tomcat and VF-124 in the selection after flight school, and Bargamian is likely a reference to the last name of a pilot Maverick had likely known well. The squadron was located in NAS Miramar, California, and in 1972 the squadron became responsible for training pilots and RIOs in the F-14A Tomcat in the Pacific. These training fleet replacement squadrons would fly out to aircraft carriers to fly day and night carrier qualifications.

In the movie, however, Iceman wears a patch for VFA-25 Fist of the Fleet. This means that he was likely reassigned to VFA-25 for deployment. What is interesting about this is that the squadron never flew the F-14 Tomcat, rather, they only flew configurations of the F/A-18 Hornet. VFA-25 was based out of NAS Lemoore, CA, and was in Carrier Air Wing CVW-14 at the time of the movie. They deployed on the USS Constellation from February 1985 to August 1985, and from September 1986 to October 1986. Their next deployment wouldn’t depart until April of 1987.

In the movie’s opening scene, Maverick and Cougar use the flight callsign ‘Ghostrider,’ the callsign for a real F-14 squadron (VF-142). In the early 1980s, VF-142 was deployed several times on the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower as a part of Carrier Air Wing CVW-7 flying F-14s. They deployed from April 1980 to December 1980, from January 1982 to July 1982, from April 1983 to December 1983, from May 1984 to May 1985, and from July 1985 to September 1985. Then they had an extended turnaround while the ship returned to the shipyard for an extensive overhaul and did not deploy again until 1987 with the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower.

However, you may notice that Maverick’s patch is NOT for VF-142. The patch has VF-1 written, referring to the F-14 Tomcat fighter squadron known as the Wolfpack. The Wolfpack deployed on the USS Ranger from January 1982 to February 1982 and from April 1982 to October 1982. Then they deployed on the USS Kitty Hawk from January 1984 to August 1984 before returning to the USS Ranger from May 1986 to July 1986. They deployed again on the USS Ranger from August 1986 to October 1986 and from March 1987 to April 1987.

But this does not match the logo for the squadron, rather, the patch’s logo depicts a bird in flight. Aircraft from the NAS Miramar-based squadron VF-51 Screaming Eagles and VF-111 Sundowners were repainted in fictitious markings for the film. One could presume that the logo is meant to be a nod to the VF-51 Screaming Eagles. The Screaming Eagles flew off the USS Kitty Hawk in 1981 but transferred to the east coast following an accident that killed a deckhand from the squadron and injured an aircraft’s crew when an A-7E Corsair II from VA-22 struck one of VF-51s aircraft. They flew off of the new USS Carl Vinson from March 1983 to October 1983 as the ship traveled to its homeport in California. VF-51 is the first F-14 squadron to intercept several Soviet aircraft including an armed MiG-23. The squadron cruised with the USS Carl Vinson from 1986 to 1987.

Obviously, we know that Top Gun was filmed on the USS Enterprise, so this is another inaccuracy regarding his squadron. The USS Enterprise sailed with CVW-11 many times in the early 1980s. They deployed from September 1982 to April 1983, May 1984 to December 1984, from January 1986 to August 1986, from January 1988 to July 1988, and from September 1989 to March 1990. CVW-11 consisted of VFA-14 Tophatters, VFA-41 Black Aces, VFA-86 Sidewinders, and VFA-97 Warhawks.

Basically, none of it will paint you a clear and accurate picture. Obviously, I didn’t expect it to be accurate in terms of dates or aircraft carriers lining up and overall accuracy, but the patches and bars on their uniforms would have been nice. I’ve been trying to put together a timeline for Iceman’s career prior to TOPGUN but it’s a little hard when they don’t flesh out a character with a complete and fool proof backstory. I mean, Val Kilmer had to come up with his own headcanon in order to play his character with at least a little bit of depth.

EDIT: you can find a lot of information on different Naval squadrons using the website seaforces.org, they’ll give you info regarding their deployments and what carriers they were on and what planes they flew. Also, Wikipedia is legitimately a great starting place in terms of research :)

[crazygadgetshere]

Cold War U.S. Navy Fighters 1957-2006 Complete Guidebook featuring Tamiya 1/48th F-14A

This digital guidebook is a comprehensive resource for building U.S. Navy Fighters of the Cold War era, featuring Tamiya 1/48th F-14As in the VF-14 Tophatters 80th Anniversary scheme. The guidebook is divided into two parts: This digital guidebook, , covers all you need to learn about making your own Cold War-era U.S. Navy Fighter. It has 143 pages and 13,000 words that explain the “why” as well…

[usafphantom2]

🎩Tophatters🎩 they are the Navy's oldest active squadron, having formed in 1919!

#sidewinderlowlevel #500feet500knots

@JarodMHamilton via X

[mustanged]

#𝐌𝐔𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐍𝐆𝐄𝐃 ⏤     independent, private, selective & plot-driven original character 𝐊𝐀𝐈 𝐅𝐋𝐎𝐑𝐄𝐒 based in the top gun universe.  green to gold; prior enlisted ( arc 2 - aviation machinist's mate assigned to vfa-136 knighthawks ) before comissioning ( arc 3 - naval aviator assigned to vfa-14 tophatters ). 

written by mini, 26, gmt+1, she/her

blogs: @untwined, @daygeneral, @mustanged & @moiraied