#YES i know im being annoying

[agentfaust]

i desperately want haiku bot to notice me that is all thanks

[drabbles-of-writing]

I realize the Collector is probably going to realize they’re being tricked via King’s Power Of Friendship™ and also Belos getting a bit too cocky with his world domination, but you know. I really hope that one of the things that pushes the Collector over the edge and back onto King’s side is because Belos is doing his evil speeches while possessing Raine, sees Eda for 0.2 seconds, and immediately tells the Collector to murder her on sight.

To which the Collector turns to him, now fully 100% suspicious, saying “wait a second...that’s not right. You’re supposed to be in love with the owl lady, aren’t you?” and Belos, a born-and-raised 17th century puritan, clashes so badly with Raine snapping into mortified consciousness that the entire puppet body short-circuits

[d1sc01nf3rn0]

I'm seeing a lot of people with neurodivergency, specially under the autism spectrum say that "Laios is annoying, never shuts up, is insensitive, and I can't stand him"; and the irony is not lost on me lmao.

[unironicallycringe]

man I'm just gonna say that it's incredibly fucking weird to walk onto a stranger's blog, project your own predatory age headcanons onto a character with no canon age, and then decide that means the blogger condones it.

like?? my dude?? the only person talking about that is you because it's your headcanon?

"you're bad because I think of this ageless character as a 30yo being paired with a teen" well I sure goddamn don't and I didn't need to hear that shit! it's not only extremely inappropriate, it's creepy as fuck! so like, maybe do some self-reflecting on why you decided that a stranger should abide by your headcanon, and maybe also stop doing that.

[the-holy-ghosted]

were they in love here yes or no

[craycraybluejay]

yes i am an adult male who loves high school dramas this is because i literally never experienced normal coming of age drama like ever and am disconnected from the collective experience of having a relatable peer group forever hope that helps

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

for some reason im really feeling the Queer Euphoria in this chilis tonight, specifically: being so ambiguous its hilarious. there is No label to describe my orientation/gender. like yeah i use nonbinary bc technically it fits but also bc the flag Fucks. if asked, my only correct answer would be "Wildcard, Motherfucker!"

[compacflt]

I just wanted to say as someone who has stumbled across your blog and has read your Wednesday wips and posts about anything topgun related that your thought process and consideration of mav and ice, specifically their political beliefs and relationships with their own identities, is honestly so impressive and cool. You have brought such realism and life to these characters which is just so refreshing to see. idk i just wanted to express how cool and awesome i think that is

Because of the thought into these characters does it make it difficult to like them or understand them if you have differing opinions from them? for me personally i feel like if i were to ever actually have a convo with ice or mav regarding identity politics i would actually start to lose my mind (like how one feels when your dad or fun uncle talks for too long at thanksgiving dinner). If it does make them difficult to like, does that make it difficult for you to write them sometimes?

oh yeah! i think, my ice i really empathize with & really love & really could get along with, once he grows out of the sexism of his teens & twenties, but my maverick drives me crazy. someone sent in an ask a while ago that was like “WHY is cyclone simpson your one true love??” And it’s because i too would absolutely hate maverick & hate working with him lol. people who are overly cocky & un-self-aware & a bit self-centered make me CRAZY. (narrator voice: compacflt is a hypocrite as all these things also apply to compacflt.)

Politically… It’s difficult to say. no one really wants to hear the intricacies of one person’s political journey, which is why i won’t give you mine, but suffice to say—since the start of the russian invasion of Ukraine, and my semi-concerted effort to learn more about the political landscape of modern warfare, my own personal beliefs have shifted a whole bunch. definitely aided in that shift by my top gun fic project that specifically aims to understand the conservative straight-passing male mindset as it relates to military matters… there are many end goals to a project like mine, but one end product is a filter you can take away and hold up in front of your eyes and see the world through it. When writing from the eyes of a conservative straight (passing) white man, your priorities totally shift. I had to write from the perspective of someone who doesn’t care about identity politics. Because they don’t! A core tenet of conservatism is very proudly not caring about that stuff, and being very annoyed when people (usually left-of-centers) make that stuff very visible and want you to care about it! “Don’t shove it in my face,” etc., etc. Don’t force me to care about this taboo, private thing I really don’t care about. It violates my freedoms, or whatever, to be forced to care—or even bear witness to—stuff that i don’t care about. Etc. And then, to be nominally a part of that community that you really, really don’t care about, and then to be told that you have to care about it because of your publicity… people asking you to be proud of something that has had a negative connotation for much of your entire life… that’s not a transformation that happens easily.

Jesus, I could write an essay about this. I have, several times by now in responses to asks over my blog. But there is so much that I could talk about. I think… I really worry that some of my writing falls into the first of the below categories:

I really try not to romanticize conservatism in my writing—I tried to show that ice and mav’s happiness is the price they pay for their conservatism. They’re actively choosing to be unhappy—but because they prioritize their honor over everything, due to EXTERNAL PRESSURES they cannot control, and which I think are often ignored in the fandom space for one reason or another. The fact of the matter is, in 99% of IPs, characters prioritize something other than their sexualities. It’s never Maverick’s personal identity that is at stake in either Top Gun or Top Gun: Maverick, because he has built himself so impermeably masculine that there are no grounds upon which to question his personal identity. He just isn’t thinking about it. He’s thinking about how to get into Charlie’s pants, how to win the Top Gun trophy, how to uphold his promise to Goose, et cetera. If he’s fucking guys on the side, it’s because he wants to and because hes maverick and he does what he wants without thinking about it—that’s the whole point of his character, from a story-construction standpoint. That’s his archetype. He’s a renegade maverick superstar who is both thoughtlessly brilliant and thoughtlessly dangerous. He’s thoughtless. His priorities are to survive and to look cool doing it, and that’s it. He is a savant in the Naval Air Force, where honor is your lifeblood, who feels he has been dishonored by his own family name, and who willingly joined the conservative post-Vietnam Navy right when/after Ronald Reagan was elected President, and who wears cowboy boots and who disrespects women to their faces, and who is eager to get into altercations with Soviet-Chinese-DPRK-X-second-world-country-coded-but-EXPLICITLY-Soviet-manufactured-Mikoyan-Gurevich-MiG-28s(-F-5s-painted-black)… I’m sorry. In my opinion, the conservatism is baked into him as a character. I find it extremely difficult to separate him from his conservatism, because in some ways his patriotic conservatism is his raison d’etre. IMO if you take that away from him, he ceases to exist.

Same thing with Ice and his unwillingness to openly rebel or go against the grain. That is his whole reason to exist in the story at all. I know that I’m saying this in a fandom space where the whole point is to change characters & put them in different situations (fanfic) but… in kind of a perverse self aware way, as in I know I sound ridiculous and pretentious, i guess i don’t really understand an impulse to change the core tenets of a character irreparably in fanworks. We are shown that ice always goes by the books in TG. Then we are shown that he achieves the fruits of that labor (four stars) in TGM. So he is rewarded for never rebelling, whereas Maverick, who always rebels (but NEVER in a way that challenges his personal identity), has stagnated in the ranks at full-bird O-6. And that’s Ice’s character. That’s what he’s there for in the story—he’s a tool to show us the value system of rank and prestige you earn by following the rules of the Navy. Why take that away from him? That’s his priority! Canonically, that’s his priority and reason for existence! And historically the way to achieve that priority is through conservatism.

And you ask me if it’s hard to like my ice and mav. Yes, but that’s not my choice. The movie already did that for me. They are not, I’m sorry, likable people. I am not a straight white conservative male writing about straight white conservative men to validate my own beliefs—I’m a queer AFAB person of color writing about straight white conservative men because I want to understand the limits of their conservatism. What they do and do not care about, and what it takes to make them care. And from what we are shown in TG… ice and mav would not care about ME. At all. And they would not want to be forced to care about me. Ice’s casual careless dismissiveness… “the plaque for the alternates is down in the ladies’ room…” mav following Charlie into the bathroom… turning the key in the ignition and driving away while pretending not to hear her… “what?? i can’t hear you! 🙉” … they do not care. They have no desire to care.

Again. Maybe I subscribe to a very very old-school and labored and pretentious ideology when it comes to writing… I know a lot of people write just to have fun. I do not. I wish i could, but I don’t. And when you’re not writing to have fun, you don’t have to like the characters you’re writing about. They’re nothing more than tools at your disposal to get your point across more effectively. No, I don’t like them! Of course not! My ice is cruel and cowardly and careless and hypocritical and subservient and weak, and my mav is demanding and dangerous and dismissive and oblivious and so, so, so unbelievably bitter.

And that’s what my story needed, to get my point across. So, shrug. My point was my priority. I don’t care too much about the characters themselves.

Re: icemav & identity politics. Part of hopefully selling this story is the attempt at empathy for the conservative male, to bring this discussion back to the top. Why write fiction at all if you’re not going to write about people different from you, and why write about people different from you if you don’t want to understand them? So… part of trying to understand them was to understand and have empathy for this shift in priorities. Conservative guys do not want to care about labels, or sexual orientations, or, God forbid, discussion of their gender identities. I can kind of see Ice tolerating it by the end… but, there are limits. Again, it’s supposed to be private. I think he’d chafe against getting labeled gay—he wouldn’t want to be called the first gay compacflt, or SECNAV, etc. He can’t say, “i slept with like a hundred fifty women before I even MET the ONLY man ive ever slept with,” because that’s like intensely private personal information!! No one deserves that information, but people still want to call him gay, even though in his head he really is not!!!! Again—from the conservative perspective, it’s a public imposition of left-wing, overly sexualized, too-neat labels and politics onto an area of life that has typically been kept private and respectable—I don’t agree with the conservatism, but I can at least empathize with it. Pre-Maverick’s death (pre-coming to terms with it), it would’ve been shameful & embarrassing to him; but even after coming to terms with it, it’s still not something he “takes pride” in. I think he thinks of it like this—most people aren’t proud of being straight. Like, it’s weird if you are. Same thing with being proud of being white, etc. Why be excessively proud of things you have no control over? Why not take pride in your ACTIONS—for instance, his career that he has actively sacrificed so much of his pride for? I can really empathize with that thought. I don’t necessarily agree, but I get it, especially in his professional circumstances, where he has so much to be professionally proud of, and yet people keep wanting him to publicly care about this private part of him he has no control over and can’t change.

Maverick though. I think he’d be actively hostile about talking about it in public. He Does Not Care. he does not want to care. It’s all an insult. They call him the first openly gay Ace cause he’s married to another man— “okay, but, like, I’m not. Stop calling me that. Neither of us are. Oh my god we have slept with so many women. Stop calling us that.” Ok then what do you want us, the press corps, to call you? First openly bisexual Ace? “No that’s worse!! That’s a word some teenager made up and doesn’t mean anything!! I’m sixty years old stop asking me to talk about this stuff im too old.” What do you have to say to LGBT kids who want to go into the navy? “😎👍 there’s a place for you etc etc. Let’s go back to talking about all the planes I shot down.” Maverick does what he wants without thinking about it. That’s the core tenet of his character. Very conservative. Don’t ask him to care too much.

Idk. No I don’t like them. But I understand them, if that makes sense. Like their conservative anti-label logic does make emotional sense to me. So that’s part of what I took away from this project, for better or worse… probably worse: I understand why conservatives don’t like the modern over-publicity of sexuality. They don’t care and they don’t want to care. And because they are small-C conservative, my ice and mav still don’t care lol. So, yeah. It doesn’t make them hard to write, because thats why I wanted to write them in the first place.

[gifti3]

Thinking about og obey me and how asmo would say something that would have me quickly filing him in the 'avoid' category

[mokeonn]

if you dont mind sharing, what are some of your favorite ska songs/bands?

I will admit I am not a huge band person I tend to be more of a "pick whatever random songs sound good" person, so I can't recommend any good bands. I also listen to Ska Punk, which is a subgenre of Ska... and Punk. So I am not a good authority on Ska songs to listen to I am just someone who is banned from being passed the aux cord...

But some of my favorite songs include:

No Children - Ska (cover)

Quinto Patio Ska

Everything Went Numb

S F D D

And songs by Reel Big Fish tbh. I know I just said I don't listen to specific bands but Reel Big Fish has some pretty good songs like...

Sell Out

And their Take on Me cover

Here's my disclaimer, though: I am not into music subcultures I just listen to whatever sounds good (and jazzy punk with horns sounds good), so I could be giving absolutely awful music recommendations that anyone who is especially into Ska (and more specifically Ska Punk) might find egregious. I personally just grab whatever song sounds good and add them to my forever long playlist.

Also the Jabberjaw (Running Underwater) song from Pain used for the Cartoon Network Boomerang Groovies is probably the reason I enjoy Ska punk so much, and it has been in my playlist for years now:

If nothing else in this list interests you, I require everyone by law to listen to Jabberjaw Running Under Water by pain and watch the Cartoon Network Boomerang Groovie video of it. I used to watch Boomerang a million times, and this was probably the only Groovie I really enjoyed watching and didn't go to the bathroom during.

[reiverreturns]

so you’re telling me eivor “you could have wisdom! glory! power! what more do you need?” “everything else” varinsdottir really decided to leave england on a whim but went out of her way to say goodbye to:

aelfred (rat bastard)

guthrum (yawn)

harald (great hair less than 30 seconds screentime in the original game)

and she wouldn’t travel to say goodbye to:

valdis, oswald, and broder who lost a brother fighting to rescue sigurd from fulke

ljufvina, who has always been a firm friend and sacrificed so much fighting under eivor’s banner

stowe and erke, a perpetual reminder to her that what is good and what is right don’t always align

vili, the man who knows her heart as she knows his, her longest and often-closest friend

ceolbert, a man who left this world too soon but left such a mark on eivor that she would visit his grave and mourn him long after he was gone

are you really telling me that ubi. with a straight face. in this economy.

[protectoratenova07]

I think the worst part about the wogs on Jack's power, besides the Contessa point, is that it kinda fucks over how he was beaten in worm.

It was a plan made by Theo and that runs into the first complication because Broadcast should stop parahumans from devising plans on killing Jack that would work. It's apparently the reason why Aisha doesn't just stab him back in Brockton Bay. But hey, maybe it's enough disconnect because he's not the one doing it. That can get a pass untill...

He runs it by Dinah, third most powerful precog. You'd think with the whole talking powers in the background thing, Broadcast would have seen that and tipped things in Jack's favor. Broadcast may not account for unpowered people, but PtV sure as hell does and Broadcast can apparently screw with PtV.

After that and a series of parahumans all attacking, the Dragon Teeth guy gets room to act and all he does is blind Jack a little. That's it. Doesn't even injure him. He just throws some foam over Jack's eyes which allowed Tecton to punch him.

That was apparently enough for Gray Boy to deem Jack a loser and loop him. Which you'd think Jack's passenger would have an issue with and get Gray Boy to look the other way, but he's apparently special in that regard and gets a pass from the whole communication thing Jack has going on.

But no, Jack never loses to parahumans.

[staticpine]

The Ideal Wizard would be one who has achieved a combination of Jock and Nerd as well as a synthesis of Prep and Goth.

You also have to be Fruity,

Faggy even.

Extra points if you are Transexual.

[aria0fgold]

Surprise for Morgana

Morgana sat by the window of the attic, observing what he can outside that can be overlooked from it, the people walking, the buildings, the darkening sky as dusk approaches. It was a good way to pass the time with, though there wasn't anything much he can do with this annoying cat form of his, and with Ren hanging out with Ryuji, he's left to just stay at home.

Morgana huffed, which is his way of sighing in this form. Staying at home is somewhat stuffy although it does give him enough peace and quiet to think more about what to do next for the Phantom Thieves, he may not have all his memories yet, he still has his intuition. And so far it proved to be rather accurate, in fact, currently his intuition is telling him that Ren's new friend is more than meets the eye.

Kaito Kuroba, a new friend that Ren made by walking around in Shibuya. The two hit it off well even by their first meeting so they exchanged numbers. Ren has a way of meeting new people and Kaito seems just as delighted to have met someone new just as well. It was a chance encounter that the two were more than happy with. Morgana was too, it's always nice to see Ren getting along with other people outside of his usual group. Although, there was just something about Kaito that Morgana can't quite put a finger on it— or in his case, a paw.

Kaito met up with them from time to time too, he seems to be good at observing people, is highly skilled with his hands considering the magic tricks he loves to show-off sometimes, he seems to have skills that'll be incredibly useful for the Phantom Thieves. Then again, he's also mischievous, annoying, a pain in the neck, and has Morgana said annoying yet?

Whenever he comes by he would always tease me! He's way worse than Ryuji especially since I can't even talk to him the same way I can talk to the others! He's frustrating to be around with, who said he could be helpful, forget about that, I would rather not be in the same room as that guy!

Morgana's tail flicked about as his thoughts drifted to the many times Kaito messed with him. Just as his annoyance rose, he heard what seemed to be faint sounds of footsteps climbing the stairs. His ears perked at the sound of it, expectant that Ren is back home, he jumped down preparing to greet him.

“Hey Morgana! I got a surprise for you!” Ren's voice called from the stairs.

Morgana tilted his head, confused at what the surprise was, although he also couldn't help feeling a bit excited from Ren's own excitement.

“Geez, you didn't have to get me something! But glad that you're ba—”

Morgana wanted to act cool by seeming to not be interested at all, but his attempt was abruptly stopped by what greeted him next. It was Kaito that appeared from the stairs.

Huh???

He walked past him, confused as to where Ren was, he looked down the stairs, but he was no where to be found.

But I heard his voice…?

Kaito's laugh brought Morgana's attention back to him, he wore a wide grin on his face. “Look at you being so confused! You sounded so excited too!”

No way… Did he… imitated Ren's voice?!

“Well, Renren may not be here but I wasn't lying about having a surprise for you!” Kaito held up a package, one that Morgana knows all too well. After all, it was from the sushi place they once visited. He remembered that the takeout was instead given away, when it was something he had been looking forward to.

Is that…

“There's fatty tuna here too.” Kaito winked at him.

“Fatty tuna!!!" Morgana exclaimed, though it only came off as a loud excited meow towards Kaito.

Kaito laughed, “You're a really smart cat! Come on, you can have a piece while we wait for Renren.”

Well, maybe he wasn't as annoying as Morgana first thought.

[faunandfloraas]

Jeongin having almost no votes on that poll makes sense to me, not because I think he'd do particularly bad but because I'm utterly certain if he ended up stranded with one of us he'd just up and leave and I wouldn't blame him

[gncrezan]

testing out how different the pen pressure is on the new laptop w/ @asphodelgame <3