#but at least he gets to feel sad about it on screen amiright ajdhfjfhfj

[actuallyitsstar]

Maverick + 2, 21, and 22?

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2. favorite canon thing about this character?

i think that hands down i have to say that i actually really respect the writers/tc/whoever making the active choice to humanize maverick. in a lot of big Straight Man Macho Action Flex Movies (tm) i feel like this is hardcore frowned upon. but i gotta hand it to tc, because i feel like it's a through line for his films- my poor traumatized meow meow ethan hunt comes to mind- that his action hero characters are like. PEOPLE. with emotions. who behave in a way you can empathize with and unpack.

like even in the original movie, though they are obviously not explicit in discussing it, they do address the way a scare can shake you up, the way there's no shame in it. viper even says as much to maverick when he's thinking of quitting. there's no shame in it. that spin was hell, it would've shook me up. there's no shame in cougar quitting either- he still is a good man, as mav helpfully reminds the others. he disobeys orders to help cougar, (i'd like to get on my 'parallels to jake launching against orders to save mav and bradley' high horse here but its not relevant rn so i'm gonna refrain), and he defends cougar's honor to the others multiple times. of course there's the surprising (for an 80s movie full of cheese and needless romance subplots and sweaty men) amount of emotional intelligence in goose and mav's conversation at the housing, when mav apologizes for showboating and makes the ~promise~ to goose and goose gets to display his immense working knowledge of What Makes Mav Tick. for all of that famous ego we've seen in action, mav is perfectly capable of listening to what goose has to say and understanding his point and conceding without making it about himself. that right there is some surprising emotional intelligence (which never coping with losing goose will promptly destroy but i digress)

and then there's the post goose's death universe- they let it haunt him. as they should, but i feel a lot of films in a similar genre and style wouldn't be willing to dwell on it so. he gets to cry. a lot. he's literally in the jet in top gun '86 with just. tears running down his face. then there's tgm- there's the scene outside the hard deck and there's the scene with ice and there's the funeral and there's the fight with bradley on base and there's but you are here and the hug on the carrier. he gets to be genuinely emotional and heartfelt. he gets to express actual in the moment feelings that are not just anger and are not just with a ~love interest~. HE GETS TO BE HUMAN !!! HE GETS TO BE SOFT !!! THATS SO IMPORTANT TO ME. probably wouldn't be my number one blorbo man if it weren't for that.

21. If you're a fic writer and have written for this character, what's your favorite thing to do when you're writing for this character? What's something you don't like?

aaaaaaa i think my favorite (evil) thing about writing mav is the unreliable narration. it's rly great (read: painful) to sit down and just say the craziest shit that is not true as if it is fact and then know he that he really thinks like that. hes just like 'of course he can't expect the most basic human decency known to man from his closest friends and family because it is unreasonable to imagine someone as horrible as himself could ever deserve it' and he's just talking about like. needing somebody to pick him up from the airport. and you're just like wow. this little guy is fucked up huh

least favorite tho....... it's a two sided coin. it can't be too on the nose and it can't be too over-the-top. mav is great at being/seeming functional, on a surface level. it's only when you get inside of the one bedroom apartment with a bedroom he is not allowed to use bc that's for just in case his long lost son ever comes home or whatever that you realize something is wrong. his pov can't be too down or too depressed. it's mostly objective, with just a direct little splash here and there, just enough so the reader can be like 'okay. yeah. makes sense. alright. still making sense. and....wildest most untrue thing you could possibly say about yourself. alright yeah he needs therapy' <3

22. If you're a fic reader, what's something you like in fics when it comes to this character? Something you don't like?

aaaaaa so many amazing authors in this fandom do so much that i adore i don't even know where to start, but i guess one of my favorite things has to be when he's just very *shrugs* about the flyboys and they've already decided that he's one of them now. it's really great to know we just all agreed somehow that this is a found family group of aviators who barely have any screen time with each other, and that we all just agreed that mav probably doesn't understand the invitation to be as direct as they mean it because he is frankly unused to receiving such direct invitations period. there is nothing like watching an idiot who needs loved get roped into a found family. like !! yeah !!! get loved !! do it !!! it can't be stopped !!

and hmm something i don't like. very much the reverse again, in a way, but i think one of my least favorite things has got to be either over-infantalizing him into like, way too much of the "baby brother" in the group (i am not denying that this is objectively probably his role, just that this does not mean he is going to be acting like he is 5). he knows how to do the basics. he's an adult man who is technically capable of taking care of himself (though whether he feels he deserves the effort is a different story). you have to be hella fucking smart to graduate with the kinds of degrees and experience you need to do what mav does. he's a fully capable adult. he's just also a little dumb about the self care sometimes. they're not mutually exclusive.