#does top lie?

[forcebookish]

I just have to say you are restoring my faith in humanity with all your Top and Mew opinions. People are so weird about them I just don't get it. Their dynamic to me is so exciting and I look forward to their scenes every week. What really strikes me about Top and what a lot of people don't want to see is that he truly wants someone to care for and look after. The way he so quickly took to taking care of Mew you can tell he really treasures him. I also just love how much of an enigma Mew is (in the best way), he always subverts expectations and I think he really needed someone like Top in his life, regardless of what's going to happen in the future.

thank you, anon 🙏

you put it perfectly, they "don't want to see" who he actually is, so caught up in their own narrative of what they want him and the drama to be - something neither of them are. like, why do they think top wanted to still be with mew after he thought that he wasn't a virgin, had lied to him about actually liking him, and might have been cheating on him with ray? just... 'cause? he told boston he still liked him even after all of that, after being so hurt that he slept with someone else. how many times does a guy have to say he likes someone before people believe him????

and you're so right about him taking care of mew!! i've been planning a post about this since ray asked, "is top the kind of boyfriend you want?" because uhhh, you mean a boyfriend who takes care of him? validates his feelings? worships his body? respects his boundaries? and like you said, treasures him.

on their first date, he buys him the sex book lol

on their second date, he puts on his laser tag light up thingie for him

he helps him at water skiing

(i mean lol that second one is obviously a move but still)

on their silent disco date, he puts on mew's headphones for him and gets him a drink

he assembles furniture for him

he gets his drinks for him at the party, he takes him home

(side-note: i've seen folks have a problem with this checklist line, as if he's "faking" at being a good boyfriend, but it's just a reference to mew saying he has his a checklist.....)

he's so concerned for mew when he gets hurt, he wants to go after biker, and "fixes" his glasses (an attempt was made ok😂)

like???? do they think he didn't take care of his exes??? he doesn't know what mew's "type" is, he's just acting like how he acts in relationships. and he was taking care of him even before mew said that!! (inb4 that line about him only caring about coming and making himself happy, he said specifically that he couldn't remember the last time he felt like that; that doesn't mean he never has, it just means that mew's the most serious boyfriend he's ever had. he's never been in love before, that doesn't mean he's not now.)

who goes that far just to "pretend" to care for someone?? and even if he did, don't you think that would lead to him actually caring about him? they really go, hmmm, he's a good boyfriend🤔🤔🤔 suspicious🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔 lmao

to your point about mew, he is an enigma! every week, i want to know more about him. i've never seen a character like mew before - even though i've known people like him in real life.

and i agree that top's actually been good for mew, even if it leads to (momentary?🥺 interim?🥺 please not permanent🥺🥺🥺) heartbreak, it's good that he's getting out of his shell. we haven't seen a lot of his backstory, but top keeps introducing him to new experiences outside of just reading, helping him live a life outside of studies. and, uh, (at least soon) help him realize how shitty his friends are😅

so pleased my silly little (ok, overly long) posts restore your faith in humanity, anon. it's asks like these that restore my faith in humanity. so glad i'm not alone in loving them <3

(and glad that you anons seem to like it when i make your asks into HUGE ASS POSTS COMPLETE WITH SCREENCAPS OMG I DON'T KNOW WHY ANYONE READS THESE BUT I'M GLAD Y'ALL DO)

[vampiremolloy]

Covers of all of Daniel Molloy's books (that we know of)

[astrobei]

my take on modern will byers is that i don’t think he would be a music snob/music purist in that he refuses to listen to pop or makes fun of it or whatever but i DO think he is a Spotify Wrapped Curator and turns on a private session every time he listens to something remotely “embarrassing.” which is why, when will proudly displays his top five artists and top five songs at the end of the year, el is very confused as to how she heard jenny by studio killers playing in his room for 72 hours straight without it showing up on his end of year stats.

[zeb-z]

Foolish outright lying when Tubbo presses him about the fed worker death message oh if anyone wasn’t certain he’s protecting Cellbit they can be damn sure of it now

[thelonelynindroid]

His only deanfense

[maulfucker]

So fucked up that obimaul is a rarepair. What do you mean not everyone is obsessed with enemies to lovers with a Force connection, where one side is completely obsessed with the other who barely acknowledges him (but is just as affected)

[theposhperyton]

All evidence suggests yes

[hella1975]

so there's a reason my new job got back to me so quickly about my application and that's bc it's an absolute fucking shambles like actually perfect timing for me to decide to rewatch the bear bc i have never more felt like ive been thrown into a broke on-its-knees establishment trying to crawl its way up the ladder where i am somehow a godsend to them. my old job was crazy and shambolic in the sense that the industry is just Like That but this one?????? insanity. every 5 mins i am questioning what im doing with my life. ive already had a walk-in fridge moment

[thedrotter]

look i know this month has been crazy already in what has been going on for me BUT IT GETS CRAZIER... I got to finally have my constant pain I've had for two years diagnosed... I have fibromyalgia lol i have a chronic illness??😭😭

tbf it doesn't change anything i was already coping with these pains because I've been sitting with em for 2 years i just have anti depressants now but you know what has changed... my character lore GOT SICK AS FUCK!!!!!!!🦅🦅🦅🦅 (lighthearted)

[hauntingblue]

making a collection

making another collection with a threatening aura

[forcebookish]

Force Jiratchapong Srisang as Top Tanin in Only Friends, ep. 6 (🥺🥺🥺)

[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.

[kimbapisnotsushi]

Hi, can I ask your top 5 favorite characters from Haikyuu? Why you love them? And, what are your top 7 favorite moments from the series? Which top 3 fav games are your favorite (between which team)?

Also, why do you love Haikyuu? What made that series special to you?

Yes, I'm so excited after watching the movie. Haikyuu really is one of the best anime/manga series ever....

(Love your headcanon Haikyuu, thanks for sharing them)

aww thanks so much!! i am so so sorry this has taken me a while to get to, but i'm happy to answer!!

to get the last one out of the way first: i've probably mentioned this, like, a million times already, but haikyuu has so much great symbolism and imagery and characters that just make it really fun to dive into and think about!! they all come together to make a beautifully constructed story, which can be very difficult to do when the genre is realistic fiction/sports. and i like that the overall messages and themes are very hopeful and uplifting at the end of the day—it's about connection, it's about dreams, it's about trying again and again. it's about getting back up!!! it's about trusting in the people around you, and being able to trust yourself. it's something i really appreciate and keep close to heart. i love haikyuu for lots of reasons, but this covers the basics of it pretty well!!

now, as for the rest of what you've asked . . .

top 5 characters:

okay i'm going to cheat a little and say that kageyama and hinata are obivously tied for first. i can't help it!! they're the main charas and they do it so so well. the growth that they go through is one of my favorite things about them, as are the relationships they have with each other and the people around them. they're sort of a package deal, really, so i don't think you can blame me for that

in second place i would have to say oikawa!! beautifully flawed and beautifully human and such a great antagonist overall. i think he's the closest we've ever seen to a character almost making a mistake that they would have regretted (ie hitting kageyama), and even despite all that it's not like he truly hates kageyama or wants him to stop marching on his own path. he's also just really funny and pathetic i love him

YAKU!!!! YAKU MORISUKE MY BELOVED. i like him because i find him very relatable and i love what he does for nekoma!!!! he's so badass!!!!!!! everyone loves him everyone thinks he's so cool AND i love his whole thing with shibayama and lev. he's kind and caring but hides it under like five layers of being a bitch bastard if you're someone who annoys him i love him so much oh my god

and on that note kenma!! thinking about who he used to be, who he helped kuroo become . . . the fact that he finds volleyball fun and admits it . . . the fact that he loves it despite how exhausting it is . . . how he loves his friends and team . . . kenma's story was so wonderfully done and i adore it with every bit of my soul. he cares soooooo much!!!!! i adore that about him!!!!

hngngnsdhfsjyuef last one this is so hard . . . but i think i'm going to have to say hoshiumi! the way he wants to prove how he has nothing to prove and wants to leave no room for doubt . . . right off the bat he recognized hinata for what he was worth because they were the same!!! and the way he said he'd wait for hinata!!!!!! i could probably go into so much about how hoshiumi was probably the first to look at hinata and see a true and proper rival because there was no way he couldn't when he knew what it was like!!

top 7 moments:

oooooh boy. okay first off is the first boom jump during the nekoma match, when kageyama calls for an open!!!! i love this for obvious reasons but UGH the fact that it symbolizes kageyama's trust in hinata and is a testament to how far they've both grown . . . how kageyama decided to make it a set for hinata rather than giving up on him . . . how hinata was able to fly to reach it . . . it is soooooo good oh my god

hmm second i would have to say are definitely the parallelism panels (real match vs practice) during the nekoma match!!! the idea that karaneko playing against each other is so familiar and so fun that it feelsl ike home and feels like any other day is so precious to me. truly one of the best moments that show how haikyuu is about connection and love and passion.

"someone even better will come and find you" are you SHITTING me. everything we learned about kageyama and his grandfather broke my heart but that scene especially, followed by hinata's "i'm here!" easily makes into top seven for me oh my god. i get so many emotions thinking about it and it was just so incredibly well done.

when hinata yells "I'M HOME" during the jackals v adlers match!!! and everyone yells 'WELCOME BACK" and kageyama says "took you long enough" GAH i want to cry. baby is home and he's back amd he's here and they're together again!!!!! i just hngngngn UGH

when oikawa shows up at olympics with argentina!!! and he calls it a family reunion!!!! i wanted to cry!!!! i guess it does depend on the translations you've seen but i MUCH prefer it when he calls it that because that really solidifies what haikyuu means!!! and it shows how he's never forgotten where he came from!!!

kenma's "this is painful. this is tiring. i don't want it to end" with the panel of him GETTING BACK UP AND RUNNING TOWARDS THE MATCH??? that meant EVERYTHING to me oh my god.

ughhhhh last moment . . . this is so hard . . . i'm going to cheat and say hinata's collapse during kamomedai because of everything that happens after it!!! takeda on his knees talking to him, kenma's "i came to cheer up a friend", kageyama's "but i wanted to go further with this team" . . . it gave us so many good things and i think is also such a pivotal moment in the story!!! i don't think most people were really truly expecting it (although people have def picked up on its foreshadowing before) and it makes you think that really anything can happen during a match i'm adding a bonus to this: that moment during the all-stars match when oikawa asks ushijima what he thinks of oikawa's "petty pride" now, and ushijima tells him "i think it's fantastic". LIKE HOLY FUCK WE HAVE COME FULL CIRCLE!!!!!!!!

top 3 matches:

okay this probably goes without saying but karaneko at nationals!!! that was everything to me!!! that was what we were all waiting for!!!! i know there are those who don't like it because of how it ended but imo it's very fitting for someone like kenma and it really does, once again, give off the sense that anything can happen in a match and can make you win or lose—it's what furudate's been trying to tell us this whole time, even if some read it as a cop-out.

inarizaki match definitely. it was really really good not just for introducing inarizaki and their stories but also the fact that we realize hinata doesn't have to be chained!!!! there are people capable of keeping up with him and there are people who WANT to keep up with him at his level!!!! atsumu was the first determined to do so!!!!!!! (which i could talk about more but like. that's a story for another time)

AGH last one was so hard . . . it was a toss-up between karasuno v seijoh (spring high playoffs), karasuno v shiratorizawa, or jackals v adlers and i'm going to have to say jackals v adlers!! i love the other two but the fact that we got a match fthat shows how far everyone's come and how they're still connected and passionate and full of hopes and dreams is my favorite thing ever. we got some GREAT stories within that match and we got to see so many characters return!!! what more could you ask for, really?? i will say tho that i'm giving honorary mention to nekoma v nohebi i've got such a soft spot for that match LMAO

but that's it!!! thanks for the ask i had fun answering all these. if anyone's ever curious to know more about anything i've mentioned feel free to swing by, and thanks for reading!!

[darkforestwarriors]

speedy machine (woosh) going FAST AS ALL FUCK down supre fun SPINE

[wedielike]

he lied, like a liar.

[beans-and-shet]

"Welcome home, Aoyama-kun!"

Aka Masaya surprises Ichigo by completing his abroad program and coming home early.