#sexuality development

[stevesbipanic]

Steve had never given sexuality much thought until he met Robin.

He didn't have many crushes growing up, in fact he could count the on one hand.

First there was Sara Flint, Steve was twelve and they were lab partners all year, three times a week he and Sara would joke around in class. On the last day he realised this was those butterflies his friends always talked about, but by then it was too late, all he got was a kiss on the cheek and that summer the Flints left town.

It was another four years before his next one, Nancy Wheeler. Four years never finding those butterflies again, Tommy cycled through girlfriends like a rolodex until he finally landed on Carol. Sure they had been girls who kissed him at parties but they felt hollow and boring. There was even that kiss he and Tommy shared last year to "check if they were gay just in case" but he felt nothing there either.

But Nancy, Nancy turned caterpillars into butterflies inside him. She was smart and beautiful and kind. They had met when he'd been told he was going to fail chemistry if he didn't pick up his grade. He'd gotten Nancy's number as a possible tutor for extra credit. Two weekdays and every weekend they'd either be at Steve's dining table or down at the library studying. Steve passed his test and butterflies grew inside him when Nancy hugged him in congratulations. This time Steve wasn't too late, but that Halloween made him wish he was.

Steve hoped it would be another four years before the butterflies returned but the following summer brought, Robin Buckley. Robin had been different, they hadn't gotten on at first, but after Steve told off a jock for touching her she allowed him to be closer. They weren't friends but they had jokes and banter. Then the Russians pulled Robin into Steve's orbit in a place he never wanted her to be, the butterflies grew but he would've taken the blows despite them. Sitting in that bathroom with Robin he allowed the butterflies to stay but recognised them more as moths drawn to the light that was a best friend.

Steve had never given sexuality much thought until he met Robin. He assumed he was straight, I mean he had to be right? Sure he didn't feel the same way about everything his old friends talked about but he had liked girls before and he'd never liked boys.

Robin taught him a lot of her limited knowledge of the subject, they were still small town teens after all. So yeah, of course he was straight.

Steve was straight until he wasn't, until he met Eddie. Eddie who pulled the attention of his kids and brought smiles to their faces. Eddie who was loud and bright even when faced with the horrors of another world. Eddie who kept smiling through pain and smiled at Steve in the hospital room. Eddie who took him on drives when nightmares couldn't be chased away. Eddie who remembered things about Steve and asked him questions about his day. Eddie who hugged Robin in understanding bring Steve's best friend an ally in a world he couldn't get. Eddie who would do anything for the ones he loved.

Steve who was straight and didn't understand why people seemed to go on dates with people they just met. Steve who was straight and had only ever liked girls. Steve who was straight and loved Robin more than anything.

Steve who was straight until he felt butterflies grow inside him for a fourth time.

Steve who was straight until he met Eddie.

Steve who was straight until he realised he would've loved Eddie whether he was a guy or not.

Steve who wasn't really straight and loved Eddie because he was Eddie, who knew that loving Eddie was as simple as breathing.

Steve who wasn't really straight because loving Eddie was inevitable, written in the stars, a love that had been waiting all along.

Steve who wasn't really straight but didn't need a label to know that he loved Eddie, and for him that was enough.

[phoenix----rising]

𝑎𝑟𝑡 𝑏𝑦 𝐿𝑢𝑐𝑖𝑎 𝐷𝑎𝑚𝑖

[femmefatalevibe]

Hey love

What things I need to do to radiate sexual energy ?

Hi love! I would say the following attributes:

CONFIDENCE (comfortable in your own skin/body, how you hold yourself, interact with others)

Own your right to having sexual desires and feeling sexy (wearing lingerie and a sensual fragrance you love are helpful for this)

Maintain an air of mystery (listening more than you speak, avoiding oversharing, having a sense of restrained curiosity in your eyes)

Have a playful and witty conversational style/way of interacting with others

Display intelligence, an ability to laugh at yourself at times and with others, self-awareness, and a curiosity about others/to learn more about the world

Wear outfits that flatter your figure and allow your body to show off the clothes (not the other way around where there's little thought to the outfit aside from putting your body on display; Think a form-fitting square neck mini dress or a well-fitting pair of jeans and an undone silk blouse tucked in vs. a bralette and daisy dukes)

Embrace comfortability discussing sex, pleasure, & sexual preferences (this one is contextual, of course, but not shying away from having desires/accepting them as pleasurable and natural vs. shameful is key)

Relish in life's pleasures generally (great food, drinks, sunshine, beautiful art/music/literature/scenery)

Display healthy skin, hair, and generally top-tier hygiene

Smell good/wearing sensual perfumes (I love Tom Ford's Velvet Orchid for this)

Have the ability to let loose and have fun outside of professional/serious settings (dance, sing, laugh with others)

Enjoy flirting just for the fun of it as a way of interacting and getting to know others – whether it's a means to sexual gratification or just a friendly gesture (of course, be honest with the person, though, before your motive gets questionable)

Show genuine interest in others and the world. Displaying a balanced desire for savoir-faire and joie de vivre is incredibly sexy

Hope this helps xx

[brookheimer]

i feel very mixed on shiv's ending, particularly her choice to return to tom -- i think it makes sense from a thematic/character arc perspective and is a powerful yet devastating indictment of both shiv and the world that created her as well as showing that the cycle of abuse will always continue to cycle, that shiv will become her mother etc, but i also think it does not make sense from a character/internal logic perspective. it's a choice that makes sense from the writers, but not from shiv, not yet. it could've been a brilliant ending to her character, but is tainted for me by the less-than-ideal execution of it, which felt very rushed, making shiv's final submission to tom feel forced by the show rather than forced by the situation or honest to her character. the ending is not inherently misogynistic from the writers' side as i've seen some criticisms claim (it is a dark but real portrayal of misogyny within capitalist society and how it's internalized within the white women who end up at the hips of the CEOs who run it), but i do understand how it could feel that way. the show fails at building up to (and thus convincing us) that the version of shiv we currently know would so immediately subject herself to her mother's fate, so instead of it feeling like shiv's hand was forced by patriarchy to place herself into her worst nightmare, it instead feels like the show itself was the thing that forced shiv to take that route, which does leave a sour taste in the mouth. it doesn't feel like the result of a choice shiv would make or the impact of patriarchal society bearing down, it just feels rushed and thus wrong. shiv would've benefitted immensely from a few more episodes or even just a few scenes dedicated to teasing out her newfound willingness to subject herself to immense disrespect in order to remain close to power, but given that her entire character has always been defined by her inability to do just that unless forced to (which i don't think she was in this situation as she could've easily not waited in the car for tom, not put her hand in his, but she did), her return to tom feels hard to comprehend, and her near immediate submission to him hard to stomach.

(read more under the cut because jesus christ did this get long)

in my mind, at least, i've always understood shiv as being respect-driven rather than power-driven -- she wants power, yes, but more than anything she wants to be taken seriously and respected and seen as a legitimate player, and time and time again we've seen her blow up situations that would've been very advantageous long-term because she felt disrespected and needed to speak up and force people to take her seriously (which, ironically, typically results in the opposite). shiv's overarching goal is power, but her immediate necessity is always respect. her dignity is her number one priority at any given moment, even when it shouldn't be, even when it stops her from attaining the success and power she wants. i can kind of understand shiv going against kendall because of this -- she's always had a very, very narrow lens whenever she feels like she's being disrespected, and even though it is infinitely more humiliating for your (somewhat ex) husband to betray you and boot you out of the CEO position behind your back at the behest of your supposed closest ally (and for you to still vote for them after that!!!) than it is for you to magnanimously allow your brother to be CEO (which would publicly be seen as a choice, as telly etc said - sibs need to stand united behind one chosen CEO - rather than shiv being out of the loop and fucked to infinity), the narrowness of her vision upon seeing kendall about to win makes it impossible for her to think about that legitimately. it's not just jealousy, it's indignity: shiv feels she earned CEO through her machinations with mattson and feels genuinely sick seeing the loganified kendall grinning at the head of the table, hearing his "that's fucking right" and witnessing his cocky entitlement to the job that belonged to her. so, she does what she always does when she feels disrespected, when she feels her dignity is at stake, and impulsively blows everything to fuck, including her own best interests. that makes sense for shiv, at least somewhat -- i still think that as much as she wouldn't want ken as CEO she'd feel like at least w that outcome she'd be seen as a player and a deciding factor, whereas with mattson/tom she'd be viewed as a pathetic fucked-over nothing woman pawn etc (a situation of unparalleled indignity imo), but i can rationalize her choice to go against ken anyways as being part of the narrowed field of vision she always gets upon feeling disrespected by men in her life that makes it impossible for her to think strategically (and i guess even though the disrespect was greater and more humiliating from tom/mattson than ken, ken was the most recent most present and most lifelong source so that's all she could focus on; seeing him like logan was too much to bear). it's hard to imagine shiv publicly throwing her vote behind two men who publicly fucked her as humiliatingly as mattson and tom just did, even if the other option is kendall, but i think that's part of it -- it's fundamentally illogical, even from her disrespect-lens, because there's just something about kendall specifically being in charge that she's never been able to stomach. it's visceral and impulsive. it's not meant to make "sense." it's just what she feels she has to do to preserve her own dignity, even though it works directly against those same interests realistically. it wasn't executed very well, making it hard to entirely buy it given just how publicly humiliating the alternative is, but it can still be chalked up to her historically one-track-mind when it comes to indignity by the hands of kendall in particular. it's a last-ditch attempt for shiv to at least feel like she's maintaining her dignity, her self-respect, as counterintuitive as it actually is. it makes sense. i can stomach it.

again, shiv's fatal flaw (in logan's eyes and aside from her original sin of being a woman) has always, always been her inability to shut up and make the smart move in situations where she feels she's being disrespected or not taken seriously. if shiv stayed quiet during that dinner with the pierces, maybe she would've been logan's CEO, but no, she couldn't stop herself, she needed to feel she was being taken seriously, she burst out 'cmon, dad, just tell them it's going to be me.' she is unable to play it smart, to keep quiet, to win when winning means perceived disrespect. she's allergic to it. even on a personal level, she shoots herself in the foot constantly because of this: she is unable to let herself have the things she wants because she can't put herself in positions that open her up to disrespect and perceived inferiority. she can't be vulnerable because she needs to be respected. tom asks her if he could 'try to make love to her' in episode one of this season, and even though she clearly wants to, she says 'no, i don't think so, tom.' tom tells her he 'wants her, wants this' back in episode six, and even though she clearly wants that too, she draws back and says 'well then you shouldn't have betrayed me.' shiv is fundamentally incapable of allowing herself to remain in possibly advantageous situations when she feels at risk of being seen as lesser, of being disrespected, of being perceived as weak. that is her response to patriarchy. when patriarchal forces bear down, shiv is unable to grin and bare it -- she has a short fuse, a sharp tongue, and an inability to entertain even a second of being treated like The Woman, of being looked down upon, especially when it's for her gender. it's the one thing she cannot do, cannot let herself do, and it's why she fails to "win" over and over and over again. she shoots herself in the foot the second her patriarchy disrespect sensors tingle. she makes the wrong choice, the dumb choice, the one that makes her feel like she stood up for herself in the moment but ends up leaving her powerless and helpless in the end. that's the only explanation for why she chose to vote against kendall (the clearly better option for her long-term as she'd 1) be respected as part of the decision, as someone who helped choose the CEO rather than a Woman who got fucked over and had the door slammed in her face by her husband and close ally simply because she possessed a womb, and 2) probably be head of ATN or some other area of waystar, she'd have actual power within the company and be respected as a legitimate source of power rather than the CEO-to-be made CEO's humiliated wife -- if she was capable of making the smart, selfish choice in terms of power instead of having a hair-trigger reaction to gendered disrespect and cocky male superiority, she would have voted kendall. but she is not capable of doing that. she never has been. so she voted tom and mattson.

so what i still cannot for the life of me understand is what would compel this shiv, the one who cannot stomach indignity even when power's on the line, to immediately return to tom's side the second he beckons her, which is like five minutes after he becomes CEO (the job she was promised) by mattson (who gave it to tom instead of shiv because 'why get the baby lady if i can get the man who put the baby inside her?'). it makes perfect, cruel, devastating sense from a show perspective, and that's what most people are talking about, understandably. it's a devastating yet unavoidable, inevitable outcome. she's left with no other choice once she makes the decision against kendall, and patriarchy compels her to play the good wife to stay close to power. except, like... she does still have a choice. she does not have to go back to tom's car. she does not have to sit patiently waiting for him. she does not have to quietly congratulate him on his victory. she does not have to place her hand in his. these are all choices she made very voluntary. they're choices between maintaining her dignity and self-respect at the cost of future power versus maintaining the potential for future power at the cost of her dignity and self-respect -- the classic siobhan roy conundrum. she's been faced with it time and time again (even just five minutes prior with kendall) and she has never, not once, chosen the latter of her own volition. she hasn't been able to. that's her fatal flaw. maybe i could stomach her going back to tom if she didn't congratulate him, didn't place her hand in his when he expectantly held his out -- then some dignity would be preserved, maybe. but her complete and total submission for the sake of future power does not make sense with her lifelong inability to do just that. it makes sense that this would be her eventual endpoint, but we have seen nothing that implies shiv would so willingly subject herself to this feminine submission of wife and mother before person or source of power, to the complete and utter humiliation of being the quiet wife at the side of the man who knifed her in the back (and notably handed said knife by the man she thought her closest ally) in order to steal the job she fought for her entire life and, in her opinion, had earned. maybe she would come back to him eventually, for love or (more likely) for power, but it is incredibly hard to believe that shiv 'impulsive when faced with indignity' roy would be capable of immediately and publicly playing the role of the good wife after such intense and public humiliation at the hands of her husband.

really, the way i feel about the shiv ending is similar to how i feel about the daenerys ending -- unlike most people, i really wasn't that against the daenerys outcome. i thought it made a lot of sense and was interesting, devastating, and fascinating. i thought there had been a few signs all along and that that ending for her would make sense and be far more interesting than a Hooray ! Girlboss ! ending. however, it was poorly executed -- it was rushed. it did not make sense from where daenerys was at that point in the text. it could've worked, it could've worked brilliantly, but it needed more time to build and fester in order for her ultimate turn to feel earned rather than forced for the sake of the point the writers wanted to make. that's kind of how i feel about shiv. i get the ending and i don't think it's inherently bad or misogynistic or anything, but it feels like the writers saw the possibility for a shiv 'mommed' ending and immediately took it, with little regard to what actually made sense for shiv herself to do in that moment. outcome > character. that's frustrating for me particularly for succession because my like number one reason for adoring succession as much as i do is their consistent refusal to operate the way most media does (using the characters as instruments to achieve the plot/outcome the writers want), instead prioritizing following the characters themselves in a way that feels honest and real. it's character-driven, not plot or ending driven. i think that this fell by the wayside a few times in the latter half of this season simply because there was so much that needed to happen in such a short space of time (especially during the finale), but in my opinion, at least, the most egregious case is shiv. given more time, more development, more build-up, the last shot of her hand in tom's would've struck the chord the writers wanted it to -- and for some people, it did anyways! but for me, it rang out and fell nauseatingly flat. it felt hollow and wrong and unearned. shiv could end up becoming her mother, that feels entirely possible, but not in this particular sense, not yet. in what world would siobhan roy willingly choose to be seen as nothing more than a woman hanging off her husband's arm, especially when said husband had publicly humiliated her and ruined her entire life just five minutes prior? when, just five (metaphorical) minutes prior, she was the one poised to be CEO and everyone knew it? when now everyone will see her on tom's arm and whisper and gawk? she has become her worst fear, yes, but unlike kendall, it does not feel earned. it does not feel like she has actually become her worst fear. it feels like the show forced her to. not patriarchy or the situation or her own desire for power, but the show itself. that's what feels so shitty.

i wouldn't necessarily call the writing misogynistic as a result of this, as it's less a flaw of misogyny and more a flaw of bad, rushed writing that could happen to any character. it's the same as with daenerys -- although (somewhat unlike succession) there were many, many aspects of GoT's writing that were deeply misogynistic, especially in the last season (just look at fucking brienne), the core issue with the daenerys plotline is not one of misogyny but of time. they did not give daenerys the time needed to become the version of herself seen burning down the city. that could've easily been a focus of previous episodes, but it wasn't. they simply did not develop her enough for that turn to make sense yet. it could make sense, hypothetically, at some point down the line, but at that point it felt sudden, off-putting, and wrong. shiv could easily become her mother. that's been made evident especially regarding her relationship to pregnancy/children, love, and vulnerability (or the lack thereof). but for this ending to make sense, we would have needed to see signs of shiv imitating her mother's willingness to be relegated to the sidelines, to bring out the food while the men eat and make deals, in order to remain tangential to power. that is a concession shiv roy had never been willing to make prior to the last five minutes of the entire show. other signs of shiv imitating caroline or falling prey to patriarchal norms throughout the show are not enough to undo shiv's fundamental refusal to weather gender-related indignity even when doing so would benefit her. in my opinion, that's why the final five minutes of shiv's plotline were so unsatisfying.

shiv could become her mother, and her ending could be a devastating portrayal of the inability for even rich white women to escape their original sin of being a woman in a man's world, as well as a dark, ironic criticism of both women like shiv and the patriarchal world that breeds them into existence. but because the show did not develop shiv in this particular direction and because her entire character thus far has been defined by her self-destructive insistence on being respected at all costs, shiv's ending did not land the way it could've, or should've.

[dnffics]

seashells

by sappymix1

Rated E, 20.5k words

Tags: Oral Fixation, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Developing Relationship, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Sexual Content

Summary:

He could see George's teeth – his perfect front teeth, like little iridescent seashells pressed to his gums – working at his lip. Not biting it, not the harsh mean pressure Dream had put on himself a million times, just rubbing against it. It felt the same way that it did when George clutched his hands together. A safety thing. And Dream thought back to scraggly hoodie strings lit by New Years fireworks. Dream had never been good at moving from place A to place B. It always felt awkward and stilted and like he was two seconds from tripping over his own feet. Maybe that’s why he and George had been stumbling over what their relationship was becoming for months now. But asking George if he wanted Dream to put his fingers in his mouth only felt like the next natural step, he supposed. - George likes having something in his mouth. Dream likes George.

[phoenix----rising]

[drdemonprince]

like, i think what's happening is that plenty of people do find something approaching egalitarianism to be plenty erotic enough, but not everyone, because well a lot of us have very big gendered power dynamic baggage (among other fun insecurities that we also eroticize! cool!) but natalie experiences love as this engulfing, life ruining forbidden thing for UM A LOT OF REASONS THAT WE AS HER VIEWERS ALREADY KINDA KNOW hii, and so in making sense of other people's sexualities and romantic lives she mistakenly assumes that everybody goes that lana del rey for people but it turns out only some of us crazy bitches seem to

[plural-bees]

how did we miss microraptor day...

well, regardless, have some funny looking birds, feat. a more recent pic titled “little guy conference” , in which there are little guys and they are having a conference

[ratatattouille]

I miss when romances had pining and longing and uncertainty and friendship and nuance instead of instalove scenes with two scenes of characters staring across the room from each other in slow motion while dramatic music plays and then kissing maniacally and having sex in the next two seconds

I miss when characterization used to matter in how romances developed instead of making your characters make out as soon and passionately as possible so that a bunch of people could make gifsets of it

romance in stories today feels like how pop love songs are written nowadays, rehashed, impersonal, angsty, remixed, sweetened, surface, self-destructive, toxic, immature, brief, marketable and consumable

emotional manipulation that relies on overwhelm to make you feel something instead of sincerity. it is marked by falseness, thinking that’s what fantasy is, that’s what the escape is, when the true escape in any fantasy is silent, excruciating hope

[thedanceronthestreets]

Ok, had an outright delusional conversation with my mum about ted lasso and this is what she said: what's the point of colin coming out in the grander scheme of things? Why is trent's presence at richmond relevant to the plot? Trent ultimately being there to help colin through his coming out is sweet and inspiring but, on its own, it doesn't drive the big plot, only creates a new sideplot. So, what is it's relevance to the main plot/character? How is colin coming out and trent helping him relevant to richmond, relevant to ted? She said it implies ted goes on some sort of self discovery journey that mirrors colin's and with all the gay stuff happening it's not a huge mental leap to assume ted starts to question his sexuality too once he hears about the experience of being closeted from someone going through a coming out. And she specifically said this is seeded in ted's relationship with sassy: even though sassy seems to show genuine interest in him (whether that's romantic or purely sexual) ted always seems to go along with it mindlessly, without questioning if it's what he really wants/needs in that moment. He uses their relationship as a distraction from his depressive episodes but never genuinely seems interested in sassy as a romantic/sexual partner. So what would happen if he started to question his encounters with her? What would happen if he started to question where the selective disinterest is coming from? Would he find it's only because he just can't let go of michelle? Or is it because he can't let go of the expectation surrounding these encounters? He's never had to answer such questions because he's been with michelle from such a young age. What if he started to explore encounters he DOES find genuine interest in and what if he finds the encounters are unexpected and scary, similarly to colin pre coming out? What if trent helps colin, but ultimately, inadvertently, importantly, helps TED in his journey to self-acceptance and colin is just the spark to light the fire? It's so big brained cause it ties most of ted's struggles together so neatly: his struggle with his marriage, with who he is outside of the marriage, with why he's always felt he needed to justify his presence with 'being curious, not judgemental', his relationship with sassy and trent and most importantly his father, ESPECIALLY as we might learn about trent's relationship with his father

[shouts-into-the-void]

I've been coming to the realization that I'm demiromantic over the past week, which is extremely uncomfortable given I've identified as Aro-Ace for the past three years, and I've obviously been met with a lot of the "you'll find the right person eventually" crowd

[infizero-draws]

born sexy yesterday

[phoenix----rising]

"𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑚𝑜𝑠𝑡 𝑝𝑜𝑤𝑒𝑟𝑓𝑢𝑙 𝑤𝑜𝑚𝑎𝑛 𝑖𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑤𝑜𝑚𝑎𝑛 𝑤ℎ𝑜 𝑖𝑠 𝑤𝑖𝑙𝑙𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡𝑜 𝑤𝑎𝑙𝑘 𝑎𝑤𝑎𝑦 𝑖𝑓 𝑠ℎ𝑒 ℎ𝑎𝑠 𝑡𝑜. 𝑇ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑚𝑒𝑎𝑛𝑠 𝑠ℎ𝑒 𝑛𝑜 𝑙𝑜𝑛𝑔𝑒𝑟 𝑢𝑛𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑠𝑐𝑖𝑜𝑢𝑠𝑙𝑦 𝑠𝑡𝑟𝑒𝑛𝑔𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑛𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑚𝑎𝑠𝑐𝑢𝑙𝑖𝑛𝑒 𝑠ℎ𝑎𝑑𝑜𝑤, 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑔𝑒𝑛𝑒𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑎𝑙 𝑡𝑟𝑎𝑢𝑚𝑎 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑓𝑒𝑚𝑖𝑛𝑖𝑛𝑒 𝑒𝑛𝑑𝑠 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ ℎ𝑒𝑟, 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑎 𝑛𝑒𝑤 𝑤𝑎𝑦 𝑜𝑓 𝑏𝑒𝑖𝑛𝑔, 𝑜𝑟 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑖𝑒𝑛𝑡, 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑠𝑎𝑐𝑟𝑒𝑑 𝑤𝑎𝑦 𝑖𝑠 𝑏𝑜𝑟𝑛.

𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑎𝑤𝑎𝑘𝑒𝑛𝑒𝑑 𝑤𝑜𝑚𝑎𝑛 𝑖𝑠 𝑝𝑟𝑖𝑚𝑎𝑟𝑖𝑙𝑦 𝑑𝑒𝑣𝑜𝑡𝑒𝑑 𝑡𝑜 ℎ𝑒𝑟 ℎ𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑡, ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑜𝑟𝑎𝑐𝑙𝑒, 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑜𝑛𝑙𝑦 𝑠𝑒𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑑𝑎𝑟𝑖𝑙𝑦 𝑡𝑜 𝑎 𝑚𝑎𝑛.

𝑊ℎ𝑦?

𝐵𝑒𝑐𝑎𝑢𝑠𝑒 𝑜𝑛𝑙𝑦 𝑤ℎ𝑒𝑛 𝑎 𝑚𝑎𝑛 𝑐𝑎𝑛 𝑠𝑒𝑒 ℎ𝑒𝑟 ℎ𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑡, ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑜𝑟𝑎𝑐𝑙𝑒, 𝑐𝑎𝑛 𝑠ℎ𝑒 𝑎𝑐𝑡𝑢𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑦 𝑑𝑒𝑣𝑜𝑡𝑒 ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑠𝑒𝑙𝑓 𝑡𝑜 ℎ𝑖𝑚, 𝑜𝑟 𝑜𝑝𝑒𝑛 ℎ𝑒𝑟 ℎ𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑡 𝑓𝑢𝑙𝑙𝑦 𝑡𝑜 ℎ𝑖𝑚, 𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑦𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑒𝑙𝑠𝑒 𝑖𝑠 𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑙𝑙 𝑎𝑛 𝑒𝑥𝑝𝑟𝑒𝑠𝑠𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑔𝑒𝑛𝑒𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑎𝑙 𝑡𝑟𝑎𝑢𝑚𝑎 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑓𝑒𝑚𝑖𝑛𝑖𝑛𝑒 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑑𝑜𝑒𝑠 𝑛𝑜𝑡 𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑒 𝑓𝑟𝑜𝑚 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑠𝑜𝑢𝑟𝑐𝑒 𝑜𝑓 𝑡𝑟𝑢𝑒 𝑙𝑜𝑣𝑒. 𝑂𝑛𝑐𝑒 𝑠ℎ𝑒 𝑝𝑟𝑖𝑜𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑖𝑧𝑒𝑠 ℎ𝑒𝑟 ℎ𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑡'𝑠 𝑠𝑎𝑓𝑒𝑡𝑦, ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑜𝑟𝑎𝑐𝑙𝑒 𝑜𝑣𝑒𝑟 𝑛𝑒𝑒𝑑𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑣𝑎𝑙𝑖𝑑𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛, 𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑠𝑠𝑢𝑟𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒 𝑓𝑟𝑜𝑚 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑚𝑎𝑠𝑐𝑢𝑙𝑖𝑛𝑒, ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑒𝑛𝑒𝑟𝑔𝑦 𝑐ℎ𝑎𝑛𝑔𝑒𝑠, ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑒𝑚𝑏𝑜𝑑𝑖𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡 𝑐ℎ𝑎𝑛𝑔𝑒𝑠, 𝑎𝑛𝑑 ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑖𝑒𝑛𝑡 𝑝𝑜𝑤𝑒𝑟 𝑟𝑒𝑡𝑢𝑟𝑛𝑠."

[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.