#//is it good? probably not!!!

[thebahwrites]

Slider & Mav + shovel talk...

Slider & Maverick - Shovel Talk (But I'm gonna surprise you <3)

Ron thinks he should be thankful that things worked out between Tom and Pete; it took them long enough after the Layton rescue but he thinks he should be thankful — if it had gone over a year, he'd probably start ripping his hair out. It was even worse not having Goose around to suffer along with but those were thoughts to be buried and not brought up again; the kind that led nowhere and only made him sad to begin with because what else there was to deal?

(Maybe he'd deal with it by himself and a bottle of Jack, when no one was looking.)

But right now, Slider found himself sitting besides Ice who was going over some reports ever so absently, muttering to himself things pertaining to their latest training hop - teaching at Top Gun wasn't a bad place to be so he didn't mind some of these more slowly-trickling days. "What d'you think about Matador Beach?" Tom finally speaks up when Ron was almost dozing off, laying on the couch, he blinks slowly.

"Like... as a place in general or..?" Ice grunts out a small laugh.

"For a date, Kerner." Oh, right, yeah, it made sense. Scratching the side of his neck, all Ron does is shrug, not really thinking too much about it.

"I guess it's fine if you like beaches? Like a picnic or something, right?" Between the two of them, Ron was more impulsive where Tom held back so his dates tended to be a lot less planned than the other's.

"Yeah, that's what I thought." Ice shrugs with that typical self-confidence of his and goes back to pour over his reports. Slider's eyes narrow as he realizes he should probably make sure this whole thing doesn't blow over Ice's face. Not that his friend needs protecting but it's always good to secure and Maverick was a damn menace who often needed corralling so a shovel talk, before things got super serious between those two idiots, was more than due.

It wasn't hard to find Maverick these days, if he wasn't on the tarmac or the bar or the hangar, he was at Carole's. (Whom Slider had been avoiding like the plague and he was sure to get an earful from.) So it was quite easy to, on the very next morning, when out for a run to detour so he'd hopefully find Mitchell there; which he did.

What Ron did not expect was to find said man just sitting on the front steps of the house, staring emptily into the distance with a blank expression and slouched shoulders. For someone who was, quite frankly not particularly tall or big - Maverick often took up a lot of damn space. So much so it was easy to forget the inches he lacked in height, making up for it being loud and brash and seemingly larger than life. The kind to not let himself get hit by anything and even if he did, brushing it off like water off a duck's back. Hell, he had come out of a tragedy into a rescue with what, a week to spare?

(Impressive was the right word but Slider would be damned to say it.)

He stands there, at the corners of the fence, watching Mitchell for a moment longer. In his USNA threadbare shirt and running shorts, the man doesn't move for a good while, like he's bracing himself for something, drawing sharp breaths and then burying his face against the back of a knee.

Ron decides to step back, seems like a bad moment.

Then every moment after that seems like a bad moment.

Maybe because he had never tried to pay close attention to Pete until now or maybe because he had never had the chance, always surrounded by others and the very very least Ice was always there too. Maybe he had never really tried to read more than just their regular banter but in the following days, looking for a breach, Slider realizes just how stupidly vulnerable Maverick is. How he keeps fighting uphill to stand taller than everyone, how he keeps his chin up taking hit after hit both metaphorically and physically when it comes down to it.

Their stupid beach picnic date comes and goes without any kind of hiccup and Slider was still trying to find a way to put Mitchell against the wall but the more time went by, the less he actually felt like doing it. It felt wrong, like kicking someone who was already down and he can't quite put a finger on the why. Maverick was a damn runt, is what he was.

It's exactly a week after that, when Ron realizes why, despite all their bantering and picking and arguing and more often than not headbutting, he can't bring himself to be actually hard on Mitchell. Sure call him slow and overthinking, maybe he just liked to cover all of his bases before spurring into action but for once, it at least panned out when the lamp clicked over his head like a cartoon moment.

"Hey." He calls out to Ice, as they're back where they'd been a week ago but instead of lying flat on the couch, Slider is standing right in front of the desk, grabbing his pilot's paperwork to make him look up, serious intent behind it. Tom looks up with a puzzled and slow blink, putting the papers down. They'd always been on the same wavelength

"Hey, what's up?" Ice picked tone shifts easily, he'd learned how to read Slider like an open book and he was glad for it. It was why, and how, they worked so well together for so long. So he could read the very real seriousness on Ron's voice and the very real intensity behind his eyes, adjusting his posture to make sure Ron knew; he was listening.

"Be good to Mitchell." If anyone, ever, held Ron Kerner to those words, he'd probably deny it. Hell, he wasn't so sure he was even saying them but fuck it if he hadn't rehearsed it inside his head for a while now. Holding Ice's startled gaze with firmness, he held a rigid finger pointing at his pilot's chest. "Don't fuck this up, man. I know you're the best and all so I'm counting on you, don't make me kick your blondie ass, got it?"

Tom stared back, surprised and clearly speechless, a little bit like a startled fish with his mouth falling a little open; Ron wanted to backtrack because it felt weird.

But someone had to keep an eye out for Goose's runt, right?

[Send me a Top Gun / Top Gun: Maverick prompt for a ficlet!]

[hamletthedane]

Thinking about him (the soldier in Poynter’s Faithful Until Death painting watching an apocalypse unfold around him with horror in his eyes as he tries to keep himself standing beneath a doorway, based on an actual 19th century archeological find of a man in full soldier’s garb under a doorway at Pompeii)

[liquidstar]

If my mom sees a significant amount of blood she gets lightheaded, and has fainted on some occasions. Once it happened when we were kids, I wasn't there to witness it but I heard the story from my dad. Basically my brothers, around 7 or 8 at the time, were playing outside while my mom was making their lunch, and she accidentally cut her finger. It wasn't anything serious, but it drew a fair bit of blood and she passed out. My dad saw this and rushed over, but he didn't really know what to do so he just sort of started slapping her to wake her up (not recommended, but he had no idea and panicked)

At that exact moment my brothers both came in from playing, and all they saw was our mom unconscious on the floor and our dad slapping her. So, like, without even saying a word to each other they both just INSTANTLY start whaling on him, like, full blown attack mode to defend our mom. Which obviously didn't help the situation, but she did wake up and everything was fine.

Now our dad says that he's actually really glad they attacked him over what they thought was going on, because it means he raised good boys. And I still think that's true, they're very good boys.

[wanologic]

sorry danny, sam will never think you’re cool

[harbingersecho]

you will regret this for the rest of your life

[thatskindarough]

Ice cream parlor (December 2023)

[junaip3r]

Good Omens + Parallels

[the-maw-consumes]

the flood.

[hmslusitania]

Origins: the world is ending and you and your one remaining coworker are the only option left to save it.

II: the unavoidable tragedy of a queer friend group/polycule trying and failing to save their fucked up city

Inquisition: you went to a conference and accidentally ended up in charge of saving the entire world (again) with a team of colleagues who are (mostly) professionals and outstanding in their fields.

**

Veilguard:

Rook: hey, I suffered from “sudden field promotion” after “fucking everything up worse than it already was.” I’m putting a team together to kill at least one, maybe three, Gods

Seven of the most unwell people in Thedas: say no more, I’m in

[xshinina]

*Married life playing in the background

This idea was probably funnier in my head

[mcducky1356]

I just watched the 1990 movie for the first time, so now I’m redrawing some scenes with the Rise boys!

[ayo-edebiri]

Deadpool & Wolverine (2024) dir. Shawn Levy

[nouverx]

*proceeds to drink the whole bottle*

Yeah Alastor you're gonna be loved and appreciated wether you want it or not :)

[elodieunderglass]

changes and trends in horror-genre films are linked to the anxieties of the culture in its time and place. Vampires are the manifestation of grappling with sexuality; aliens, of foreign influence. Horror from the Cold War is about apathy and annihilation; classic Japanese horror is characterised by “nature’s revenge”; psychological horror plays with anxieties that absorbed its audience, like pregnancy/abortion, mental illness, femininity. Some horror presses on the bruise of being trapped in a situation with upsetting tasks to complete, especially ones that compromise you as a person - reflecting the horrors and anxieties of capitalism etc etc etc. Cosmic horror is slightly out of fashion because our culture is more comfortable with, even wistful for, “the unknown.” Monster horror now has to be aware of itself, as a contingent of people now live in the freedom and comfort of saying “I would willingly, gladly, even preferentially fuck that monster.” But I don’t know much about films or genres: that ground has been covered by cleverer people.

I don’t actually like horror or movies. What interests me at the moment is how horror of the 2020s has an element of perception and paying attention.

Multiple movies in one year discussed monsters that killed you if you perceived them. There are monsters you can’t look at; monsters that kill you instantly if you get their attention. Monsters where you have to be silent, look down, hold still: pray that they pass over you. M Zombies have changed from a hand-waved virus that covers extras in splashy gore, to insidious spores. A disaster film is called Don’t Look Up, a horror film is called Nope. Even trashy nun horror sets up strange premises of keeping your eyes fixed on something as the devil GETS you.

No idea if this is anything. (I haven’t seen any of these things because, unfortunately, I hate them.) Someone who understands better than me could say something clever here, and I hope they do.

But the thing I’m thinking about is what this will look like to the future, as the Victorian sex vampires and Cold War anxieties look to us. I think they’ll have a little sympathy, but they probably won’t. You poor little prey animals, the kids will say, you were awfully afraid of facing up to things, weren’t you?

[greykolla-art]

Charlie: “I’m so glad my most villain-coded friend is at full power again! 🥰💕”

*throws this to you angst goblins like raw steak* ❤️

(No I will not do a part 2!❤️)

[pirateprincessjess]

I feel the need to periodically remind people that Idiocracy is a eugenics movie.

One of the things that eugenicists believe is that it is bad for society when the “wrong people” breed.

The entire premise of the movie is that “stupid people” kept having kids while “smart people” didn’t have kids, and it ruined society because stupid genes propagated while smart genes died out. This is eugenics propaganda.

I know people will read this and their response will be “actually it’s satire” but the movie isn’t satirizing eugenics. It’s satirizing anti-intellectualism, and consumerism, and it proposes eugenics as a solution.

When eugenics was first conceived, it was used as a way to justify inequality. The idea was that people who held privilege were able to do so because they were smarter and genetically superior to lazy and stupid people who don’t have privilege. Obviously this is bad and wrong, but it is also the core lesson of Idiocracy.

The movie literally ends with the main character becoming president and having “the smartest children in the world.” Because he and his wife have smarter genes than everyone else. The proposed solution for the things that Idiocracy is satirizing is for the smart people to have children that can be in charge of the world.

I know it’s fun to use this movie to dunk on anti-intellectualism and the MAGA movement, but we need to stop. When you quote and reference this movie you are spreading eugenics propaganda.