#NO IM NOT READING TOP GUN FIC TO LEARN ABOUT THE MILITARY

[princesssarcastia]

reading top gun fanfic like he would not say that even on pain of death. he wouldn't even know what those words mean. they wouldn't be self-aware enough to know that. that's not what that policy meant. that happened like ten years earlier or later that you're saying. That's Not How The Force U.S. Military Works.

[compacflt]

question: how do you find your research/sources? yours and dancing disasters' icemav fics are so inside baseball i love it, but how do you go about doing research?

I just read a lot & google stuff I don't know & am curious about. not that hard to start learning. and in terms of reading I've been interested in military history & milfiction my whole life. mostly related to the US army, actually--im extremely new to naval history and naval literature; all of that interest was driven by top gun. I've also been fortunate enough to visit a lot of the places I write about--ive been to Pearl Harbor a couple times & San Diego MANY times, for instance, and I've toured a few aircraft carriers and military bases. I've also finally bitten the bullet and kinda shifted my career path towards aerospace, so I've been learning a lot just by working in the aerospace & defense sector/spending a lot of time with people who do.

that's obviously not to say that I am somehow Educated in all this stuff. im pretty open on this blog about me being young & naive & wrong much of the time about how the real world works. so, you know, a lot of shit I just Make Up according to my preconceived notions of the military & the world.

here is my recommended military/navy reading list, some fiction and some nonfiction.

someone also asked recently if I had read anything good in the last 6 months--yes!! three new additions to my reading list: a) Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain. So goddamn good. If you have to read only one novel about the Iraq War, make it this one. It's more about America than it is about Iraq. b) Redeployment by Phil Klay. This one is a collection of short stories about Marines in Iraq, written by a USMC vet, talk about inside baseball. Crazy amounts of jargon in here, basically a "to-google" list. won the national book award which idk if it deserved, but it's good. c) No true glory: A Frontline Account of the Battle of Fallujah by Bing West. currently reading this one, really well done so far, talks a lot about how fucked the US strategy was in Iraq with Fallujah serving as a metonymy/case study for the war itself.

again... this is all mostly close-quarters-combat (infantry) literature, I really am not that interested in the navy/Air Force that much outside of top gun lol

though I did recently remember that in early 2022, before I was into top gun, I read "Wingmen" by Ensan Case, which is actually a gay US naval aviator romance set in WWII published in 1979! it's really authentic and kind of sad, obviously, since it was a 1940s navy gay love story published in 1979. I don't actually think Wingmen influenced how I wrote wwgattai or how I think of TG/TGM but I just remembered that I read that book in February 2022 and going "oh my god they were wingmen" so maybe you might find that book interesting.

[isassolace]

! Me

✭ isa / sol , minor , any prns

✭ bisexual && aroace spec

✭ top gun, hbo war, aqotwf, mota, 9-1-1/lonestar fanatic (+ more! feel free to ask me about them!)

✭ very ‘murican — English is my first language, learning German! :) (I know very very little Spanish because of my friends—maybe I’ll learn that next lol)

✭ planning on a military route (USAF/USN maybe😉) for my future! (Or first responder)

! Information

⤚ I will only interact if I know it’s a minor allowed place, I know online boundaries.

⤚ I don’t engage w/ sexual things (including fics) due to my age and my orientation. (If I DO interact it’s because I didn’t realize the nature of the fic/post and I sincerely apologize (usually only happens w fics when I’m like 5 chapters in and I forgot to read the tags but I’m so invested in the character development 💔)

⤚ my stuff can be a bit depressing sometimes because I do suffer from multiple mental disorders so forewarning! (It’s mostly describing depression)

⤚ I’m in school so posts are limited; I may post about school. I am very well trained in OPSEC so I won’t doxx myself

⤚ adults please don’t be weird with me. if you’re a mdni account I won’t interact and I expect you to do the same. I don’t care about adults on my page as long as everyone is respectful and non-sexual !

⤚ I like to think I’m very “buck-coded”. I act a lot like him, so watch out 👀.

⤚ I haven’t decided if I’ll write anything again as I do write a lot of essays for my classes (rip), but I’ll try as soon as I have free time 😼

! DNI

⤚ mdni accounts (im a minor)

⤚ radqueers, transracial/ID/etc (transgender ppl are good!!!!!! I love my fellow transgender people!!)

⤚ basic dni (pedo, [x]phobic, racist, ableist, you get the gist)

⤚ if ur gonna hate & sexualize me GET OUT!!

⤚ fetishers 😨

⤚ TCC community (yall belong in a jail cell<3)

⤚ Basically anyone who is causing harm to someone whether it be verbal, physical, mental, or emotional.

yap account: @isaisyappin

top gun: @iceiceisa

This post is just for caution when I’m actually more active and not just sporadically posting. I have used tumblr in the past, but I’ve never been very “active”. I’m very excited to be apart of a community on here again! I hope yall will welcome me and NOT call me slurs😔🫶

[ofstoriesandstardust]

and that’s when i lost it (lt. javy “coyote” machado)

a/n: i’m gonna write something similar to this that’s coyote x reader but i couldn’t get this out of my head so i wrote this instead. literally pry this friendship from my cold dead hands i will never stop, i have so much same mistakes-verse content coming you have no idea. this is just the beginning

summary: Rebel and Coyote know the Navy doesn’t willing split up wingmen who fly like they do. they also know their CO’s had it out for Rebel for years. unbeknownst to them about the coming orders for the special detachment, the friends learn of what was supposed to be Coyote’s new set of orders.

mildly inspired by bailey zimmerman’s “a rock and a hard place”

part of the same mistakes-verse

main masterlist | top gun: maverick masterlist

warnings: no i still don’t know how the Navy works, i tailor the Navy to fit my fics not the other way around, these military men feel their feelings and that’s that, same mistakes-verse canon bullying/hazing, insecurities, swearing, this is a lil thing but im proud of her, this is angsty but it’s got an implied happy ending if you’ve read same mistakes

word count: 1,158

You nudged the door of the common room open, headed towards the kitchen. You couldn’t sleep and had thought maybe a snack would cure the inexplicable anxiety that had overtaken you tonight. You had a gut feeling something was wrong but you couldn’t explain why. It’s been a good day, successful in training and you even got to talk to your Dad for a little bit. The squadron would get new mission orders in a few days, standard for the base where you were currently stationed. You paused, seeing Coyote’s body hunched over on one of the couches. “Coyote?” You murmured, wondering if you were really seeing the body of your best friend or if it was just a shadow of the darkness. 

He shifted slightly. “Hey Rebel.” The room was dark, the only light being provided by the moon, but you knew something was wrong by the way his voice was scratchy and rough. As you moved to sit next to him, a sliver of moonlight showed you dry tear tracks on his face and your heart sank. You sat next to him, leaned up against the back of the couch. 

“What’s wrong?” You asked and he sighed. He looked over at your briefly and then looked back to the wall in front of him, jaw set. 

“I got re-assignment orders today.” He whispered and for a second it felt like your world might collapse right then and there in the common area of the base you were stationed away, so far away from home and people who cared about you.

“W-what?” 

“Iraq.” Your heart stopped for a moment at the weight of his words. Not only was your best friend, your only friend, leaving the Green Vipers, leaving you vulnerable to the abuse of your squadron members, he was going to Iraq. “I leave in three days.” That one- that one did it. 

Your body curled in on itself as you were suddenly overwhelmed with tears. He glanced over at you and pulled you into his side. You leaned your arms against your knees, hands holding your head as you sobbed. He had one arm wrapped around your back and the other around your chest, holding you as tight as possible. His head was tucked into your shoulder as your brain reeled. After everything the two of you had been through together, this is how it would end. 

In three days, your best friend would leave this base. He would leave you alone to bear the taunting of Raven and Shadow by yourself. There was a good likelihood Ghost would become your new wingman and you knew that he would leave you out to dry. Your life was now in the hands of someone else, someone you wouldn’t even trust to have your back on the ground, let alone in multi-million dollar aircrafts thousands of feet in the air with your life at stake. In three days, your best friend would walk out of this base and you had no idea when or if you would see him again. Ever again. There was a cold fear unfurling in your heart that the next time you saw Coyote, it would be in a pine wood box. 

“I don’t understand why.” You finally whispered. “We’re the best wingmen on the team, I don’t-”

“You know Admiral Thompson’s been after punishing you since Admiral Kazansky pulled your ass out of the fire a year and a half ago.” 

“But-”

“I don’t think it’s me he’s punishing.” You took a moment to fully grasp what he had said. Coyote’s words made sense. There were much higher consequences for leaving you here alone with no Coyote than putting you somewhere else and leaving Coyote here. 

“Coyote, I’m scared.” 

“I know.” 

“Don’t leave me here.”

“I wish I didn’t have to.” 

You didn’t speak the dark, poisonous words lingering at the back of your brain. That after Coyote left, you’d learn that he never really cared about you in the first place. That it was a friendship built out of convenience, of obligation to what you’d survived together, that it had all been fake this whole time. Your chest hurt as silent tears continued to slip down your face. “Javy, I can’t do this without you.” The use of his real name caused him to squeeze you tighter, if that was even possible. 

“Yes, you can.”

“They’re going to break me. They’ve already tried.” He grimaced at the thought of what you’re referring to. 

“Ask for a re-assignment.”

“If you’re right about this being punishment, you know that will never get approved. Not unless I get Admiral Kazansky involved and he’s already saved my ass too many times.” 

“You might have to. I don’t know if you have a choice.” You shook your head.

“No, I can’t do that to him.” Coyote sighed, knowing when his stubborn best friend was choosing a hill to die on. He knew when you’d rather suffer than ask for help. There was silence as your tears finally subsided, him never letting go or losing his grip on you. 

“I’m gonna miss you.” He whispered and despite yourself, you snorted. 

“No, you’re not.” He kicked your leg in protest.

“Yes, I am! I’m gonna miss flying with you. I’m gonna miss going to the bar after training with you and us betting who’s gonna get drunker that night, Shadow or Raven. I’m gonna miss the late-night karaoke sessions out here when we have to be quiet and we’re doubled over clutching each other in silent laughter. I’m gonna miss having a wingman who I know is gonna save my ass no matter what.” You felt the tears prick your eyes again.

“Coyote, I’m gonna start crying again.”

“Good, cry as much as you need to. I’m right here.” 

“What am I gonna do without you?” You whispered. 

“I’ll still be here in spirit. We can call and video-chat when we have time and maybe if we’re lucky our leaves will overlap with one another.”

“What a life we’ve chosen, huh?” He silently chuckled and you felt his body vibrating next to yours. 

“No matter what, you’re always gonna be my best friend.” A part of your soul warmed hearing the words. 

“Same goes for you.” You weren’t sure how long the two of you sat there but eventually, you began to see the pinkish hues of the sunrise reflect on the wall in front of you and Coyote slowly let you go from his grasp. You stood up, turning to the window slightly to admire the gorgeous horizon. Under other circumstances, you'd be thoroughly enjoying getting to watch it. 

“Hey.” He whispered and you turned back to him. “It’s gonna be okay.” You nodded as he pulled you in for one last hug. You almost laughed to yourself as everything sort of fell into place for you. Dad would be proud, you finally found your Goose.

[compacflt]

hi! im learning so much from your blog and its endlessly fascinating to me, im not american so i knew next to nothing about the us military before getting into tg (still dont know that much but. more than before), i never cared about or defined myself by us political terms but now i really want to know and understand the tg characters and its fascinating to me how much politics is a part of that, so thank you for sharing your views on that on here, id be lost without them!

(i havent read your fic yet because idk if im emotianally ready for it yet but when i do. im sure its gonna be great)

haha I do sort of worry that I’ve made top gun too political. I think I’ve always just been trying to come to terms with the fact that… top gun wasn’t really made for me.

I saw Top Gun: Maverick for the first time in a movie theatre in rural southern Oregon…. Which, if you’re not American/didn’t know, is a part of the country characterized by Jesus-loving gun-toting “patriots.” The theatre was a full house. Everyone loved TGM. It’s NOT an apolitical movie. It pushes a WWII-era narrative about the “American underdog” military that appeals to a certain subset of the population: the military deserves more resources because our heroes are disadvantaged on the battlefield (F-18 vs SU-57), though of course in real life no more than a dozen SU-57s have actually been produced, and American fighters… don’t engage in dogfights anymore. Cain was right, no matter how much TGM wants to sensationalize the adventurism of real life pilots: drone warfare is making extinct manned fighter jets. TGM is geopolitically out of date. —And whether we like it or not, it is straight-up recruiting propaganda. The main emotional thrust of the movie is that we (audience) are supposed to sympathize with Bradley, who wants nothing more than to Join The Navy. We are supposed to be mad at Maverick (and later, conveniently, our scapegoat Carole) for preventing Bradley from Joining The Navy. The story of TGM does not make sense if the Navy isn’t the most desirable place to be. Top Gun: Maverick isn’t just recruitment MATERIAL; fundamentally it is a recruitment STORY. I feel like that’s an important metatextual aspect to engage with & acknowledge.

I’ve said elsewhere on my blog, the target audience for TGM is Republican dads of teenage boys: men who were teenagers when the first Top Gun came out, and have that nostalgia for a more dangerous/more exciting military, and are in the position to influence their sons to join up. The Navy would not have let Tom Cruise et al rent their $20,000-an-hour-operating-cost airplanes if that weren’t the case. Top Gun wasn’t really made for people like me.

Obviously how people in fandom engage with the source text is their decision. But engaging with Top Gun & Top Gun: Maverick is to engage with the Reagan-era reactionary, hawkish Cold War foreign policy that inspired Top Gun (the 1981 Gulf of Sidra incident really springs to mind—it would’ve been in the minds of many people watching Top Gun in 1986), and then the subsequent NOSTALGIA for that time period that inspired Top Gun: Maverick. They’re not apolitical movies at all; they have an agenda. It’s good to take their agendas seriously.

I hope if you read my fics you enjoy them 😊

[compacflt]

you're a legend for referencing lauren berlant and michael warner in relation to your top gun fic and I'd like to think that they would say the same!! the stories that you've created are beautiful explorations of some of the biggest questions posed in queer theory: who are we in public? who are we in private? where is the line that separates the two (spoiler: there is no way to actually separate the two, no binary) and what are the structural forces bearing down upon all of that bullshit! I for one would love to see your questions about privacy and respectability explored with rooster and ice and mav. especially considering the generational cliff between them, with the aids crisis in the background of rooster's childhood when they were all the closest, in your world. anyway! you are an incredible writer and it's been a privilege to read you work :)

thank you so much for this ask!! yes i have spent so much time thinking about this. In March i started working on a new-yorker-style interview that tried to address a bunch of these questions. Since I didn’t do wip wednesday yesterday (sorry) here’s some relevant sections of that wip related to your ask. I don’t think it’s spoilers since I’m not sure id ever post this anywhere—you can see for yourself how entertaining the writing is and it’s overly political and didactic. Just a lame hegelian dialectic where im interrogating my own characters (at least, my own interpretations of them) on their politics. And I’m not an expert on any of this stuff (currently on the slow uphill climb out of the valley of the dunning-kruger graph—trying to learn). Nor am I fact-checking it & that feels irresponsible to post For Real. so just take this post as a fun (for me) exploration of what i (20y.o., ignorant, no editorial oversight, smooth-brained) think Might be some political implications of my fics, trying to write from a lib-moderate pov (tough!)

talking points I wanted to address:

The politics of ice’s career, both internationally & domestically (some wild navy scandals happened under his “tenure” [fat Leonard most pressingly—would LOVE to know how actual TGM’s ice & mav felt about that bc it was SO FUCKING CRAZY, navy officers & admirals having wild sex parties paid for by a singapore defense contractor (the details are so fucking crazy i can’t even say them here—one anecdote involves 7th fleet officers using WWII/Korean war general macarthurs historical memorabilia during sex acts—go read about it) a couple PACFLT RDMLs were charged with actual crimes, 60 admirals (of the navys total 160 admirals) were under investigation & both my and TGM’s ice & cyclone would probably have been two of them, basically if you were a pacflt officer in the mid-2000s-2010s you were under investigation it was so fucking wild]) —and another geopolitical look at the implications of both top gun movies (reagan weighs in from beyond the grave)

Ice and mav who can’t win—they want their relationship to Not Be A Big Deal. leave us alone. We’re Normal. we’re not Weird or anything. —but can’t understand WHY their relationship is so sensational/political—yes, boys, it is a big deal, sorry!! mavericks probably the last Ace the world will ever see & ice is the secretary of the navy and they’re married, fuck yes that’s newsworthy!!!

my version of Ice acceding to SECNAV at the intersection of a couple crucial contextual moments for the navy/military as a whole: 1. Recruitment is currently fucked. This interview takes place in 2020/early 2021, and things were bad then, but the numbers just came out for the Navy this year, and hoooooly shit they are so bad. And blame is falling along partisan lines like always: Ds blame low recruitment numbers on lack of benefits etc, Rs literally i am not shitting you are mostly blaming low recruitment numbers on the military going Woke. The USN has long been seen as the most obnoxiously woke/gay (derogatory) service to conservatives & there’s a lot of political baggage that comes with having a SECNAV who, while not openly identifying as gay, is openly married to another man. especially with a recruiting crisis like this one. 2. Withdrawal from afghanistan obviously. kind of a shit way for ice to end his career ngl. It Did Not Go Super Well. 3. rising tensions in eastern europe pre RU-UA invasion in 2022, what that means for the MIC and procurement, etc. 4. The joint chiefs openly declaring they (& by extension the military as a whole) would not support trump’s coup attempt post-J6—the end of that extremely politically polarized presidency—what does it mean for the following Dem president to then have a gay secnav after that? It’s HUGE. SO no matter what, Ice as SECNAV is going to go down in history. He just wants it to be for his actions, not the fact that he’s gay.

Icemav’s relationship with their identities. We really really don’t want to be known for being gay. “Ask me what my proudest achievement is, I’ll tell you without a second of hesitation—my family. Without a doubt. But does any military man really want to be best-known for his marriage?” We want to be known for being the BEST at our jobs, which we are. We’ve earned that title! There’s so much more interesting stuff about us than who we got married to.

AND how that is a liberal-moderate-conservative median-50% meritocratic WET DREAM of an ideology. an interview like this one is a straight fluff piece pre-ice’s confirmation to secnav—it lets him prove to the moderate liberals that he’s left-leaning enough to protect social justice interests in the USN, AND prove to conservatives that he’s right-leaning enough to not let identity politics/“woke bs” get in the way of the navy’s mission of providing a lethal maritime fighting force. the merits of this ideology are up for debate.

maybe helping the conservative viewpoint of that ideology: The fact that the Kazansky-Mitchell-Bradshaw-seresin family is so not-stereotypically gay. Like, look at these four guys. 9-to-11 combat kills between them (11 in my universe where ice gets an extra 2, 9 canon confirmed) in a period of history/modern warfare when ANY air-to-air kill is/was massively historically significant. Extremely macho & tough. They present themselves about as traditionally and toxically masculine as you could possibly get. Theyve KILLED PEOPLE. They’re not “soft” by any stretch of the imagination. Physically & emotionally they ARE extremely conservative, and there’s something to be said about the politics of that too—molding yourself into the shape of what you think a man should look like, just to avoid persecution, and then performing masculinity BETTER than even the men who would want to persecute you…!

Related to your ask: the modern/young ppl inclination to make sexuality SO political and public. When asked how he could reckon with joining a DADT-ruled navy, rooster answers: “hope I could do something to destroy it before it could destroy me.” When asked why he DIDNT use any of his considerable power to influence the repeal of DADT, ice answers: “it was better than the blanket ban that came before it. And maybe I’ve always wanted neither to tell nor to be asked.” the conservative respectable opinion that your intimate relationships ought to be PRIVATE, doesn’t matter if you’re gay or straight—just do your job, and preferably do it well. yeah, don’t ask and don’t tell. It’s not anyone’s business. ice doesn’t have a philosophical problem with DADT, because he agrees sexuality should be private & secret. —is it anyone’s business? whose business is it? How much of your personal life do you owe the public if you’re a public-facing individual like the COMPACFLT or SECNAV? all good questions!!!!