#and he means it as a positive but like. are you fucking kidding me

[fryingpan1234567]

bodoc nation how we feeling

i present some not quite PG thoughts from someone who is halfway through iron flame

In my head Bodhi has GAD but maybe I’m crazy

His favorite place to bury his face (I mean… in a public setting) is the inked spot where Ridoc’s neck meets his shoulder 

Bodhi is COVERED in tattoos and Ridoc will get the random urge to just. Lick them. Someone save him he’s a horny idiot with minimal impulse control 

Let’s never ever forget that Ridoc has the sex drive of a teenager and Bodhi is like Xaden’s twin but somehow more possessive. Randomly disappearing for twenty minutes throughout the day and reappearing with obnoxious grins, making out in hallways between classes, PDA at 200% all the time

Also they have a bunch of weird hideouts only they know about all over the school they discovered while exploring together

Cooking together in the Aretia fortress!!

Tyrrish pet names 

Telepathically sharing notes in class

Telepathically flirting

They’re in each other’s heads

(Cuir and Aotrom are mated)

The dirty jokes don’t stop but while Ridoc’s are obvious, Bodhi’s are subtle and he says them with a straight (lmao) face so it takes a second for people to notice 

Bodhi needs a full night of quiet time and being wrapped around Ridoc like a sloth to cool down every time Ridoc comes back with fresh wounds from RSC so he doesn’t murder anyone

SPARRING SPARRING TROPES SOS SAVE ME

Ridoc giving Bodhi fuck me eyes across the cafeteria just to watch him spit his drink at Imogen sitting next to him

Bodhi sending an image of the position he’s gonna put Ridoc in later as revenge and Ridoc spills hot coffee all over his lap

Racing, both on foot and dragonback (Cuir and Aotrom are just as competitive)

After the first time Violet showed her squad the magic knife thing, Ridoc tried not to freak out when Bodhi gave him an exact replica a few days later

The hugs after they get back from battles… I’m unwell 

TRADING FLIGHT JACKETS. OR JUST RIDOC WEARING BODHI’S. BONUS POINTS IF IT’S BECAUSE THEY’RE LATE TO BREAKFAST AND RIDOC PICKS UP THE WRONG ONE IN HIS RUSH OUT THE DOOR. BODHI WHO DOES NOT ARGUE BECAUSE HE LOVES SEEING HIS NAME ON RIDOC’S BACK. THANK YOU

They’re always touching somehow their friends are so sick of them 

Studying together help me gods

“Hey you took this class last year, what was the Treaty of—“

“I’m not helping you cheat on your history homework.”

“What I’m hearing is you don’t love me.”

“You heard wrong.”

“TELL ME ABOUT THE TREATY.”

“NO??”

Freaking out over each other’s wounds, even if they’re minor

Yeah these two are just as bad as Xaden and Violet when it comes to… furniture usage (if not worse than, somehow)

Showering together help

The HORRIFYING, GRINCH-LIKE GRIN when Sawyer dropped to Bodhi that Ridoc was deathly afraid of snakes

MERCILESS teasing (about that but also just in general)

Just cause they’re perfect for each other doesn’t mean they don’t argue, cause they definitely do

Ridoc has a LOT of exes and Bodhi’s favorite thing is the looks on their faces when he fully just makes out with him in the middle of the courtyard

Ridoc has that Needy Cat Energy, but especially when Bodhi is in leader mode. There’s just something about it

Nightmares. They both get them. They know how to take care of each other.

Yeah affectionately Ridoc is an attention whore but lucky for him Bodhi is happy to give it to him pretty much all the time

Ridoc helping train some of the younger marked kids without Bodhi’s even asking him to or even hinting he needed help with them. He nearly proposed on the spot

Also Ridoc defending marked kids in general

Going to some bar/ dance club vibe over one weekend and both of them getting slightly drunk (Ridoc is pretty much wiped but we don’t talk about that) and dancing together 

Ridoc fell for Bodhi when he caught him laughing at one of his stupid jokes btw if anyone cares

Bodhi fell for Ridoc when he learned he’d gotten into a physical altercation with some jackass who said Navarre would’ve been better off if the marked kids were executed with their parents

Bodhi’s mom would’ve loved Ridoc btw ): I’ve never met her but I just know she would 

They’re almost the same height but Bodhi is marginally taller 

Sometimes Ridoc gets too antsy or fidgety and Bodhi needs to focus on whatever task at hand so he’ll kiss him to shut him up

Xaden coming to visit Basgiath before learning about Bodhi’s thing with Ridoc and seeing marks on his neck under the collar of his flight jacket like “NOT MY BABY COUSIN!!!!”

“I am one year younger than you—“

“I’LL KILL HER”

“Not a her”

“I’LL KILL HIM”

“Sit tf down we need to talk strategy”

Yeah they use regular pet names, and I already mentioned Bodhi uses Tyrrish ones for Ridoc when he’s feeling extra sappy, but sweetheart is used ONLY with negative connotation— teasing, fighting, sparring, name it

Too many inside jokes between them

Have y’all seen that one post about two characters stripping each other about to bone but they can’t cause they each have too many concealed weapons and there’s just a ludicrous cartoony amount of hidden weapons piling on the floor with their clothes

If that isn’t The Most Bodhi And Ridoc Thing I’ve ever heard 

[hauntingthenarrativepod]

(this is qiqi) (look if it's an unhinged overly complicated response it's likely to be qiqi can we just pin that somewhere)

He's one of those adolescent German Shepherds with huge paws and ears that the rest of the body hasn't grown into. He's still cooking.

This is one of the greatest descriptions of Lockwood I have ever seen. I want this cross-stitched on a pillow somewhere. It's beautiful.

OK so let's talk Sykes a little bit cause I'm loving your tags there.

Sykes is just...not really talked about much, is he?

Timeline-wise, Lucy is 13 or 14 at her interview, and Lockwood/George are about a year older. 13 gives me hives so let's go with Lucy being 14 and the boys 15.

Lockwood says that the agency's been registered for three months, and he got his full licence (a.k.a. his Grade 4) 'last year'. Lockwood was apprenticed to Sykes, so Sykes must've been around long enough to sign that certificate. We know Lucy's interview is in May, so the agency was registered in February, so Sykes died sometime in the 13 months before Feb - when Lockwood is 13 or 14.

George moves in a year before Lucy's interview - so May the year previously. I tend to think that it makes little sense for George to move in unless he's working with Lockwood (his parents are from London), and he never mentions working with Sykes, so I think it's likely that he moves in after Sykes dies. (Probably they futz about as a freelance/independent duo for a while before deciding to set up an actual company, which may take some time.) But anyway, if George moves in after Sykes dies, this means that Sykes has to die sometime Jan-May of the year before Lucy moves in. And yeah, Flo implies that his death was nasty which means traumatising so...it's no wonder Lockwood didn't talk about him.

As you say in your tags -- it's likely that Sykes was an actual Gravedigger, which would imply extremely working class. Which...makes a lot of sense, when you look at Lockwood. He does a lot of borderline charity cases, especially in the East End (a traditionally very poor area of London -- somewhere I'd expect a Gravedigger to run an independent shop, though). He swears like a fucking sailor (so many 'short responses') and eats absolutely terribly (have you hung around middle class/rich people? They all eat like Holly, even the kids). He tries to fob off the hard work on everyone but him because he wants to be lazy and keep his clothes nice, but he's also not afraid of it -- he doesn't complain about having to crawl through muck or worse, it's just part of the job. And despite the fact that he obviously has money and resources, you don't really feel a class difference between him and Lucy or George. Yes, we are going to do a whole episode on class, but I think the text supports the idea that Lockwood was a middle class, rich boy who's family fell on hard times (he did a lot of odd jobs when it was just him and Jess) and then roughed it with the commoners for quite a while.

(And I love how you point out in your tags that yeah, working class tends to stand up for each other. I do think Lockwood wasn't taken in by the big agencies because he was too old, but Sykes would take him in because he had nowhere else to go -- and Sykes did right by him, because a 9 year old boy, all alone, big house in Marylebone? The vultures must have been salivating)

2) Lockwood and Forgiveness! That's a really nice point, that he's so unforgiving with ghosts, but so forgiving with people!! I will counter you though that by the time he 'forgives' Kipps in TCS quite a bit has happened to deepen their connection in a positive way -- a) Kipps follows George into the catacombs and tries to save him, b) Lockwood and Kipps work Aickmere's together and are partnered up, solo, in the dark (and in this particular scenario Lockwood probably got to see quite a bit of how Kipps handles his team -- I tend to think that Aickmere's is when Lockwood starts really respecting Kipps) and then c) they'd worked Guppy House together, where Kipps had demonstrated a good deal of respect for Lockwood and his team. I do think that TSS Lockwood would magnanimously piss on Kipps if he was on fire, but I doubt he'd go out of his way to help Kipps to the same extent as he does in TCS.

Thoughts?

It’s Boxing Day in the UK, St. Stephen’s Day in Ireland, and December 26th in the US, and there’s no way we’d rather spend it than discussing the beloved namesake of our series — the one and only Anthony J. Lockwood, Esq.!

For our third episode of Haunting the Narrative, we’re going to be digging into all things Lockwood. We’ll talk about his dark backstory and how that links to the core traits and motivations we see him display. We'll discuss his ambition, his relationship to his family, and his own search for meaning throughout the books.

Somehow this is our shortest episode yet, which is nothing short of a Christmas miracle.

Listen on Apple

Listen on Spotify

Listen on Amazon

Click here for the transcript!

Join us on January 8 for our next episode on the Problem Economy!

[bittsandpieces]

-

[lilithofpenandbook]

Literally how do you even respond to that?

[primordial0riginator]

Me, the only Ares and Nyx shipper on planet earth: 😏

[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.

[medinaquirin]

I hate letting shitty people take up real estate in my brain, but sometimes the bastards refuse to leave.

[slippery-minghus]

oof

[franeridan]

also the way mihawk up and leaves the moment shanks shows up like "I agreed to fight whitebeard not akagami" biting my fist very hard Very Hard

[tenwhiteandalusians]

pertaining to the idea of tenax’s band of strays i do think it’s touching that the kids are the ones who saved him and waited outside the door to make sure he’s okay. for all tenax claims to be harsh and cruel it’s a fine indicator of his character that the kids won’t rest without him and are there every time he’s in danger.

[faunandfloraas]

inadvertently stopped using my freckle fade cream without thinking.... right around the time i started making gifs of felix.... coincidence?

[the-acid-pear]

Honestly i can't stop thinking of the fact you can literally leave the Dark Worlds without closing the fountain, this is most directly showcased by how Susie and Kris leave Castle Town every time, and yet, Ralsei insisted in chapter one the only way to get out was for the heroes to close the fountain, which caused that by chapter 2 neither Susie nor us questioned it. And it feels so... wrong.

Because sure, I know, The Roaring and all that jazz, but this is Ralsei. The very Same guy who at the start of your journey tells you that your choices matter. Why on earth would he refuse to tell you Hey There's Another Way Out Btw ^_^ and THEN mention the roaring? Like, i know, i know it is because this is the fate of his entire world, but The Roaring is ALSO the fate of the entire Light World, IF he isn't lying.

Like I really don't think he's evil or means wrong but that he's a big fucking liar that i won't tell you is not true.

[vulpinesaint]

absolutely unreasonable over this coworker that i rlly like rn. thank god i don't like men or i would have fucking Lost it by now! as it is i don't even know what has me so dkfjghsdf about him i'm just sitting there with my head in my hands going "he's so normal about trans people..."

[mymarifae]

i hope everyone's prepared for me to become the most annoying person ever in 13 more hours

[areyouwho-ithinkyouare]

me internally when i’m trying to respect and recognise that my dad has unaddressed autism that impacts the way he handles social interractions while also trying to not just excuse the shitty insensitive behaviour that has absolutely contributed to my mental health issues

[meliohy]

ok ok I talked to a colleague and now all's good. I'm motivated af for the interview this afternoon. I'm getting that fucking job. Everyone wants me to get that job anyway. I'm done being nice now I'm letting them know they better give me that job and sign the papers in the next month else I'm quitting. Good luck with finding yet another engineer to work in the middle of nowhere when you're already struggling to hire 💅