#he doesn’t actually /want/ to be a hero

[fancyfeathers]

Yandere Batfam w/ Wife/Mother!Darling & Daughter/Sister!Darling

So even when Daughter!Darling gets older one of the punishments they still use is making her share or sleep in one of her sibling’s rooms so they can have eyes on her at all times. Most of the time it is Tim or Cassandra, they all are fairly gentle with her and do not overreact to situations most of the time in case she needs to get up in the night.

Damian has too hard of a time to be calm or gentle when he gets upset with her.

Dick gets way to clingy in his sleep, like to the point where she can’t move in the night because he practically squeezing her like a teddy bear, but if she gets sent to Blüdhaven when she has really messed up and has to stay with Dick that is just how it is, though it is better when Barbara is over because she is the one with her arms around her boyfriend’s sister and Dick’s arms are over them both with Daughter!Darling in between them.

Jason gets too many nightmares, dying and being brought back is a traumatic experience he has not fully recovered from and he does not want her to see that side of him.

Stephanie rolls around too much in the night, plus she is almost as clingy as Dick.

Then Duke is a heavy sleeper, having patrol during the day and a thousand other things, he goes to bed before everyone even leaves for their nightly patrol, they have been times where Damian or Bruce has found Daughter!Darling out of the manor because she managed to sneak pass Duke.

But sleeping with Mother!Darling and Bruce is not that bad, Bruce does not get home till late since he is the one normally patrolling the longest every night and his daughter has school in the morning so that’s normally why it is one of her siblings. But when she does end up sleeping by them it is actually nice. Bruce holds his little girl close whenever he has the chance and he holds her like glass because she is nothing like her siblings and he is scared that he’ll break her. But sometimes Bruce has a nightmare in the middle of night, or whenever he sleeps, of something happening to her and just immediately holds her so close to remind himself that she is safe and nothing bad will happen to her.

The thing is this goes on till she’s seventeen or eighteen, it is such a humiliating thing that she has to deal with just because she broke one a rule that wouldn’t even exist for normal people her age and then eventually she runs away because she cannot take it anymore, becoming a vigilante just to prove a point that she is not weak like the painted her out to be.

But then there comes a time where she is wearing that hero’s mask and she gets hurt and does not wake up this time. It was Bruce who found her body first, those nightmares he had when she was younger coming true.

Dick just shatters when he sees Bruce carrying her corpse out of the Batmobile and he can’t even cry because of the overwhelming shock he feels.

Jason, can’t even think, her body sending him back to when he died, she was scared and alone just like him when he was murdered. Tim has to be held back, he wants to hold her, he doesn’t want to accept the fact that she is actually gone, he wouldn’t accept that fact.

Damian is fuming with rage, people have to keep an eye on him to make sure he does not go out there and kill the person who did this to her, and by kill I mean rip limb from limb, leaving them alive while he does so they can know the pain they have caused.

Stephanie just shuts down, falls into a deep depression, unable to eat, sleep, or shower without someone pushing her to do so.

Duke cannot fully process the fact that she is gone and is not coming back, once they learned that she was a vigilante he used to check up on news stories to keep track of how she was doing but he still does when she is gone, only finding stories that are weeks old.

Cassandra and Barbara the ones who keeps everything together, they are grieving, but they know if they just stop everything the bad people and criminals in Gotham who do this sort of thing are just going to get away with it and they may have not been able to save her from what happened but they will be damned if they cannot stop it again.

[dewthegay4403]

DUDE YESSFF

SILLY YAP SESSION! ALL LOVE! NO HATE! GRAAHHH😼😼

lowkey the fandom always forgets that Nexus is a deteriorating husk of “Moon”. Moon literally was driven to insanity BECSUSE they cared so much about their family. Everyone always puts Moons GOOD actions onto Old Moon, but then brushes away every single little mistake known to mankind onto Nexus. Nexus shouldn’t be viewed as the villain. She should be viewed as a mentally ill character, because that is what she is. She turned to what only can be put as drvgs and a life groping for power because she knew the family would NOT accept her back because of her mental health.

Now I’m not saying the celestial family are the villains in play, but I am also? Eclipses recording showed Moon in a very disturbing state which should have been focused on more than the fact that Moon was going to make plans to kill Ruin or BloodMoon (two known villains/Anti-heros in tsbs. More on that in a second.) Earth wants to be seen as a therapist, and we can see that in the episode “Confronting MOON! In VRChat” Earth gets upset when Moon says she ISN’T a therapist. She says “I will NEVER forgive you for the words you just said to me.” The fandom agrees with Earth, “Moon has no right!” “She was just trying to help!” & xyz were thrown across the fandom, but genuinely most of these were incorrect. If Earth wishes to be viewed as a therapist, she does Infact have to learn to put aside her problems with her patient to actually help them, which she didn’t do. This of course simply reinforces Moons statement that Earth is not in fact a therapist and has a lot more to learn before she can become one. Of course this comes back to show Earth probably couldn’t have helped Moon even if she wanted to. She would’ve had too many difficulties and problems to set aside from Moon before she could’ve listened, learned, and helped. Now, to address something bigger. The whole Moon trying to kill Earth thing. Let’s jump into that.

“Moon KILLS EVERYONE!! In VRChat”

Moon enters the room at 3:55 and it’s quite obvious they’re going to kill someone. They say it’s not their fault if Earth accidentally dies. Skip to 4:30, Moon and Ruin talk about god knows what, their family and Moons insanity til 14:00. That’s about 10 minutes of talking which will provide importance in a second. At 14:00 Moon brings up they’re going to use star power and states they will not hesitate to kill everyone and everything in the room, including earth who is tied up. He actually shoots at 15:30, a minute and a half later. In this minute and a half, Ruin could have been untying Earth to let her go but for whatever reason chose not to. Same thing goes for the him talking to Moon for 10+ minutes instead of letting Earth go.

Now that has been covered, allow me to point out the differences between “Moon tried to kill Earth” and “Moon tried to kill BloodMoon and Earth was in the way”. Moon did not pointedly try to kill Earth. They tried to kill BloodMoon. This is VERY DIFFERENT from them trying to kill Earth. If you say Moon tried to kill Earth, you’re wrong. They tried to kill BloodMoon.

Twisting back to Nexus’ mental health and everyone’s view on it. I’m going to discuss the fandoms view of her mental health next.

Everyone always says “Nexus had no reason to go insane!” “Suns the real one who deserves to go insane!” “Nexus doesn’t deserve to go insane!” “Nexus doesn’t have enough trauma to go insane!” & xyz. Now, here’s where these statements are wrong. Somebody can’t deserve to go insane. They simply do. Insanity is not something that is willing, it’s something that is built up.

Think of it as a beaver dam. The water at first flows smoothly and openly. We’ll acknowledge this as somebody’s thoughts, emotions, and views of certain things. Then, here come the beavers. The event. It doesn’t have to be a big event. It can be little ones that slowly place up a wall. The dam that closes off everything else. Oftentimes the person will bottle everything up. Making the water stop flowing. Over time, the river will rise above the dam, and cracks will begin. This can go on for months, years even. Eventually, the dam will break. Snap. All those emotions and thoughts, and reason will get washed away in the thick of things and the river will swell, flooding the banks which will cause problems. Untreated, this can be incredibly bad for the person and cause them to deteriorate into a husk of the person they once were. This is what happened with Nexus.

I believe the start of the build up of the dam for Nexus would begin at his talk with Old Moon. Where he was told to kill himself for his family’s wellbeing. Reminder that this is fresh after Solars death, so the pressure is still on his shoulders. The build up continues through his breakdown and then we reach his hallucination. This is the point where I think Moons’ dam began to crack, twigs spring out and water slowly begins to flow only to be closed up too soon. We can watch as Moons dam slowly gets flimsy and then breaks from that episode to the Earth and Sun confrontation.

Onto the last part of my yap session. (Ur a real one if u read this far down.) Moons imprisoning which was a BIG SLIP UP.

Honestly, imprisoning Moon in a small cage was the worst thing they could’ve done. Leaving him alone for days, weeks even, with his hallucinations, only popping in every few days just to flat out torment them (Monty.) and continuously compare them to their “superior self” (Sun). Moon even stated that they were “Screaming at nothing and thrashing about” for days on end and Sun paid no mind to it. Which is genuinely surprising because Sun was in this exact position, but instead of paying aid to Moon, he orders the computer to shock him unconscious and walks out not another word nor glance.

God these robots man, THESE ROBOTS GRRR. They’re all flawed so perfectly to antagonize each other but the fandom is so closed minded they can’t sort out that each character has REASON for beings one way or another🙏

in conclusion I miss Nexus and her goofy self and Moon and their stupid braindead self☹️☹️

I miss new Moon

Honestly, I don't care about Nexus but thinking about what happened to New Moon specifically hurts me a little. I just still can’t believe that a character who we knew for a year could just go POOF so randomly and sudden

And the worst part is that everyone in the show acts as if he never existed at all. As if only Nexus existed and everything good he did in his life was actually old Moon

It's weird. I kept hoping for a happy ending for him. I even thought he would eventually just leave with Solar to some random dimension after realizing his mistakes. But unfortunately it seems that the only way for a major character to go off screen is for them to die

Anyway I'm already changing some lore stuff when redesigning characters so have the biggest change so far: my Nexus is alive and "domesticated" (I love domesticated villain trope a lot). He lives in Sun and Moon's basement and only goes outside to get some snacks because he is still very salty about everything that happened. Nice

[thatonesonicfanfictionwriter]

heyyy the anon who requested the sonic having a bisexual awakening, yes part two is in order (#^.^#)

would love sonic sinking further into his denial like “nope! I just think of him as a very good friend, the feeling is friendship!” And then him being crushed by a bunch of bricks when he finally comes to term with it

“Woah, I’m Bisexual! I Didn’t Know That!” (Part 2!)

Pairing: Sonic the Hedgehog x Male Reader

Requested: Yes (by the same anon! Hello again ^^).

Description: Bisexual disaster Sonic. That’s all I can say.

Notes: I agree, part two is in order! More disaster bisexual Sonic is needed in this world!

(Like before, Reader will use He/Him pronouns.)

(Still not proof-read/beta-read.)

– – – – – – – – – – – –

“Uh…you okay, Sonic? You’ve been staring at that paper for a while,” Tails says, his namesakes swishing behind him.

And Tails was right; ever since you gave Sonic your number, he’d been contemplating calling it.

“Huh? Oh, yeah, ‘m fine, bro, don’t worry!” Sonic says.

“If you say so,” Tails says with a shrug, turning back around to his work desk. “Did you get some girl’s number or something?”

“Uh, no. It- It’s a guy’s, actually,” Sonic mutters.

Tails pauses and turns back around.

“You like guys??” Tails asks, not in an offensive way.

“Whaaaat? Pshhhh! Him and I are just pals!” Sonic states.

“…Uh-huh. Sure,” Tails says.

“I’m serious! All he did was save me and-” Sonic pauses, his face tinting pink. “…and call me cute-”

“Sonic. There’s no way you’re this oblivious,” Tails says.

“We’re just friends, Tails! Nothing more,” Sonic states, causing Tails to facepalm. “I’m goin’ on a run, byeeeee!”

Sonic zooms out of the house at high speeds, and Tails lets out a sigh.

“Good for him for being bi, but seriously, see the signs, Sonic,” Tails mutters to himself.

Meanwhile, with Sonic, he seems to be out of it, running while thinking.

“(I mean, come on, of course we’re just friends! I’m straight!)” Sonic thinks to himself. “(At least, I think I am-)”

Sonic gets cut out of his thoughts as he suddenly runs face first into a tree, causing him to fall on his back, letting out a groan of pain.

“You really are a clumsy one, aren’t you, blue?” you ask, your face coming into Sonic’s view.

“Not all the time…” he mutters.

You reach out your hand for Sonic to take, and he does, you helping him up.

“So, any reason in particular that you’re out here, cutie?” you ask him.

“Oh, uh, y’know, just goin’ out for a run,” he says, noticing you two are still holding hands, letting go of your hand and putting his hands behind his neck with a blush on his face.

“Is that a thing you do often? It’d be nice to have a running partner,” you tell him before smirking. “And a partner in general~”

Sonic’s face goes entirely red, the only noise coming out of his mouth being a quiet “Ah-”

You chuckle, kissing the back of one of his hands.

“Only if you want to though, Sonic,” you tell him.

“Ah- H- How did you get my name?” Sonic asks.

“Did you really think I wouldn’t recognize Mobius’s most handsome hero?” you ask him.

Oh god, you were going to kill him with all of this flirting.

But he doesn’t think he minds.

[rttnzombii]

Guys who wants to see my mini essay about Eggman being a loser and agent stone making him less of a pathetic loser?

“In the games, and in any other media before the movies came out, everyone hates Ivo Robotnik. It’s not in a fun, dedicated way where he is an arch-nemesis of Team Sonic; no, everyone sees Eggman as a failure. This may sound weird if you don’t know anything about Sonic and thought Eggman was a typical villain.

To make matters worse, his entire family hates him too. Movie-only fans might be aware of this as it was the focus of the newest movie— there’s Gerald Robotnik, His and Maria’s grandfather, who didn’t give Ivo a second glance in favor of his long-dead cousin Maria, who’s death he wants to avenge. Gerald manipulated Ivo and dismissed him, saying "oh Ivo, you’re no Maria," even though Ivo probably doesn’t even know who Maria is in the movie universe. Gerald's character suffers similarly in the games.

What you may not know is that in one of the games, Eggman encounters a descendant multiple generations into the future named Eggman Nega, who absolutely hates Ivo too. He believes Eggman is cramping his style and even tries to go back in time to eliminate him to restore his own reputation. Eggman also has other family and cousins who seem indifferent to his fate. I recall a character named Collin, who went by the nickname Snively, who worked with Eggman at one point but also hated him and later betrayed him. I can't remember a single family member of Eggman's who actually seemed to like or tolerate him.

He’s had many henchpeople too, most of whom are robots. Many, like Omega, Alpha, and Sage (who was a robot daughter he built for himself), have betrayed him and joined the heroes. Sage is somewhat of an outlier; while she doesn’t switch sides, she certainly isn’t loyal either. Smaller minions like Orbot and Cubot were unable to betray Eggman, but would have if they could, as they didn’t like his poor leadership and failure to recognize their devotion.

None of this is particularly surprising. Eggman is seen as a villain to the heroes and a failure to other villains. It’s humorous in a way; he needs more formidable foes in the games to heighten tension, but his iconic status prevents him from being sidelined completely, so he remains a comedic figure rather than a genuine threat. It’s a bit sad, but he has brought it upon himself by attempting to create a totalitarian egg-state and belittling Sonic for having friends. Why should anyone remain loyal to someone like that? Joining the heroes is often viewed as the right move; characters like Shadow and Knuckles have done it, and others have wandered the line of allegiance.

It’s worth recapping that for many years, Eggman was depicted as someone without any truly loyal supporters – not even his robotic henchmen. In various animated shows and comics, he created robot companions expressly meant to like him, but he often found himself isolated.

However, that has changed in recent times. As of 2020, Doctor Robotnik finally gained his first and only loyal henchmen, Agent Stone.

Agent Stone's presence sets off a shift in Eggman's story and character, as he embodies the loyalty and support that the villain has long been deprived of. When movie Eggman states that there’s only been one person who truly cared for him, he is specifically referring to Stone, who is the only true ally eggmans ever had. GAent stone worked to follow Eggmans manifest and work to follow the villain through all his evil schemes with no alternate goal in mind other than to follow Ivo and keep him safe. Who can see Stones heart is in it when he heart brokenly says “No, I cant lose you again.” As Ivo fires him when he is still being manipulated by Gerald.

Eggman is ignorant towards Agent stones devotion and genuine care for him until hisGrandfather betrays him. Revealing he was only manipulating Ivo so he could destroy the world that he blames for Marias death . He then decides to Team up with team sonic and redirect the giant self destructing laser that he and his grandfather are currently in to the moon. Choosing to save earth, to save the only person who ever cared about him, to save Agent Stone. “I, Dr.Ivo Robotnik am dedicating my final live stream to one very special henchman, Agent Stone.” Then the camera cuts to Agent stone watching the broadcast play jaw slack and eyes wide. “ If i cant rule the world then I might as well save it. You were the one and only person who ever cared about me”The camera then cutes to Stone again as he begs the doctor not to “you were more of a sicko freak to me. You were a sicko friend.” Then the camera cuts and the beam hits the moon and the space station eggman is stationed in explodes.

This strays completely from the games, where Ivo doesn’t have to self sacrifice and there isn’t any ally who’s going to miss him when he’s gone. They set this up so that he would finally have a friend, an ally, someone who loves and cares for him. He is still no where near the typical villain, but he’s now no longer universally hated. He’s growing and developing for the first time 34 years. “

Uhm sorry I panicked

[spoofyleaf]

MK doesn’t want to be a hero to save the world, he just want to have fun and keep his friends safe. In this essay I will-

[theweeklydiscourse]

God forbid you ever criticize the lack of consequences Bakugou experiences in MHA, or suddenly you’ll find dozens of Bakugou stans pouring into your mentions to make a speech about how cruel you are for forcing him to eat cement. They’ll act as though “consequences” inherently involves throwing him into the dungeon or putting him in detention for 100 years and then moan about how him facing consequences would only perpetuate a cycle of abuse/discrimination.

Listen, it’s not really that much of a consequence if the “consequence” in question isn’t directly connected to his current or past bad behaviour. “Oh but his scars!” “When he died that one time!” “His guilt for getting kidnapped” None of those are related to his bullying, and in my opinion, that makes them insufficient as consequences in an arc about changing for the better.

The consequences I would actually like to see could be as simple as: Izuku feels sad/mad because of what he went through, or certain characters reflect on how Bakugou’s past impacts their perception of him. More introspection on the victim’s end is needed, Bakugou doesn’t necessarily need to be pilloried for the arc to be satisfying.

[cologona]

I am just so fundamentally uninterested in the story where Jason is in the wrong and needs to Gain Perspective or whatever. God what a snore. What an absolute waste of my time.

[swordmaid]

i am wide awake thinking about that post canon jb au again when I should be sleeping …!!! such is the nature of the jbrainrot…

[theroyalriot]

I thought it was criminal to post the comic strip and not the video I made it for. So here is the tiktok of the Villain Tadashi concept I’ve been obsessed with lately. Some people asked for my headcanons so I put them in the tags!

Design is by me! Concept is from a different tiktok video about a fan altered BH6 ending. I live here now.

[toddtakefive]

thinking about todd and his resolve toward… not quite isolation, but being alone in a room full of people again. he goes along to the study room to sit on his own and do his homework, he sits at the poets table and follows along with what’s being said while keeping quiet, he goes to the meetings at all but doesn’t necessarily contribute (in fact, if you watch him when cameron is telling the story ���from camp in sixth grade’, you can see that he recognizes it before any of the other poets but doesn’t voice it until they all have). he’s not alone, necessarily, if you want to get technical about it, he’s just lonely, and he’s generally okay with that. he doesn’t have friends and that’s fine, he doesn’t participate in class and that’s fine, he doesn’t have a relationship with his family and that’s fine—he could live without any real connection and he’d have been, more or less, fine.

the thing about when he says “i can take care of myself just fine!” is that he isn’t really wrong, you can infer that he’s been doing it his entire life anyway, it’s that ‘taking care of yourself’ isn’t the same thing as really living or being happy. todd’s an introvert, certainly, and even as he gets closer to the group he defaults to sitting quietly in the background, but he’s also denying himself community out of fear not introversion. todd isn’t friendless because he’s an introvert, although that definitely plays a part, he’s friendless because he pushes anyone that might want his company away. if anyone has every wanted for his attention in the first place. (neil’s unwavering interest in him is unique (even when it comes to the rest of the poets, who are fine with todd coming along and joining the group, but aren’t really hellbent on him being there in the beginning) and his refusal to accept it is a direct result of being so lonely growing up.)

there’s obviously something to be said about the implications of his parents neglect, and the more than likely fact that he grew up friendless, and how those both play a part in in him being so skilled at dodging social interaction/being so avoidant of it, but by the time we see him in the movie he’s all but accepted his fate as being alone his entire life. he’s already accepted being the family disappointment, and he’s already accepted he’ll never amount to anything, and he obviously doesn’t like it, but he’d have managed living with that knowledge without the confirmation that it was all wrong. would he have been miserable? almost certainly. but he’d have managed. he’d done it for that long already, anyhow.

[fujii-draws]

OKAY! Chatot rant in tags below! Read at your own discretion.

[wildsaltair]

Ranting in the tags isn’t enough so I’m going to say one more time that just because Maximus isn’t morally gray doesn’t mean he isn’t complex

[valewritessss]

If I read one more “annabeth is toxic” analysis where they leave out the part where Percy laughed after the judo flip and where they subtly make Percy out to be some weak and submissive victim while they’re at it I’m going to scream

[yonemurishiroku]

Hmm.

There’s an anonymous poll for “Who’s the fairest of them all?”. Percy is proud to say he’d always choose Annabeth. Leo doesn’t need to think to know Piper’s his choice. The whole camp votes Piper actually. Or Drew. Generally someone in the Aphrodite cabin.

And then there’s that one vote for Nico.

Hmm. Wonder who that’s from. Jason. Of course it’s Jason

[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.

[apollo-just-ice]

The funniest and saddest thing perhaps is how captivated I have been by Skaði/Njörðr lately…

Yeah. Njörðr from Feh and his… presumably existing wife that isn’t even in Feh in any shape way or form atm.

I mean I’ve taken what can be learnt from Norse mythology and have made her into my own character, basically, but still…

I am working on a fic rn but man. Who is gonna get this except me? It’s crazy. But I am having fun with it soooooo. Hopefully that’ll be enough <3