#ice would fight the whole navy for mav and that’s canon

[ordinaryxgirl]

One of my favorite icemav hcs is that they secretly think the other one is the better pilot, they’ll just never say that to each others face

When they’re alone it’s all “of course I’m the better pilot, what are you talking about?” but they secretly tell everyone else the other one is the best there is

I mean, in TGM, Mav was way too happy to clarify that he in fact got second place, I can totally see him being insufferable about the fact he has the greatest navy pilot as his wingman

And I can seriously picture Iceman making phone call after phone call because “how could you possibly bench the navy’s greatest pilot ever?”

It’s just something I’m always thinking about, they might tease each other, but they also secretly think it’s not even a competition at all :)

[the-ace-with-spades]

Trying to make myself write like a monkey pilot and so random bits from worldbuilding of this fic that are only mention or not even included (this is trans Bradley fic, for people who have not read it, but some bits are universal - I'm sorry for the rambling)

Merlin has a flight school in Nevada - this is where Bradley gets his commercial pilot licence, not long after he starts medical transition. Merlin runs it with his second wife, Nandini, who was the original owner and main flight instructor. They met through Slider, who got his commercial through her school, and they got two kids and their daughter had a crush on Bradley everyone in their family holds against her any time they meet for family gatherings.

Slider, by the way, retired from the Navy the same year as Mav started on the path to become a test pilot, and got a commercial and then airline pilot licence. Mav makes fun of it constantly.

Jake and Bradley (then pre-transition) talked extensively about their future life together and in Jake's mind, it was a given they would get married and have kids eventually, they'd just wait for the right timing or until they were at certain ranks/positions. Bradley did want all of it, he just never thought/imagined how it'd actually look with him as wife/mother, only vaguely with Jake as a dad and his own image completely avoided (kinda hard to explain but it's like a very blurry picture where his own figure would be even blurrier).

Bradley still wants to get married and have kids. Once the whole wife/mom bit became husband/dad thing, he's no longer uncomfortable about the topic. He knows being pregnant would be difficult because society sucks but he's pretty sure he's at the stage of confidence when he can pull it off.

Jake's mom is the nightmare mother-in-law people joke about. For real. She is terrible to all of her kids' partners, but she is especially terrible to Bradley (pre and after transition) because Jake is her little miracle baby.

Coyote joined Jake's squadron just as Bradley left the Navy, which means he met Jake in the middle of a heartbreak and well, that's basically why he's not the biggest fan of Bradley (even if sometimes it shows in ugly ways).

Bradley and Jake also had very different mindsets about their relationship during the break-up period of six years. Bradley had been a bit in denial and tried to force himself to move quickly, thinking that ever being with Jake was impossible (or you know, a fantasy only possible in his head...). Jake up until he sees Bradley, now after transition, at the Hard Deck, thought they were like magically destinated to be together and they'd meet again at some point. He dated some girls, mostly on Coyote's insistence, but he never hit it off with any woman, liked to say he was 'ruined for life' for Bradley and never stopped believing they'd find each other again despite the years apart piling on.

Mav and Ice renewed their vows and had a second wedding after Ice went into remission. Bradley was the officiant, mostly because Ice and Mav had a massive fight about whose witness he should be.

This is implied ?? but Ice's cancer went in remission because I imagine Bradley being there and Mav being there more often because of Bradley meant Ice'd go to the doctor earlier than in canon and had better chances given it was at an earlier stage when it was found. You know, a butterfly effect and all that.

Bradley and Ice spent weeks after Bradley's top surgery playing DCS, most often in the F-14 sim with Bradley in the RIO seat, sometimes with Slider providing commentary. As stated in the fic, Slider is the one to pop the idea and install the whole thing. Ice and Mav often play while goes through his oncology treatment and Ice often uses his puppy eyes to make Mav play as the RIO (rather than have two planes and Jester AIs)

Jake has a strange view on gender, which isn't necessarily bad, but it can be disheartening to Bradley, especially at the beginning. It's almost as if he doesn't see people's gender but who the people are (kinda like similar to not seeing skin colours??) which can be great when you don't want to be perceived/treated by just gender (like Bradley pre-transition) but can be ignorant if you do (like Bradley after transition). He is also terrible with labels and doesn't really believe or use them.

(A bit nsfw/tmi ??) Bradley chose his preferred type of top surgery based on the desire to keep the sensation of his nipples (buttonhole has a higher probability of keeping the feeling), mostly because it was a really sensitive part of his body, but ended up not keeping the full sensation on one side, which is always a possible outcome with any top surgeries, and after a few more months on T realized that his chest isn't really that sensitive anymore anyway. It's probably one of the very few things he misses.

I'm absolutely ecstatic because readers picked up on it, but Jake's been so jealous of Mav the whole time the fic's been going on and it'll continue until he realizes who Mav is to Bradley actually. You can only imagine how horrified he is when he realizes how terrible of a first impression he made on Mav.

While Mav is not a fan of Jake, Ice is trying to be very neutral. Objectively, he's not the biggest fan of Jake either, mostly because he's never going to be a fan of any of his baby boy's partners, but he thinks Bradley is an adult and should be able to make his own decisions. He also knows that a lot of people would have told him Mav is no good for him and it's not true at all so he's trying to trust Bradley's judgment.

someone please make me write, i just stare at the open document and change words in already written dialogues

[compacflt]

cymav thoughts?

i Have given it a lot of thought over the last six months bc multiple people have asked and I really don’t have any cymav thoughts unfortunately

from where i sit they have no chemistry and they’re each in their 50s when they canonically meet so there’s no real incentive to get together

cyclone is like ice (annoying version) on steroids. the scene that for me defines the cymav relationship is the scene after ice’s funeral when cyclone a.) kicks mav out of the fucking navy and ends his career after mav just got kicked in the teeth by ice’s death (not endearing or attractive) and b.) scraps Maverick’s mission parameters and recreates them in a way that is technically safer but definitely more likely to get all of the aviators killed, maybe just to cover his own ass—he and maverick think so differently about tactics and strategy that they are diametrically opposed in a way i think is fundamentally incompatible. I don’t think they would ever be friends let alone sexually or romantically involved

Lest we forget cyclone is mav’s superior & commanding officer when they meet so that’s a weird place to start as well—they are never equals in institutional power even meeting. I feel like part of why icemav works so well is because they were both snotty overconfident greenhorned lieutenants when they met/went through unspeakable levels of trauma together. Whereas with cyclone it’s not like “when we met we were both lieutenants who saved each others lives in active combat while fighting side by side for the same mission❤️” it’s “when we met he was an admiral three ranks my senior and he contemptuously ended my whole 35-year career and LITERALLY commanded me to my death from his position of relative safety and if i had died it ostensibly wouldn’t have affected him at all…❤️?”

Cyclone is like ice: he is successful in the navy because he refuses to have any daring or break the rules at all, and only digs up a hint of respect for maverick after he is repeatedly proven wrong (annoying, runs counter to mav’s whole ethos)

if they Were ever to be involved, it would have to be kind of an icemav post-original-tg-mission thing where they learn how to respect each other over a long time, because clearly there’s a lot of deep-seated disrespect for each other especially from cyclones view towards maverick. He straight up does not think mav is a worthwhile asset to the navy, a good tactician, OR capable of basically anything that is asked of him. he openly tells mav the only reason he’s still in the navy is admiral Kazansky, outwardly and rudely dismissing any prior skill or valor maverick has exhibited and earned. For Mav, someone whose ego is his most prized possession, that might be too deep an injury to bear, even if he proved cyclone wrong in the end. And after he retires, there’s nothing keeping him & cyclone in the same place to become friends, and by TGM neither seems to me like the kind of guy to ask former nemeses out to drinks if they don’t have to, so i don’t think they would

those are my wet blanket thoughts. I personally don’t see it sorry

[the-ace-with-spades]

Hi again. I know you just wrote a phenomenal response to one of my asks so no pressure at all to answer this one. But I have noticed a lot of transMaverick posts on tumblr recently, and I was wondering if that’s something you vibe with at all. I think they are very cool and an interesting take on a well loved character. Your work monkey child is just so wonderful and moving that it made me curious as to your thoughts on this topic. Also feel free to not respond if you are not comfortable, as I realize this could be a sensitive topic for many people. Thank you so much!!! Hope you are doing well and that you aren’t working too hard. Make sure yo take time to have a break and smell the flowers do to speak.

Oh my, sorry but this might be a bit long as this is such an interesting topic for me...

While I enjoy fics/fanart involving trans Mav, I do not vibe with it that much?? I like it as a concept and I'll always be glad that people are up to interpret/headcanon characters as trans, no matter which characters -- there isn't much trans representation in mainstream media, especially when it comes to transmasc people, with lack of main characters being a major problems, so I definitely take comfort in headcanoning characters as trans in fanwork. I could go on a tangent here about this but the gist is, there's either no rep, very background rep that absolutely doesn't bring anything to the story and feels added as an afterthought, trans rep whose story is told in a way that can be pityable and accommodated to cis audience, and very sad, stereotypical trans rep when you've got the whole dramatic haircutting in front of a mirror, ace bandages, and 'that's not my name, mom' that's not the reality and a major simplification, or we have sob story trans rep that dies at the end. I've written a major assignment about this (curiously, before I came out as trans...) and my point is, fanwork is a form of comfort and rep that we're not getting anywhere else.

I don't vibe with trans Mav as much since my modus operandi in fandoms is primarily staying around canon/canon divergence, so most of the headcanons/ideas I like are close to the reality of the universe of the original media or could take place in it without major changes to the universe. When I write, I try to make it semi-realistic in the same way. Obviously, TG and TG:M disregard some physics laws and have a lot of very improbable things happening in them but socially and historically seem to be the same as our reality.

There's a reason I wrote Bradley coming out later in life in monkey pilot rather than have him come out before NROTC or while in flight training (and it wasn't just because I wanted to write the Jake drama...) - in short, realistically, trans people weren't allowed to be part of armed forces until 2015 (in the US, of course) and they only allowed people who were already in service to return after transition, you couldn't enlist as an openly trans person until a year later (that was iffy too, and more complicated but I won't go into details), and to this day, veterans are fighting to get their VA benefits back as they were taken away if they came out as trans after completing service... Laws regarding trans people were in general more complicated before 2010s (name and gender legal changes, mainly) as well as access to trans healthcare, and coming out as trans wouldn't really be an option (realistically) if one wanted to be part of the military anytime before 2016. Even in the monkey pilot I've taken a large artistic license (gave Ice a bit more power than he would have in reality...) to keep Bradley in the Navy post-transition.

This means there isn't a way for Mav to be openly trans and in the Navy in the 80s while also in service. It's always in the back of my mind whenever I see fanarts or read fics because the sad truth is, that wouldn't be the reality. I know a lot of trans people like to write trans characters in settings and universes with a silent 'transphobia doesn't exist' au and I can see the appeal of that at times but once again, not my modus operandi (with the exception of different job aus, I think?).

I do think that an Icemav fic could be an interesting idea and made realistically if we had Mav closeted and serving in his agab (so, female to the outside world) but slowly coming out to the found family around him (Carole, Goose) without transitioning. This is something that sometimes, undeniably, happens in the trans community -- people don't come out or start the transition process because it's not safe or will severely impact the comfort of their life. There are ways to affirm your identity without coming out in every aspect of your life and Mav might have very well been supported like that by his friends and family as long as he was in service. I imagine that it could create an internal dilemma for both Ice and Mav once they started falling for each other -- Mav, as he'd probably want to come clean, and Ice because he'd have to decide if he would be able to relationship with a guy. I imagine they would live their life as a hetero couple outside their home, and as truly themselves in their own home for the majority of their lives and Mav would transition late in life, at the age of fifty-three, and this is also something so underexplored. You might have noticed that trans Mav art and fics are mostly with him being a twenty-something twink, which, again, is probably more relatable as most fandom people are twenty-something, but it kind of takes away the appeal for me -- I like to find comfort in that despite the struggles and the reality for trans people being bad, there's a happy ending waiting somewhere or with someone.

Different people engage in fandom for different reasons and I totally understand that my point of view may not be the most common one. I'll never say that people shouldn't headcanon/write/draw Mav as trans because, in the end, I don't have to be completely on board to find it enjoyable or to see the value it can bring to others.

I'm sorry if this was a bit long and thank you for the asks - it's so kind of you to send any at all to me. Once again, hope you're doing well and taking care of yourself too 💙

[theicemavstan]

#they’re so absolutely gone for each other not even their pilot ego stands a chance#mav thinks his husband is the best of the best#ice would fight the whole navy for mav and that’s canon

Your tags op. Im literally sobbing

One of my favorite icemav hcs is that they secretly think the other one is the better pilot, they’ll just never say that to each others face

When they’re alone it’s all “of course I’m the better pilot, what are you talking about?” but they secretly tell everyone else the other one is the best there is

I mean, in TGM, Mav was way too happy to clarify that he in fact got second place, I can totally see him being insufferable about the fact he has the greatest navy pilot as his wingman

And I can seriously picture Iceman making phone call after phone call because “how could you possibly bench the navy’s greatest pilot ever?”

It’s just something I’m always thinking about, they might tease each other, but they also secretly think it’s not even a competition at all :)