A treat for my fine Tumblrians: since I only have 69 of these beautiful new Effin' Birds shirts available, I figured I'd give you first dibs before those monsters on Instagram buy them all to resell them at a profit. (Feel free to buy them and resell them at a profit, though, capitalism sucks ass and we all have to eat.)

I'll also have a limited number of them with me at Fan Expo Vancouver next weekend, and possibly at my next few shows after that. You can find my upcoming appearance schedule right here.

I LOVE YOUR WRITING

Just wanna say i have been devouring all your Top Gun fics one by one and they have been phenomenal and amazing and masterpieces each and every one

How are u such an amazing writer i must study your works under a microscope before i eat them all

P.S.: i am obsessed with Maverick's ugly dogs especially Chicken Nugget. She's my spirit animal 😌

Thank you so much! This is a very sweet message. Chicken Nugget 4 Lyfe

not gonna say it. but he popped into your head didn’t he

Playnes

I want to talk about work.

Val Kilmer as Tom "Iceman" Kazansky TOP GUN: MAVERICK (2022)

Top Gun + Lucky Number Slevin

BEHOLD.

The soft expressions. The :3. The comfort. The room for interpretation that Ice is also the first seal and changed his mind on where he wanted to nap. The implication that this has happened many times before. Maverick reading Tess of the d’Ubervilles to strengthen his pain tolerance. Their love is so apparent in every nook and cranny and I am having such a time (good) beholding these images with my eyes again and again.

When they sleep underwater, harbor seals squeeze between two rocks to keep from being dragged away by the current.

"Hey, Ice—"

Dumb jokes I make about @topgunreacts completely amazing Harbor series, in which Iceman Kazansky "runs selkie software on harbor seal hardware." ILU and I think about selkie Iceman a very normal amount xo

Do you ever think about how a single misguided study on wolves in captivity has resulted in both the most widespread toxic pseudoscientific theory in the manosphere and what is arguably the weirdest genre of graphic kinky gay fanfiction and depending on who you are and what you've seen you'll hear the word Alpha and either think of the platonic ideal of a cis het man or one feral mediocre middle aged actor's dick knot impregnating another's slick-drenched hole. Isn't the internet a wondrous place.

guys i need you to be less comfortable making super negative comments abt a character in the tags of a random post abt that character. like i support haterism but make your own post. please stop and think about whether op, a person who is interested in this character enough to make posts abt them, wants to hear all that. i see this too much from people reblogging from me and it makes me embarrassed that you’re reblogging from me. you are being rude

FINALLY 👏 SOMEONE 👏 SAID 👏 IT. 👏 ALL OF IT.  👏ALL AT ONCE. 👏

(Thank you @fallingawkwardly​ for bringing this to my attention.)

The 'write for yourself uwu' culture shift has done real damage to fic writers imo. I recently had a post on the importance of strategic commenting break containment and I'm surprised by how many strangers who rb it in agreement feel the need to reassure in the tags that they do write for themselves, but...

There is a kernel of truth in the heart of this sentiment--if you only chase stats, you are unlikely to find joy in your writing. At the same time, I think we've veered too far in the other direction.

It is only natural to want engagement and the write for yourself crowd often overlooks how communal an effort fic writing usually is. So many story ideas are born from casual discussions about h/c's and favourite scenes and what ifs and the comment box is a cornerstone of this process. Not only can the discussions in the comment box be a hub for idea generation on their own, but even when the said idea generation takes place in DMs or Discord chats, commenting is often the first/easiest way into befriending authors; it's where community building starts.

Further, the write for yourself crowd similarly overlooks that the things a writer can write for themselves are often vast and many at any given time, and relative engagement levels across fandoms/ships can play a large part in which of those ideas a writer chooses to pursue--or whether they choose to publish their finished work at all.

In sum, I don't think we need to be this apologetic as writers for wanting feedback and engagement for what we post -- writing is hard work and it's only human that we want something external out of it in turn, however rewarding the process might intrinsically be.

I used to live in Boise when I was younger and would listen to this radio station named Bob and Tom, 🤣 For some reason, their song 'You Can Be Mean to Me' they sang reminds me of your Gayboy Airline series!

Omg that’s so funny. I found it on YouTube and it is very appropriate

me reading straight up pornography: hmm… this one just doesn’t have enough accurate character psychoanalysis to get me off

someone I follow on the bird app just announced they're starting a very exclusive private fic server because they and a bunch of other people want to talk about how much they love the fics they're reading, and as an author can I just say that a really great place to talk about a fic you love is in the comments for that fic

I understand that people are trying to create safe spaces, but as the number of comments that I get on my fics dwindles with each passing year, knowing these spaces exist where my fics are being discussed, places that I am excluded from, makes me want to write fic LESS

I mean I guess who cares, right, because if I stop writing, there's 10,000 other people that will continue...but if you participate in a fic "book club" server and you say nice things there about a fic you loved, maybe copy and paste that into a comment on AO3?

the only thing fanfic writers are asking for in return for hours of hard work is attention. please don't rob us of the one thing that we hope for when we hit "post"

What if I told you "Your work reminded me of another, more popular work I've seen" is actually not a complement

Just finished Top Gun 1986 for the first time and I have some thoughts. Do you guys think that film was a little gay or what

Both IceMav entries for Callsigns Zine in one post for convenience woooow

The one where Ice and Maverick look at stars and kiss:

The one where Ice and Maverick love one another over their lifetimes in so many ways: