#edts notes

[compacflt]

If you want, and only if you want to, could you explain about making Logistics a big part of Ice's career path? Not only did fit so well with your Ice's characterization, it was just so neat I've made it my HC for Ice's career path.

yes!

I got REALLy deep into the defense policy weeds in this post so I’m putting a cut to save people’s dashboards

1. when i was rewriting chapters 8 &9 last winter i did literally the bare minimum of research about the current set of high-level officers. the commander of the pacific fleet at the time had previously been the director of pacific fleet logistics ordnance & supply. So that was easy to yoink. a proven chain of succession.

2. but also: it fit ice’s (or his alter ego admiral Kazansky’s) neat, orderly, effective, collected, strategic characterization. And as professional tactics go, there would be no better promotion for a high-level officer looking to take over the fleet than DFLOS. understand the fleet by the numbers, you comprehensively understand the fleet.

3. In terms of secret-keeping logistics, ice is supposed to be kind of the best. like, because of his logistical thinking, he & maverick get away with it. Or that’s how I would’ve written it if I were a little smarter. Obviously in practice a bunch of people find out so it’s not great. but the navy AS A WHOLE doesn’t find out.

4. The field of military logistics is rigorously bureaucratic, boring, soulsucking, selfdefeating, notoriously corrupt, and yet entirely necessary for the military to succeed at any level (in the very first draft of WWGATTAI i included a famous US marine corps maxim that most people have heard at some point: “amateurs talk tactics. professionals talk logistics.” but that was literally the only good thing about the original chapter 6 which got entirely rewritten a month after i published it). So logistics as a field of specialization fit in perfectly with my secondary character thesis that rising through the boring bureaucratic ranks of the Navy sucked all the humanity & will to live out of ice one day at a time.

a couple related interesting things that I’ve never talked about on this blog & might never get the chance to again:

a) ice canonically joins the navy as a fighter pilot & ends his career as a glorified bureaucrat. that sucks. obviously the struggle to rise in the ranks is a notoriously cutthroat, political, sleazy business (you do not get to the top of the United States Navy by being nice to people), but i would also not be the first person to say that—for exemplary officers—leadership is an EXPECTATION that can counterbalance someone’s natural drive to excel, if that makes sense. You get promoted because you’re good at something (flying), but you get promoted away from the thing you were good at. There is an extent to which you have to fight for a promotion—but there is also an extent to which commanders above you pick you for the job, suck you up along the pipeline. Loss of agency—a major major component of joining the military—does still apply to upper-level officers.

B) to that end, i am reminded of one quote from Todd Schmidt’s 2023 book “Silent Coup of the Guardians: US Military Elite Influence on National Security.” This is an Army training & doctrine commander speaking: “the military has a lot of two- and three-star senior leaders that were confident, charismatic commanders at the O-6 level. But that’s the end of the story. One in fifty, maybe one in a hundred, truly have what it takes to operate successfully at the strategic level and make a real difference for their service. The problem is that they all tend to think that, since they have stars on their shoulders, they’re the one.” —I’ve been writing ice as “The Chosen One,” the officer unicorn, for two reasons: one, it provides him cover for his illegal relationship (and also asks an interesting chicken-egg question: does he get away with his rlnship because he’s so good, or is he so good JUST to get away with his relationship?); and two, he’s “the chosen one” in canon, i.e. he already has four stars in canon: canonically he is not a mediocre officer. But most officers (cough cough maverick) are not cut out for high-level leadership.

C.) in Thomas E. Ricks’ book “The Generals,” Ricks argues that (at least in the Army) mediocrity in the general/flag officer ranks is unfortunately by design. In WWII, if you were a mediocre officer, you got relieved! You got fired! It’s part of why we won: merciless culling of the general officer ranks! But between WWII and Korea, officer relief began to be associated with shame & wasted resources. Mediocre officers got promoted anyways. The military elite pipeline sucks mediocrity up the chain of command. Ricks blames this issue for (at least the Army’s) shit leadership in every post-WWII war, including but most especially Iraq and Afghanistan. There’s no penalty for mediocrity. That in turn reflects on military strategy (mediocre strategists at the helm) & the outcome of every military foray (mediocre outcomes).

D) additionally. There’s a whole neverending debate in the field of civil-military relations (an extremely interesting field of study btw) about the corporatization of the military—lots of high-level talk over the years of “running the military like a business.” If you get kinda into defense policy like me (am i still antimilitary? Idk! but i CAN easily tell you i am against the navy’s littoral combat ship program! It sucks!) then you will know that the navy is struggling right now on a lot of different fronts (procurement [shipbuilding esp. is a disaster—ford-class carriers are under budget though 👍🏽], recruitment, theatre prioritization, general preparedness, readiness against major adversaries [China in particular]). Simply, the navy is pretty mediocre at the minute. I talk a big game about ice being COMPACFLT & SECNAV, but if those are true, & if he “exists” in our current timeline, or even canon timeline (COMPACFLT in 2020), then he’s complicit in a lot of why the navy is sucking ass right now. He didn’t do his job very well. LOL. So, because I love (especially my version of) ice too much to see his legacy suffer, I am stating for the record that my timeline is a different timeline where ice saves the navy from itself and fixes all its issues & solves all its problems & makes it the pride of the armed forces & the tip of the spear of American defense :) because I said so

E.) unrelated but important. It sounds obvious but it must be said. Ice dies on the job in TGM canon. To the extent that in earlier drafts of the script, not-his-sister-Sarah even points out to maverick that ice is still active duty, in the same breath as she tells him ice is sick again. (A wise move to remove that line.) ice does not resign his commission. Ice does not retire to spend time with his family at the end of his life. Ice dies as commander of the pacific fleet. He dies on the job; he dies FOR the job, bureaucratic as it is. If you were wondering why I wrote ice so dormantly suicidal, it’s because canon (i argue) has made it clear that—since the second ice signed up to be a fighter pilot during the Cold War to the second he died active duty—ice has ALWAYS been ready and willing to die for his honorable Navy career.

[compacflt]

Would you ever consider writing about a different path Ice and Mav could take, one where they choose to leave the Navy and pursue a more open relationship and civilian life? Thinking it would be easier but maybe the sacrifice to their careers brings its own challenges?

(hi, jan 2024 me here, this was an ask that I answered when it was sent in in May 2023 & didn't post because I felt I actually answered it fictionally in the "icedad" one-shot the week after [and you can obviously see how these thoughts affected the writing of other pieces like "tremors & aftershocks"], but I still mostly agree with this take [though it's a little overgeneralizing] & I think it sums up a lot of my final "meta" modern-military-theory thoughts on ice & mav & their relationship, so im posting it now before I post the compacflt masterpoast)

see,… the thing is, i just… can’t see that happening!! i have no idea how to write that!!! Maybe i really do have a lack of imagination. But i can’t see that happening for a number of reasons. So short answer, no.

Long answer (and it’s long):

1. lame reason to start out, but it, uh, it’s canon that ice ends up at O-10 and mav ends up at O-6. not saying that im beholden to canon obviously (my mav ends up at O-7 and my ice ends up alive) but I do base my characterizations of them on the implications of the political struggles of both their careers so… taking away ice’s fourth star is basically starting from square one wrt my characterization of him. which is a lot of work. i could start from the beginning with a top gun 1986 ice who knows he’s gay—that would be a fun AU (i think other people than me have definitely done that better, though—I’m a one-trick pony). So if that’s what you mean then disregard the rest of this post. but if what you mean is a divergence from my existing work (i.e. homophobic/rank-climbing ice&mav) then… yeah, can’t see that happening, for further reasons below.

2. wrt my characterization of him: it’s based on a broad historical overview of armed service officers and the expectations of their careers. in my view, high-ranking officers aren’t after power—or maybe they started their careers wanting power, but somewhere down the line, it just becomes an expectation. if you do everything right and follow all the rules, you are expected by the institution to lead, whether you want to or not. That’s just the pipeline. at some point you start losing agency. which is what I mean when I keep saying ice doesn’t have a choice in advancing his career (besides the meta fact that this is fanfiction and canon demands that he have 4 stars lol)—high ranking military officers are continually and continually groomed for bigger and better positions; and the longer they spend in the military, the harder it is to leave that lifestyle for something else. And with ice’s canonical (and characteristically INTEGRAL, as I mentioned a week or so ago) refusal to rebel against the wishes of the navy as an institution, plus this historical expectation to lead placed upon the shoulders of excelling officers, I really do think ice is destined for four stars & nothing less, even if it gives him chronic depression. It’s his highest priority not because he wants it to be, but because…it just is. that’s how the institutionalized system of advancement in the military works. it just is. it has to be.

3. I mentioned in this post that I can’t ever see a foot in the door with them talking about their relationship unless maverick dies and is resurrected, and I feel the exact same way about them & their retirement plans. There’s a lot that ice and mav don’t talk about: the biggest one is obviously Goose’s death, the foundation of their relationship; but also their love for each other obv, what they did to rooster, AND their careers, which have to end at some point. Them talking about everything is totally inevitable, it was gonna have to happen eventually before they died, and I think one foot in the door MIGHT have been them eventually talking about retirement (someone sent in a prompt asking for this exactly & i am brainstorming it furiously) but before the Navy FORCES them to retire… i think they would studiously avoid talking about it. For a couple reasons: a) what does retiring with each other mean? living in the same house until they die together? hard to do if you’re just good friends. talking about retirement is tantamount to talking about Them. and b) what are they gonna do outside the navy? Ice has a lot of options, as I mentioned in the slider one-shot—general/flag officers are SUPER sought after in leadership/intelligentsia/management positions post service, so maybe if he were offered a crazy cool civilian position somewhere in San Diego in like the 2000s he would quit the navy for it… but what about maverick? I have no idea what a non-navy mav would do. Civilian airline pilot? Hoo boy. I think he’d hate that. I could maybe see emergency helicopter pilot, lol, or race car driver (i just watched days of thunder can you tell?) but none of the above offers the institutionalized honor the navy does (that, as a reminder, he *killed people* to obtain in the first place). I suggested his test piloting expertise would make him an attractive technical advising candidate to A&D companies like Boeing, LockMart, GD, etc. so that might be one option. But it might have been kind of a touchy subject for him before he racked up the expertise he’d need for those high-level civilian positions… the navy was kinda his only option. So they wouldn’t talk about it because it might hurt his feelings.

4. The biggest reason: again… open rebellion like rocking the boat by quitting the navy to be in an open long-term gay relationship, in upper mil brass ranks, and even retired upper mil brass ranks, just… isn’t done. And REALLY wasn’t done in the 2000s, when i think the scenario in this ask is positioned. And it’s not like “oh but whatever who cares about the navy, ice and mav are in love, they deserve to be happy no matter what, they should do what they want, fuck the navy…” no. Ice and Mav care about the navy. Clearly. Canonically. By necessity. The military requires cohesion and on some level repression of individuality & personal expression to FUNCTION, even when you’re retired. Yes, maverick certainly strains against that repression (which is why you Could spin top gun as an anti-military franchise if you were desperate enough), but he rebels through his ACTIONS (stupid plane maneuvers) not through his personal IDENTITY. his personal identity (headstrong overtly masculine white male pilot, whether gay or straight who cares) is NEVER challenged throughout the franchise (i.e. no one really challenges his masculinity specifically) & his personal identity does not POSE a challenge to the navy. Both he and ice in their outward-facing personal identities really fit in quite neatly to the navy’s overarching identity & contribute to the navy’s cohesion in a way that is favorable to both their careers and the establishment. Lack of imagination or not… i can’t see a universe in which Ice and mav would actively WANT to rock the boat and wreck the navy’s cohesion and their reputations for an open relationship and definitively rebellious personal identities, with the obvious caveat being Maverick’s death recontextualizing both their priorities (yes we’re in love AND we’ve finally proven ourselves to be ultra-capable officers regardless of our sexuality so no one has a license to judge us anymore etc.).

And also, they’re not enlisted seamen. Nor are they mediocre officers who have the luxury of fading into obscurity. Things are different when you’re that high in the ranks, and when your job publicly matters more. sorry, but even post DADT (probably until about biden’s election), an open relationship would end their careers. They might not be fired, but they’d never be promoted again. Too much of a liability getting subordinates to still respect them, from the higher-ups’ perspective, especially if there are other qualified candidates who fit the navy’s core identity better. Like—sorry. This is such a jaded oversimplification. But if you rock the boat like that (i.e. break the service’s united front to be individualistic in a way that does not match the service’s overarching identity), from the perspective of your officer peers, you simply are a bad officer. Being an open individual in a job where you are required to fit in and represent your service is not your job. You are not doing your job well. Straight-up. Even if you’re retired. I met US Army 4-star gen. David Petraeus (retired obv) in February—he led the successful-ish surge in iraq and Afghanistan in the mid-2000s—and he’s STILL a laughingstock for his disastrous affair with his biographer a decade ago, even after he retired from AD service. That’s what people remember him for, not the fact that he was one of our only successful commanders in any of our Middle East campaigns.

Something like that might be one of ice and mav’s worst fears—being known for their affair/scandal instead of the institutionalized honor they’ve fought and killed for. That kind of thing just Isn’t Done. It's bad taste. You have to keep it quiet. If you’re an officer representing the service, you have to represent it well & according to the service’s preconceived identity, even in retirement. (see, for another shitty example of "not fitting in" even in retirement, Lt. gen. Mike Flynn [his whole scandal is actually kinda geopolitically relevant to my fic if you squint lol] whom everyone fucking hates)

To summarize: i hope I’m not mischaracterizing your ask when i reframe it like this—would you ever write ice and mav without the institutionalized pressure to advance in rank and conform to institutional norms?

and yes, I would (and will if you ask—it looks like this: ice & mav meet & fall in love & it’s boring and fine. end of story), but I guarantee you someone else already has. I’m all about interrogation of institutional norms here. And i think until maverick dies & comes back from the dead, there is absolutely no *REALISTIC* incentive for ice & mav to leave the navy and/or have an open relationship. Like it’s just not possible. Idk how else to say it.

[compacflt]

Oh to be Maverick, reading AD magazine and has a husband that will write you a blank check to buy any decor you want. Or collects expensive watches. And has the same taste. I don't know if anyone have asked this, what is your hc about their car preference? I hc that Mav likes big car because he's relatively short. And Ice likes luxury car. What do you think?

oh my god i have had this headcanon for so long thank god someone’s asking about it.

Ice will ONLY drive American-manufactured cars. like even when he travels somewhere and rents one. he will raise a stink about it.

It is a significant point of contention in their relationship & marriage that maverick is only interested in Japanese-manufactured motorcycles. Like they have had, and will continue to have, shouting matches over “why can’t you be a patriot and buy American motorcycles like harleys??!? What is with all the kawasaki and yamaha crap???” and “ice im telling you they just run better!!! the japanese just make better bikes!!!” tongue-in-cheek threats of divorce etc.

i definitely think of ice as less a luxury car and more a classic muscle car guy. back when muscle cars still were delicate and beautiful instead of hard and sharp, if that makes sense. there is a Venn diagram of luxury and muscle cars and he definitely has dabbled in the middle (see my fic’s deepthroating of the 2005 ford GT). But he won’t cross the line. (Won’t be caught dead driving a Porsche or mercedes for instance)

in the final final draft of my fic (ie the draft that will get posted before i call it quits on my top gun phase) the Dream Car is getting changed to a ‘68 Plymouth HEMI roadrunner. camaro is too mainstream i will admit. but see above for my “car preferences” hc.

[compacflt]

So one of the things that made me cry (and laugh) the most, when reading the whole series was in Debriefing when Ice has surgery and Mav kisses him on the forehead, then Ice types out “I am cured” with like no punctuation. (Because of course Ice is the punctuation man 99% of the time.)

One, Ice is actually so fucking funny with the “I am cured.” Like no one would believe how funny he actually is. (And I headcanon that Mav knows this, of course, but almost no one else believes him. Which drives him up the wall.) Two, that exchange was so simple but so loving??? Foaming at the mouth here. Especially after those crazy 30 years. So my question is, what are Ice and Mav’s kisses of choice? Forehead, cheek, regular ol’ lips, the world is their secretly sappy oyster.

I haven’t read that chapter of debriefing since fucking last October! Whoa! not sure how i feel about it .

regular ol’ on the lips :) it means something more than all the rest, it’s romantic in a way none of the others are (which is why it’s so dangerous)

okay yes re: ice being funny yes. wait wait wait let me find it in my doc hold on

here!

[compacflt]

idk if this question has already been answered or not but idrc, would your ice have considered it "talking about it" to admit his physical attraction towards mav? like calling him beautiful or genuinely complementing him. this goes for mav too

i do feel post debriefing ice would call mav beautiful openly or some sappy bs like that

love your writing 💌

anon i need you to know this ask was so cute it made me physically nauseous. i was sick all week thinking about how cute this ask was. thank you for sending it.

i actually had a couple drabbles where yes ice both pre- and post-TGM mission is like yeah im physically attracted to you, but it’s less like “oh my god you’re so hot 😍” and more like “i mean, yeah, you objectively look like tom cruise so it’s not like i really have a choice.”

but “beautiful” specifically i had not thought of, and it has knocked me off my feet and made me go feral/rabid/undomesticated for a few days straight, so i will be writing something about this. thanks.

[compacflt]

pre-publishing notes for extras part one (coming tomorrow i pray 🙏🏽 if not tmr than next saturday 🥺) for those interested

i am incredibly busy this wk so the final final edit of my fics isn’t gonna come till later, like next Wednesday or the weds after that or something.

but do not worry i am not changing anything major, unlike in previous edits. It’s just fixing little stuff (hyphenation, some grammar, places where AO3 fucked my italics, changing “chief naval officer” to chief of naval operations [i literally have no clue how that error happened as i got it right in some places and wrong in a bunch of other places like wtaf], removing brand names that show idk what the fuck im talking about, etc.). The most substantial edit is I’m adding one sentence to the slider one-shot where ice tries to convince slider that he and maverick are only tying the knot for financial purposes, and “so the govt doesn’t fuck one of us when the other dies for real.” that sentence was in my original draft and idk why it got removed.

i will not be editing the hangman one shot (besides fixing the proposal date), the airplane one shot, or the wingmen one shot because i do not really care for them and they have been overwritten by other sections of my fics. the bradley one shot is also pretty much going untouched

ONTO THE EXTRAS. Unlike some of my other fics which are M-rated & therefore kind of implicit, these extras are a littol bit edgy & explicit. Not beating around the bush anymore. I am warning for possible triggers, mostly related to disordered eating and, like, a BUNCH of casual suicidal ideation/discussion of suicide. Also it’s E-rated.

however that isn’t to say it’s not mostly fluff lol. there’s SOME sex but u know me.. it is sex as symbol not sex as sex... (You know what they say, $20 is $20 and writing practice is writing practice) I wanted to expand the scope of my original fics—more politics, more complications, more backstory, so that’s mostly what it is. Not everything revolves around goose anymore. It’s also about the rest of the world

parts of it will also obviously just be me dicking around, a disclaimer

not every scene that I’ve posted in a wip wednesday made the cut. I got rid of a bunch of them that were boring/repetitive. (so, my apologies to the anon who told me they liked the sickfic excerpt, for instance—the one where mav sprains his wrist is basically the same thing, we don’t really need to rehash the “taking care of each other” motif twice)

prolly download these somewhere else because it really is just 70k of a wall of text with no chapter breaks and we all know how ao3 is

thanks for reading! as always! ❤️❤️almost at the finish line here! part 2 (post TGM mission) hopefully next Saturday :)))

[compacflt]

i’ve got a question about your writing process: in order to write a 30 year narrative, you create it out of hundreds of individual moments & actions, and each one has to function by itself and also part of a whole—have truth to itself and emotional resonance in a timeline. imo the key to doing this successfully is to care about each moment and make each one memorable, which seems very difficult: you have to get at the meat of the human behavior, believably, in a way that matters and explains and progresses the story, every time. and to write 200k words of it you do it hundreds of times! could you talk a bit about idea generation for each moment and how you brainstorm and write them?

omg an excuse to make more diagrams ! Thank you so much for this lovely ask!

okay: in case you don’t want to scroll through like four/five months of my inane icemav Poasting, I’ve done a couple other posts that go into my process — here about specifically chapter 1 and here about the fatal flaw of my fics from a construction standpoint

but from an idea generation standpoint… it’s pretty boring and cynical. I literally just make checklists. “things that HAVE to happen.” here’s my notes app check list of stuff that HAD to happen for the story to make sense in my rewrite of what is now chapters 8 & 9. this is from last december lol

and here’s a checklist/diagram of the major story beats and the changes in relationship dynamics throughout the story. any one of these dynamics changing reflects on the others in a way that‘s worth talking about. the hard part is finding a framing device or scene to talk about them.

the A plot of the fic is ice’s relationship with the navy, primarily. his arc is defined by his rank. so that’s the number 1 dynamic I wanted to focus on in such-and-such scenes, and why I stuck as stringently as possible to the “one rank per chapter” formula until ice got to the top & had to reckon with what being at the top actually means. His change in ranks is inspiration enough for most scenes because it shifts the dynamics in a way that is worth remarking upon in and of itself.

as an example im thinking of this scene (mostly because it’s short but also) because i think it’s kind of representative of how my idea generation process works

It fills a lot of gaps that i needed filled at that specific juncture in the story. the idea started with a stupid little section of dialogue in my head (mav would be surprised that ice’s official Navy docusign signature isn’t his actual signature) that happened to be symbolically relevant too (of course ice would have two different signatures for his two different personas). Then it morphed into a discussion of Ice’s canonically unhappy-looking compacflt portrait, which is canonically unhappy-looking. Then add onto that ice admitting he’s only happy at home (home obviously meaning with maverick, given that he’s literally in his house right now and still doesn’t feel like he’s home) and maverick telling him, “well that’s a problem that has literally the easiest fix in the world. youre making this way more complicated than it needs to be. just come home to me.”

so it’s literally just checking off boxes of things I wanted to talk about. as I said, a very cynical creation process. ✅ ice and mav doing the long-distance-relationship phone call thing (framing device for the whole scene). ✅ mav knowing ice’s real vs fake signature ❤️. ✅ ice’s canon unhappy compacflt portrait that makes an appearance in TGM. ✅ ice not feeling at home in Hawaii. ✅ ice not being fulfilled by the job & only being fulfilled by mav. ✅ ice coming up with excuses to see mav at any possible chance he gets. ✅ ice still obviously thinking of mav and Bradley as his family & maverick as his home. Etc etc. You see what i mean? how many stupid little ideas, symbols, and dynamic shifts can i cram into a page or so? that’s pretty much my thinking.

[compacflt]

your use of names throughout your works is just sooo chef's kiss - I noticed that while you have the internal dialogue of Mav and Ice refer to themself/each other as Maverick/Ice and Mitchell/Kazansky for the majority of your fics, there are instances where they do call each other by their first names even before they 'talk about it'. I was wondering if you had any thoughts about the first time they called each other Pete/Tom? Any preceding events/emotions/conversations? Or did it just slip out?

LMFAO it’s when they first jack each other off LOL LOL

but aside from that the next times they call each other by their first names are: when bradley comes out to them (Pete), and literally 9/11 (Tom).

the whole “when they use names vs navy-issued identities” topic is one of those things I can’t talk about for too long without sounding like im sucking my own dick (bc im very proud of it) so ill just leave it there