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compacflt · 1 year

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Rumors from Pearl Harbor.

When Admiral Kazansky first comes to Pearl, he brings with him about half of his previous staff, all exceptionally-hardworking people hand-picked over years—advisors, flag aides, secretaries, ranks all over the board. But his new hires, upon getting acquainted with the old guard, are shocked to discover that his previous staff still hardly knows him at all.

“He keeps to himself, mostly,” Lieutenant Commander Hartford explains over a pint. “I made the mistake of asking him once what he did for fun. You know, like, hobbies and stuff. He blinked at me for a second, and then said, ‘I read.’ That’s it! I read! My advice to you newcomers would be, don’t ask him questions about his personal life, because it tends to be pretty boring.”

“It sounds to me like he’s a walking, talking Wikipedia page,” says Captain Calvert, who worked for the previous two Pacific Fleet Commanders and thinks she knows how to deal with them by now. “We owe it to ourselves to figure him out. It’ll make our lives easier, anyway. So, let’s put our heads together: what do we know about him?”

What they know are his habits, which they’ll come to learn intimately over the next few years, and which are admittedly pretty boring. Admiral Kazansky is one of the first to show up to work in the morning and one of the last to leave in the evening. He often answers e-mails past 2300 hours, but never later than midnight. Jokes never catch him off-guard; he rarely smiles, and when he does, it has an ulterior motive. When he’s not working, he’s scheming and making plans to go back home to San Diego, and his requests for leave are always granted, because he works like a pack mule from home anyway. He signs off every e-mail with “Sincerely,”…

“Is he sincere, though?” asks Chief Warrant Officer Kent halfway through Admiral Kazansky’s first year. (Admiral Kazansky is surely unaware that his staff now spends the second Friday of every month chit-chatting about him over drinks in downtown Honolulu.) “I can’t ever tell. And he lives in Hawaii. San Diego’s nice, I know, but what’s so different about the beaches there that he can’t get here?”

“I genuinely don’t think he’s human,” confesses Commander Stoddard. “People warned me about that when I came here, and I laughed it off, but… he keeps his desk biologically sterile. Not one fingerprint, but I’ve never seen anyone wipe it down. I’ve looked through his drawers. Don’t judge me, I got curious. Everything squared away, like he’s goddamn Einstein or something. Have any of you ever seen him in his civvies?” No one has. “God damn it, where does he shop for groceries? No one’s seen him at a grocery store? Does he even own a pair of jeans? Does he wear his uniform to bed, too?”

“He probably goes grocery shopping on the whole other side of the island to avoid all the enlisted kids,” laughs Captain Calvert. “Come to think of it…you know how he always eats lunch in the office? It’s always a salad. And always the same kind of salad. This guy survives on one cup of coffee and one spinach salad a day. Maybe he really isn’t human.”

They build out their wealth of knowledge and come to learn that Admiral Kazansky is defined by his extremes, by what he always does and what he never does. Admiral Kazansky gets his uniforms dry-cleaned every week, though he never spills anything on them. No one has ever seen Admiral Kazansky stumble over his words while giving a speech, or trip over a sidewalk curb, or push a “pull” door. He is always polite and never friendly. Sometimes he is cold, and sometimes he is cruel in his patience with you when you’ve fucked up, like a cat toying with a hemorrhaging mouse. But he never raises his voice. He is always immaculately put-together, well-groomed, constructed every day like a product on an assembly line. Nothing is ever out of place. Allegedly his umbrella once turned inside-out during a rainstorm; he disdainfully shook it once, as a hunter might pump a loaded shotgun, and it flipped itself right-side-in again. The laws of physics do not seem to apply to him. Nor do the natural embarrassments that come with being human. Admiral Kazansky is never flustered, never harried, and never falls apart.

“I found this old picture of him shaking hands with another pilot on the Internet,” says Chief Warrant Officer Kent in Admiral Kazansky’s second year. “Smiling like the Cheshire Cat. Never seen him smile like that in all my years working with him. And he had frosted tips, too. Like Guy Fieri on a diet and steroids. It was the eighties, sure, but it’s like he knew how to have fun, once upon a time. Wonder what happened to him.”

“I feel lonely for him sometimes,” says Commander Stoddard. “Strict guy like that, no family, no friends, no wife, nothing to live for but the Navy? He’s like a workhorse with blinders on. Nowhere to go but forward. That’s a lonely existence.”

“Not if you’re a robot,” says Lieutenant Commander Hartford. “I swear, sometimes he breathes and it makes me jump, ‘cause I forgot he was alive!” —What else doesn’t Admiral Kazansky do?

That’s when they realize that none of them, not the old guard nor the new, has ever, not once, ever seen or heard Admiral Kazansky sneeze.

And they all finally give up the game and quit arguing and agree that, no, he really isn’t human after all. He must be some cyborg from the future sent to whip the Pacific Fleet into shape, and you can’t ask for too much humanity from someone who’s doing a pretty damn good job of it.

The rumors start soon after that. Jokes that could get them all tossed out of the Navy, but probably won’t. Jokes that accidentally spread like wildfire.

Yes, Admiral Kazansky could be a cyborg, but he also could be a Mormon fundamentalist, or a Scientologist, or a really weird Catholic. Maybe he goes home to San Diego so often because in his spare time he’s really a mule ferrying cocaine across the Mexi-Cali border. That’s what he does for fun. He eats spinach salads because he’s a reincarnation of Popeye the Sailor Man, and he needs all the super-strength he can get to deal with the Navy’s modern-day bullshit.

“I don’t know if that story makes sense,” laughs Captain Calvert on the phone with her husband in Washington, “but it makes more sense than the real Admiral Kazansky does!”

So the rumors get spread around.

“I don’t know if you know this,” Maverick comments, watching Ice make their bed from the relative comfort of the bedroom doorway, “or if I should tell you this, because you might crack down on it, which would be a shame, ‘cause it’s funny. But every time you send a mass e-mail to the Pacific Fleet commissioned officer corps, you become the main topic of conversation between all of us officers for a solid day and a half.”

“Oh?” says Ice with a smile, struggling to fit the last corner of the fitted sheet to the mattress. He sighs, tugs on the strings of his old ratty-ass hooded sweatshirt, and looks at Maverick balefully through his glasses. “Help me out over here, would you? —What are people saying? All good things, I hope.”

“Not really,” Maverick says, stuffing a pillow into a pillowcase as he stares out the window into the San Diego sunshine. “Some pretty crazy shit, actually. Hard as hell for me to keep a straight face. I heard this one—you know, people are saying you eat nothing but salads?”

“Oh,” laughs Ice, hospital-cornering the free sheet. “Yeah, that one’s kind of true. I bring salads in to the office sometimes.”

“You hate salads.”

“I know, it’s torture! Move over.” He bumps Maverick out of the way to tuck in the last corner. “But, I figure, if a man torments himself with spinach-and-arugula salads three times a week, you ought to respect his commitment. It’s all an act. You get to a certain Defense Department paygrade, it all starts being storytelling and stagecraft.”

“Or trickery and deception, depending on how you look at it.”

“Sure. But you could say that about everything. —Besides, I’d rather the Navy discuss my salads than discuss… well, this.” He gestures to Maverick, then down to the bed. They start tugging the comforter over it together. “How much slack you got over there?”

“‘Bout a foot.”

Ice pulls his side down a couple more inches to match, then flips the top up. “Is that it? That’s all people are saying about me?”

Maverick grins and bends down to pick up a pillow. “They’re also saying that you’re the reincarnation of Popeye the Sailor Man. I yam what I yam and that’s all what I yam, and all that. Think fast.”

Ice doesn’t think fast, and the pillow hits him square in the face, and he laughs again as he catches it in his arms. “Shit, that’s good,” he says; “I was just about to call Slider, think I’ll tell him that one. That’ll make him laugh. Popeye Iceman.” He tosses the pillow onto the made-up bed and pulls out his cell phone, but—then he frowns, grimaces, mutters “Ah, no,” and turns away to sneeze.

#these are not real OCs obv #none of my OCs ever are #just names saying things #if a tree (ice) falls in a forest (sneezes in his office) and no one’s around to hear #does it really make a sound?#cyclone hears these rumors and immediately starts slamming salads and dry cleaning his uniforms #what he doesn’t understand is that sometimes overachieving is driven by having something you desperately want to keep hidden #im very interested in an interpretation of TG86 ice that #has constructed a mythos/character around himself #(best of the best & scary frosted tips for example)#to hide the truth of who he actually is.#Popeye iceman #top gun #top gun maverick #pete maverick mitchell #icemav #tom iceman kazansky #top gun fanfiction #it’s the way he lives. ice-cold; no mistakes.#popeye’s ‘I am what I am and that’s all that I am’ would be good advice for my ice to take #of course around mav tho…

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rainedroptalks · 3 months

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yknow what, call it bad taste but I actually kinda like kindermilly cockerspaniel or whatever her name is. As a lover of annoying weirdos, I cannot wait to see her again

#ramblings #d20 #dimension 20 #d20 fhjy #fhjy #fantasy high junior year #kipperlilly copperkettle #as an overachiever I honestly kinda get her #she’s just kinda weird and bitchy #take this with a grain of salt tho #this is the same mind that brought you ‘yea Penelope everpetal did all those thing but have you considered she was funny while doing them’#ALSO I AM SO INTERESTED IN HOW SHE FOUND THE ROUGE TEACHER

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stuckinapril · 1 month

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how did u become this productive and academic and cool.. what age did u start..

Built this way babeyyyy

#I’m kidding. Idk I’ve been very academically oriented since I was a child #Being raised by an overachieving engineer mother probably helped but I can also safely say I was predisposed to academia the whole time #And as uni got harder I started mentally coaching myself until I got where I wanted #I also genuinely love science and I’m grateful to be studying something I’m passionate about every day #And while academic productivity (for the lack of a better term) comes naturally to me other stuff doesn’t #I’m very much a schedule kind of person and if I don’t have meticulous to do lists I literally die #I’m very lazy in certain aspects but I also like keeping my hands busy which is pretty fortunate #Flattered that u think being a nerd is cool. That is basically what I am

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amasdoodles · 3 months

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what was supposed to be my first post for oc kiss week lol but is now one of two i made for it. listen to the majority of 'this is my idea' from the swan princess for the full effect lmao

thank you @thesolemnhour for letting me borrow agria for this lol

#ama doodles #cn: agria #arthur khavortorov (oc)#pwotr pals #its this is my idea but they never fall in love they just keep hating each other #i found out what clipping layer is and am going to make it everyone's problem #i think they would hate each others guts. not even bc of arthurs shitty actions in the future just bc theyre both so competitive #put two overachievers in a room together and they tear each other to shreds

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jojea · 4 months

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✨ holiday matsuri 2023 lineup ✨

zazie the beast — trigun stampede

nie huaisang — mo dao zu shi

shadowheart — baldur’s gate 3

ema skye — ace attorney

choso — jujutsu kaisen

#holiday matsuri #trigun stampede #zazie the beast #mdzs #nie huaisang #baldur's gate 3 #shadowheart #ace attorney #ema skye #jujutsu kaisen #choso kamo #cosplay #two weeks out from the con!!!!!!!! and so it is…. lineup time #YES i am being an overachiever with five whole ass cosplays and what about it?#it wasn’t going to be this many but what can i say #the bg3 brainrot is strong and i had so much for shadowheart already so i could not resist #limited edition post

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essektheylyss · 4 months

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I have finally hit 30k on my current book draft and this section is roughly outlined to my liking and I have worked out a number of later plot kinks in the process and truly, if I can get through this and the next section before the New Year, I might actually stand a chance of finishing this thing with some efficiency. And thank FUCK.

#really the trouble is gonna be when class starts up again. but that's for later megs to deal with.#however if I can miraculously get through three next THREE sections before the new year I'll be done like two weeks into January.#wouldn't THAT be a miracle #megs is writing #for real this time!!!#it's wild too cuz like... this feels like a first draft but technically it's a fourth #so it's possible I won't even need to do THAT much editing once it's done #we'll see but #the farther I go the more I'm like. okay okay okay.#while simultaneously being convinced I'm gonna fuck it up on the next scene but #also the more text that i know doesn't have to be tossed entirely the easier it is to also be like 'okay but rewriting one scene is fine'#ANYWAY i am once again overachieving on writing goals but i am also once again feeling like overachieving is REALISTIC #and what a miracle that is after this fucking year #uggggh i also gotta start learning python tho FUCK

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aladork · 11 months

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people might misunderstand this in a dreadful way but i do think it would be kind of epic alador and lilith """"dated"""" for a month or even less in high school before alador developed a thing for darius. i do think it was some "trying to perform for the norm" type of thing. almost got catastrophic by way of pushing down discomfort and avoidance but i think at some point before it got too agonizing they got to have a talk and i think this is how lilith finds out shes aroace and also alador life forshadowing for his own understanding of romance. literally ending in a "well i didnt really feel anything particularly deep when we went out on 'dates' but i did enjoy the hanging out with you part." type of deal. alador might have felt something and may have been concerned about being a bad first partner for lilith but not never says anything about it because she never seemed upset with him. like hes probably dodgy about physical touch because of overaccomodation and may have been a little awkward for a little bit and like he was probably hurting during the confusion as much as lilith was but i think their collective logic brains allowed them to still be good friends.

its not about the romance and them dating its not about shipping its about lilith having had an excursion to see if she enjoyed dating someone and safely found out the answer was no without fear of hurting or losing anyone. i think they are secret autism confidantes. dont talk personally for months but lilith can go to alador to ask his thoughts. ofc faded off during the marriage but. definitely was explaining lilith about his feelings for darius and trying to logic map out if he was attracted or not (there was definitely misscommunication in the hexside aladarius era because of this) and shes like hm i dont know. does anyone see my vision here. is this anything.

#alador blight #lilith clawthorne #i do NOT ship them but i do think that miss overachiever miss grudgby captain would have felt the need to perform the whole thing yknow.#also i am aspec i am projecting.#lilith voice i think it would be logical for us to do this. alador voice that is logical youre right....

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clmfusded24-7 · 25 days

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there's nothing more painful to be an overacheiver, a people pleaser, and a perfectionist when no matter what you do or how much work you put in, you will only ever scrape average.

and then there's someone out there with natural talent. who doesn't need to try and never has, that excels in everything you love and it's like salt in the wound to watch them succeed while you fail.

#this is about me but it could also very easily be about oikawa tooru #i am oikawa tooru #can you tell that the exams are getting to me?#overachiever #perfectionist #people pleaser #gifted kid burnout #physics #to the person who is the kageyama to my oikawa im happy your doing well for yourself BUT STOP MAKING IT SO OBVIOUS #adhd #autism #audhd

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curseofdelos · 6 months

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Take a Chance, Roll the Dice (3/3)

Relationships: Nico & Bianca, Nico & Hazel, Nico/Will (Solangelo), Nico & Percy Word Count: 31k (across three chapters) Summary: By the time everyone had gathered around the table, Nico was buzzing with excitement. His character sheet and notebook were neatly laid out in front of him, and his D&D Player’s Handbook was tucked away in his bag in case he needed it (he wouldn’t, he had it memorised back to front). Bianca didn’t have any dice, so Nico was sharing his collapsible dice tray with her, and set it between them for easy access. His fancy obsidian dice were neatly lined up along one side, and the glittery green acrylic set he loaned Bianca was lined up on the other. Percy was idly stacking his blue d6s opposite Nico while Grover was organising his spell cards next to him. Thalia was at the other head of the table - opposite Annabeth, and between Grover and Bianca - doodling in the margins of her character sheet. “Okay,” Annabeth said to grab their attention, and Nico couldn’t stop smiling even if he wanted to. “Let’s start by introducing our characters.” ------- An exploration of Nico’s relationships through games of D&D. Written for “Day 25 - D&D” of @solangeloweek's Auctober event.

Read on Ao3 [LINK]

#nico di angelo #solangelo #my fic #this is more of a nico fic than a solangelo fic but the solangelo part is still 11k+ words so it counts #this fic also arguably fills the college & roommates & enemies to lovers prompts too because I am nothing if not an overachiever #this was supposed to be a short fic I wrote as a break from my longer projects I don't know what happened

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hunter-sylvester · 3 months

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I honestly feel bad for Hunter. Having neglectful parents suck, I can see why he’s so attached to Kevin. Especially considering they’ve been friends since third grade (I think). I’d be scared if my friend started running off with some chick too tbh. Because now it’s not just us anymore.

[although Hunter still has Robbie, I love Robbie]

You and me both, Anon 💔 [prev ask for context]

And you’re preaching to the choir about neglectful parents lmao there’s a reason I relate to him so heavily. More like about a million reasons but that’s beside the point.

I agree and I definitely think it plays a very large part. Even the band’s name changing is symbolic of that loss of the illusion of them that Hunter was living under. I didn’t touch on it much in the previous analysis because I was trying to stay focused on his parental issues. But when discussing his attachment to Kevin in any way it’d be an oversight to ignore the fact that Hunter is in love with him. Dare I say canonically.

“When I first got the script, the first thing which popped out to me was that Hunter seemed like he was in love with Kevin.” – Adrian Greensmith

It's how Adrian played Hunter. It's as close to canon as it can be without it being in the script.

Although I do not think that it's entirely necessary to accept him being in love with Kevin for the following to make sense, it does enrich it imo.

So in my mind he subconsciously believes that Kevin and he are something. Something more than simply best friends. Not that he’s able to realize that. He automatically pushes everything down the second he feels it. Unless it's anger, of course. [emotional regulation issues | father]

You can see him repress his emotions so clearly here.

And yeah, the bandname. In the same scene, we get a quote I always read entirely too much into love to analyze deeply. Watch how he says it. It means way more to him than it should.

Skullfucker is them. It's Kevin & Hunter. It's his idea of them and their future. Of touring and performing together. Of striding into adulthood together.

His preceding "You can't. You can't-" is him practically begging Kevin not to abandon him. [abandonment issues | mother]

"You can't leave me because we are Skullfucker. Skullfucker is us. You can't break us. You can't throw me away, you were supposed to be the one that doesn't throw me away because we're us. You can't break Skullfucker."

It makes sense that Skullfucker is quite a 'strong' and over-the-top, even violent name. It's everything Hunter wants to project outward to protect himself and what he has with Kevin. Aside: it changing to Skullflower, which has a softer connotation while still befitting a metal band, can easily be read as symbolic of Hunter being forced to learn it's okay to be vulnerable as well. But that'd be a tangent and a half.

Kevin is shattering his entire world in the scene. He's taking a fucking sledgehammer to it.

"You need me a lot more than I need you. Without me all of your dumb fantasies disappear. But without you I might actually live a real life." - Kevin Schlieb

"Dumb fantasies" can be read as the more obvious. Namely, their band making it big while Hunter has to make zero compromises to his vision. Or there is the arguably more painful version. Hunter's dumb fantasy is them. Them together. Them being anything. Which certainly all falls apart without Kevin.

Aside: I wish to note that while I think Kevin makes a good number of painfully accurate points during this fight, I don't think he means all of it at his core. It's said in the heat of the moment and should thus be taken with a grain of salt. "You need me a lot more than I need you. Without me all of your dumb fantasies disappear." These lines I view as painfully accurate. "But without you I might actually live a real life." This one I think is not to be taken entirely at face value. It is said in anger with the intention to hurt in my opinion. And it works. But it's not what Kevin actually thinks.

He lashes out after this. As it's the only way he knows how to deal with anything and it beats having to examine why this is shattering his very being. [emotional regulation issues | father]

Aside: let it not be thought that I in any way condone his actions leading up to this scene. While the speech class scene is my favorite scene in the movie, Hunter's actions in it towards Emily are inexcusable. And the consequences that follow are something he brought upon himself.

There is also a case to be made for this being an example of or affected by Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria, as I view all the members of Skullflower as being AuDHD (ADHD + Autistic).

But to circle back to Kevin running off with Emily...yeah. Of course that shatters him. Kevin is the only person that he feels safe around and on top of that he's in love with him.

His bubble of safety and his presumption that Kevin is his are turned to dust before his eyes and he doesn't even know why it's hitting him as hard as it is.

Also yes, they have indeed been best friends since third grade.

"Hunter's been my best friend ever since he stopped Molly Levine from pulling out my hair in third grade" - Kevin Schlieb

And yes, Robbie rules. We love Robbie in this household. I love that he's someone Hunter can also lean on. Even if it does have to be through very heavy projection.

And a hug. You can't fault a good hug.

I will emphasize tho, he never actually loses Kevin.

He couldn't. The way in which he thought he lost Kevin was a way he never had him to begin with. Kevin is still his best friend, still his bandmate and still someone who is safe and who is there for him. Kevin was just angry at him (and for good reason, let's be real). But he wasn't actually abandoning him. Hunter only felt like he did. [abandonment issues | mother]

Look no further than the fact he broke him out of Rehab. He came back for him because that is what Kevin does. Even if he gets mad, even if they fight, even if Hunter acts entirely out of line, Kevin is never gone. Never lost.

There will be consequences, absolutely. But he'd have to do a lot worse to actually lose Kevin for real. Tune in next time, where I will explain why Hunter and Kevin's relationship fits a BDSM bratting dynamic /j ANYWAY-

I do think their relationship is special. Just not necessarily in a way that involves kissing, unfortunately for Hunter.

Thank you so much for asking, Anon 🤘 If you are the same Anon from last time, then thank you again. I enjoy going on these incomprehensible rants and I'm massively thankful for being asked about my special interest like this. It's very nice ^-^

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