‼️

In terms of the lens of 'MiG I respect the most as a competent plane within its historical context and if i met her at a bar i would feel the most kind of insecure and inadequate around', MiG-21(feels self explanatory)

In terms of 'personal attachment and childlike awe of flashy things', MiG-25 (kind of the prettiest thing in the world to me, the sound she makes when she is taking off is genuinely kind of intoxicating like her R-15 tumansky engines make her sound so much like a rocket going off like you hear that and it's like. i dont know i know a jet with afterburner is always going to sound a bit like that but you hear that she's got two engines that were meant for missiles and it's like. ohhh. shes the world's most special missile actually (also off topic but the history of the really early 60s-70s drones tupolev OKB was trying to develop from the aftermath of the cancelled Tu-121 missile the MiG-25 got her engines from is really interesting too!) and also i dont know the way that people tend to talk about her now a lot of people like to say she's overrated because they're comparing her to a role she wasn't designed for just because she's a really specialized interceptor really connects to me like people want her to be something she isn't and there's something kind of transfeminised about that like i think she'd be kind of a depressed tgirl burnout (maybe burnout is not the best word to be using here) and also! people act like a dedicated supersonic interceptor is somehow less 'glamorous' than a more dedicated air superiority fighter but to me the dedicated interceptors have always felt like the kind of truest MiG torchbearers like that's kind of what they were doing from the start basically like even in the patriotic war most of the MiG-3s were special because everyone else was low altitude duking it out but her mikulin engine was all high altitude specialized and most of them were rolled into the PVO instead of the VVS by the end of things (air defense is important!! intercepting is important!) and like MiG 15 was at her best killing bombers really fast! etc etc. sometimes it's not all about the homoerotic rivalry sometimes a fighter jet just goes really really fast and goes up behind you and gets you and that's very cool and like knight-girl coded too... and recon!! MiG-25 was very good at recon and that's important too! also specifically recon variants that didnt have weapons attached are cute because it is a bit like caging her? impotent. cute!! also im singling out the MiG-25 and not the MiG-31 because i think a lot of the problems with her and the rough around the edges add to the moe factor. Like. i dont know. a plane that goes really really fast and then melts a little is cute. there is no way around that. i like that her engines kind of destroy themselves and she's really high maintenance. i fantasize about like i think it would be nice for her to push herself too hard for me and hurt herself and then i get to slowly nurse her back to health. also. record for highest air-breathing jet. shes gonna touch space and stuff.. not actually that's under forty percent of the way to space but still. that record in particular gets me because like. mm. in the same way that a lot of early space stuff the soviets were doing kind of floors me, it's just. the test pilot that broke that record had to flee stalingrad as a kid during the war. theres a kind of knot in my stomach seeing stuff from the 50s, 60s, 70s in the USSR, seeing the kind of technology being developed, and juxtaposing that against the sheer basically apocalyptic scope of circumstances just a couple of decades prior. i don't want to gawk and romanticize and stuff just. i imagine for a lot of people it must have been a very exciting time and place to be. but im getting off topic.